Thought Processes from Wednesday, Continued

Anyway... this is where I was when I had to stop writing the other day.

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About my occasional references to God - I'm not the devout person I used to be. I was very involved – probably to the point that part of my antipathy is burnout from being so involved. I served at Masses, I did this and that project, did that outreach, I taught Catechism. I was a candidate in an ancient secular order (you can read about that sad story on my alter ego blog), but was so devastated by their lies and hypocrisy that I've shunned going to Mass for the longest time. It's what, a year and a half now? I'm getting there. I am. Just not yet. When I'm finally over it - I don't think I can go to Mass without being over my... let's call them "trust issues" - there are some people I need to visit and apologize to. I walked away from teaching Catechism because I was so hurt and angry inside, and didn't feel that it was right for me to be teaching children when I felt that way. I need to see the coordinator and apologize for abandoning her, the kids and the program.

The paradox is that I have no problem with raising my future children in the Church. The parishes around our house are very orthodox, with really excellent priests; this is true especially my former parish, whose programs I'm firmly behind as they're just super and well thought out, much better than what I grew up with. We also have excellent parochial schools near our house. This is the part of any future children’s upbringing I don't have to worry about.

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I think about the things I would do differently with our children than my parents did with my younger brother and me. We were the tail end of seven kids, and were raised as a completely different unit than the "older five," the youngest of that group being eight years older than me. Little brother (4B - 4th brother) and I were late children; I am now the same age (37) as my mother was when she was pregnant with 4B. My children will essentially be, like me, late children. Because Mom and Dad were essentially part of the "Geritol Crowd" when we were in school, instead of the hyper-vigilant parenting with the older five, they were very laid back with us, allowing us to be kids, kicking us outside to play. When the older kids (by then out of the house) would come home, they went nuts. We got to stay out until 9 or 10 from an early age, we got our drivers’ licenses at 16, and they didn’t; not a one of them got their license because there were just too many of them and not enough money to insure them. The older kids whined about that. They still do, twenty years later. A lot.

Yet there was the other side to that coin. Laid back meant being, I'm sorry to say, uninvolved. There wasn't a lack of love - God no! - but they'd been there and done that and in their laxity, let us run free. We were left to our own a lot as kids. Mom and Dad didn’t come to my sports events. They didn’t sit down with us and help us do homework. They didn’t do parent/teacher conferences a lot – Mom went to a few for me through my elementary school years, but not much after, say, junior high school. They just weren’t involved that way.
They were lucky with me because I was self-sufficient: I did my homework, got myself to and from games and practices, maintained my GPA, and I was the lucky kid who didn’t really have to apply myself to do well in school. Mom was involved with me in kindergarten, because one of her friends was my teacher; after that, I was left to my own devices. And I survived. My brother wasn’t wired the same way cerebrally as I was, and had his difficulties. Mom hung onto him in high school because he was hanging with the wrong crowd and doing dumb skater stuff. He survived, too, but he paid for it. He still does, whether he admits it or not.

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DH, on the other hand, had parents who were TOO involved. His dad was a helicopter parent decades before the term was coined; hell, he war-dials the house every night, trying to live vicariously through DH’s corporate life since he’s worked from home for forty years. FIL meddled with DH’s teachers and coaches, wangled his way into coaching all of DH’s teams up until high school. His mother did many things right – teaching him to do his own laundry, do household stuff, although I wish she’d taught him how to cook! – but she had her issues too. She never told him what was going on. She took care of everything for him, paid for everything. She made him do piano lessons even though he wasn’t very good and hated the piano. He is always the bad guy when it comes to his sister – MIL *always* takes SIL’s side, even today, even when SIL is blatantly wrong. You get the idea. The favoritism has carried over into his adult life in the sense that he’s apathetic to his sister; the hypervigilance, he said even in his home study, made him unprepared for life in the real world. Pretty big stuff.

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We know that somewhere in the middle is the answer. We need to be involved, but not to the point of being crazy and controlling. Discipline needs to be instituted, safety ensured, yet freedom encouraged. Since DH and I are both academically lazy with foundations from not being pushed in that regard, we know we can’t let down our guard in the future. We also need to be attentive to the academics in general without being overbearing. Our child(ren) will be encouraged to do sports, but we won’t be there every day, every hour; and, if the child(ren) don’t want to do sports, that’s fine, too.

I guess it’s about balance.