I used to work in a plant nursery, and I’m reminded of it when I see things for sale that I used to help with: pansies and tulips in early spring, geraniums near Mother’s Day, etc. To sell tulips for bouquets, we cut the tulip bulbs right in half along the stem: florists/retailers valued the extra small amount of stem you could get that way, and they must have been willing to pay more for it than it would cost the nursery to buy all new bulbs. (Some workers took home the cut bulbs and planted them.)
One of the early spring projects involved making cute little planters. I don’t remember everything that went into them, but it was, like, two pansies, an ivy, and some other green thing in a pretty wooden basket-shaped planter, things like that. We were supposed to choose whatever pansy color combinations we personally liked: the idea was that the dozen of us workers with our varied tastes/opinions were probably a pretty good representation of the tastes/opinions of the buying public. So if one of us liked red and purple together (even if others winced), probably approximately 1/12th of the population would too. If one of us liked both pansies to be the same color (even if others found that boring), probably approximately 1/12th of the population would too.
I was trying to put something together here where I’d say that this was like parenting. We all make parenting choices based on our own inclinations and the things that come naturally (if you’re a hiker, you probably take your kids hiking; if you like crafts, you probably do crafts with them), and most of us feel like our parenting methods mean our kids are missing out on a bunch of other stuff (if you hate the outdoors, you probably feel bad that you’re not taking the kids outside as much as you feel you should; if you hate crafts, you probably feel bad that you’re not doing art projects with the kids as much as you feel you should). Maybe you feel strongly that kids should learn to cook, but you don’t care so much about manners and thank-you notes and firm handshakes; maybe any time you try to teach cooking someone ends up crying and/or yelling, but you have endless patience for the art of the thank-you note. Whatever your parenting strengths, you’re probably doing those naturally/easily; whatever your parenting weaknesses, you’re probably feeling bad/nervous about those gaps.
And here’s where I’d make the leap to the pansies: if each of us teaches/models what what can and what we like, we end up putting together a nice selection of people for society. Each kid doesn’t have to do allllll the things as a child. It’s okay if one kid grows up doing a bunch of outdoor stuff and not much in the way of crafts/reading, and another kid grows up doing a ton of indoor stuff and not much in the way of hiking/boating, and another kid grows up doing all the hiking/boating/crafting/reading but didn’t go to plays/concerts/movies. When kids grow up, they can fill in anything their parents missed, and that’s one of the fun parts of being an adult: if your parents never let you take karate lessons, you can do them now; if your parents didn’t teach you to cook, you can learn now; if your parents were indoorsy types, you can go hiking/boating now; if your parents didn’t take you to plays/concerts/movies, you can go now; if your parents always boiled vegetables into mush, you can eat them steamed/raw now; etc. Another of the fun parts of early adult life was getting to know people with different sets of life skills/experiences, and swapping/sharing: it feels like the whole world is opening up. Doing things with your peers > doing things with your mom and dad.
The analogy doesn’t work as well as I’d hoped, and it doesn’t take into account parents who are naturally inclined to teach/model, say, racism and violence, and it doesn’t cover the category of stuff parents might not enjoy doing/teaching but they force themselves to do it anyway. But I still like the feeling of the idea. I remember standing at the worktable stressing about which colors would sell well, and then the relief of being told to just choose what I liked: that if we each chose what we personally liked, we’d end up with a nice mix.
I think your boss at that nursery had rare wisdom.
Good analogy for parenting.
Ooh. I like this a lot. I also think it’s worth noting that you can outsource experiences that you want your child to have but that you as a parent are not personally interested in teaching them/doing with them. My daughter has, on the whole, done more baking with her nannies than she has with me, because while I love to consume baked goods, I detest the process of baking. If you’re a non-outdoorsy person, you can sign your daughter up for Girl Scouts and let someone else take her hiking and camping! (Except I am non-outdoorsy and ended up as the Girl Scout leader so now I’m in charge of it all — but I enjoy it a lot within that specific context and in controlled circumstances such as at a Girl Scout camp with staff who know what they’re doing with a camp fire.) So in this way, you can add to the nice mix with other people, and dilute your own limitations/preferences somewhat!
Interesting. I married my husband (or maybe, more accurately, tended not to date people who didn’t meet this criterion) partly because he and his background, approaches, and interests in life are different enough from mine that I figured we’d form a multi-talented parenting team.
Thank you, Swistle: It helps to be reminded of this, now that he & I have been married for 2 decades and sometimes his, er, differences (which are of course our differences, except that mine are correct ;) ) drive me batty.
I agree- I think the analogy works. Our family is very focused on sports. I was not an athlete as a child. Largely because my folks put their athletic resources/ energy in my brothers. Anyway, now I get lots of teasing from my kids who are good at sports when I try to offer suggestions. Anyway, there are loads of sports my kids have never tried like hockey. They have friends who play and they become interested via friends.
I do find that people who are jerks are setting a bad example for their kids to be jerks. Our high school district is split. Kids at our school are exposed to lots of diversity. The other high school is known as being very privileged and the students tend to be entitled. My kids have figured out when they cross paths with (not all but most of) the students from that school that they cannot tolerate entitlement. Variety is the spice of life.
Hm, what does it say about me that I loathe crafts and do not feel even the slightest twinge of guilt that I’ve never crafted with my kids? I’m not sure I’ve ever felt bad about not doing anything with my kids that I don’t like. If my kids want to do something specific that I don’t like, I just look for a group for them to join that does it (certain sports), or buy them the stuff they’d need to do it themselves (specific craft projects), or foist them onto their father if it’s his sort of thing (see again: sports).
