We exist in a narrative of failure

When you became a parent, everything was so hard. You stopped knowing how to live. Without a day job to structure your hours, you got lost between day and night, between baby breakfast and snack. You forgot what the shower looked like. You measured your self-worth by how much or little you smelled on any given day. You looked at the kids, and at least they were there. Alive. Good. Perhaps not because of you. But probably. I mean, they were just babies. It was up to you, right?

Eventually, you forced yourself to make your own structure. You got together some to-do lists, you made some long-term goals, and you used social media to help you find friends--other mothers who were new at this thing, other women who were struggling.

They never knew you were actual garbage.

You had enough of a talent for writing that you were relatable. You never worried about showing them your failures because you were funny about it, and you didn't mind looking bad if it made other people feel better about themselves. You kept hacking away at your lists and your writing, and, for a while, you felt pretty good about this. You felt like you were making a difference to people. People seemed to be trying because you were fighting there along with them, there to support them and laugh with them, there to share your triumphs and failures. For a while, you felt like the face of a certain type of parenthood, and you were okay with that. Parenting is a wonderful thing to bond over because it is essentially outside of yourself. It is a foreign body to nearly everybody. As close as it is to you, it is never quite who you are. That makes it somehow safe. It gives your life an outside focus. It is something you do, not something you are. But it is ALSO something you are, and so the validation and friendship you receive as a result of it is natural and complex. You can talk about it as an it while also integrating it as a you. It's easy to write about, to pull funny snippets and anecdotes into a broader context that all parents can relate to. You knew always that you were a very small fish, and you constantly checked yourself, lest you became egotistical about it.

You always liked to be the center of attention. Lord knows how often you had been told about that part of yourself.

But kids grow up.

And suddenly they're too old for you to write too much about them anymore without violating their privacy and agency as people.

At the same time, you've hacked your to-do list to pieces. You've won awards, you've published in all the places, you're making money, you're even being paid to teach others how to do this.

But you're still garbage.

And now you're not even relatable. You are somehow too much and not enough at the same time.

You realize your bulletproof strategy was perhaps closer to compulsion than you want to admit, and you are not proud of yourself at all. Since you are garbage, everything you've accomplished is garbage, and those who celebrated your accomplishments are garbage and everything is garbage.

So you keep going, racking it up, doing your best. Your paper resume is fucking solid. There is no denying that you are GOOD.

Except you're not. You're leaking everywhere. You want to tell people about how hard you work, in the hopes that they will admire your tenacity and ethic, that they will see this goodness and say something. But you know that telling people about how hard you work is poison.

First, it might make them feel like they are hopeless, unaccomplished, not enough. It also provokes an eye-roll reaction, because, honestly, who cares what you've done. It gets to the point where even in places where you're supposed to list your accomplishments, you don't want to. "X is a freelance writer" is all you want to say. You're afraid the rest is bragging. You're afraid the rest is showing off. You're certain other people could do this, what you do. You are not special.

You do not want people to think you think you are special.

You do not want people to think you think you are better than them.

And now that your days consist of writing and interviewing and publishing instead of changing diapers and mushing up avocado, you can't hide what you've been doing all along, which is talking about yourself.

Forcing yourself to badly put together an IKEA dresser for your kids and forcing yourself to write a 2,000-word profile for a major magazine seem the same to you, but they're not. You can write about the first, and it's funny and cute. If you write about the second, it's smug, it's bragging. And not just about your accomplishments, but about the unhealthy standards to which you've held yourself, and about the unhealthy way you accomplished those standards.

And speaking of the kids, you look at them now, growing, and you see the weight has shifted. They are still good, but now you know that it is definitely in spite of you, rather than because of you. The kids are good because kids are made good, and it's all you can do to mess them up as little as possible, and you're failing.

You see other people, women in particular, doing what you have done, and you want to tell them to stop. You want to tell them it doesn't work. You want to protect them from this. You're afraid it will overwhelm them, swallow them. You're afraid they're doing it the way you did it, to fill something. You're afraid they'll wake up and find it still empty, like you did.

But you can't warn them. How presumptuous of you to assume they are like you. They are not garbage, after all. Why project your feelings all over their hard work?

