High Tide in Tucson_ Essays From Now or Never - Barbara Kingsolver [37]
Now there are stereotypes that encircle a problem like a darn good corral, and there are stereotypes that deliver a problem roaring to our doorstep, and I’m suspicious of this one, the Terrible Twos. If we’d all heard half so much about, say, the “Fat Fours,” I’d bet dollars to donuts most four-year-olds would gain lots of weight, and those who didn’t would be watched for the first sign of puffiness. Children are adept at becoming what we expect them to be. “Terrible” does not seem, by any stretch, to be a wise expectation. My Spanish-speaking friends—who, incidentally, have the most reliably child-friendly households in my acquaintance—tell me there’s no translation for “Terrible Twos” in their language.
The global truth, I think, is that the twos are time-consuming and tidiness-impaired, but not, intrinsically, terrible. A cow in parliament is not a terrible cow. It’s just a question of how it fits in with the plan.
The plan in our culture, born under the sign of freedom with mixed-message ascendant, is anyone’s guess. The two developmental stages we parents are most instructed to dread—the twos and teens—both involve a child’s formation of a sovereign identity. This, a plumb horror of assertive children, in the land of assertiveness training and weekend seminars on getting what you want through creative visualization. Expert advice on the subject of children’s freedom is a pawnshop of clashing platitudes: We are to cultivate carefully the fragile stem of self-esteem. We are to consider a thing called “tough love,” which combines militarist affection with house arrest, as remedy for adolescent misbehavior. We are to remember our children are only passing through us like precious arrows launched from heaven, but in most states we’re criminally liable for whatever target they whack. The only subject more loaded with contradictions is the related matter of sex, which—in the world we’ve packaged for adolescents—is everywhere, visibly, the goal, and nowhere allowed. Let them eat it, drink it, wear it on their jeans, but don’t for heaven’s sakes pass out condoms, they might be inspired to do it. This is our inheritance, the mixed pedigree of the Puritans and Free Enterprise. We’re to dream of our children growing up to be decision makers and trend setters, and we’re to dream it through our teeth, muttering that a trend-setting toddler is a pain, and a teenager’s decisions are a tour down the River Styx. How, then, to see it through?
The traditional camp says to hold the reins hard until the day we finally drop them, wish our big babies Godspeed, and send them out to run the world. I say, Good luck, it sounds like we’ll have men and women with the mental experience of toddlers running domestic and foreign policy. (And, in fact, it sometimes appears that we do.) This is the parenting faction that also favors spanking. Studies of corporal punishment show, reliably, that kids who are spanked are more likely to be aggressive with their peers. For all the world, you’d think they were just little people, learning what they were taught.
I hold with those who favor allowing kids some freedom to work out problems their own way, and even make some messes, before we set them on Capitol Hill. I do not hold that this is easy. The most assiduous task of parenting is to divine the difference between boundaries and bondage. In every case, bondage is quicker. Boundaries, however carefully explained, can be reinterpreted creatively time and