[Editorial
note by George Turin: My younger
granddaughter goes to the lovely Hamlin elementary school in San
Francisco. Its Head, Wanda M.
Holland Greene, writes a blog addressing issues in education and
parenting. A posting there last
month struck me as a particularly wise reflection on a dilemma faced by many
parents: how to help those of their children who are very different from
themselves find their own worlds and flourish in them, and to do this
non-judgmentally. I asked Ms.
Holland Greene for permission to publish that posting here, which she
graciously gave. It follows, verbatim.]
***
My son Jonathan turned five on Saturday, January 12th. I still can’t believe that the baby boy
that was five months old when I started working at Hamlin is now five years
old. Watching our children grow up
is a great blessing, and raising them to be happy and confident children is a
great responsibility. I love the
wisdom and practical advice found in parenting books, and I am currently
reading author Andrew Solomon’s extraordinary new book called Far From the
Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity. As I was reading, I was
struck by the following line: “Though many of us take pride in how different we
are from our parents, we are endlessly sad at how different our children are
from us.” Let me take you back to
Saturday, January 12th for a moment.
A couple hours before Jonathan’s birthday lunch, he attended
the birthday party of a dear friend.
A children’s theater company in Fort Mason hosted the party, and the
parents were asked to drop the children off and return in 90 minutes for
pick-up. In 90 minutes’ time, a
production would be rehearsed, staged, and ready to perform for a small
audience. My husband Robert and I
were eager and ready with our video camera to capture the special moment of
seeing our son Jonathan on stage.
At home, Jonathan is a dancer, an athlete, and a comedian; surely, he
would find joy and comfort on the stage.
I arrived at the party at the designated time, only to discover that
Jonathan had refused to participate in the show. He was nervous and shy and did not want to act. He did, however, agree to be the “stage
manager,” and he proudly worked the lights during the brief and charming
production of “The Lion King.”
This experience is not new to me as a mom; my older son
David has also refused to participate in any show of any kind—in preschool,
David was in charge of music and sound effects for the class play. He was the only child in the class who
was not “in” the class play, and his teachers supported his decision. Thus, when David learned that his
little brother Jonathan was the stage manager for the play, he looked at me
with glee and exclaimed, “Mom, aren’t you proud to be the mother of two stage
managers?”
For my two sons, “audience participation” is an oxymoron.
They prefer being in the audience.
They do not wish to participate in the show. I am stunned (and sometimes a bit saddened, as Andrew
Solomon observes) by how different my children are from me and my husband, and
I am learning to accept my children’s differences without the slightest show of
frustration or disappointment. I
want to see them on stage as animated performers and passionate public speakers,
but that is my dream, not their reality.
Andrew Solomon talks about two kinds of identity: vertical
and horizontal. Vertical identity
encompasses all of the attributes, values, and traits that are transmitted from
one generation to the next. Race
and culture, language, and sometimes religion are examples of vertical
identity. Parents are overjoyed
when they see traits and behaviors both in themselves and in their
children. We are comforted by the familiar,
and we are certain that we are part of the same lineage when we consider our
vertical identity. Horizontal identity—traits, values, and preferences in
children that are not similar to their parents’— “catapults us into a permanent
relationship with a stranger,” Solomon asserts. Horizontal identity is affirmed not by parents, but
through close association with a peer group. Thus, our children are familiar to us in many ways
(vertical) and can be foreign to us in others (horizontal).
Far From The Tree is
beautifully written and explores far more significant aspects of horizontal identity
than my “stage mom” anecdote: Solomon interviews hundreds of parents whose
children are deaf, dwarfs, transgender, autistic, prodigies, or born under
traumatic circumstances. In a very
real way, these parents live in a different world from their children, and
their children must find “their tribe” in order to affirm who they are and to
support their healthy transition into adulthood. When the proverbial apple falls far from the tree, parenting
may be harder yet often more rewarding.
Are you an accomplished athlete parenting a daughter who is
physically uncoordinated? Are you
a former spelling bee champion parenting a child with dyslexia? Are you a choral singer whose child
can’t carry a tune? Are you a
straight parent with a gay child?
Are you a superbly organized and focused adult who is parenting a child
with ADHD? Are you a passionate
and confident public speaker whose two children want to be the stage
manager? Ultimately, it is our job
and our joy as parents to accept our children for who they are, viewing their
differences as distinct features and not character flaws. We must strike the necessary and
delicate balance between allowing them to be exactly who they are and encouraging
them to be more than they could ever imagine.
Wanda M. Holland Greene
Head, Hamlin School