Feeding the other wolf

I read a great article today by Margaret Plews-Ogan (and a flock of others) -- she was writing about graduate medical education and teaching, but the opening story reminded me of parenting.

This is how it goes.

There is a story of a Cherokee elder sitting with his grandchildren. he says to them, "In every life there is a terrible fight -- a fight between two wolves. One is evil: he is fear, anger, envy, greed, arrogance, self-pity, resentment, and deceit. The other is good: joy, serenity, humility, confidence, generosity, truth, gentleness, and compassion."

And one of the children asks, "Grandfather, which wolf will win?"

The elder looks him in the eye. "The one you feed."

I snapped at Abby, our ten year old, yesterday. She was screwing around, not getting dressed and we only had a few minutes before we had to be out the door to gymnastics.

I've heard we're the yelling generation, and certainly, I'm as guilty as the next parent. We've stopped beating our children, so now we just scream. I know from behaviorism that it's entirely ineffective as a parenting strategy, but man, she ticked me off.

Better stop on the way home and pick up a steak for the other wolf...

Plews-Ogan et al, (2007) Feeding the Good Wolf: Appreciative Inquiry and Graduate Medical Education. ACGME Bulletin, 5-8.

NO, you can't grow up. No more conversation.

IN THEORY, we parents want the same thing as the adolescent.

We want them to emerge from adolescence as a young adult, capable of living independently without, you know, being a heroin dealer or endorsing any political efforts we find objectionable.

But the reality is slightly different.

There are many of us who mourn and idealize those younger years. When the little ones spontaneously held our hands and couldn’t possibly fall asleep without an elaborate ritual involving parental reading, singing, and, if necessary, sacrificing a goat.

Strictly speaking, if we were being logical, we would give them incremental independence, and as they demonstrated they could handle it, we’d offer a little more. But we aren’t.

Let’s face it, a small part of us sings and dies with each new independent burst. I call them bursts, because that’s how this works – growth isn’t linear – one moment a kid can’t tie her shoes, the next she works in the city and has a tattoo.

Yesterday my wife dropped our eldest at her boyfriend’s house – my wife spent a few minutes with his mother – and drove home. Alex is only 13 and they’re hanging out with his family listening to music and facebooking. But my wife wept in the car on the way home.

She (and I) miss that little girl who was so full of wonder and songs and was mesmerized by all things bedazzled and sparkly.

We’d debated the trip over to the boyfriends house -- and grilled her. Who’s going to be there? What are you going to do? We were, in truth, a little over the top. She thought we were worried about her having sex -- but that wasn't it.

It’s these times -- when the theory and reality get confabulated that we need to step back. When we confuse putting on the brakes because our child is ahead of herself – biting off more than she’s capable of handling – with putting on the brakes because we can’t bear to see them take one more step towards launching out of childhood.

Look, there’s no question that adolescents sometimes lie, cheat, steal, and routinely reveal their immaturity. But sometimes, it’s us – wishing the cosmic toothpaste back in the tube, trying to force them just a few developmental milestones in reverse.

The reality is that Alex, while only 13, has a good head on her shoulders. I’m sure she lies to us and withholds a good deal, but she’s assertive, perceptive and smart. She was ready for a boyfriend, and if you’re going to have one, you probably should be allowed to spend a little time with him.

So eventually, I picked her up from his house and when we got home, she hung around the kitchen with her mother, and then goofed off with the camera with me, and for a little while, she was that little girl -- and all was right with the world.

My kid's best friend's parents are....swingers...

Recently our ten year old fell in love with another girl – they are BFF’s. Unlike her older sister, Abby hadn’t found a group of great friends yet – probably because her temperament is unusual among girls. She doesn’t like spending time with boys and she’s fearless, energetic, and physical. She wants to climb the tree first, do flips off the high-dive, and run around in the dense woods behind our house. Her girly friends are more content to be a bit more cerebral.

So when she met Katie, a girl with the same level of energy and fearlessness, we were thrilled. Katie joined us for dinners and sleepovers and even on our family vacation to Cape May, the southern New Jersey Victorian beach community.

Until...

we discovered that Katie’s parents are, well,...uh... swingers. Not trapeze artists. Sexual swingers. You know, drop your keys in the jar, have a few drinks, and...

And not just a little bit. They are the king and queen of swingers. They organize the largest swinging event in the country down in Miami.

Being a psychologist, I’m not all that squeamish about sex – I’ve heard of all sorts of arrangements that couples make to thrive and survive and don’t think I’ve got the magic path, but I do think swinging comes from emptiness and a feeling of hunger.

And I do think that loving and being loved is the nectar of human experience and that monogamy offers safety when the winds of crisis appear.

That’s just my response to the swinging.

Oh, then there’s the strip clubs and web sites Katie’s parents run too.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve met Katie’s parents and I like them. I mean, I don’t want to sleep with either of them, but I like them as people. They seem kind of down to earth.

So how do I teach Abby what I want her to learn? Do we prohibit her from seeing her first friend that truly matches her? Little Katie isn’t a swinger, after all. She’s only ten. She does seem to be growing up faster than Abby, but I can’t attribute that to her parents activities, or can I?

A few times a week I drive Abby to gymnastics. It takes about 25 minutes on mostly open highway in central Pennsylvania. And this isn’t Chicago or Denver or Boston – places where I’ve had occasion to navigate during rush hour, the roads are wide open and rural. So we have time to talk.

So I created a “virtue barrel.” It’s a pretzel barrel with moral dilemmas and virtues written on small pieces of paper. Every day on our way to gymnastics Abby picks out a few pieces of paper and answers the problem on the page. Like what do you do if a friend gives you a necklace you like and then tells you she stole it? Or, if a friend asks you to keep a secret and then tells you she’s doing something dangerous, what do you do? So far, her answers have been dead on, so I’m turning up the heat a little.

I haven’t written one that says, “what do you do if your best friend’s parents are swingers?”

I’ll wait a few months for that one.