Screaming in the Dark

(Image from Colette Baron-Reid)

So. First and foremost, I promise that this will not be or become a mommy blog. But I’m also just going to write about what I’m thinking about on any given day, and I spent most of my day today taking my stepson back to school clothes shopping (or attempting to) so here we are.

I find myself thinking about parenting a lot on days like today. I would describe myself, on a good day, as a reluctant parent. Don’t get me wrong, I love my stepson and do a lot for him but it wouldn’t be 100% true to say that this was my first choice. Before I met my husband I swore off older men and swore off men with children. He’s 38 years older than me and has four children. So. Yeah. (As the saying goes, man plans and god laughs.) But despite being a reluctant parent I am the most able to get through to him of his four parents and the first person he comes to when he’s upset. We have a meaningful connections that is very important to both of us. Recently, he was very sick with chickenpox of all things, and for almost two weeks I was the only parent he wanted, and I was there for him every day.

One of the parent child or adult child tropes/issues that drives me absolutely batshit is that a lot of people treat children like they aren’t people and deny them any autonomy. Today was pretty much the last day we could do any back to school shopping for clothes before he goes back to school on Wednesday. We were in the car on the way to the mall and he keeps telling me “I really don’t want to go clothes shopping today.” Now, full disclosure and honesty, I don’t think it was about the clothes shopping. I think that at 14 almost 15 he’s more concerned about running into someone from school and being embarrassed to be seen with me. For some parents I know this really pisses them off. For me all I keep telling him is that someday he’ll realize that everyone is too concerned with themselves to even care. God, I’m so glad I don’t ever have to be 14 again. So instead of fighting about it and yelling at him and ruining both our days I told him that we absolutely had to get him shoes today but I could order everything else online. So that’s exactly what we did. We bought shoes and socks, came home, and ordered pants, T-shirts, and underwear online. I did it that way because there are things he needed and because if I was feeling how he was that is how I would want to be treated. Remember? The golden rule?

I was talking to my husband this evening about the day and I told him that our son really didn’t want to go clothes shopping today. I asked him “if you really didn’t want to go shopping and I told you ‘I don’t care you have to go shopping no matter what!’ How would you feel?” He responded, “I’d want to punch you in the nose!” (Context, this is a common kind of joke of my husbands. He’s not a violent person but it’s more about things or people who piss him off. Like if he gets cut off in traffic I’ll ask “do you want me to go punch them in the nose?”) So, will someone please explain to me why it’s okay or even expected for me to treat my stepson in a way that we as adults would find unacceptable? Why do we teach our children the golden rule and then not treat them how we would want to be treated?

I feel like this can extend to the food and picky eater issues too. A while back I made risotto (it was amazing, thanks for asking) and my stepson did not want it, thought it looked really gross. I didn’t yell at him or do the ever charming “you can eat this now or you can eat this for breakfast! You will eat the food that I prepared for you.” Instead I told him “more for me!” and let him make some of his favorite ramen that we had. Once again, if there was a dinner that looked gross to me I would be furious if I was forced to eat it or go to bed without dinner. And no one would ever think to do that to me. Please explain to me why it’s okay to treat a child that way!

Maybe a year or two ago, I got to have a real fun conversation with my stepson. I think he may have been pushing for a sleepover or something. I asked him “do you want to know a secret?” He’s a kid, of course he did. I told him “I don’t like children.” At first he was a bit surprised and confused and maybe a little bit offended. But then I explained to him that the way I see it children are people just like adults. Why is it normal and acceptable to say “I like children” but extremely weird to say “I like adults”? The reason is that we don’t, in our culture, see children as people. We see children as a big group that are all the same if they’re the same age. If you’ve spent any time with children you know they aren’t all the same. You probably also know that as a general rule a lot of children are assholes. (See, told you this wasn’t a mommy blog.) That may be an unpopular opinion but somehow it’s not an unpopular opinion to say that most adults are assholes. So the only logical conclusion I can come to is that we don’t see children as people.

Maybe… just maybe… if we started seeing children as people and not a big glob of entities who are all exactly the same we would be able to treat them as individuals. Not all children like the same things. Or want the same things. Or respond to the same kinds of treatment. Let’s all get to know the children in our lives for who they are and stop expecting them to all be identical. We may find that we like children as a group less but we may like children as individuals more. At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter how we feel about hypothetical children or children as a group, it matters how we feel about the children who are part of our lives and how we treat them.