That Little Face in the Mirror

My daughter’s six and sometimes I worry about her. Yeah, sure I worry in the way that all parents do but I also worry in this vague way that has to do with intellectual snobbery. When I was but a wee lad, my solace and my light in life was the written word. I certainly couldn’t talk to my parents but with my nose between the pages of some good book I felt that I had the absolute attention of some great and wise person. Books were my one true escape so like any good little kid I tried to escape as much as possible.

In a way, I’ve carried that forward to my adulthood and sometimes apply it to my attempts to be a parent. While I certainly don’t want our children to have to find all their entertainment in books it would be nice if they displayed some interest and it worries me sometimes when they don’t. I worry about what experience or bit of knowledge they might lose because they’re not curled up with some great bit of literature. Actually, I should say that I used to worry.

The other day our six-year-old, we’ll call her Miss Six, was getting ready for bed. Bedtime is a somewhat lose process in our house; the first step involves actually getting into bed but very little sleeping and so she was taking something to do to bed with her. Lately she’s been on an art kick so she had gathered up the 20 pieces of paper for the book she’s drawing and toddled off to bed. Daddy, having a moment of concern, saw the art and declared that Six needed to be reading in bed instead. Well, as with all strong-willed children this sent Six into a tizzy. She looked daggers at me but relented and trudged unhappily off to her room to look gloomily at some books. It seemed reasonable to me for a split second that she should be reading a book in bed rather than working on her other interests.

After the split second passed however, I realized the injustice of what I’d just done. A bit of history on Six is probably appropriate here. Six is a child of intensely varied interests; for two weeks she will be utterly and completely devoted to science. The entirety of her existence will be about animals and dinosaurs and fossils and digging things out of the yard but after a few days the furnaces will cool and she’ll move on to something else and the cycle will begin all over again. Her pursuit of everything is absolutely frenetic and single-minded. For the brief period in which she’s interested in a topic it will be impossible to draw her in any other direction without a major fight. Her father exhibits not dissimilar tendencies. As you might tell from his blog, his interest in everything (including blogging itself) is subject to change without notice.

It was exactly this image of myself followed by an image of Six that flashed before my eyes after I told her to go read in bed. In the moments following the split second, I realized just what a shitty thing I’d done to my child. How would I feel if someone stood over me and made me read a book when what I really wanted to do was write a blog entry or tinker with the microscope? What a cad. Well, only one thing to be done. I called her in from her bed and said in my most level voice:

“Hey, I’m sorry about that. I realize now that it wasn’t fair of me to make you read a book when you were working on something else. You do so many different and cool things that it’s not appropriate for me to make you do one thing over another. Go ahead and do what you want in bed.”

And that, was that. Some of you may well say that I’m an idiot for not making her read. We’ve impressed on her many times that reading is the most important thing she’ll ever learn and no doubt next week she’ll be off of art and on to reading voraciously and I’d rather have her do what she wants with enthusiasm than have her do what I want begrudgingly. The difference between success and failure is not knowledge but passion. She has passion, she’ll find a permanent target for it in due time. I officially don’t worry about Six any more.