parenting manifesto

By alice | November 30, 2006

Welcome to readers from Rebel Dad; I hope you enjoy thise manifesto post and the teatray blog.

Hugh MacLeod started something with his 500-words-or-less manifestos idea. Unsurprisingly, he was swamped.

I’ve been a parent for over a decade now, and I take the job very seriously indeed. My parenting resume includes full time employment with a baby in daycare, attachment parenting (this is an early years approach), homeschooling, step-parenting, and in the last couple of years, long-distance parenting (which I could and would have lots to say about, if it seemed applicable to more than a tiny handful of people. At the moment, it feels like just me and Oprah columnist Lisa Kogan’s boyfriend Johannes, who spends 4 months a year with her and her daughter in New York, and the other 8 months with his teenaged son in Germany. I doubt it’s their first choice either, but when there are other parents involved and those other parents live thousands of miles apart, someone is going to be spending a lot of time on the phone.)

Currently, one of our four is homeschooling with us, one goes to school in Austin, two go to school in England, and Continental Airlines should be giving us free shares in their company. We manage. We do better than “manage”: I would say every single one of us is, overall, so far, G-d willing, happier than before our lives all changed (but that’s just me, they have brains of their own too and opinions may go up as well as down). And we keep working on making the hard things easier for them as much as possible.

So anyway, here is my parenting manifesto. I may not be the world’s greatest expert on every single family, but I definitely slaved my ass of earning the world pancake-making record for enough years to feel as entitled as anyone else on this planet to speak my mind on the subject. (Youngest Child eats almost nothing but. No efforts by anyone in the world have succeeded in changing this fact. We have Strong-Willed Genes.)

1. Take care of your own oxygen mask first. Kids need you healthy enough to show them this wonderful world. That’s your job.

2. Do not kid yourself: the 24-hour supervision, maintenance, education and support of a dependent intelligent creature is mind-bogglingly expensive in terms of money, effort, time, energy and choices. Get real, and be creative about it. Reprioritise, downsize, learn to enjoy subtle and simple beauty as much as the expensive, obvious kind. Outsource the boring crap, do what you care about. Repeat as necessary.

3. You have never been the parent of a (insert your child’s age to the day)-year old ever before. Get happy about constant change. It’s teaching you what you need to know.

4. When you notice your child is actually showing this wonderful world to you, be happy. You’re doing great.

5. Get into getting your hands dirty. Dirt is where the fun is, and fun is the reward for working your ass off.

6. There are three kinds of parent: those who continuously work their asses off and fail sometimes, those who occasionally work their ass
off and fail constantly, and those who alternate between the two.

7. When you fail stay calm, sort it out, and keep going. There is no learning without failing. Good failing is one of the most powerful things you can show your kids.

8. Pretending to be perfect may seem easier at the time, but to your children it constitutes misrepresention of the nature of the universe and humankind. Your kids get their reality from watching you. Take that seriously: live your truth.

9. If they hate you now, at least you can deal with it now. If they hate you later on, you may not even find out. Kids these days have friends all over the world. They won’t need to hang out with you forever.

10. If everything goes brilliantly they will forgive you anything, be your best friends, and probably look after you in your old age as well. The more you expect these things however, the less likely they become.

11. Your children are not your children alone: they have two parents (ideally) that’s not including add-ons). Be generous about this. Fighting over kids costs them their security, confidence, identity. Talk instead. Get professional help with talking if you need it.

12. In the end, your children belong only to themselves. Respect that, by getting to know them better throughout your shared time on this earth. There’s no better investment around.

3 Comments »

3 Responses to “parenting manifesto”

Katie Says:
December 1st, 2006 at 10:19 am

I would add one thing…in #11, between the last two sentences…”Listen a lot. Hear a lot.” My love to all of you.

Alexandra Says:
December 7th, 2006 at 8:36 am

Wow! That’s such a great post today, Alice. Really insiteful and, quite honestly, how we should all live our lives. Children are our future whether we gave birth to them or not. I’m a happy aunt to 17 nieces and nephews!

alice Says:
December 7th, 2006 at 9:43 am

Thanks, Alexandra :) And 17- wow.