EVERYTHING
FOR YOUR FAMILY
KID
QUIPS
“One night, my 3-year-old asked me if she could sleep in my bed. I told her no. She said, “That’s not fair! Why does Daddy get to sleep in your bed?” READ MORE
Early Years (2-6)
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If I were a cartoonist and not a writer, you might see this in living color: Our family of three drives up in a nifty new Toyota Prius, its rear bumper adorned with a bumper sticker that gently admonishes: “Live Simply So that Others May Simply Live.” Another family approaches in a bright Technicolor Humvee with an NRA rifle decal on the black steel, looking like this assault vehicle that could eat our car for a snack at a stoplight. In our Prius, our son listens to a cassette tape recording of Beatrix Potter. Inside the Hummer, mesmerized by the built-in DVD player in the back seat, our son’s best friend stares at an action film. The boys wave excitedly while both sets of parents observe each other warily through the tinted glass (theirs) and the rose-colored glasses (ours). Cartoon caption below Pruis: “Who are these people?” Caption under Humvee: “Who are these people?” Or try another cartoon scene, if you dare: A beloved lifelong friend relocates to the area. You and she are excited to reunite. You anticipate that your two young children will finally experience what the two of you did so long ago: the beginnings of a deep and abiding friendship that will last throughout their lives. The two children meet at the local playground and in mere minutes it becomes immediately obvious to them and to you: They are as incompatible as the hybrid eco-buggy and the Gulf War monster jeep in the previous frame. There’s no caption here. It’s awkwardly quiet. You and your friend exchange nervous glances, shrug, smile weakly, as your respective Pride and Joys do what entirely incompatible children do so well: ignore each other. I’ve taken poetic, or perhaps artistic, license here, in part to protect the identities of the parties involved. I have exaggerated the playground and parking lot scenes in order to make a few larger, and I hope obvious, points. (For the record, we only dream of a Prius.) These points are likely to show up on their own as soon as your young child’s social circle begins to grow a bit, to include friends and acquaintances – and their parents – beyond the roster of relatives and neighbors and postal carriers and trash truck operators she or he has known up to now, as he or she is chaperoned through life. Difficult, if predictable point No. 1: The parents of our child’s friends may not necessarily become friends of ours. Point No. 2: The children of our friends may not necessarily become the friends of our child. The chaperoning is going to get a bit problematic. The neighbors will insist on offering beef jerky to your little vegetarian. An avuncular (and drunk) partygoer will frighten the kid. Proselytizing (religious, political, dietary, musical) will occur. Somebody will teach somebody a filthy lyric. Somewhere down the road, Romeo is going to meet Juliet, and you will not like her parents. Get ready for some news, Mrs. Capulet. The Montagues probably don’t like you either.It is, after all, the kid’s life to live, though I wince as I hear the echo of the famous soap opera in that line. But some of us – let’s face it, many of us – resist letting go. Consider what is at stake: losing our soap opera-esque fantasies of extended families. It was an ideal built around our own imagined scripts or our own power to control the little tyke, once received so splendidly by all those happy bunnies, cheerful flowers, singing birds and jolly tenants of Sesame Street. Now he is met with the ruffled tapestry of the human quilt, some of which smothers even while it tries to warm and comfort. What can parents do? Remember whose friendships they are, after all. Theirs, not ours. What really matters? Our comfort zone? Or theirs? And, once again, we need to strive to be the role models our children need, the kind who give people, all people, the ones who drive Hummers and the ones who choose hybrids, the Capulets and the Montagues, a chance. The kind of parents who resist stereotypes and remember tolerance, the kind who reject coercion disguised as genial match-making and embrace our children’s choice of companionship. Chances are, if we do our part right, our children will do theirs. Lisa Alvarez, an English professor at Irvine Valley College, lives in Modjeska Canyon with her husband and 3-year-old son. |
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