In a way, I was lucky. When my daughter Clementine was born 10 days after her due date, followed, a few years later, by her brother Clyde being born three weeks before his, I was put on immediate notice that, while it may be that I have a child-rearing schedule firmly in place, my children were obviously under absolutely no urge to follow it. Knowing that from the very beginning made it easier for me to accept things later on when they insisted on being the outliers on my imaginary bell curve—way too early to walk and too late to get teeth, not speaking for months past the expected day (and then speaking in full sentences), giving up on nursing first too soon, at one, and then too late, at three. And, of course, most tragically, giving up on naps just when I was starting to learn to enjoy them again myself.
Things haven’t changed much as they’ve gotten older: no matter what I do, what plans I make for them, they insist on being the people they are going to be, when they want to be them. For example, the one I originally signed up for dance ended up playing right field, and the one I bought the football helmet for cheerfully goes to dance class twice a week. Go figure.
But that’s okay. As far as I’m concerned, I would no more try and force my kids to fit into some kind of imaginary little box I started building back in fourth grade (back when I also thought that my husband was going to be a doctor/astronaut/rock star and that we would both live on a quarter horse ranch in Wyoming) than I would try and force them into clothes that were too small for them. Besides, even if it were possible to do such a thing, wouldn’t it ruin the delicious surprise of slowly discovering what kind of people they are going to turn out to be? And so, even though I am at turns excited, frustrated, mystified, and incredulous as I watch them slowly evolve, above all else I am for the most part, quiet.
Sure it’s hard to watch them make some boneheaded mistakes, but then again I am sure that it was hard for my mother to watch me put on pumps and bobbie socks. (Give me a break: it was the 80s.) But still: I am a firm believer that not only do we learn best from our mistakes, but also that we very nearly learn only from them. (I’m not willing to go so far as to say that no one can learn any other way: there very well might be a tribe of people somewhere out there who has managed to perfect the art of listening to—and learning from—the cautionary tales of their elders; so far, however, I have yet to see any evidence of such a tribe’s existence.)
Again, I understand how hard it is to watch someone you care about make the same stupid mistakes you made yourself, but the truth of the matter is they’re not making your mistakes all over again—they’re making their own. And the ability to make—and recover from—mistakes is one of the most valuable skills you can teach your kids, certainly much more valuable than teaching them never to make any mistakes in the first place.
It’s like “Cinderella.” In the original Grimm’s version, the mother was so desperate for one of her own daughters to be the one who ended up with the prince that she cut off their toes to try and make their feet fit into the shoes.
Of course, it didn’t work. And more than that, I’ll bet that those sisters never listened to a word their mother said again.
Who knows? Maybe that was the real lesson of the story after all.