Good children

For reasons unknown to me, and perhaps surprising to those who know me as an optimist, I have been really drawn to post-apocalyptic fiction of late. I just finished, All Good Children by Catherine Austen, which details an American town some time hence built and run by a chemical company. They opt to drug all the school aged children and teens to make them well behaved and essentially mindless. It was a good read, chilling, sometimes funny, and its “hero” manages to avoid the “vaccination”. A key quote from it, which resonates for me in my darker sleep training moments, is “Living with hope is like rubbing up against a cheese grater. It keeps taking slices off you until there's so little left, you just crumble.” The book made me think a lot about how much we all claim to want “good” children, good sleepers, good students, and how much we complain about misbehaviour. The book’s simple message is that we are richer and happier when we freely feel the full range of human emotion and maintain our capacity for critical thought and rebellion. I am sure we all agree. I challenge myself to remember this and bring the fullness of what it means into my parenting. Ben and his soon to be little brother will and should test us, test themselves, create (however messy), even destroy, complain, exclaim, protest. They must be given the freedom to fail, to fall, to break. We cannot save them from everything, nor I think, should we. I know A and I are blessed with the sweetest little boy, a sensitive spirit whom we are going to yearn to shelter. Though he has his challenging moments more and more, as a thoughtful two year old on a mission, we daily come back to the simple beauty of him. To our deep gratitude to him and for him. I cherish each morning of snuggles, each dance party to Indian beats, each carrot-ginger muffin making session, every one of his fabulous new expressions (snow tractor coming!). I love what a goof he can be too, like how he was romping around wearing A’s padded bra swimming suit this morning!

Ben, forgive us this impending massive change in your life. Remember that you are our Benni forever, the one and only, our first. And not only do we love you, but we really LIKE you. Be brave, be strong, and remember that we know it won’t always be easy to share us, to be the big brother. “I love you forever, I like you for always, for as long as I am living, my baby you’ll be” (Munsch).

E