Meritocracy is a lie
Don't tell my son's 1st grade teacher, but I barely look at his homework. Every Friday morning I mindlessly scribble my signature on his homework packet and stuff it into his bag. I mean, I'm pretty sure he completes it, but it's first grade. The school is fairly progressive-minded and claims a child-centered pedagogy, so the stakes are low. Though parent teacher conferences are coming up, so we'll see. . .
I don't have it in me to homeschool or unschool my children. I would love for them to pursue their own interests unencumbered by external pressures and expectations, but it's just unfeasible. Still, I get so sad when he comes home fixated by the number of chapters in a book he's reading or whatever level books are in his baggie. I gently remind him that that is not the point of reading. It is absolutely not a competition. None of this is a competition. I worry about plugging him into a system that sorts, sifts, and catalogues his experiences into college-application fodder. We all are trying our best, but what are the costs to our commitment to "the best" for our children?
A few years ago, I came across an essay/blog post about radical acceptance. I think it was shared by a parent friend, and I wish I had saved it somewhere. I remember it being a compelling account by a parent whose child had significant medical and socio-emotional needs. As a reader, you were caught in the visceral tug-of-war between her expectations as shaped by society, her frustrations as a parent, and her desire to love her child as is and the power of that love. Both, to feel like you would do absolutely anything for your child to make their life better AND to love your child unconditionally, including accepting them as they are. I wonder how much any of us could resolve this seeming paradox.
Surprising no one, I land mostly on the unconditional love side of the equation. I don't believe it's my job to make life comfortable for my children. This is not to say that I contrive hardship for them. I'm not taking away for their toys and books and music classes and their many other privileges. I'm just trying to focus on discovering who they are in a nonjudgmental way. To pay attention to the things that catch their eyes, that make them exclaim and fall down those rabbit holes of unexpected delights. And also to the things that make their hearts heavy. The things they don't understand with their brains yet, but of which they still feel the full emotional brunt. The disappointments, indignities and small cruelties that they are theirs to endure because they are little and given so little power over their own lives.
It's a new kind of vision that children offer adults. But it's an old vision too. It's one we've forgotten and replaced with competition and scarcity, with loaded terms that imply one thing is better than another, one way is better than another, or that there is only one right way to life and that particular insight is something to hoard, or can only be meted out by gatekeepers. We think children can't or shouldn't handle too much, but it's really us who needed and imposed these limits.
Sometimes I think it's a sad irony that the ones children rely on for their unconditional love are adults who all have unlearned how to love unconditionally. My children love me unconditionally in actual practice. They come to me every day with their attention, their wide open vision of who I am and what I'm capable of, their belief in our mutual love. I do not. They frustrate me. They don't get it. They don't listen. They have no idea just how lucky they are. I lash out at them. And I will love them again too. But maybe not in this moment or that moment. And this will be how they learn to love.
Listen, I'm not feeling bad for my kids, or even those kids who are caught up in that college admissions fraud scandal. Our world was built to handle families with that kind of privilege with great care. They are not the ones who pay the full price of living in an artificially scarce world, a world engendered by generations of doing absolutely anything for your children to improve their lot in life. Only there's always one more thing to improve, more money and resources to hoard, more power to accumulate, but we are forced to be deeply invested in these unequal systems. Elitist considerations shape where we choose to live, where we send our kids to school, what sort of work we do, the kind of communities we belong to. Wealthy, well-connected parents are determined (apparently, at all conceivable costs) to give their children the world on a platter. It's not an uncommon sentiment. Many of us seek to emulate the rich. Do they ever stop to think about what a truly diminished world that is?
That's not what I want for the future. Although we all have different abilities, we all have equal value. I don't care about any status signifiers. I strive to pay attention to people as whole beings. And I say to my kids, I love you no matter what. You don't ever have to prove yourself worthy of my love. Your accomplishments, of which we are all rightly proud, are irrelevant to how we love you. I say, I love you even when I'm mad or disappointed or disagreeing with you, even when it looks and sounds like I don't. And I can only believe in real magic because they believe me, because they continually invite me into their world. That capacious world is where children live completely and wholly without reservation or inhibition, where we are loved no matter what, and it is sorely needed by all of us.
