With raising buntens on the mind, it wasn’t long before the topic of having children entered the conversation. Despite being friends for so long, this is something we’ve never talked about together before, but to my complete surprise and delight, they revealed that they too were hoping to have children in the next three years or so. There was a lot of mutual excitement and…
“What names do you like?”
“I don’t know, I think you can only name them when you meet them!”
“Oh yeah, that’s a great philosophy, but that being said, we’ve already chosen ours!”
“He wants three girls…”
“Yes! Daughters are the best!”
However, hearing about their wedding plans and the inevitable flurry of compromises and sacrifices that our friends have accepted with an open mind and open heart, it reminded me of the more painful memories from my own. We are all first generation Australians who grew up with parents not only generationally different from us, but culturally too. Unfortunately, it means that when it comes to matters of tradition and convention, we will disagree with our families on every detail.
When my Cat and I have our secret tête-á-têtes, we find ourselves fervently agreeing on natural and organic parenting styles. More due to our existing lifestyle and habits than any deliberate transformation, we prefer our future children’s lives be surrounded by more books than TV screens (we installed a TV into our living room a year and a half ago and have only turned it on twice for DVDs since), I love crafting and will probably end up making most of my child’s toys, and we love getting closer to nature and adopting a more eco-conscious and animal-friendly approach to life, which we think will more likely than not rub off on our children. The other day I found this wonderful Australian website that serendipitously reflects many of my values on childrearing called Natural Parenting. The essays in the Journey of Parenting section are wonderfully articulate and humorous, I particularly loved ‘Lessons Learnt—The Challenge Of Natural Parenting’ (do stick it out until the fourth paragraph!).
Now a little wiser than I was when I got married, I’m treading cautiously around the trap of becoming so engrossed by a natural style of parenting, inspired by educational philosophies like the Steiner/Waldorf and Montessori methods, that I forget that the vast majority of the world, and even greater majority of our families, will think good parenting is the exact opposite of our ideology. I anticipate that for them, academic achievement is an indisputable first in our children’s lives, which they see as the most assured guarantee into a high-flying and lucrative white collar career and long-term, intrinsic happiness. Although you may be thinking this is fair enough, I also know we have some other strong opinions about parenting that will be less popular, like wanting my buntens to not be swimming in plastic fantastic mass-produced toys emblazoned with brand names that provide a list of instructions on how they ought to be played with, nor guarded with an iron fist from bounding barefoot through our vegetable patch and playing in the mud. I know many of you reading this now share my ideals, but I can assure you that some members of my family, if they read this, would probably cry!
I don’t want to forget this. Before they cry, I want to be there to calmly explain to them each and every one of our choices rather than convince myself that ‘every educated, enlightened parent thinks this way’ and treat our family members like they’re from Neptune. I want to be able to convince them persuasively that our methods are not based on madness, but on valid scientific experiments with proven results. I want to compile a newsletter with links to these great resources with everything from Natural Parenting to academic journals to say, “Look! We have really thought about this, and although you may not agree with our methods, please at least see that our decisions are coming from a place of love yet based on rigorous empirical evidence.” I want them to feel that their concerns are also being heard out and their points of view respected.
Although I want our approach to first and foremost come from a place of tolerance, respect and love, at the end of the day, I think it’s also important to be firm. My hope is that every member of the Bun and Cat families gets on board and accepts if not supports our parenting methods, however, if anyone remains stubbornly adversarial, The Cat and I has also agreed to remove their negative influence from our bunten’s life.
I want to end this on a happy note so here’s a link to a gorgeous blog I discovered recently, called Childhood Magic. The playroom they have set up in their house is absolutely magical, her children are very fortunate indeed!
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