Now not getting them to floss enough? Not getting them to keep their rooms tidier? That’s the sort of thing I reserve my guilt for. It’s hard to instill certain good habits that are kind of a drag but have to be done anyway.
It says you’re a well-balanced parent comfortable in your parenting skin. Yay, you! Carry on.
(And because tone can be tricky on the internet, let me clarify there’s no sarcasm here. I honestly believe you are modeling confidence for your kids and parents within your circle.)
Love this post – I think about this kind of stuff a lot! I also often think of the happenstance that must occur for child A with natural talent for X is exposed to X at the exact right age where his/her interest was there. Think about fabulous musicians, or athletes, or writers or whatever really. I think it applies most to extremely accomplished musicians who play an instrument and/or athletes who play an obscure sport. My guess is that there are so many people walking around on this earth who have a great aptitude for something of which they are not aware. They were never exposed to it; so who would know they would have been great at it. It’s all just a random crap-shoot, ya know?! Which is NOT to say we need to expose our kids to every activity under the sun!
I think about this a lot too, and not even in the context of being good at something, but probably there are sports and hobbies that I might enjoy immensely but it would never occur to me to even try them
This reminds me of an article in The Onion that taps into this very issue; I find it hilarious and also horrifying: https://local.theonion.com/97-year-old-dies-unaware-of-being-violin-prodigy-1819571799
My fervent, fervent hope is that it rarely happens that someone with a vast remarkable talent ISN’T naturally drawn to explore that talent, with or without being led to it by their parents.
“I swear, she should have been an actress or something,” he added.
LOL!
I know! Imagine getting to the afterlife and finding out your destiny was to be a circus trapeze artist, yet your childhood never included monkey bars at the playground! You had no idea it was even an option!
Gosh, especially now that kids are growing up being pushed towards STEM careers by middle school…. (gah, I’ll stop, it’s an ISSUE for me, and I admittedly don’t know if that is true outside of my general region).
I mourn the loss of the rich arts and music curriculum I had as a kid, too.
What an empowering sentiment…we teach our children the skills we have, and trust that they’ll pick up other interests as they go. This sounds like something Brene Brown would say! (I just finished The Gifts of Imperfection and it was a good read).
Right? It’s a big world and my kids are increasingly venturing in to it without me. I don’t have to be the one exposing them to every option. They’ll find it.
I really like this analogy slash philosophy. I want to mull on it awhile, but I have the feeling it will become one of my soothing Swistlisms that I repeat to myself. (Like “Drops IN the Bucket” and “Tomatoes in August”)
I like this. I was sort of thinking about this on and off when you wrote your time-and-money saving post, how there are things some of us care about very much that are of no consequence to others, and it all kind of works out nicely in the end. I mean, if every single child played hockey, then there would be no room for other things, as an example (hockey being a very big thing here and something we did NOT put our children in). As my grandma always said, it takes all kinds to make a world. She usually said that kind of snippily, but to me, it’s actually a really nice thing. It DOES take all kinds and that is what makes it interesting. I mean, not the racist/ violent part, obviously. That could happily be eliminated from the world. But you know what I’m saying. I like how balanced and non-judgy your posts always are, you always hit the right tone.
This is part of why we all decided mandatory education is so important, too, including the bits they are always cutting like art and music and drama. So if I never did reading/art/music/math with my kid because it wasn’t my jam, they still learn it and maybe find out they love it and maybe find other kids who love it too.
This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, which I think you might also enjoy:
“If we were all determined to play the first violin we should never have an ensemble. Therefore, respect every musician in his proper place.” – Robert Schumann
That’s a great quote! Thanks for sharing. :)
I LOVE this quote!
I like this a lot. It makes me feel better about my hard stance against having pets. To me, it sometimes seems selfish of me that my kids really want a pet and I refuse (and I’ll always refuse) and then I feel bad. But when they are adults they can choose to have a pet. They don’t need that (and everything else) as a childhood experience. They can choose that for themselves when they can care for it themselves.
+1 to saying a hard no to pets. You’re not the only one!
I’ve met people who never do sleepovers, who haven’t purchased dress pants for their kids until they’re in junior high, who feel strongly that air travel is for adults only. There are so many boundaries we all negotiate in our own ways! I think it’s a good sign, actually, that we all don’t have to do everything identically.
Know thyself!
I too was not a pet person. Then I found out that, while my husband was officially holding the line with me against the kids’ pleas for a dog, he had, in fact, wanted a dog his whole life and his mother had always said no and then he’d ended up with a wife (me) who was also saying no. I caved (partly because his mother was kind of controlling and I didn’t want to be thought of as being like her) and we got a small, hypoallergenic non-shedding dog, and guess who this dog adopted as her “person”? You guessed it: me, the only one who hadn’t wanted a dog. And I LOVE her, much to my surprise, my kids’ dismay, and the startlement of all who know me. She follows me around the house, she sleeps within arm’s reach of me, she comes and asks to be picked up if my mother’s bullying cat is slinking around when we’re out there visiting, if I’m not home she constantly checks out the front window to see if she can spot me approaching, she celebrates when I get there, practically falling backwards as she jumps up and down with her paws in the air – it’s hard not to be touched by that kind of devotion.
Don’t read this as trying to persuade you to change your stance however, because on the other hand I know a woman who let her husband and kids talk her into getting a dog, and she picked a non-shedding hypoallergenic breed (though pretty large), and they took it to training and it was very well-behaved, etc. and she has never, ever managed to manifest even a smidge of fondness for it.
I have to admit I heaved an audible sigh of relief when I read this. Thank you.