Fighting for the Prize

Written in response to Fatherhood Freestyle: You Are The Prize. By Dr. Mike McRae

My daughter, Ryan, has been walking to school with Jule and Julia since the first grade. I was so excited to have it work out. It meant that I was "integrated" into the community, that I was a "good" mother doing good mother things, and it freed me up from having to walk her to school in the morning myself.

Integrated, good and free. Me, me, me.

It has never been the best arrangement for Ryan.

Julia is playing with Ryan at our house as I sit here and write this. (Having valiantly tried to eat an American sandwich and soup for dinner.) Jule, on the other hand, has never been anything but rude from day one of first grade. Her mother, Heidi, is an equal bitch. (Jule is too young to be a true bitch and is actually very attractive, intelligent AND clever. She's just had to learn to take care of number one from an early age, poor thing.)

The first two years the three girls walked together, Jule's older sister Maya walked with them. Julia and Ryan would wait outside Jule and Maya's home while they got ready (they were often late) only to have the two of them run on ahead without even a word of greeting. This went on for two years, Julia's mom (Claudia) wanted to kick them out of the group, and I said, "Be nice." Be the bigger person. Don't make waves. BE NICE.

I am so ashamed. What have I been teaching my daughter about her self-worth?

Since the third grade, Jule (and Heidi mostly) have NEEDED us. Since Heidi is raising Jule to be independent and self-sufficient (meaning that she doesn't want to have to be bothered with her), Jule is consistenty late. She also cried when she came too late to the group meeting point and missed the other two girls. "Couldn't the mother help that poor girl get it together in the mornings?" we asked. But again, "be nice" won out. Ryan picks up Julia and then the two of them pick up Jule, still waiting outside in the dark and cold while she gets herself ready.

On the way home, however, when it is not cold and dark, and Jule has other, cooler friends she would rather be with, she leaves Ryan in the dust. She has also been treating her like dirt in school. In December, Ryan was so depressed that I had to have a talk with her teacher. (They don't help much here in Germany; the kids are supposed to work it out for themselves. Mobbing is huge and kids learn to take care of themselves first.)

Yesterday, when Ryan told me she had had to walk home alone again, enough was enough. I called Heidi and told her it just wasn't working out. One of the problems, besides the basic lack of respect for me and my child, is that the other two moms in the arrangement have grandparents who pick their daughters up after school a couple of times a week. That leaves Ryan with only one of them to walk home with. It also means they really don't need me, and my daughter, in the afternoons the way they do in the mornings.

I've been bending over backwards to "be nice" and to "fit in", but where is the concern for my needs? Or for Ryan's self-respect?

I'm very disappointed that my friend Claudia, Julia's mom, has decided to continue the arrangement with Heidi and Jule. All along, she has been telling me I was right and that she would stand by me, and by Ryan, in our decision. But when it came to direct confrontation today, she copped out. She tried to get me to compromise myself - and worse, my daughter, yet again. It has been almost FOUR YEARS. "But can't we just at least keep the morning arrangement going?" What, my daughter is good enough to pick everyone up at 7AM but not good enough for the afternoons when they don't need her anymore? "But isn't Ryan going to feel left out?" Well, she's feeling pretty left out already, every single goddamn afternoon.

The real feel good ending would be if Jule and Heidi got kicked out of the arrangement, had to learn a lesson, and became better human beings. It's the one I was hoping for. The real world ending leaves me driving Ryan to and from school alone and the other two moms trying to work it out. Noone is very happy with this arrangement either - including Ryan who likes walking to school with her "friends."

What am I teaching Ryan about friendship, though, if I allow this to continue? It's been too long already. "But Jule is nice to me if Julia is there." says Ryan optimistically. "Sometimes she is nice to me." She is thrilled with any crumb that is thrown at her.

I've taught my daughter to be nice (in a country that really isn't big into being nice to others).

It's time I taught her about what's right and wrong. (Integrating and fitting into into a system isn't all so great if that system is WRONG. And there, I have said it.)

And it is WAY PAST TIME I taught her self-worth. She is the prize.

Fatherhood Freestyle: You Are the Prize : WeParent

Cannot say it any better than this. MUST READ.


Fatherhood Freestyle: You Are the Prize : WeParent

We're Not Going To Take It!

I've taught the kids some "Twisted Sister" lyrics this afternoon. And then we all practiced headbanging - which, it turns out, hurts my neck more than it did 15 - 20 years ago - jumping off the furniture and yes, defying authority.

What have I been thinking? Here I am, trying to teach my kids to fit into a society that actually will benefit more if my kids don't try to fit into it.

