mandarine

I was tagged for this parenting meme. I am afraid I will have to translate some of the questions so that it applies more adequately to my situation. A few context items: I have one son, and he is three and a half.

How do you view your role as a parent? What are you there to do?

There is a lot of fuss going on about parenting and what’s the right thing to do. I doubt there has been a single human being who could claim to have been the right parent. And anyway, whatever I do, a child will always find loads to criticize when he’s sixteen, and at least one thing to regret for the rest of his life after he’s twenty.

Beyond providing for food and shelter, I believe parents do a good job when they can offer some form of psychological and sentimental stability, whatever the form of that stability. If it involves tokens of trust and love, it’s all for the best. But from what I have read, I believe it is much more difficult for a child to grow with a permanent uncertainty about the psychological mood of an otherwise loving parent, than with a distant albeit stable parent. Sometimes, I am under the impression that I am a fairly distant father. It takes a lot of crying to arouse concern in me. On the other hand, it takes a lot of mischief to arouse anger in me. Although genuine, my empathy is always one step back, and cannot be swayed easily. I practiced this when I was taking care of my notoriously obnoxious nephews, and it has not changed much with my son.

In any case, I do not believe I should always be at my best, in anything in general, and in parenting in particular: setting an unreachable goal is the best way to permanent failure. I just make sure I organize my life in a way that my reasonable average will be good enough. I’ll be a good enough father if I am not overstressed, overworked, or overtired. And on the occasional bad day, I do not hesitate to publicize my state of mind, and to use state-of-the-art parenting assistance technology (DVDs).

In your social circle, are fathers expected to work or are they encouraged to stay home with the child?

Joke aside, I would love the feminist movement not only to want women to be allowed to do what men do, but also the reverse. I’d love to be a stay-at-home father. Yet I confess I would be a lousy housekeeper, and a poor nanny (but a good cook). My vision of spending a day with a child is merely to be around, possibly go walking; but I cannot play along for more than ten minutes.

How do you feel about your child’s education? What’s good about it, and what do you wish could be done differently?

Six years ago, a documentary film entitled ‘Etre et Avoir‘ made millions dream of sending their kids to a rural single-class school. I cannot say our emigration to the countryside was not influenced by the idyllic vision presented by this film. Our village still has one of these schools (free, public, but threatened by budget cutbacks), where there are only twenty pupils from age 2 to age 8 in a single class, with two and a half teachers to man the lot. My boy has been going there since he was 2 years and four months old, at first only mornings, and gradually afternoons too. I cannot say a lot about the level of education, although he’s shown he can already write his name. Whatever the teaching level is, as long as it is not psychologically damaging, he’ll be all right with us intellectuals as parents. I remember saying once to my mother when I was a kid: “School is where you learn all the things you already know”. I think he’ll be in the same situation.

How do you share the childcare with your partner (if it is shared)? Do you tend towards different activities or different approaches to parenting?

My wife is much less distant than I am, both ways. She does the football playing, the plasticine squeezing, the in-bed wrestling, and a lot of the talking. She also does most of the yelling. There is no clear split of activities, and we have shared all tasks roughly 50/50 from the start except the breastfeeding part. But she’s the one who chooses the clothes (I believe a child has a 5°C clothing margin), who prescribes the homeopathy (I believe a well-fed child has an immune system), who dictates the food taboos (no cow’s milk, no fruit after a meal with starchy foods - or is it meat? never mind, as long as he does not complain). I am the one who rides him to school (on the rare occasions I am not on my commuter train), who explains the laws of physics (my father used to call my grandpa on the phone for this), who pours ketchup in his pasta (it’s homemade from homegrown tomatoes). And we both read bedtime stories and sing songs (in turns).

Our approach to parenting is different in the sense that I believe a child will learn everything he has to learn in due time, providing that we do not stand in the way; she believes some things have to be taught at specific moments and that some educational ‘launch windows’ should not be missed. Examples are numerous: when to stop co-sleeping; how to train for the potty; how to teach table manners… But she’s not so strict that she cannot be talked into a little tolerance and patience. And anyway sometimes she’s right, in the sense that a child can need a nudge, and just standing back and waiting may not be most helpful attitude. So that despite our differences, we always agree in the end.

What are the most important virtues to instill in a child?

Some level of empathy (age three is probably the low point in this respect, at least I hope so); a capability to deal with frustration (it is all right when he has had enough sleep); a feeling of security and self-confidence (no problem there); a notion of danger (so that I will not live in constant fear of accidents following reckless behaviour).

What’s the relationship like between parents at the park and the school gate? Would someone you didn’t know help you out in a stressful moment?

In our rural district, your best chance of finding like-minded neighbours is with fellow parents. Schoolgate talk is rich with arrangements for community-oriented volunteer initiatives and various invitations. Someone would definitely help us out in a stressful moment, but there’s no way it could be someone we did not know, as everybody knows everybody else, especially parents.

What do you fear most for your child?

Living through barbarian madness like children in the Warsaw Ghetto, Cambodia, Chechnya, Darfur, Iraq. All the rest (including death) is petty idle worrying. What I mean to say is that I feel it much more cruel to fall a slowly tortured victim to the darkest side of mankind than to fall off a tree, die of pneumonia (or under the rubble in a earthquake).

How do you discipline your child and what are the errors you would put most effort into correcting?

He goes ‘to the corner’. He has learnt to deal with this quite admirably: he rebels for no more than a half minute, then accepts the punishment while he acknowledges the misconduct which got him there, then asks for his “doudou”, and exits the corner by himself when he is calm again and ready for reconciliation (and contrition).

The only errors we are worried about is his tendency to hit people when cross. I am not sure this is one habit that will naturally fade with time (too many adults seem to live with this “social handicap”), so we react quite severely when he does this on us. But we would need a webcam at school to catch all similar events — this is hardly desirable.

Do you think the life of a child has changed much since you were young?

I can’t speak for other children, but I think my child is having nearly exactly the same life as I once had: loving complementary parents (although the other way around), a stable background for any sort of learning, a no-frills material life. The main difference is that I had two siblings when he has none (yet).

What’s the best compliment your child could pay you for your parenting skills?

I can never remember compliments. But I’d love to hear him say once something like ‘It’s OK, Dad’.

Maria, you’re tagged.

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