Smoking around your kids. Obviously a no-no, right?
This came up today in conversation. There were eight of us, and someone said, “If you smoke you should make sure you do it away from your kids so they can’t see you.” Another person added, “After all, you’re their role model, and they will try to emulate your behaviour and actions.” Nods all round.
I nodded too, but I’m not totally sure. Not necessarily with smoking itself, because of the effects of secondary smoke on non-smokers’ health. Rather, the notion that we should change our behaviour or hide what we perceive as our bad traits from our children. The notion that we should always present our best possible selves to our children.
This comes up a lot when talking about long-term relationships. That when you first get to know each other you highlight your charms and strengths and do your darndest to avoid having to expose your weaknesses. However, lasting love and relationships are when you uncover your partner’s grey areas, sometimes ugly, sometimes just complicated, almost always something you hadn’t considered. You work through them, layer by layer, deciding if you’re still in it as you go. That’s the real person.
And so often you hear people talk about what they discovered about their parents at the end of their lives. On their parents’ deathbeds, or at funerals, they learn about the people their parents were which don’t match the people who’d brought them up. Who were they? Why didn’t I know this about my father?
Isn’t your relationship with your child one of the most, if not the most important of all? Don’t we want to present them with our more authentic selves, good and bad, to have a more genuine, grounded relationship with them?
I’ve been trying to be a model parent. I love vegetating in front of a screen, trawling through Facebook, YouTube and Reddit. But I limit my use of screen time when Alex is around. I indulge in McDonald’s and KFC, but only after he’s gone to sleep. These days the TV is almost never turned on, except for designated TV time for Alex (we’re one of those households who subscribes to cable solely for Disney Junior). I’ve always been someone who makes liberal use of all manner of four-letter words to express myself. In front of Alex, the worst one is probably “heck”. And I smoke occasionally, mostly when I’m drinking, but I almost never do it at home, and when I do, it’s on the balcony and Alex is watching TV.
I also feel guilty about what I do which isn’t ideal parent behaviour. I hate cooking, and only do it in order for Alex to eat more healthily; as a result, he’s not learning about the joys of preparing food that I read about other mums doing since I want to get it done as quickly as possible, nor is he getting an exciting variety of dishes to try. I don’t exercise, so that doesn’t provide a model for him to be fit. I don’t speak to Alex in Chinese, so I feel guilty that he’s not getting the advantage of the acquisition of that language.
My husband, on the hand, is very much himself around Alex. He’s on his computer a lot playing games, with Alex underfoot and learning and mimicking the sound effects of video game characters. He loves football and is always watching clips or listening to podcasts about it. He swears with minimal censorship. He’s mostly unconcerned about presenting any kind of perfect self to his son.
While I can’t predict what effect all of this will have on Alex the teenager or adult, subconsciously or otherwise, I can tell you how it is for us now with Alex the toddler. When I’m around, he knows I’ll attend to his whims and fancies. With my husband, Alex pretty much entertains himself unless he’s got bored or there’s something that he can’t solve. While far from being a model child, he’s definitely less whiny with his dad than with me.
I wonder if there’s a connection. I wonder if presenting an ideal self makes it harder for children to think it’s okay and in fact normal to fail again and again. If it makes them think they can’t share their grey areas with their parents as they get older.
I wonder if I’ve sacrificed too much of my authentic self; the one who used to spend hours devouring new music, reading food blogs and trying new restaurants. The sacrifice is for Alex, to be more fully devoted to him, but perhaps our relationship might be less rich because I’m doing less of those things for myself, and therefore, presenting a facade of myself to him. In that way I admire the families of who rent a mini-van and drive through Morocco, newborn and all, or less adventurously, for whom kids sleeping in restaurants while the adults drink and are merry are part of their non-adherence to routines.
I’m not sure where I stand on this, and where that balance is to strike. But I’m quite sure that I should feel less guilty about who I am, what I like and what I do, not despite, but because of Alex.
–
Uma is a Malaysian working mum with a French husband and a toddler named Alex living in their fourth country together.
Image credit: Flickr user Raison Descartier