You have long thought about how anxiety affects your life. You've come around to wondering about compulsion and what it even means. But you can't really complain about your feelings, your drive. If you do have anxiety, it's not that bad. You're just making a big deal out of it, like you always do.

People have it so much worse. You can get out of bed in the morning. You can do all the things! You do them, all the time. You have 'spoons.' Lots of spoons. All the spoons. You can go forever.

You worry that too much talk about this anxiety will turn people off. Now, not only do they feel compelled to pat you on the back whenever you've accomplished whatever stupid thing you set out to accomplish that day, they also will feel like they have to comfort you. That's an emotional burden they don't need. You think they'll resent you for it. You think they probably already do.

Here she comes. She has everything, does everything, and, still, she needs us to coddle her.

You've gone from relatable to off-putting. You've gone from just enough to make everyone happy to too much and too little all at once.

You're going to lose everyone, as well you should.

This is what happens when you base your narrative on failure and you then outwardly succeed. This is what happens when you make it on the outside without ever having looked at the inside.

And deep down, you know that your inside doesn't even deserve the attention you're giving it right now.

There is nothing wrong with you. You are fine.

Other than being garbage.

...

You throw some Christmas lights over your garbage heap and hit post.

When Kids Can't Connect the Dots

One of my children has the unfortunate habit of screaming like a banshee when something has offended her, or her sister has teased her, or anything has angered or annoyed her in any way. The other one has the unfortunate habit of trying out different forms of insult humor, then throwing a tantrum when no one finds it funny. Then trying to pretend it never happened and opening up new conversation as if she hadn't just skewered her opponent, then crying about it again when her conversation partner isn't ready to move on yet.

Both things happened yesterday, and, at different times, in different situations, I explained to them that sometimes saying sorry is the best way to move forward. If the one's screams have offended all within hearing distance, and she wants to then play, perhaps a simple, "I'm sorry I lost my temper right then," would help pave the way to playtime. If the other snuck in a jab, then wanted to recover because she's embarrassed it wasn't funny, but was instead hurtful, an "I'm sorry I said that about you. I was just trying to be funny, but that was wrong," would probably move everyone along much faster.

But my kids think of apologies as punishment. It brings about a responsibility they don't feel toward their actions until it is uttered. And they don't like that. They don't yet see how apologizing is a necessary, and NICE part of life. That boulders can be moved with sincere apologies, and that those types of apologies make us better people, stronger people, happier people. That an apology is not just to assuage the offended but to offer greater insight to our characters.

Right now, apologies are still "gross". Whatever that means.

Anyway, last night, right before bed, I was able to get a legitimate and heartfelt apology out of the screamer. I felt proud and happy that she seemed to understand what I meant.

Until 7:30 this morning when she called me from my warm bed.

"Mama, I'm sorry I cried and screamed on our special date."

That "date" was a month ago and that "date" was not something to apologize for. In that instance, the screamer was legitimately distressed out of her mind because she was separating from her twin for the first time. At the time, I did everything in my power to comfort and distract her, and we eventually (after hours) had a good separate day.

What kills me about this is that instead of connecting an apology to the annoyance of or mistreatment of someone else, she connected it to her feelings.

I told her that wasn't something she ever needed to apologize for. That her crying in that instance was understandable and right and that she has a right to her very real feeling.

My heart broke though.

Apologize for the time you tantrumed when I didn't give you chocolate, or made you put on your seatbelt or brush your teeth or go to school on time.

Don't apologize for the one time you felt scared and helpless and alone.

...We have some work to do.




 

Black Dog -- Guest Post

A brave and important post today by Aubrey Harmon from World Split Open as we all process the events of this past week.

...

You are in the middle of training for your new job, when the trainer needs to take a break for a few minutes.  You pull out your phone to check for news about your son, who has been sick.  Instead you discover that Robin Williams has died of an apparent suicide.  You share the news with the trainer when he comes back and you share a moment of shock and sadness.  Then you get back to work.  But the knowledge hangs in the back of your brain, nibbling.  It’s there when you drive home with music turned up loud to drown it out.  It’s there when you get home and eat dinner and drink wine and keep eating and drinking to drown it out.  Because nothing drowns it out.  Not petting your dogs.  Not thinking of your kids.  Not trashy television or equally trashy novels.  You know depression, that black dog, is stalking and it can take you down.  Even with money and fame and everything that goes along with that, even knowing the pain suicide would cause those you leave behind, it can take you down.  You aren’t in that bad place now.  You believe in better living through chemistry.  But sometimes, even with the meds and the therapy and the writing and art and music and eating and drinking, even with friends and family, the black dog whimpers and growls at the edges of your mind.

