Pressure Cooker Parents

"The only thing you ever had to do to make me happy was come home at the end of the day."

---Aaron Sorkin

Recently I was talking with some friends, and the topic of anxiety came up. An anxiety disorder is a real, medical, neurobiological condition, no question. It's one I wouldn't wish on anyone, it's crippling at times and not well understood. But there's also the regular run of the mill anxiety we all feel sometimes. Work deadlines, family pressure, stress and the like. What about that? I wish I knew, because then maybe I could help a few young friends of mine, but I don't have all the answers.

I have some questions though. Why is the rate of teen suicides up so much? It's horrifying. In the period between 2007 and 2015, the number of girls ages 15-19 who took their lives doubled. For boys, it went up 30%. We are losing too many precious kids to depression and anxiety issues.

Another question I have is: Why are so many teens so incredibly stressed out? Even some who are not harming themselves still suffer. Panic attacks, aggression, strained relationships with family, and risky behavior with drugs and alcohol are all hallmarks of stress. Remember when being 16 years old meant you hung out with friends, went to school, played a sport or joined the marching band and maybe on a Friday night you got to borrow your mom's car and go out with your friends? It's so not that simple anymore.

Where is this stress coming from? Some kids have diagnosed anxiety disorders, and my heart is with them and their families because it's incredibly hard dealing with that kind of illness. Some kids are just born high strung and put pressure on themselves over grades, SATs, college and so much else. Sometimes though, the pressure is coming from a parent. We've all seen those parents, and while I never like to assume I know everything by looking at someone, sometimes you can just tell. Haven't we all been at a game where a parent is screaming harsh criticism from the sidelines? Heck, I've been to a game where one parent punched another parent over a goal that was denied. This pressure cooker way of parenting is happening more than any of us realize, and our kids are at risk.

A friend told me that her husband (pardon me, now ex-husband) "required" their kids get As in every subject. I said, "What happens if they don't?" and her daughter spoke up at that point and said, "We were too scared to find out." Raise your hand if you think it's fine for a kid to get so freaked out over a B that they consider hurting themselves?  This dad isn't a one-off either, and it wasn't an issue of domestic violence, he never raised a hand to anyone, he just "laid down the law." There are a lot of parents just like him though. Ask any guidance counselor, principal or teacher how many kids they see that are about to burst from stress. You might be surprised.

How did some parents get this way? Another unanswerable question. They aren't all ogres, they aren't all looking to borrow Joan Crawford's wire hangers, but they're stressed too. They want the best for their children, but some of them have gotten it terribly wrong. Perhaps they've read too many books like "How to Prepare Your Pre-schooler for the Ivy League." Ok, that's not a real book (at least I hope not), but there are plenty of similar books. Maybe they've gotten caught up in some societal rat-race competition thing. I sure did a few times, thinking that my kid just had to take a particular class or stand out as a stellar athlete or they would be left behind, choking on the dust of failure and desperation. Do we all want the best for our kids? Yes. Is getting into an Ivy, or having the highest GPA in town or being an MVP worth their health, their sanity or their lives? No. I'm not making this up, there are kids dying over grades, over SATs, over social drama and while there could be hundreds of causes besides parenting, it's one of the few things we can control. It's got to stop. How do we make it stop?

I don't know any parent who doesn't love their children so much they'd walk through fire for them. Maybe before doing that, we parents could all take a long hard look at our kids, their strengths and weaknesses, their faults and fears, and remember that they are, for a little while yet, still children. Remember when they were babies, all pink and giggly? Somewhere under all the stress, the eye-rolls, and the sarcasm, we have to remember that they are still our babies and some of them are in a world of hurt. Surely we can fix that, right? I don't know about anyone else, but I'm with Sorkin on this one. If my kids come home at the end of the day, to me, that is everything and more. 

Where Everything Didnt Used to Be

NB: What also "Didn't Used to Be" is a paywall over my column. I realize the paper has to make money, but I am not paid by the GateHouse, yet they charge people to read my column? I don't much care for that, to be honest. I don't mind doing it, I like being a part of my community this way. But still....OpEd content should be available to all in the community.

"Anything that triggers good memories can't be all bad."

---Adam West

Summer is over, it's not Thanksgiving or the Christmas season yet, so it's hardly the time to get all maudlin and wax poetic about good times gone by, kids who have grown up and moved on, and absent friends. Or is it?

Halloween isn't a big deal at our house beyond handing out candy and keeping an eye on my own kids at the same time. No decorations and we're so over the pumpkin carving. I think the year my oldest wound up in the ER for stitches took the fun out of it. Then, out of nowhere, this very different kind of Halloween happened at our house.

For years, I walked my kids around the neighborhood for trick or treating. First Andy, then George, then Devin around and around the same couple of streets. Guaranteed something memorable would always happen. There's a big tree near my house, and I used to tell  Andy to look behind it because there were extra treats. It was dark and spooky, and he fell for it every time, while I laughed like a fool. That will come up in a therapy session someday. Then there was the year George was three years old, and he got so freaked out by some jerk who thought it was funny to hide in the bushes and jump out at little kids that I had to bring him home, screaming all the way. The Spiderman costume did not go to waste though; he wore it every day after school for a year.