(Just a note to say that everyone can love everyone else unconditionally and practice radical acceptance. One does not need to be a parent to live in this kind of relationship to the world.)
I don't have it in me to homeschool or unschool my children. I would love for them to pursue their own interests unencumbered by external pressures and expectations, but it's just unfeasible. Still, I get so sad when he comes home fixated by the number of chapters in a book he's reading or whatever level books are in his baggie. I gently remind him that that is not the point of reading. It is absolutely not a competition. None of this is a competition. I worry about plugging him into a system that sorts, sifts, and catalogues his experiences into college-application fodder. We all are trying our best, but what are the costs to our commitment to "the best" for our children?
A few years ago, I came across an essay/blog post about radical acceptance. I think it was shared by a parent friend, and I wish I had saved it somewhere. I remember it being a compelling account by a parent whose child had significant medical and socio-emotional needs. As a reader, you were caught in the visceral tug-of-war between her expectations as shaped by society, her frustrations as a parent, and her desire to love her child as is and the power of that love. Both, to feel like you would do absolutely anything for your child to make their life better AND to love your child unconditionally, including accepting them as they are. I wonder how much any of us could resolve this seeming paradox.
Surprising no one, I land mostly on the unconditional love side of the equation. I don't believe it's my job to make life comfortable for my children. This is not to say that I contrive hardship for them. I'm not taking away for their toys and books and music classes and their many other privileges. I'm just trying to focus on discovering who they are in a nonjudgmental way. To pay attention to the things that catch their eyes, that make them exclaim and fall down those rabbit holes of unexpected delights. And also to the things that make their hearts heavy. The things they don't understand with their brains yet, but of which they still feel the full emotional brunt. The disappointments, indignities and small cruelties that they are theirs to endure because they are little and given so little power over their own lives.
It's a new kind of vision that children offer adults. But it's an old vision too. It's one we've forgotten and replaced with competition and scarcity, with loaded terms that imply one thing is better than another, one way is better than another, or that there is only one right way to life and that particular insight is something to hoard, or can only be meted out by gatekeepers. We think children can't or shouldn't handle too much, but it's really us who needed and imposed these limits.
Sometimes I think it's a sad irony that the ones children rely on for their unconditional love are adults who all have unlearned how to love unconditionally. My children love me unconditionally in actual practice. They come to me every day with their attention, their wide open vision of who I am and what I'm capable of, their belief in our mutual love. I do not. They frustrate me. They don't get it. They don't listen. They have no idea just how lucky they are. I lash out at them. And I will love them again too. But maybe not in this moment or that moment. And this will be how they learn to love.
Listen, I'm not feeling bad for my kids, or even those kids who are caught up in that college admissions fraud scandal. Our world was built to handle families with that kind of privilege with great care. They are not the ones who pay the full price of living in an artificially scarce world, a world engendered by generations of doing absolutely anything for your children to improve their lot in life. Only there's always one more thing to improve, more money and resources to hoard, more power to accumulate, but we are forced to be deeply invested in these unequal systems. Elitist considerations shape where we choose to live, where we send our kids to school, what sort of work we do, the kind of communities we belong to. Wealthy, well-connected parents are determined (apparently, at all conceivable costs) to give their children the world on a platter. It's not an uncommon sentiment. Many of us seek to emulate the rich. Do they ever stop to think about what a truly diminished world that is?
That's not what I want for the future. Although we all have different abilities, we all have equal value. I don't care about any status signifiers. I strive to pay attention to people as whole beings. And I say to my kids, I love you no matter what. You don't ever have to prove yourself worthy of my love. Your accomplishments, of which we are all rightly proud, are irrelevant to how we love you. I say, I love you even when I'm mad or disappointed or disagreeing with you, even when it looks and sounds like I don't. And I can only believe in real magic because they believe me, because they continually invite me into their world. That capacious world is where children live completely and wholly without reservation or inhibition, where we are loved no matter what, and it is sorely needed by all of us.
(Just a note to say that everyone can love everyone else unconditionally and practice radical acceptance. One does not need to be a parent to live in this kind of relationship to the world.)
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