Benevolent Creator

Courtesy of Ayo, here are my personal DNA results:

Benevolent Creator

Interesting quiz. I like that they give you sliders instead of "check this box, agree or disagree"--it allows for every shade of gray on the scale, which is mostly the way I look at things in life. We were just talking, Ryan and I, last night about our writing, and I was reminiscing about the days when I fancied myself a fiction writer. This was back in high school in college, when I wrote poems on the side but mostly wanted to write novels. Mind you, most of my novels never made it past 40 pages. It seems my formulaic side took over. :) And we were discussing construction of characters, and I mentioned how when I was writing in college, my characters always started out interesting, but went flat after awhile. I think it's partly a testimony to who I was at the time....and I do deeply believe that where YOU are as a person influences where you are as a writer, all debate over no-autobiography-in-critical-analysis-of-poetry aside....which I think most of us go through at some time in our lives. I saw things as extremely formulaic back then. It was perfectly understandable, nay, expected, that you would become some kind of dysfunctional deviant if you had a rotten home life. That it would affect you in very clear-cut ways. And while I still think that a rotten home life will earn you some level of dysfunction (as my dad says, when relating about his own upbringing, such things are in your blood....you have to choose, every single day, NOT to allow those knee-jerk responses rule your actions), it is, after all, a choice. Just like everything else. And there's so much more that goes into the development of a person; so many other influences that help you grow into the person you're going to be. A good fiction writer knows this and allows it to happen in his or her writing.

I'm also reading Alfie Kohn's Unconditional Parenting, which is eye-opening. My parents gave it to me for my birthday this year (and before anyone thinks it's weird--and a high-pressure tactic, to say the least--for my parents give me a book on parenting, I asked for it specifically). It is indeed an open challenge to traditional methods of parenting, and interestingly enough, I tend to agree with most everything he says in there. Some of it's hard to swallow--the idea that we should not praise our children when they've done something "good" or "right" or "well," for example--well, it just runs counter to everything we've come to value in parenting styles. Why not make the kid feel good when he or she's just gotten a great report card? His answer: because they already should feel good about it for the work they put in to achieve it, and your praise at that moment will only serve to plant the seed of "maybe my mom only loves me when I perform at a certain level, and will not love me if I fail." And then of course there's the epidemic of praising kids for doing very little at all, or for simply allowing the inevitable to happen (the author's anecdote was a mother at a park telling her toddler, "good swinging!"--praising the child for the correct use of gravity?). Still, this is a difficult pill to swallow, and while I haven't completely finished the book, I'm holding out for his promise to share ways that we can talk to our kids about what they've accomplished in a way that is positive but does not sound conditional. In my memory, I was rarely praised as a child....which is not to say I was not praised, but I do recall being thanked for doing thoughtful things, even things I knew I was supposed to do, like taking out the garbage or doing the dishes. However grudgingly I did them, I was shown appreciation for doing the right thing. But I think that's not the same thing as praise. Saying thanks is something you do in a civilized society, it's a part of social interaction.

However, I mentioned this book this past weekend to a married couple--friends I've had for years, who both happen to be teachers. Jim teaches middle school and Becky elementary school. Both went through the rigorous education program at Albion, and the minute I mentioned Kohn, Becky got rather wordy about her feelings about him. Apparently they'd been force-fed his theories throughout their education, by a teacher who nobody really tended to respect or like, and it had left a bad taste in her mouth. They are also the parents to a wonderful 2-year-old named Ben and now another on the way, so they're also familiar with what it takes to be a parent, particularly to a toddler. The thing is, so does Kohn. He has two kids, about four years apart in age, and he's raised them as best he can in keeping with his own principles. That's where he has real credibility with me--he's not just some Ph.D. philosophizing from on high. He's been in the trenches and knows what parents are dealing with.

Anyway. Regardless of how you, the reader, may feel about Alfie Kohn, I'm looking forward to finishing the book. It's interesting how it has, in effect, lifted a filter on my perception when it comes to parenting. Now I see moms and dads out and about with their kids all the time, and I have to almost chuckle in a sad way when I see how out of control they are. Yesterday at Meijer's a mom and her three kids were waiting in the checkout line behind me, and the saddest thing is that a) the youngest child, seated in the cart, pitched a fit over having a particular pack of gum that was different than the one she already had, so mom had to acquiesce just to keep her from progressing to full-out tantrum; b) when she had her gum, the child said "THANK you!" in an exasperated sort of way, which the mother did not question or challenge; which led to c) the oldest child, a boy, to tell his little sister that "that is not how we say 'thank you'!"--so we've got children programmed to reprimand children, how convenient; which led to d) the middle child, a girl, to remind her brother that "sometimes [he] says it that way!" Which thankfully did not lead to an all-out squabble; in fact, it became a game between the two older children, practicing different inflections for the words "thank" and "you." Thus proving, to me, that it really didn't matter to them how the words were said and in what context, because they really didn't mean much of anything to them. Applying Kohn's principles, they've been taught to say thank you under any and all circumstances, so really feeling gratitude and acting on that feeling is no longer the priority. It's obeying social convention, not acknowledging the feeling behind it. Kohn says not to do this; don't force them to say "sorry" or "thank you" when clearly you know they don't mean it--let them learn from observing your behavior. When someone gives you something, say thank you and mean it; they'll get a lot more from that than being told what to say and when to say it.

Well, enough babbling. I've got to go to the gym!