When I tried to get George to fall for the "treat tree trick" it worked once. The next year he said, "Ya, what am I, stupid? You did that last year." Devin started her Halloween trick-or-treating early, at ten days old. I still had to haul her brothers around, so I packed her up in a bunny sleeper and showed her off to the neighbors.  Through the years she was a dead zombie cheerleader, a vampire girl, and a fairy-princess-butterfly-Tinkerbelle which just meant she put on every sparkly thing from the dress up box because she couldn't make up her mind on what to be. Halloween was never complete without a stop at the home of a friend's parents. They would ooh and ahhh over the kids and tell me what good mother I was, which in those days of herding young children was better than candy.

Fast forward to this year. It's about to get dark on Halloween. I look around, and there are no kids in my house. Obviously, I knew where the boys were, but I'd forgotten that Devin had plans with a friend. It was the first year in over two decades that I hadn't cut up a sweatshirt to look like a little lamb or painted blood on someone's face with my lipstick. Apparently, as far as Halloween went, I was obsolete.

It reminded me of when my father used to say, "That's it, everyone in the car, we're going for a ride." We'd hop in, and while we usually got an ice cream out of it, there was always the narration that went along with the journey to nowhere. Frank liked to show us where everything "didn't used to be." The drive-in didn't used to be on the Lynnway; it was a factory once.  The mall wasn't always indoors you know, those walls and that roof didn't used to be there; they enclosed it back in the 70s. On and on, with the parade of places that didn't exist anymore.

It's supposed to happen this way though, this moving on and changing. We'd all die of boredom if it didn't. The costume of camo pants and a GI Joe shirt has been replaced with an official USAF Airman Battle Uniform. The girl is an actual cheerleader so there's no need for a dress up box anymore. Andy would never fall for the tree trick; he's much wiser now.

Like all those places my father dragged us to, Halloween "didn't used to be" what it is now. Thanksgiving will be different as well since George cannot come home for it. Christmas? Who knows? I'm going to have to find a way to weave the old memories into the new normal. I'll get right on that as soon as I hit the store and buy some 50% off candy since I can't steal it from the kids anymore. And so it goes…

“It’s no use to go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

---Lewis Carroll, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

It’s summer and while many of us will be hitting the beaches or heading for theme parks and road trips and other adventures, there’s a significant amount of work happening at my house. There will be a vacation, the first in two years, but that’s way at the end of the summer. Until then, like Robert Frost in his “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” poem, I have miles to go before I sleep. Job 1 for right now is the countdown to launching my son to Air Force Basic training in San Antonio. In August. Because you know, it’s lovely marching around the parade grounds in the hot Texas sun, while being serenaded by a drill instructor who seems homicidal, manic or perhaps just hangry. At least from the YouTube videos I’ve seen. Note to self: stop watching basic training videos on YouTube.

Unlike shopping for cute matching dorm pillows and shower caddies, getting a kid to basic isn’t really about how much stuff there is to buy. It’s actually more about paperwork (in triplicate), organization, and consuming enough Chardonnay to quell the rising panic. I’m really only good at one of those things. George will leave home with one small backpack and a manila folder. He likely won’t return again until the spring, if he’s lucky, has time and all heck doesn’t break loose (again) in this dangerous world. So, his room will be empty and I will be making a land grab and claiming it for my own. There will always be a bed for him, no matter what, but in the meantime, that bed is going to be have a fluffy quilt and there will be lots of beach art on walls repainted in a soft shade of green that should be called “Mermaid’s Butt” but is actually “Sea foam Serenade.” Now it just needs cleaning out.

The bookshelf is what’s happening this week. I was once dubbed “The Meanest Mother in the Universe” for saying no to some toy in the store, but there was pretty much never an occasion when I said no to a book. Many of them will be kept, but most have to go. While my oldest was a reluctant reader, he did like the Captain Underpants books and while I’m grateful to Dav Pilkey for writing something that would engage a kid like him, I no longer need the entire boxed set.  Nor do I need any of the Magic Tree House books, anything where a nerdy aardvark and his friends whine about school, or any moral lectures from that obnoxious holier-than-thou bear family that had all the answers, but still couldn’t come up with better names for their kids than “Brother” and “Sister.”

Nothing is worse than “Rainbow Fish” however, in which the lesson is that if you have different colored skin, or scales, as fish have, you will be bullied incessantly over it. The bullying will only stop when you physically peel off some of these shiny scales (which are body parts for fish!) and hand them out so the rainbow is re-distributed to everyone and no one can then be unique or different. Since I’m the only writer/author and English major in the house, I get to decide which books go and which get to stay. First, let’s begin with “Corduroy” by Don Freeman. That book stays with me until someone pries it from my cold, dead hand. The same goes for everything by Robert McCloskey. It’s possible I would run back into a burning building for my copy of “Make Way For Ducklings” because it was mine growing up and has an inscription from my father.

Finally there are the books about everyone’s favorite SOB (Silly Old Bear). A. A. Milne understood childhood better than any writer I’ve ever read. If it were possible, Pooh Corner and all the inhabitants would be real and I’d live there. What’s not to like? A an overanxious rabbit who talks too much, a stuttering pig that is clingy, an overweight bear who is never fat-shamed, a tiger who can't spell and routinely knocks people over bouncing around on them, a kangaroo single mom who hovers too much, but is still sweet and a clinically depressed donkey who has friends that love him and include him in their lives, even if he is sad and anti-social at times. These are characters that carried me through the toddler times, the teen angst and so much more. I’m different now, so is George, and that is exactly how it should be. Pooh, Corduroy, Mr. and Mrs. Mallard and a few other treasured friends, however, will be what they have always been: a window to the wonderland that books can be for a child of any age.