Let's face it, I was really self-conscious, as an American who expects immigrants to adapt to America, that I should try to integrate into our adopted country as well. Learn the language. Respect the culture.

Yada yada yada.

Been there. Done that. Bought the Lederhosen.

Ryan (yes Ryan again, I don't want to get into it) came home almost in tears because her bicycle didn't pass inspection again this week. Let me explain. The fourth-graders in our part of Germany all study, and practice, and then are tested, on bicycle safety and traffic laws. By the police. Which all sounds nice and harmless and very civic minded - until you see the list of bike requirements.

I told Ryan she could tell the police officers that if they expected every child to have a safety kit - including first-aid, repair and pump - then they should feel free to go ahead and provide one. I also told her to tell them that her family didn't feel they needed one, since we just stopped and asked a German for theirs if we ever ran into any trouble. And, I have to be fair and honest here; whenever any of my children gets injured on the playground, two or three people come running to us with first aid kits. And we have asked a passing bicyclist for the use of his pump when one of our tires went flat; of course he had one and he was glad to help.

Poor Ryan. It has to be the year she takes a bicycle class from the cops that I decide to start resisting authority again.

On the other hand, her bike finally passed inspection on week three when she explained to the police that, although her rear light was not the required red, the light blue showed up in the dark just as well. Reasoning with the police! In Germany! You go girl!

The problem lately has been unreasonable demands/expectations from the school. Too much homework. Money for books. The bike thing. But the other problem is that the other mothers just go along with it. They bitch and they moan. Their lives suck too. But it's the way it's always been. It's the way it's going to be. And it's just something they have to get through.

Germans may not like the rules, but they will follow them to a T.

Which I why I finally called an Italian mother about the book thing. I had just received a letter from the school telling me that my daughter had destroyed a book to such an extent that we were being required to pay for it. Huh? Come again? I had seen the book in question - albeit last year - and never noticed any damage. Had she torn the pages out, defaced it with doodles, scrawled all over the margins? Nope. It's a little tattered, dog-eared from use. But the way the letter was worded in German was as if she had intentionally destroyed it. And it begged our forgiveness but was sure we would understand and forward the required money. A German friend of mine said it was standard and that she'd had to do the same thing the year before. It was the school's way of getting new books subsidized a bit from the parents, she figured.

My Italian friend and I saw it differently. "I've been here ten years," she said, " and it's time to draw a line and tell them when they are wrong. I'm not just going along anymore." How did I even know she had received a letter about a book? Because her daughter and mine were chastised in front of the entire class. Her daughter is also distraught that her bike hadn't passed inspection yet either.

The police had told the children that if their bikes hadn't passed inspection by next week they would no longer be allowed to participate in the program.

Let me repeat that. The police had told the children that if their bikes hadn't passed inspection by next week they would no longer be allowed to participate in the program.

The authority figures are threatening - and shaming - the kids in school. Is it only the tea-dumping Americans who see something wrong with that?

I could obviously start in on a rant about the German mentality - again - or I could just teach my kids that it's not only okay to be different, but that I expect them to defy the status quo when they feel it is wrong. I tried it this afternoon. "The Germans are crazy." I told them. "But you have a choice about who you want to be. You're only a quarter German which still gives you a fighting chance." My sarcasm , fortunately, goes right over their heads at the moment.

We talked about doing what was right, even when the powers that be tell you not to. We talked about freedom and individuality and standing up for yourself; about being who you are and not who the system is trying to force you into being.

It may be even harder for Andrew than for Ryan. At least she never stands a chance of being what they want her to be. Andrew came home from school with his first math test. 52 questions in 20 minutes. The test that took Ryan 22 minutes - and she got half right. He not only got all 52 questions right, he did it in 9 minutes and then had time to draw an intricate mural on the back. How do I know it took him 9 minutes? Because it turns out they are timing - and praising - and comparing - and therefore - once again, shaming, the other kids in the class who aren't meeting the gold standard.

It's easy to be the golden child in Germany.

Which is why he's letting his hair grow and learning to play electric guitar!

Philosopher Mom : Part One

How does a twenty-first century housewife carry on an affair with a nineteenth century preacher? Let me introduce - or reintroduce - you to the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Be, and not seem." As my own words take shape in my head, and as ideas struggle to take form, I feel no guilt in leaving you to words penned from a higher source - while I figure out the muddle of my own thoughts and get them down.




"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."




Taken directly from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance" as found in "The Spiritual Emerson" by Tarcher Cornerstone Editions, 2008.