Another on Parenting

I've been reflecting quite a bit on what I can describe only as the water drip erosion of my original parenting goals and ideals, from proudly peaked mountains down to rounded just barely there hillocks.   

Case in point:  When we first started giving our kids allowance, I jumped in with great ambitions of using it to teach them about saving and generosity and wise use of their own spending money.  Three sixths – pocket money.   Two sixths– save for college.  One sixth, which we match – give away.   Oh wasn't I the clever, creative and good parent?

For the first couple of years, Alexander choose World Wildlife Fund for his charitable contribution because they sent him a free stuffed animal for a certain minimum donation.    Basically every year he bought himself a $104 stuffed animal.  But okay I rationalized, it was a start on the right path.

It came to light a few weeks ago, as we were discussing the 2011 donation, that no donation had ever been made for 2010 – with the move to South Africa and all.  Putting saving my sanity above teaching good values, I invoked the Statute of Limitations.  It is enough just to figure out how to get the 2011 money out the door and into the right hands – dealing with 2010 now that it is 2012 is just plain overwhelming.  


The whole college savings bit is happening - in that Bill keeps a spreadsheet tracking all their weekly allowance money that is supposed to go into their college fund. The only problem is that the kids never see the money or the spreadsheet and it all remains as abstract and un-lessoney as if Bill and I were just squirreling minute amounts of money away for their college fund every week. Which I guess basically IS what we are doing.


So what does that leave us with?  That's right - with the capitalistic part of the whole enterprise.  Every so often, after they remind us enough times that it has been a while since they got their allowance, we sit down with a calendar, add up what is owed and hand it over.  Into greedy little outstretched paws.  


And there we have it.  What started as an attempt to imbue my darlings with generosity and the good old fashioned habit of saving for the future boils down to "hand over my money, mom."  Why?  Because the day-to-day of keeping my boy off screens, arranging play dates for my friend-starved daughter, reminding both of them to please wash their hands before dinner and then for the 6000th time to please please please use a fork to eat (Quince still!) and to stop putting your face right down in the plate to shovel the food in (Alexander, still!), drips all my energy out of me, one admonishment at a time. Drip, drip, drip each day wearing my idealistic parenting mountain down.  I've got nothing left to sustain those clever value teaching systems I cook up when I get a spurt of inspiration and energy. They get pushed far down on the list, lost, and then guiltily remembered while lying in bed.  


My friends are not like this.  They somehow, miraculously I think, find the energy to teach manners AND instill good values. Through some mysterious parenting process, they are raising kids who volunteer on their own volition, who ask birthday well-wishers to give money to a chosen non-profit instead of buying a birthday gift, who start save-the-environment projects, who protest against social injustice. I'd feel better about it if my friends' kids had the manners of 3 year-olds, but of course they don't. They save the world and eat with forks, and use napkins, and say please and thank you.


I have decided that I am just one of those people who would actually be quite good at parenting if I didn't have kids wearing me down all day.  After all, I have loads of great ideas to raise caring, generous, world-saving people.  I wonder, once my kids are off on their own, no doubt having chosen some ozone-destroying career, if my worn-down little rounded hills can re-grow the peaks of parenting idealism.  Watch out future grandchildren - do I have some ideas for you.