Thursday, September 17, 2009

Lessons from Sleeping Beauty

Ours is a Sleeping Beauty household. Sometimes multiple times a day. During one recent viewing I began to ponder the approach the king and queen took to parenting with Aurora- isolating their daughter from potential danger by banishing all spinning wheels, with their perilous spindles, from the kingdom. At first glance, not a bad strategy, akin to following your child around with a bottle of antibacterial hand wash for the first five years of life. Upon further reflection, it became apparent to me that the royal parents were actually doing their child a disservice in insulating her from the spinning wheels of life rather than equipping her to deal with the challenges she will inevitably have to confront.

Every little girl is enthralled by the scene of the handsome prince rescuing his damsel in distress with a kiss. Such is the stuff of which dreams are made. As a mother, I cringe at the thought of Ella waiting around for someone to rescue her, romantic as it may seem. I want her to right her own wrongs, to wield her own sword against the injustices of her world.

To do this, I must do what is perhaps the hardest thing for a mother: allow her to know, in incremental ways, that the world is not the happy place scored by the song of woodland creatures that we would all like to pretend it is, if only until our girls finish first grade. I must take her hand and stand abreast with her, pointing out danger and explaining the best way to deal with it, rather than tuck her away behind my skirts as my heart longs to do.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Cutting the Strings

This week marked the commencement of my daughter's first-grade experience. In the last three days alone, there have been numerous watershed moments in which her mother, bursting with pride at Ella's newfound independence and at the same time reluctant to relinquish the last vestiges of babyhood in her only child, was forced to confront the reality that Ella, sensing this hesitance, is more than willing to sever the apron strings herself. The first cut came on Monday as we entered her new elementary school building for Meet the Teacher night. My unconscious reaching for her hand was met with a glare and words barely uttered through clenched teeth, "Mom, I will walk beside you, but we will not be holding hands." This with a reminder of her earlier admonishment not to smile at anyone lest they question my mental stability, thus rendering her a social pariah at the getgo.

A second snip, and perhaps the unkindest cut, came early Wednesday morning. I had explained to her the night before that I would not be walking her in- first-graders walk alone. This explanation had been proffered with every expectation that she would balk the next day and I would have to employ my uber-mommy powers of persuasion to convince her that she could in fact make the trek from van to classroom solo. All morning I looked for cracks in her composure, signs that I would have to make the carefully rehearsed speech I was sure was an inevitability. Nothing. Nada. Zip. She sat calmly the entire ride to school, listening intently to the first book in the Harry Potter series as I tried to control my emotions, contemplating that the six pound wonder I had carried home from the hospital was in fact about to enter the first grade. I thought for sure I had her when we pulled into the circle and observed other parents escorting their charges to kindergarten. Not a word. I pulled up to the entrance and responded to Ella's assertion that there was no adult there to extract her from the car with a gentle, "Honey, the nice lady at the door works here. You just need to walk to her and if you need help from there she can help you.", certain this would produce the expected avalanche of tears.

There was no, "But Mommy...", no, "I can't do thiiiis." She simply nodded, grabbed her gear, hopped out of the car, waved and sauntered into the building as if she was born to do this.

And indeed she was. Just as her mother was born to let her, even if she has to force herself to do so through a veil of tears borne of both pride and loss.