Grandmother "Advice"

Grandmother's Advice:

There was a virgin that was going out on a date for the first time and she told her grandmother about it.

Her grandmother says, "Sit here and let me tell you about those young boys. He is going to try to kiss you; you are going to like that, but don't let him do that."

She continued, "He is going to try to feel your breast; you are going to like that, but don't let him do that.

He is going to try to put his hand between your legs; you are going to like that, but don't let him do that.

Then the grandmother said, "But, most importantly, he is going to try to get on top of you and have his way with you. You are going to like that, but don't let him do that. It will disgrace the family."

With that bit of advice in mind, the granddaughter went on her date and could not wait to tell her grandmother about it. The next day she told her grandmother that her date went just as the old lady said. She said, "Grandmother, I didn't let him disgrace the family. When he tried, I turned him over, got on top of him and disgraced his family."

Well. OK, that's a silly bit of fluff, but this Grandmother has been itching to pipe up and give unwanted advice for weeks now... I've tried to talk sensibly to myself, but the urge to talk about children and parenting just won't go away. That is what this is, so if you are not interested, I'd suggest moving on.

I'm not going to play any games here, this whole train of thought was really kicked off by recent events that have happened in the household of Scott and kaya. However, they are not the only ones in this circle who are parenting children and adolescents. Lots of people are deeply engaged in the business of trying to guide young people into adulthood, and that includes aunts and uncles, good friends of families, teachers, coaches, pastors, scout leaders... Whatever role we play in the lives of our young ones, it is a fact of our modern lives that we are, more often than not, all alone without much in the way of support.

I know that, as I raised my own children, I was sometimes painfully aware of feeling very much "on my own." The support systems and networks of extended families and close knit communities that once operated to support young parents, to guide and mentor and affirm them as they worked through the challenges of raising families, simply was not part of my own parenting experience. I had access to lots of books on the subject, but there was a huge dearth of knowledgeable elders to lend and ear and/or a hand when I was at my wits end.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author, storyteller, Jungian analyst, and teacher for my life talks about the relationship that we who are grandmothers and grandfathers could have with our world today:

"Teenagers and young adults aren't going to grandmother and grandfather anymore to sit in the kitchen and listen to their stories. We go to the cinema to see the cliffhangers on Saturdays.
Your grandmother and grandfather did not have the same news at hand that we have now. We are now the new grandmothers and grandfathers and what we have available to us are audio tapes, newspapers, letters, gatherings of people, books that are written. We have means to extend the kitchen out into the world, or to extend the hearth place or the bonfire out into the world, and to gather together people who would ordinarily not be within our reach."

So, perhaps that is the urge which feels so strong in me these last few weeks -- to make space at my cyber "hearth" for all who are feeling, as I once did, alone and beleaguered in the work of parenting; in need of some sort of support and understanding and reassurance. If I have anything to say that might make the work of raising young people to adulthood easier, then this becomes a worthwhile bit of time spent.

For the record, I bore two children into this world. My son is now 32 years old, and my daughter is almost 31. They are well into adulthood, and I don't worry about them nearly as intensely as I once did, but there are still nights when I lie awake and plead my case with whatever force there is in the universe that screws with human lives -- "Please... just let my kids be OK. Please let them be happy and healthy and good. Thank you."


My two were as different as two children could be. Same genetic inheritance -- totally different temperaments and personalities. There is a gap of 16 months between them in age, and there was a time when it was like raising the toddler version of Jekyll and Hyde. My son came into this world with a serious, deliberate, considered approach to life. His sister was just wild from the moment of conception. There was no kind of mischief that he couldn't think up -- and talk his sister into trying (while he stood off to the side to watch the ensuing craziness). They were a package deal that was just perfect for creating an ongoing sense of schizophrenia in their parents.
I remember the moments after each of them were born, when those tiny, new, fresh human beings were laid in my arms -- looking into baby faces and promising each of them that I would do my very best to raise them to be good adults. I was very sure that my job was about raising adults -- not "raising children." That is an awesome responsibility and task -- to take on a tiny infant and work to teach and develop the fully capable adult, ready to assume their place in the community.

And, it isn't only an awesomely challenging task, it is one that brings its own emotional burdens as well. Because, for all that good parenting requires us to be there, to give and give, it also requires us to somehow KNOW when to let go, when to hand the control into young, inexperienced hands. We learn, when we parent, the many talents and skills of our children, but we also come to know with crystal clarity, their shortcomings, weaknesses, and deficits. We dedicate ourselves to protecting and nurturing through all the days and nights of their young lives, and then, at some point, we have to release them to make their own choices -- good and bad.

All the other animals are probably much better at that part of this than we are. One comparison that I know has been bandied around a lot in kaya's case is the analogy to a "mother bear." It is a great image, bringing to mind the ferocious mother animal fighting against all threats to her vulnerable cubs. Those of us who have ever found ourselves in the role of "mom," know exactly where that instinctive reaction dwells in our own hearts.

