I do a lot of things differently. I plan to do a lot of things differently. Differently than most I know, that is.
In December, JDawg argued the merits of me refusing to tell Isobel about Santa. He considered it stealing from her childhood and something I’d do to be trendy.
I don’t lie to Isobel. I don’t make up white lies to get her to stop asking questions, or tell her about bunnies bringing Easter eggs, or that her father is a perfect daddy or I am a perfect mommy. I won’t. Refuse, honestly. I am authentic with her, to a fault. I tell her when I’m getting frustrated or upset. I don’t mince words about how I feel or the world around us, if I think she’s overreacting or I don’t understand her toddler ease. I tell her she’s being rude when she doesn’t say hello back to a homeless person. This is why Santa was not whored out.
When I told friends in my neighbourhood that I planned to home school Isobel, they looked at me in surprise, asking questions about socialization and how I planned to not lose my fool mind without her being away from me for most of the day.
When I was in school, I was bored. I was too smart, too shy and too fat – as a little kid – to get away with being a wallflower. So I did a 180. By 8th grade, I was a constant talk-out-louder, high as a fucking kite and challenging myself to get the lowest grade possible in classes I’d otherwise ace. Becoming a ‘dumb slut’? Worked. I was no longer picked on, singled out (much) or thrust into the spotlight when I didn’t choose to tapdance my way in from stage left. I was still bored. So I dropped out. Again and again.
JDawg? Also a dropper outer. Also bored. Also the life of the party – literally – and into chemical consumption and problems with authority. But we both love to learn. Which is why enrolling Isobel in a self-directed learning program, outside of the public school system is important to me. Because I want her to enjoy her education, not loathe it, but still hunger for real knowledge.
Someone asked, an online friend, how we lived, about our lifestyle and I said that we shared a bed in a 400 square foot apartment. Then they asked why I didn’t live somewhere bigger, with my own bed, in a different neighbourhood.
We live where we do because it’s the cheapest in the neighbourhood and if I have to be in Vancouver, which I pretty much do, because of JDawg, then it’s here. There is nowhere else I’ve known in my city where streets are littered with fashionistas, starving students, homeless, married gay couples loving each other openly, mommies and daddies wearing Ergo carriers, flocks of Spanish nannies and their charges and dogs. And they’re all interacting with each other in a polite manner. Nearly all.
This is the most diverse area I’ve seen, with every income level represented, every marital status, every ideal and disillusion. And I want her raised to think that’s what the world does look like, not should look like. It means we have a tiny place. Big diff. Space doesn’t equal grace, I figure.
Why do you spend so much money on groceries? Why doesn’t she eat candy?
Since she was born, I’ve had it ingrained in my head – raise her to eat right. Don’t make her one of those kids that people sneer about. She’s become, over the past year and especially once the potty training bribes were brought out, a chocolate lover. With the exclusion of dairy, all chocolate’s gone out the window and now, rarely, she gets some carob. Now, for allergy testing’s sake, we’re excluding soy and wheat (something I intended to do, myself, about two months ago) from our diets as well. It means she, and in turn I, mostly eat fruits, vegetables and meat, with some alternative protein sources and carb sources thrown in as an afterthought.
It costs more. She’s got more energy and so do I, technically. It’s a trade off, since I didn’t especially think she needed more energy. And as a general rule, we don’t do filler foods and treats are something crazy wacky like a piece of 100% fruit leather. We go big – choosing for her to get something really different instead of something really sugary and synthetic. It works, so why stop?
You mean, you don’t vaccinate, at all?
I vaccinated her for her first year. While she was freshly immunologically challenged. While she was getting a new cold or flu every three weeks, each lasting at least 10 days, resulting in an ear infection, whose antibiotic side effects would bring about diarrhea so badly that she’d get a diaper rash that’d burst open, cracking and bleeding while a yeast infection would take over at the same time. Every three weeks. Eleven times.
Vaccinations didn’t help shit. And I’m sorry, call me naive, but I believe in the principle that if I’m not supposed to get something – because my body should, at its optimal health, be able to fight disease and sickness and repair itself, too – I won’t.
And I also believe in survival of the fittest. And evolution and mutation and super-viruses and ultimately not in the genetic manipulation of human beings. Sorry. I know that makes me a monster of a mother, but it’s true.
She dresses herself? She eats when she wants to? She decides on everything?
I allow Isobel a choice in every. single. thing. But not too much for her age. For instance, I will not tell her to pick what she’s wearing that day and expect her to. I will ask her if she wants a dress or pants. Then stripes, hearts, or flowers? This one, this one, or this one? Tights or leggings (because it’s always a dress, now)? Then, which of three pairs of shoes.
Everything works like that, for as long as I can see her being engaged in the process. If she shows a sign of being bored, uninterested or burnt out, I take over. And I always have the final say. But she always gets a vote, if she’s capable of taking it.
You know why? Because I figure that those boundary pushing interludes that two and three year olds are great for? Might be worn down a little if she feels like she has some control. Because I want to nourish decision-making skills in her, and especially independent thinking ability, from a very young age. Because she can.
She has how many books and like, no toys?
I’ve never really bought her toys. That’s what grandparents and friends and other family are for. What I have always done is made sure she’s gotten at least one new book a month. Now, with a discount bookstore moving literally a block and a half away, you could say we’ve both vastly expanded our book collections. This means, I think, she’s always going to be surrounded by books. Hopefully her love of being read to and ‘reading to herself’ (now, in the form of story-telling via pictures) and the normalcy of a book coming before a toy might mean something later on. Maybe she’ll be bored as fuck until she can buy her own damn toys. I have no clue.
She doesn’t have a bath every night because she doesn’t need one every night. She doesn’t watch Nickelodeon because we don’t have cable – and I mean even the normal, basic, channel 3 to what? 28 cable. We have DVDs and VHSs and a library to borrow more from in one direction (which we go to every Wednesday, without fail) and a video store to rent from in the other (that’d be Friday’s venture – date night). We are entertained enough, commercial-free.
We don’t eat pork, either. We don’t go to church, but I’m not adverse to her deciding to check it out one day. I rarely have had a drink in front of her and she knows that beer and wine and vodka are drinks that adults shouldn’t share with children – she also once said that an eau de beer wearing dumpster diver in the liquor store was her daddy. Kids pick up on shit, you know?
I’m not trying to be anti-conformist, as a label. I’m not attempting to be radical, as one might have called me. Me? I’m putting my principles and morals and deal-breakers out for her to see. I’ve got a mind to attempt to raise her, as I think I would have liked to be.
And I wonder, as parents, isn’t that what a large chunk of us are doing? Trying to give our kids the opposites of what we had?
