Why Focus On It?

I like to read Slate, even though it is often full of boring political pieces I don't care about or cultural reviews of movies/albums/TV shows I'm not interested in. But Slate will occasionally hit a home run with an article I find thought-provoking and insightful. This is an example of that.

In this article on parenting, "The Messy Room Dilemma," the authors discuss the tendency we have as parents to make a big deal of our children's annoying habits. This piqued my interest immediately, as I am well aware that my parenting revolves primarily around getting my children to stop doing things that bug me, often in ways that are illogical and out of proportion to the offense being committed.

What interested me the most from the article (it's on page 2 of the sing-page view) is the question asked by the authors: Why should I focus on it? The argument is that most of the annoying habits children have will go away with time (and, though the authors don't say it, perhaps razzing from their peers has to be part of it--ever see a school-aged kid who still sucks his thumb?), and that sometimes we as parents just need to ride out the storm.

I like this question, and I think that when I'm at my best as a parent (read: when I do what Summer suggests I do) it's because I step back, take a breath, get some perspective, and stop worrying about how this thing annoys me.

I see a similar thing in my work. When a student's cell phone goes off in class, instead of reprimanding, I tend to pause enough to make the offender feel embarrassed or joke it away (my favorite is when the ring tone is some hip-hop song and I say, with an appropriate intonation, "Who'd have though that we would have the same ring tone?"). When we're working in the computer classroom I'm perfectly fine with students listening to their music (a student asked me one day if he could "bump his pod," which is apparently slang for listen to music on one's iPod--cool, huh?).

So, the question is: if I can smile and let it slide with my students, why can't I do the same with my kids? Clearly something to work on. And while I am not encouraging permissiveness in parenting (a common problem among many parents), I think the question of why should I focus on this gets at the heart of parenting. My goal is for my children to grow up happy and capable, able to make good decisions, and my habitual nitpicking is often detrimental to that goal, limiting their ability to make decisions. Here' to more flexibility and understanding in my parenting, and to a few more messes and mistakes. It'll be fun...right?