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Mom,
Can We Go Somewhere?
I am a homebody. Not a recluse or a hermit. Nothing extreme.
It’s just that my activation energy for going out is a little
higher than some. Without well-laid plans and enough sleep
(proper star alignment doesn’t hurt), I tend to default to
relaxation activities that take place in my house with my
family: reading aloud, playing Boggle, eating ice cream. My
birthday and New Year’s almost always end up involving “having
a few people over.”
It’s not like I’ve been particularly unhappy about this. It’s
just for being such a big booster of both the cultural and
natural assets of the Capital Region, there are embarrassingly
large numbers of things in both categories that I’ve been
meaning to explore or participate in ever since I got here
and still haven’t. Larkfest. Peebles Island. The Schenectady
Museum. The list is long.
I was, not surprisingly, nervous about how this tendency of
mine would interact with becoming a parent. After all, some
of the more common things you hear while expecting your first
child are playful yet totally serious warnings about “enjoying
your freedom while it lasts” and making sure to go out for
dinner and movie a bunch now because it will be a long time
until you can do it again, and so on.
In the very early months, it was like that. Going places with
baby in tow, especially spontaneously, seemed daunting, and
I very often demurred. It takes a while to get into the rhythm
of being able to quickly throw together the right combination
of carrying devices, toys, teething remedies and spare clothes
for a given excursion, to remember whether the diaper bag
needs restocking at any given time, and to not fear that an
unexpected fit will lead the world at large to question your
parenting ability.
But as I develop basic proficiency at some of these skills,
I’ve noticed something else unexpected. I’m getting out more.
Not more than when my daughter was a newborn. More than before
I was parent.
See, my 1-year-old is a social critter, and has always been.
This is pretty natural. We are a social species after all.
She loves being around people—big and small. She loves exploring
new places. She loves picking dandelions and playing with
dirt in the community garden.
If we don’t get her out of the house at least once
a day she lets us hear about it. She points insistently at
her backpack. She asks for her friend down the street by his
name, which could be a contender for her first word, depending
how you count such things.
There’s just no way anymore that an entire evening can slip
by with us all absorbed in our computers.
And, so, suddenly, we’ve found ourselves seeing our friends
more often. We’re actually getting to our garden plot more
than once a week. We’ve made it to three First Fridays in
a row. I’ve walked the trail behind the Pruyn House. We went
to the Step It Up rally (on foot). I’m looking forward to
a summer full of finally getting to a whole host of things
I’ve long wanted to do.
Or course there are limits. I haven’t made it to any movies
in the theater and few events that would keep us out much
past 9 PM. Long car rides are still pretty iffy. Even among
the possible options, I’ve only started to make a small dint
in my list of things I’d like to do. But the difference is
still palpable.
The idea that parenthood isolates you from the rest of the
world and reduces you to a babbling idiot who can only recite
Raffi songs doesn’t have to be true. In fact, Jean Liedloff,
author of The Continuum Concept, makes a pretty good
argument that such an overly “child centered” approach is
not only bad for the parents’ brain, it’s bad for the kid.
“[A] toddler wants to learn what his people do, he expects
to be able to center his attention on an adult who is centered
on her own business.” Basically, she says, we evolved to spend
our childhoods watching and imitating adults (and older children),
and it’s how we learn, down to subtle things like facial expressions.
I take all parenting prescriptions with a salt shaker, but
this point of Liedloff’s resonates. (Of course it also suggests
less exciting things like making time to take kids along when
we go grocery shopping.)
In some ways, it’s a less extreme twist on the theme of getting
your own life in order—kicking addictions, trying to curse
less, going back to school—for your kids. If I want my kids
to find the world beyond the computer worth paying attention
to and to feel comfortable interacting with a wide range of
people and exploring a wide range of places, I have to model
it. I knew this, but I think I expected it to be one more
thing I was struggling to fit in, rather than a natural consequence.
Raising a social human being won’t get my house clean, get
me to more movies, or give me time to read more novels. But
it does boil down to an iron-clad excuse to get out more.
And, apparently, I needed that.
—Miriam
Axel-Lute
www.mjoy.org
Check out Miriam’s new blog, The Big Questions: The Path to
Albany’s First Comprehensive Plan, at: http://metroland.typepad.com/the_big_questions/
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