I have lived with, and struggled against, depression and anxiety for as long as I can remember.   Even before I can remember.  There are stories about the horrible attempts at taking me to preschool, where I would cling to my mom’s legs and sob and sob.  I wasn’t one of those kids who would cry for a minute until my parent left, then get sidetracked by other things.  No, I was determined.  I cried the whole time I was there.  The teachers finally told my mom that I probably wasn’t ready yet. 

As I got older, I learned how to cope better.  I was able to go to school, to overnights with friends, and finally to sleep-away camps.  It was at one of these camps, during the summer before I started high school, that I met one of my best friends.  She came up and started talking to me and we just stuck together.  Later, she told me she’d approached me because I looked confident, and like I knew what was going on.  I busted up laughing – I’d barely been holding it together.  Stumbling along, trying to find my way around a huge new college campus, across the country from my family,  telling myself not to cry.  Finding her helped me immeasurably.  Not only did I stop crying, but I found someone to laugh with, and to commiserate with when I started failing a class for the first time in my life.

In high school I found more friends, and I met Tom.  I kept it together, mostly.  I transferred some of my separation anxiety stuff onto him.  As long as he was with me, I was okay. 

It wasn’t until late in college that I learned from internet friends that my anxiety had a name – emetophobia.  It’s the fear of vomiting, and when I was a kid it affected me so strongly that I often couldn’t eat much if I were around lots of other people or if I were away from home for fear that I would throw up.  When one of the kids in my second grade classroom threw up in class I had such a severe panic attack that I ran out of the room and refused to go back.  Eventually I was reassigned to the other second grade classroom. I circumscribed my life into a tiny little circle to keep from being afraid.  My mom pushed me to widen my circle, though I hadn’t been able to tell her exactly why I was afraid.  It wasn’t all doom and gloom – I had fun with friends.  I traveled some.  I went on a cross-country trip with Tom.  I moved to San Francisco and found where I belong.  But in the back of my mind, always, the anxiety and depression lurked.

It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I discovered that medications could help.  I found a good psychiatrist and found a medication that drove my anxiety into a small enough corner that I could ignore it.  At one point, figuring that maybe I was fixed, I went off the meds, with the assistance of my psychiatrist.  It took a couple of months, but pretty soon I was crying on my back stairs, for no reason, barely able to eat, nearly unable to leave the house.  Needless to say, I went back on the meds.

There have been some dark times. Times when I was so anxious and lost that I thought I would try anything to make it stop.  Times when I thought about killing myself, and the only thing that stopped me was being more afraid of death than I was about never feeling better.  Times I thought I could never have kids, because how could I deal when they threw up?  Times I worried about passing my anxiety on to my kids. 

One of the worst times was after my daughter was born.  Her birth was physically hard on me, and I needed surgery unexpectedly right after she was born.  I ended up with a catheter for several weeks, housebound and mostly bed-bound for a week, and the pain combined with post-partum hormones kicked my ass.   I thought I ruined Tai’s life by having Miriam.  I thought I was ruining Miriam’s life by being so mentally absent.  There were times when I thought that maybe having no mom would be better for them than having a crazy mom.

I have been beyond lucky that those times pass, for me.  I keep walking, putting one foot in front of the other, and gradually I break out of the isolation I tend to withdraw into when I’m hurting most.  I reconnect to friends and the world.  I remember that music sounds good, the sun is bright, and life can be sweet.  I try to remember to reach out to people who love me when I’m hurting, even though the idea of being vulnerable like that is horrifying.

