watched in awe as the doctor worked on her pet. On the way home, the silence was broken when she said with eyes wide in wonder, "That animal doctor looked just like a MAN!"
Communication!
It wasn't any easier talking with my children than it was with my husband. He and I were seldom on the same wavelength either. How could I be a radio announcer, conducting daily interviews with people and yet hardly be able to communicate with my own family?
At least my daughter, Dee, got a clear communication about my desire for her success.
You've probably heard stories of famous "stage-mothers." Although I didn't know it at the time, I probably was one. I wanted my daughter to be on radio. By the time she was three years old, she was accompanying me to the station. One day she was playing with my car keys while I was "on the air." She stuck one of the keys into an electrical socket -- immediately knocking the radio station off the air! The force kicked her across the room, but the amazing thing was she was not injured or harmed in any way! She was perfectly all right. Yet, it didn't deter me from wanting her to be at the station to make radio commercials -- which she did (successfully).
It didn't really matter that she was not playing with other children. I wanted her to be doing the commercials. I wanted to brag to my bridge club, church, and family that she was doing the "ice cream" or "carpet" company commercials. That was my reward. Later at age eight she was on television singing and modeling. It didn't occur to me to ask her whether she wanted to or not. I needed that recognition...for me! Even though I was on radio, too, I felt I was never quite good enough. But she would be! My marriage was so boring, with such a lack of communication, that I lived out my life through my daughter.
The paternal grandparents kept our second daughter occupied much of the time. Even though Tony had adopted my daughter by my first husband, there was a difference shown in the way she was treated. It was like an unspoken warfare at every moment of the day.
For Christmas the younger daughter would get an opal ring or something else of significance, and the older one might get a coloring book, or some other insignificant thing.
Despite this friction, our search for happiness continued to surface in our efforts to have popular, beautiful, and talented offspring. To facilitate this effort, we even moved into the best neighborhood possible -- one with doctors, dentists, architects, and business owners. Everyone in the neighborhood had much greater incomes than our own. Though our children ran around with the doctor's kids (which was what we wanted), we were always broke. When our daughters wanted to be cheerleaders, we couldn't afford the $150 for the outfits because of our big house payment.
We had enrolled them in baton classes at age three and in acrobatics at age four. Later they took piano lessons. It didn't matter that we couldn't afford all these things...everyone else was doing it, so we had to do it too. The girls cried, saying they didn't want to take the lessons, but we plodded on, determined that they would get all of the "advantages" we hadn't had.
Were we taking giant step after giant step going progressively backwards? We enrolled the girls in a private school. When they were in elementary school, we pushed them into community theatre, Brownies, and Bluebirds. In junior high, it was the precision drill team, choir, Girl Scouts, voice lessons, in high school -- everything that was offered for them.
It was the same with our son. I remember one conversation over a new shirt in which he said, "No! I don't want a shirt like that. I might have to play what it shows." The shirt we were looking at was one with a football player on the front of it, and there was a look of fear on his sweet seven-year-old face. I thought of the previous year's football season when we had pushed him into playing tag-flag football. He hadn't wanted to play, but all of the other boys his age were playing. So we wanted Anthony to play too. How could a red-blooded American boy not like to play football! However, I did remember the coach was fanatical in his desire to win and took the game a little too seriously for seven year olds. And, all that candy the boys were supposed to sell! They had to sit on the bench if they failed to sell their dozen bars by a certain time. But I was so embarrassed when Anthony would not get into the game and fight!
And you know what? We mothers were vicious! If there is ever a group of people "possessed," it's a bunch of mothers of children playing sports. Each mother sees only her "star."
Our son would much rather have been drawing or making a model than being out there trying to compete in a football game, but when others asked if our son was playing pee-wee ball (or whatever the sport of the season was), we wanted to be able to say "yes."
Many of us have been watching our children since birth and saying to friends through the years, "Our son is going to be a doctor (lawyer, dentist, architect, singer, etc.)." Many of us seize every opportunity to persuade our children into the profession WE desire for them with no regard for their wishes or their particular talents.
For instance, our friend Norman heard from the day he was born that he would become a doctor like Uncle Frank. He went through all the schools and was a doctor for ten years before he finally yelled, "I DON'T WANT TO BE A DOCTOR! I want to work with well people, not sick people. I never wanted to be a doctor!" He finally entered the profession of his choosing and today is an excellent consultant helping make well people better by training them how to cope with their life situations.
Once I began to realize what we were doing with our children, I began to ask myself some soul-searching questions: Did I have to accept the all too apparent fact that my children were not me? Did my children need assistance in finding the right place in life?
When Dee was working at Taperdown and the Nancy Taylor Finishing School during high school, and Emily was working at Bonanza and Montgomery Ward, each familiarized herself with the working world. Each child explored her own talents while we looked on and asked ourselves, "What does she really enjoy doing, and in what area does she seem to have a special talent?" I mused, "Did God give each one a special talent where there is a vacancy in the world that only she can fill? Is our greatest burden to allow that sleeping giant within to reach its full, untapped potential?"
And what about the power to cope...to meet dangers and difficulties firmly. That takes courage. Had I helped them learn this, I wondered.
Today our older daughter is interested in acting, modeling, and singing -- the glamorous fields I always wanted to succeed in. Have I led her to pursue the wrong value system? Too late I've had to admit that my acceptance of me as she was growing up was too often based on her popularity. For too many years I searched for happiness in my children. Too late I was learning the number one priority in child rearing is to love them as they are and not as I wished they were.
Psychologist Dr. Ken Olson has said in his book How To Hang Loose in an Uptight World that, "Love, like listening is a decision…not to criticize or judge, not to hear words, but to hear the children...not to over-react…to let go of bitterness and resentment...to make a decision to be happy, joyful and glad with a terrific sense of humor." Was he right?
My mother once told me, “There are no fixed rules that have been laid down as to how to rear children. Of course, there are general rules, Bonnie, and you've heard them – ‘Train up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord…provoke not your children to wrath.”
Is it really possible for parents to train up their children in the way they should go?
What were the answers? Were
