I have a confession to make: I’m not absolutely positive that I’m doing the right thing for my daughter.
Phew! It was good to get that off my chest.
Now on to the real question: How do we ever feel like we’re doing the right thing for our kids?
In my case, I have a relatively unusual situation. My daughter isn’t one of those “smart kids” who have the typical characteristics: shy, likes to play alone, reads a lot, likes to hang out with other geeky kids, quiet and malleable in school.
That would be my son.
Back to my daughter. She’s unusual, and sometimes it’s a little hard to feel like I know what I’m doing. There aren’t very many people who can say, with conviction created from experience, that I’m doing the right thing. Most people who are honest just say…eh…I’m not really qualified to deal with this.
Her teachers are always amazed at what she can do. At her first teacher meeting with a new teacher at her homeschool program, the teacher picked up something she’d done and registered surprise: This is a third-grade exercise, she said.
What do I know? Like in most things in life, I am a perpetual novice at homeschooling. I just do what my guts tell me to do.
Well, I answered, it seemed like she’d think it was a cool thing to do.
I spend a lot of time and effort trying to find things that my daughter will consider cool things to do. If she doesn’t like something, she just flat out won’t do it. It doesn’t matter what the consequences are. It doesn’t matter how I stroke her with praise. Every discipline theory you can tell me (believe me, I’ve read and tried them all) will have no effect. If she doesn’t want to, she ain’t gonna do it. No way, no how.
She’s a little like her mother. I’ve never been great at doing things I don’t care about. In school, I did great, unless I didn’t care about the class and then I didn’t do anything.
My daughter sees life as an extended version of “do I care?”
So I do my best but I’m always wondering. Every time I read a new criticism of “today’s parents,” I suddenly see myself. The other day I wrote about how a list I read was aflame and aghast over an article that criticized parents of “gifted” children for just being lax parents.
I thought, “Oh, my god, is that ME?” For a few moments I was filled with anxiety. By homeschooling my daughter, I’m just giving in to her faults. I’m creating a monster of a person who will never be able to sit still in a classroom, hold a steady job, be a valuable citizen.
All that took place in a moment, then I realized it was ridiculous. I’m doing my best. I know I’m not the best parent she could have, but neither am I the worst.
Let me tell you: The worst would have dropped her off on the steps of a government building long ago. When they had that loophole in Nebraska where it became legal to drop off any kid under the age of 18 without consequences, I toyed with the idea. Not seriously, mind you. But I couldn’t help thinking about it…
…And I wasn’t the only one. Parenting can be terribly frustrating, and we live in a time when we feel like there should be a manual for everything. I mean, if there’s a “Beagles for Dummies” manual, how come we can’t have a single decent parenting manual that answers all our questions?
Like: OK, I tried everything in your theory and it didn’t work. Why doesn’t your theory work on my kid?
Like evolution, kids aren’t theories. They’re facts. There they are, and no matter how you try to explain them away with simplifications, darn if they’ll just always be who they are anyway.
Just one time, though, don’t you just want to be sure you did the right thing? Every once in a while, your child will actually go in the direction you were pushing, and you can congratulate yourself.
It’s possible s/he was going to go that way anyway, but hey, give yourself a pat on the back, OK? You did the right thing.
