Vicarious Rocky

Aunt Leslie said she wanted something to read. So I am posting this VERY LONG entry for her. :-) The rest of you can just ignore it because it goes on and on and on.

Before I had Indy, I had a fantasy of parenthood that focused on achievement. I wanted a traditional set of things for my son, the goals of the baby boomers – the “better” life; the newer experience, and with that, a more enriching education. I had a dream to facilitate more for him and give him the experiences needed to make him a better person then what I have become.

In that regard, I read like a madwoman and drove my husband crazy wringing my hands over the proper way to regard and respond to infant needs. That intellectualism and hand wringing defined my early emotions toward my son. I was completely unable to relate to women who told me that they gave birth and were filled with a new love they had never before known. I was instantly drawn to caring for my son, biologically attached, but the love was not “at first site.” My predominant feeling with my newborn was fear. I had one agenda as all others fell away, and it was, “Don’t kill him.”

After he and I survived the first 6 months, my fear and my intellectualism subsided as my love grew. I started to see a little person in my home and in my arms, and he started to reveal himself to me. This was not what I expected. I thought we were engaged in a scientific experiment together, and I thought I was the scientist and he my subject. Not so. It turns out there are two scientists in one collaborative project – the first project our relationship as mother and child and then the experiment naturally expands into each of our relationships with the larger world. In other words, we are both being changed and exacting change with each other and beyond.

Now, fast forward to year 4/5 and we bump up against education -- our first experience with societal system and assimilation. I found that my first reaction was a protective one. I wanted not just to protect his ego from suffering but to also protect his “specialness.” I don’t want him blended, dismissed from spotlight, and molded, and yet that’s what school requires. That’s what life requires. That’s what I assumed.

My second reaction was to revert back to the intellectual concerns and give him “the best.” So we sent him to preschool in one of the most honored and well liked K-8 elementary schools in our area. Parental educational involvement at his current school, even in preschool, is intellectual involvement. As it turns out, the required parenting to ensure my son’s academic achievement at his school butts up against my emotional parenting sensibilities.

They believe he is slow to develop and have encouraged me to push and intervene. I added to that “evaluate” and all non-school entities give my son a pass. The 2 psychologists, language therapist, and teacher from the local school system told me he was “very bright.” The doctor said he was “borderline” on small motor and said, “but why not get evaluated?” Then he clarified, “Wait, is he in Kindergarten this year? Oh next year? Well, so he has 10 months? A lot can happen in 10 months.” Uh huh. And so, this school obviously has high standards for normal. Is that a good thing?

At first, I told myself it probably was and to rise to the occasion. Higher standards require more effort, correct? So, do it all, have it all, as modern society requires. His school and their academic standards of excellence are what society requires for success. If I want him to be successful, I told myself, I will acquiesce. I will place him into multiple sessions of occupational therapy to circumvent slower development. I will play the role of task master for bike pedaling to pencil grip and every effort of praxis in between.

I saw him begin to suffer. As I stood over my slower developing son, telling him he must focus on creating the “d” within his name or disappoint me and his teachers, I felt physically ill watching him squirm. Just as I felt when he told me he was not good at “art” or anything that required small motor skills. Just as I felt when I praised him as he put legos and puzzles together and he said, beaming and surprised, “I’m good at this!”

But it was my failings that crystallized this debate for me. The school sent, as they always do, a daily reflection from class. This time a PDF of the student’s art. Not my student to me but all students to all parents. And my son’s drawings betrayed the lower skill level they had warned me about when compared to his peers. “We are concerned,” they said. “He can’t even write his name.” His father and grandmother looked at his drawing with pride and they told him how impressed they were with him. I was immediately angry. I felt they were in denial. The minute my son was out of earshot, I told them they were crazy. He was failing to measure up. He was below average and this was problematic. They were kind in their responses, but I was filled with shame the second after I let my thoughts out. I knew I was wrong. Problematic to whom? Me, of course.

That’s when I realized that my new primary job as a mother is to tell Indy that I believe he is complete and special in every way. Not to say I should be in a bubble of denial about my child’s limitations, but there is a certain degree of protection required. Because if your mother does not believe you have gifts and cannot grant you unconditional love and admiration for who you are, well, you will probably experience a lot of pain and insecurity venturing out into the world and finding the sentiment continually reconfirmed. As in, “she was right to criticize, I can’t do shit.”

It was then that I re-evaluated the purpose of education. The surface purpose – to find success within society – was no longer enough. It was time to define “success.” So, I looked closely at what I wanted for Indy and at what I imagined Indy would want for himself. He can’t tell me and this is an important part of my job description. I need to understand who he is and what he needs and not just project myself onto him.

Success, for me, I have decided, is a purpose filled life. Will that resonate with my son? I cannot be sure. And so, in thinking of the skills he will need to discover his own definition of success, I realized his education needed to focus on the very basics in human desire. Things like fostering self love and confidence, curiosity, appreciation of process and not result, and a sense of one’s gifts and uniqueness within a community.

Friends, concerned with educational assimilation said, “home school him,” and those with social concerns said, “you cannot impose such a disservice as home schooling.” Ultimately, homeschooling revealed itself as wrong for us because of the change I had experienced in parenting within that first 6 months of our grand experiment. I cannot be my young son’s intellectual guide because I am too entrenched in the emotions of parenting. I cannot be his task master at an age when he needs to build his self confidence and learn to be a whole person in the world. Maybe someone else could, but I can’t reconcile my two job descriptions.

Enter the Waldorfs. As a secular humanist, my first exposure to the local Waldorf school made me recoil. Let’s not mince words. If you are not religious, you instantly know this is a parochial school, and a strange one at that. Their rejection of technology, dedication to one teacher for eight years, extensive study of mythology, and obsessive water coloring makes me uncomfortable. Many facets of Anthroposophy make me uncomfortable. And Steiner’s past has some pretty obvious blemishes.

But, like all religions, there is baby and there is bathwater. I cannot in good conscious toss them both. School will never be tailored to the specialness of each child. It can’t be, even in homeschooling, you’re bound to disregard something in the individual. In an educational system, this is going to be prevalent. So, it seems to me, you choose the system that best caters to your child’s needs and gifts and your parental sensibilities and goals.

Indy's precocious cousin Alex would wither and die at our local Waldorf school. Her little square pegged self would be consistently shaved down and forced into the soft round, water-colored hole. My son, although I once fantasized he would be sharp and square, is soft and round. He is lost in the squareness of his current school. He belongs with the Waldorfs.

I could spend some time here talking about why the Waldorfs are what they are, but they explain it better. And so, a new journey begins. We tried the best secular private school in our area, and it was a fabulous learning experience for both Indy and his parents. Now we’ll try the crunchy Waldorfs.

I’ll keep you posted!