I’ve seen lots of reminders to seek help if you’re in that dark place.  Call a hot-line, call a friend.  Know you are loved and not alone.  Don’t feel ashamed of taking medication for your brain, as you would for any other body part.  Those reminders are true and spot on.  But I’d add one more thing:

If you know someone who struggles with anxiety and or depression, ask them how they’re doing – and ask for the truth.  Tell them that you are there.  If they have withdrawn, give them a poke in whatever way works for you both (email, text, phone, smoke signals).  Just sit with them.  Because sometimes we can’t reach out ourselves, but if someone comes in after us, it helps.  And as someone else on my facebook feed said, know that suicide isn’t an act of selfishness, it’s an act of desperation.  I believe it’s an action taken when you get too exhausted to keep fighting it, when the black dog catches you too many times.

Today I’m feeling okay.  I’m going through some difficult stuff, but I’m still moving forward.  My heart hurts for Robin Williams and his family.  And I hope that wherever he is, he has found some peace.

 

Find Out Who You Are

We are all broken. But we are all beautiful. And no one in the world is better than you are. Who you are, right now, in this very moment, as you read this, is beautiful. You belong here. And you deserve things. Good things. Even if you hate yourself right now, or hate what you've have done in the past, or hate what you will do in the future, or hate what you are doing right now, that does not mean you do not deserve the best of everything in this world, and the sooner you recognize that you are special, unique and giving this world a great gift just by existing, the sooner you'll be able to walk away from the Land Of Bad Decisions (tm).

Everyone has been there. The intensity of the situations are different, and our ability to withstand different intensities are different. But we are, in essence, very similar. We all fall, we all feel like fakes, we all struggle with hidden demons.

Your demons are just as important as that guy's over there. And you  are just as deserving as he is.

You can't keep on keeping on if you feel like you are undeserving of life, love and happiness. It's not you. It's a thing. It's a thing that's near you. It's a thing that's not you. You are not your failures. You are not even your actions. You are defined by you and you alone. You get to make up that definition. Make it good. You are strong. A warrior just like me, just like everyone. You will not let your loved ones down. They are more forgiving than you are. You are not the past. The past is not real. It is shadows. Shadows we must confront and conquer, but not our reality this day, this moment. You are not what happened to you. You don't owe anyone anything, especially at the expense of yourself. You are beautiful and you can let that show. Those who would disparage it are wrong. You can, day by day, moment by moment, take control of your life. And you deserve it.

Here are some things to do:

1) Accept blame for what is yours. But don't wallow in it. Don't allow your past to become you. Own up to your actions, understand your motivations for them, and from there, make changes so that you don't find yourself in that position again.

2) Allow yourself mistakes. You are going to mess up. A lot. This doesn't prove that you are a bad person. It just proves that you are a person. It doesn't prove that you can't change. It proves that change is a journey, not a destination.

3) Forgive yourself. I don't care how bad it is, if you can't forgive yourself, you stop yourself from moving forward. Forcing yourself to live in your old shoes as punishments for your misdeeds is poisoning. You have control over this moment, and the next one, and then the next, but only one moment at a time. And when you mess up, if you dwell on it, taking it as indicative of your nature, you are missing out on all the next moments you could control. You are worth forgiveness.

4) Forgive others. Some people have hurt you worse than others. Some people have tortured you, some knowingly, some unknowingly. Some people are still trying to hurt you now. Forgive them so that you can walk away from them. Because emotion binds us. And you don't want to be a part of that.

5) Walk away. Cut ties with toxic people. You do not owe them anything. You forgave them for you. Forgiveness doesn't mean willingness to subject yourself to more pain.

6) Be proud. Sometimes it will be hard to do this. So look outside yourself if you must. Just find one little thing each day that you did that you can be proud of. And when you find it, do not find a way to displace ownership of that thing. Do not assign yourself ulterior motives. Do not doubt that one tiny thing you chose to be proud of. Start very small. Move to bigger things from there. You must accept that you are worthy of praise.

7) Stop hiding. I know it's scary. Try showing yourself for just a few minutes at a time until you can build your resistance up.

8) Be kind to yourself. That thing in you that hates you? That likes to tell you you're a piece of shit. It's wrong. Experiment with telling it to shut the hell up. It will feel silly at first, but it separates your masochistic tendencies from who you are in a way nonverbal communication doesn't quite reach. Realize that sometimes you do things just so you can tell yourself 'I told you so.' Experiment with not  telling yourself 'I told you so' when you make a bad decision. Remember, the only one around to police you is yourself. Be a good cop.