Unfortunately, that "mother bear" image is too often used to justify protecting our youngsters beyond the point where they ought to be turned lose. Mother bears do this too. Most bear cubs leave their mothers about the time they are a year and a half old. Some however, stick around until their second or even third year. When that happens, the mother bear sends them off -- biologists say, "kicked off." The mother will, when she is ready to mate again, send reluctant cubs up a tree and walk away; or she will chase them off when they try to follow her... Mother bears understand that it isn't always easy to leave home -- even when it really is necessary. And they somehow sense that the survival of all of bear-kind depends on their lives going forward even as their cubs move to the next phase. We aren't meant to get locked into permanent parenting.

My own parents never had any trouble figuring out when to "protect" and when to "let me take my own lumps." If anything, they may have fallen a little short on that "protect" stuff -- as in letting me suffer with horrible migraines throughout my childhood and adolescence, and never ever seeking any sort of medical advice. They were very much like most parents of that era, though. They knew we weren't fragile and they were never afraid to be tough on us in the interest of helping/requiring us to grow. I very much doubt that my parents ever worried about my self-esteem. They insisted that I accomplish things -- like good grades, and a well-run paper route, and the ability to swim well, and a tidy bedroom, and the ability to cook a decent meal, and absolute competence with a manual transmission automobile. They didn't coddle my feelings and they didn't expect other adults to do that either.

Of course, as a young adult and new parent, I vowed that I would never treat my children the way my parents treated me. A child of the 60s, I was determined that my kids would be handled way more carefully and way more sensitively than I ever was. I was absolutely sure that my folks had it all wrong when it came to raising children. I made my own baby foods, and tried to treat my kids equally even though they were male and female. There were no toy guns and no pink frills. I kept them in safety seats in the car until they were too old to fit in them anymore. I remember walking into my son's kindergarten classroom on the first day -- looking at his teacher and declaring that he was "perfect" and she was not to screw him up. I monitored their television viewing, read to them daily, obsessed over their daily vitamin doses, traveled all over the place with them, made sure that they grew up with a love of the theater, and good music, and the outdoors.

I did the very best I knew how.

It wasn't good enough. Not good enough to keep my children from making decisions, as they grew, that scared me, and hurt me, and made their lives far more difficult than I thought they would have been otherwise. That is the way of it when it comes to shepherding children into adulthood. We must, necessarily give up control.

My son, my "good" kid, experimented with alcohol. If he experimented with other substances, he protected me from the knowledge of it. He completed one year of college, and then a good friend of his committed suicide, and he dropped out of school and never returned. He worked for years as a pizza delivery driver, and bumped around through a number of other weird and sometimes scary jobs. He has never been willing to contemplate the corporate route to financial security. He fathered a child with a married woman, and she chose to abort that baby. Later, in his early 20s, he and the woman that would one day become his wife, conceived a child -- surprise! They were neither one ready to become parents and they chose to allow that baby to be adopted.

My daughter dropped out of the range of my control on her 13th birthday and started a cascade of behaviors and unfortunate choices that led to a long series of psychiatric hospitalizations and correction system incarcerations throughout her teens and twenties. She took every illegal drug she could get her hands on -- sold most of them at one time or another. She stole. She forged checks. She was known by the police by her street name, "Rambo." She had sex with everything she could find that was possessed of a penis. Somewhere along the line, she managed to get her GED. Her daughter was born when she was 16 years old, and serving a sentence in the youth corrections system -- another grandbaby given up to be raised by adoptive parents...

I survived, and my children both survived. Today, they are both reasonably well and happy in the lives they have chosen. None of it is exactly the way I pictured it back so many years ago when they were very small, but it is good for them, and that is good enough for me. It is good to be on this side of the chaos of all those "parent" years. I will always believe that I was saved, and my children were saved because I had the very good fortune to stumble upon a couple of experts in the field of "raising adults." I think that my daughter was not quite two when I found the work of Foster Cline, and then of Jim Fay. Today, they are the guiding lights of the company they founded: Love and Logic Institute. It was the dynamic duo of Cline and Fay who taught me that my children's problems really should stay their problems, taught me to never argue with a child or a teenager, taught me that it was OK to set boundaries and assign consequences without feeling guilty about doing so. In the end, it was Foster Cline and Jim Fay that helped me see that I could not save my children by giving up my own life; that living well was the best lesson that I could ever teach my kids.

I guess, when I get to the end of all that rattling on, the thing that I know in retrospect is that I was lucky to find those who were wiser, more experienced, older than me while I was raising my kids. It is so important to wrap up those who are doing that work, and support and care for them and their children. The task of raising adults is just too important. It really does take a village...all of us, wherever we are along the path of our lives has a vested interest in this business going well... I've been glad to see the outpouring of support for Scott and kaya and their family. We are the village. We are the community.

swan