As an adult, I've had moments where I don't get along with my mother but she and my father actually did a lot of of things that I think positively influenced my childhood. I don’t often talk about the things my parents did
right but they helped shape the person I am now. Considering all the awfulness I’ve dealt with in my life and with my
health, I consider myself to be fairly well adjusted as a human. While not all
of my positive attributes can be traced back to my childhood, I had a pretty
amazing foundation to build on. Here’s a few of the bricks in that foundation:
1. Books at
bedtime—Before I could read, my mom would read a book (or a chapter of a book)
to me every night. When I was young it was several children’s books a night. As
I got older it was a chapter or two of a more complicated book (I remember the
Little House on the Prairie series and Black Beauty specifically…also there was
a series where a boy had little toy cowboy and Indian that would come to life
but I don’t remember what it was called, I think we also read The Jungle Book
etc.). I think this was one of simplest things to a parent can do to impact
their child’s adulthood. I love reading, part of the reason I love history is
because I love reading. Because I love books, I have an ever-expanding
vocabulary and pretty good knowledge of sentence structure so it has helped
improve my writing profoundly.
2. Spanking—Yeah,
yeah I know it’s frowned upon these days but I was a spiteful little thing. I
benefited from a small amount of fear in my parents. Even as a little kid I
recall knowing full well that I usually deserved it. For the most part, I was
well behaved, I had a very strong conscience back then but it helped me stay on
the right track to know that if I stepped out of line, the paddle was waiting
for me. Admittedly, there were times when I was getting hit that I would be thinking
about how to better hide the infraction next time but my parents were pretty
lenient if I fessed up to my misdeeds beforehand. Just to be clear, I don’t
advocate pummeling your kid or punishment without cause but if you are
consistent with spank-able offenses then the kid knows what to expect. There
was almost never (I say almost because there were a few times that I felt were
unjustified) a time when I was considering doing something bad that I didn’t
first think, this action is probably gonna get me spanked and so I weighed my
options appropriately.
3. Not dumbing
things down—I guess this might seem counter-intuitive because, as an adult, you
want to be understood but when you explain complicated things to kids (and are
careful not to condescend or be dismissive if they ask a lot of questions) you
are asking them to rise. By expecting a lot from them you get amazing results.
I knew my parents tried to challenge me intellectually (they didn’t dumb down
words or concepts) and so I tried to meet their expectations. Consequently, I
probably had the best vocabulary in my elementary school and I was certainly
the only child in my class that grasped the concepts of inflation or Darwinism.
This maybe had a slight repercussion—I really hated other kids. I was so used
to being spoken to like an adult that when I would try to talk to classmates,
the way I was expected to speak at home, and I did not get responded to
adequately I would get pretty annoyed. I didn’t really socialize much ‘til
college.
4. To be the calm
one in a situation—I don’t know if this is so much a concept my parents tried
to instill in me but it was a lesson they taught me nonetheless. They used to
fight like cats and dogs when I was young: over big matters like whether should
I be raised with a predetermined religion, to daily minutia like what we should
have for dinner. If ever there were two people who different from each other in
every way, it was them but I did learn an invaluable lesson from that: listen,
digest, and compromise. To react emotionally and irrationally is not good for
either party. Even when the other person is screaming, it is best to keep your
temper in check because when you are yelling and escalating, your point can’t
be understood and if you have to say what you mean so emphatically, you’re
probably wrong anyway. Like I said, I didn’t socialize much but I would have
been a good peer counselor if I were more extroverted.
5. Be what you
want to be—This definitely had the biggest impact on how I viewed the world.
There was never a moment in my youth in which I hesitated to do anything the
boys were doing just because I was a girl. I got muddy; I played with GI Joes;
I jumped fences…there were no preconceived notions of gender roles in my home.
Equality in every single possible way, this was the only way I knew things to
be. I remember when I was about 6 years old, getting a lecture from my dad’s
youngest brother “don’t you EVER let a man tell you that you have to do
something. If you do anything, it is because you want to do it. Any man that
bosses you around or puts you down is not a man worthwhile.” (now mind you, I
was only 6, so I didn’t have a great grasp on the statement he was trying to
make there but I got the general Girl Power gist and as I got older it stuck
with me and meant more to me as the years went by). I grew up with no concept
of a glass ceiling (although there may be one in reality, it was a very
positive way to view life in those formative years).
6. Treat
everyone like family—This was meant to be both very specific and very broad.
Specifically, if we ever had any guests, whether I liked them or not, they were
to feel welcomed and treated like my cousins (this was one of those spank-able
offenses I mentioned). Keep in mind that I didn’t relate well to kids so this
was harder for me than it sounds. Broadly, it was used mostly by my mom to
explain that we, as people, are all equal. She used to say, all the time, that
I was extremely mixed, the personified blending of many cultures and
nationalities and we had no way of knowing what kind of leaves were in our
family tree “so never start thinking that you are better than anyone else based
on race or background because it is very possible you have that very same blood
in you.” So I grew up in household that did not allow a hint of racism or even
acknowledge it at all and I went to school and lived in a very ethnically
diverse community. I think my parents were shooting for me to be color blind so
to speak and they pretty effectively achieved that goal. I thought racism
wasn’t a real thing because I didn’t ever see any until I became politically
aware in college… Then I realized it is really a rampant issue but I think my
parents did a wonderful job of neutralizing this so that, as an adult, I just
see people as people, not a skin color.
7. Don’t be a
jerk—There is really very little to explain here. It was put to me like this
when I was young “Don’t ever put yourself in the position where you are going
to be the bad guy in someone’s story.”
My parents did a lot of things that were wrong too, every
parent does. I am sure the worst nightmare of parents everywhere is that they
will fuck up this little life in some irreparable way but despite everything,
despite losing my father and my family and having the same disease I know
killed them all, I still function pretty normally. In another reality, maybe if
they had done things a little differently, I would be a drug addict or dead so
I have to give them their props where it’s due. I had a wonderful childhood
(life didn’t start to get hard until I was in my teens) and think that these
are some of the reason why.
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