9) Own it. You are who you are and you can do what you can do. You do not owe anyone anything. Practice being direct. It is scary. You don't want to displease people. But, in all reality, they don't care as much as you think they do. And even if they think they care at the time, you are only a minor player in their life movie. They'll adjust. They'll figure it out. You are only the main character in your own book. Read your book.

10) Do it. Branching off of number 9, be honest in everything you do. When everything mounts against you, and you want to hide, or lie, or couch the truth, or spare yourself what you feel certain will be other people's scorn and hate, try to buck that instead and simply state the truth. Don't allow yourself to be paralyzed on the cliff of anxiety where action is impossible and going back is equally impossible. Go forward. The sooner you move, the sooner it will all be over.

Be your authentic self. That person is awesome. Give her a chance. Hell, no one else did, right? Doesn't she deserve it? You be the first. Give you a chance.

You are worth everything.



 

What They Don't Tell You About Anxiety

When "demons" are depicted in scripts or drawings, they tend to follow the same trope. You've got your protagonist, seemingly fine, walking along, and following her, there are these entities. Sometimes these are actually drawn beings to personalize the "demons", sometimes they are simply words trailing the protagonist. Things that sometimes don't reach the ears, but sometimes catch up, and take hold.

This image is incorrect (for me). Anxiety can be far trickier than this. While I understand the benefits of drawing it like this, since it indicates the anxiety is not you but instead something that hinders you,  in reality it's not a physical entity (even an imaginary one.) It's not even a voice. It's not words. God, that it were words. I can beat the shit out of words. I do words. But no. For me, anyway, it's not messages following me around only to jump onto my back from behind a tree at random points.

It is inside of me. It is feelings. It has no drawable, relatable comparison. Which is  interesting because you cannot conquer something like that. Which leads to anxiety about anxiety. Awesome.

It's taken me a very long time to even accept that I have anxiety. Since it doesn't seem to me like a voice or demon following me around, but instead seems like, well, me, I've been very strict my whole life about kicking its ass. About kicking my own ass. When I feel like this, I don't shut down. I run harder. Because I hate weakness, and this is weak.  (Keep in mind, this is before I knew what it was.) To me, it didn't seem like something affecting me, like something paralyzing me. It felt like me doing that to myself. And fuck that, I am stronger than that. I ignore my stupid-ass self, because, no. I just will not give in to this fucking nonsense. So that I never look like this:

...because I just tell myself to shut up. And if you can just tell yourself to shut up and continue to function normally, even though (and the bottom panel is pretty spot on) there is some shit literally vomiting on your head, then you can't have anxiety, right? I mean, look at how much I do in a day? I do so much. There is a reason. If I'm still moving, I won't stop. If I stop, those feelings, that me, myself, those nerves welling up in my chest like a volcano of I-don't-even-know-what-the-fuck-it-is because I'm too afraid to stop and listen to it, well, they'll all get bigger, and harder, and seem important. To me, the only thing to do is to continue to tell yourself these feelings are bullshit and not important.

And that works for a little while. Until you throw up. Until you get migraines so unbearable strong that even you, the girl who stops for nothing, cannot move. Until you lose who you are entirely, and are just surrounded by dark.

So, perhaps, then, not the best solution...

And sometimes, in a twist so unfair it can make you cry, your children inherit this bullshit you've never given any thought to, and never tried to straighten out because you're just so strong, guys. Look. No problem here.

I have a daughter who is pretty anxious. And I'm giving her my coping mechanisms. My shitty-beyond-belief, non-working, coping mechanisms. And I'm angry. And I'm scared. I'm angry at myself for giving this to her, even though I had no control over it. I feel like it is my fault. I'm so angry, it's hard to explain. It's just like one more hugely important way I failed. And this time, I didn't fail me. I failed my child. Just by having a genetic code. How's that one for you? I'm scared because I don't know how to handle it. I want to make it go away, but I don't want to be cruel to my child the way I'm cruel to myself. I don't want to teach her to be cruel to herself, either. And yet, it's already started.

It's already started because I do not know what else to do. These things just fall out of my mouth because it is the way of the world, the way of me, and my kid is only five, and Jesus, what am I going to do?

In this comic, I am the squirrel. She is the bird.

"We don't have time for this. Suck it up for right now, and deal with your wall later."

That's fine when I'm talking to myself. I either take a bulldozer to the damn wall, or push it aside "for later" then never come back to it, until it comes up my esophagus in a fit of physical rage over not being dealt with. No biggie. It is what it is.

But, I mean, just this morning, my daughter was having trouble leaving the house for our walk to school. She'd either imagined or actually seen a spider blocking her path, and couldn't move. She tried to tell me about the spider. My response? "We don't have time for this. There is no spider, and if there is, it's not going to bother us. LET'S GO, ALREADY." And I pushed her along out the door, and she cried for the first part of our walk.

So, way to go, mom. Awesome job. We got to school on time (barely), but at what cost? And how often do I tell her to ignore her anxieties or that her thoughts are not important? Do I realize them all? Probably not. I'm basically ruining my own child every minute of the day.

Do you see those "demons" in the above paragraphs? They're not voices following me around. They are feelings without names, worries without cause. And they're not vocal. I can't hear them as if they are talking to me. They are me. It just is what it is what it is. This is reality, not something from which you could run, You can't detach it, or stop it. Because if you stopped it, you would stop life. This is life.

Another wonderful part of this is that I am on high alert all the time. You know how when something really intense is happening and your fight-or-flight kicks in? That's me from the second I wake up to the second I fall asleep. This made me a great fit for the newsroom. Do you have any idea how nervous news producers are? I looked like a beacon of calm. Or at the very least, I looked normal. And since there was ostensibly a reason for this stress (you're live in five minutes, your show is 2.5 minutes over, half your video isn't cut and your sat shot isn't up yet). In the newsroom, you don't have to explain why you're so intense. And even in real life, people seem to understand that deadline work requires a certain ethic and they respect your quirks due to that. In essence, the way you are is validated. Not so much as a stay at home mom. Without the reason to be nervous, you lose your base. It becomes something you need to think about because it doesn't fit your lifestyle.

And being constantly on high alert frays your nerves and patience. My reactions are too strong for real life. So that when I interact with my children, I come on too strong. And the anxious one? She is so sensitive and perceptive, she can pick up on cues I don't even know I'm giving off. It's a horrid cycle.

I combat this by controlling everything I do, packing everything in, being as efficient as possible. I keep thinking maybe if I could succeed at something, anything, maybe then I could calm down, get off my own back. But, unfortunately, I'm learning that's not how this works.

Very dishearteningly, I came across this:

If that's true, I'm in a lot of trouble. Controlling the world had been one of my main coping mechanisms.

One final thing, thinking about this, trying to fix it, makes it worse (hopefully in the short term?!). I'm only allowing this analysis because of my child. I want better for her.


 

Are Parents Ruining Their Children?

Are parents ruining their children?

This expansive article by Psychology Today, first released in 2004, says yes.

It says that from infancy on, helicopter parents cushion their children's failures while pushing them ever harder for success, and if that success doesn't come naturally, well, the parents help the children along. Anything for a successful child. It concludes that the obsession with perfection from a young age prevents children from growing up. It sites increased depression and anxiety diagnoses and a slowed rate of adults actually being adults (which they define as completing school, holding down a job and starting a family) to back this theory up.

And it's not that I don't agree, necessarily. I think the five-page article brings up many valid points and that parents need to re-look at their dealings with their kids.

But I think those studying this need to take our society into consideration. Remember, if your studies start in 1988 and end in 2004, or continue to the present, you are using the same subjects as both the children and the parents. That's important. For if this child-adults you speak of actually are the parents, then it's no wonder why they coddle their kids the way they do. They don't know any different. You cannot in one breath complain at the immaturity of adults today, then turn around and say those adults should know better while rearing their own kids. Of course they don't.

This is a long-term problem that has been getting worse very very gradually, not just in the last 20, 30 or even 50 years.

As we become more technologically advanced, we are coming up with solutions to problems prevalent in the 1980s. In twenty years from now, the technology will be focused on eradicating the new problems brought into existence by our current solutions to our old problems. This is a pattern that's gone on from the beginning of human existence. It can hardly be blamed solely on "hothouse" parenting.

This is an incredibly long piece, so I'm just going to highlight the select areas I had issues with.

In the very beginning, the study uses an example of a highly competent girl whose parents wrote in to her school, explaining that she had "difficulty with Gestalt thinking." The authors put forward that there was nothing wrong with this girl, that her parents had prematurely set her up for an advantage while taking her SATs.

Now, that could very likely be the case. Or, alternately, the girl could have actually had problems with Gestalt thinking. A close friend of mine in school was very smart, worked very hard on her grades and pulled in good ones. She was social, academically inclined and good at sports. She got a 500 on her SATs. She took the tests three or four times, each with the same dismal results. She'd probably have a lot to say about the smarmy conclusion of this article. Some kids, believe it or not, actually do have the problems they present with, regardless of their competence in other areas. Had my friend been given the unlimited time for the test that trouble with Gestalt thinking allows, she'd have done just fine. Her issue was that she could not skip questions, an imperative piece to doing well on the test. I don't know why she couldn't, but I believe her when she says she couldn't. She's now an elementary school teacher with a master's degree and two children. Wimpy? I think not.

This broadens to the next point of the article which is increases diagnoses of depression and anxiety in college students, supposedly brought on by parental involvement. The article purports that students are pushed to be perfect while at the same time their parents are doing their work for them, blocking them from the natural cycle of failure and disappointment, the result being that students feel they cannot do anything by themselves, and the prospect of having to (in college) folds them into a box of insecurity, anxiety and depression.

Could be. This could definitely be part of it. But we cannot ignore the advanced techniques we now have for diagnosis these conditions and regulating the brain chemicals to help those truly in need. Fifty years ago, these conditions may not have seemed as prevalent, but that doesn't mean they weren't. It simply the ways for treating it (or ignoring it) were different. Those who were not suffering to the point of incapacitation were considered slow, or odd, or slightly off. They had trouble making it in society and often stayed with their parents forever, never even attempting this growing up that the article is so fond of referencing. Those who suffered from advanced symptoms were locked away and shoved under society's rug.

Are people these days using depression and anxiety as a crutch in what should be very normal lives? They could be, I can't talk to that. But I do know that you cannot use such a statistic as evidence of poor parenting practices. It's not logical without taking societal history into account.

The article says parents are no longer teaching their children the essential skills they need to survive. Instead, it says "showing kids how to work the system for their own benefit."

I would say for the sake of argument that learning how to work the system in which you live to your benefit is a valuable life skill.

It attacks cell phones, saying the devices extend the umbilical cord indefinitely. That students and young adults no longer reason for themselves, but simply call mom and dad to get out of trouble.

I would argue that the point of cell phones is to help young people out of trouble. Real trouble. I would say the safety benefits of cell phones outweighs the potential for stunted growth into adulthood. I have a cell phone. An., yeah, I called my mom up until my early twenties if I was scared or sick. Childish? It probably was. But it didn't harm me. And I felt loved and safe. And I'm now 29 with my own family, and I no longer call my mommy when I have the stomach flu or when my car gets towed. Not that this disproves their theory, which I agree with in essence, but I do think cell phones are an advantage, not a disadvantage. Remember, 50 years ago, people stayed a lot closer to home and had their entire extended family network to lean on, in person.

The article boldly states that parental hovering is the cause of failure in young adults. It says the "no man's land" of 20-30 is continuing to extend because children don't know how to be adults themselves, and so they revert to being the children they were never allowed to be in youth.

"Using the classic benchmarks of adulthood, 65 percent of males had reached adulthood by the age of 30 in 1960. By contrast, in 2000, only 31 percent had. Among women, 77 percent met the benchmarks of adulthood by age 30 in 1960. By 2000, the number had fallen to 46 percent."

Remember, the benchmarks are finishing school, getting a job and having a family. Excuse me, but why would we use the classic benchmarks of adulthood here? We're not in 1960. We cannot compare to that without comparing all other factors as well. What about the increasing number of students getting their master's degrees and doing post-doctoral work? What about the economic downturn that is stopping millions of previously employable, competent people from getting jobs? What about women becoming more confident in pursuing careers, so that perhaps their family lives come later? My sister is well on her way to a Ph.D in biomedical engineering. According to this article, I'm the adult, and she's the kid. I'm the success and she's the coddled young adult unable to forge her way.

I don't think so. If you look at my specific family, you'll see it's my siblings that are successful. You cannot define success and adulthood by job and family anymore. It's not fair and it leads to false conclusions.

I think this article is great, don't get me wrong. It certainly gave me a lot to think about as I continue to rear my children. Many of the points are spot on, or at least make enough sense for me to be able to glean the information I need from them for use in my own life.

I do want my kids to be independent. I do want them to play. I do want my life to be easier. I think this article has a lot of tips to help parents who may be faltering on their way. But I also think that they've omitted important study in order to drive home their objectives. And I don't think that's necessary. The world is scary enough, as those writing the article well know.  We need to take things at their face value in the way they currently fit into our society without conflating them without making faulty comparisons and placing extensive blame. Of course parents are at fault for some of their children's problems. Are they responsible for the weakening of the fabric of society? I think that's stretching it.

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Phantom Noises

The babies are finally asleep.  It's the middle of the day.  Maybe I can squeeze in that shower I've been wanting to take since yesterday morning.

I turn the hot water knob, water sluices toward the wall, the inviting tap tap tap calling to me well before the water is warm enough.  I ready my towel, brush my hair.  I leave the door open, just in case.  Just in case something happens, I'll be able to hear the babies.  Everything should be just fine, right?  They sleep for at least an hour and a half everyday.  There's nothing in their room they could hurt themselves on.  They're not going to wake up.  Are they?  They're fine.  I'm sure they're fine.

And yet, without fail, the moment I step under the hot stream of shower water, my sigh of relief catches in my throat.

What was that?

Is that a baby crying?  No, it can't be.  They're asleep.  They never wake up.

No, that's a shout.  Are my kids shouting for me?  Did something happen?

I mentally calculate how quickly I can jump out of the shower, wrap a towel around myself and sprint downstairs.  This isn't safe.  I shouldn't be taking a shower.  What if something happened?

I strain my ears, as I reach for the soap.  The problem with this tap tap tapping of the water is I just can't hear anything.  Is that a wail of distress?  Is something wrong?  I should check.

I lather up.  I'm sure everything's fine.  Still, any enjoyment I may have gotten out of what should have been a peaceful, baby-free experience is ruined.  I finish as quickly as I can.  I barely towel dry, sloppily throw on some clothes and race downstairs.

Quiet.  All is quiet.  No one had ever stirred.  I had made the whole thing up.  And it's not just showers.  It can happen as I'm just drifting off to sleep, or if I have to step outside for a moment, or if I get a phone call.  Phantom noises haunt me.

To a large extent, I think this is normal for parents.  Of course we're going to worry about our babies.  They come out completely helpless, and every step they take toward being able to care for themselves is also a step they take toward being able to get into dangerous situations.  The fact that my children have enough balance not to fall off a couch is countered by the fact that, given the opportunity, they'll try to balance on the back of said couch.  The fact that my children can walk well enough to climb up and down stairs with ease is countered by the fact that they'll try to do it with their eyes closed, or they'll try to jump down, or they'll try to climb holding every toy they own in their arms as they totter down.  Every measure of safety is counter-balanced by increased danger.

If we didn't worry a little, we'd most likely be visiting the emergency room a lot.  Toddlers do think they're invincible.

But just because they're not invincible does not mean they're always in peril.  If you seem to be over-anxious much of the time, if you can't enjoy a night out, or an hour away from the children, if you worry at every cry or whine, if you can't clean an upstairs room or run downstairs to change the laundry over because you don't trust the baby monitor, you may be experiencing something more serious than what I've described here. 

If fear is dictating your life, call a professional.  Taking care of your babies means taking care of yourself.  Your babies deserve to be safe and sound.  They also deserve a happy and calm mommy.  It's not bad to be worried, just remember to also worry about yourself.


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