Getting the Pretty Back

by Molly Ringwald

  “It seems Mathilda is being introduced to the neighborhood,” my husband remarked. he seemed as undaunted as Mathilda.

  “Have you told them to stop?” I asked. “They shouldn’t say things like that.”

  “Of course I did,” he said. “Obviously to great effect.”

  I marched to the fence and faced down the unruly crowd.

  “Hello, there. I’m Molly and this is Mathilda. What are your names?”

  “Penis, butt, poop, poopface, vagina head!”

  This was going to be tough. I persevered.

  “Hey, look guys,” I said—and truth be told, they were mostly boys, with the exception of one little sister, who spent most of the time sucking her thumb, releasing it for the occasional giggle. “Mathilda, her daddy, and I just moved into the neighborhood, and I’m sure that Mathilda would love to play with you, but we need to stop with the name-calling!”

  “We don’t have to do anything you tell us. You aren’t our mommy!” one little boy said, puffing out his chest defiantly.

  Unbeknownst to the tiny hoodlums, I had already met their parents at a neighborhood cocktail party a few days before.

  I crouched down to their level and looked them right in the eye.

  “I know each and every one of your parents, and if you don’t stop the name-calling right now, I’m going to find your mommies and tell them what you’ve been saying.”

  Mathilda watched the showdown wide-eyed. There was a dramatic pause, then one little boy whooped and hollered, letting loose a Lilliputian yet surprisingly savage war cry, “PENIS POOP PEE PEE JERK MUD FACE VAGINA NOSE!”

  Good God. I move into the most laid-back, beachiest community possible and yet somehow manage to enter Lord of the Flies.

  I lunged for the gate, and the kids went scrambling, scattering in all directions like pigeons.

  “Take it easy!” my husband called after me. “They’re kids!”

  I marched down to the neighborhood hangout where many of the parents liked to congregate and chat. One boy ran as fast as his five-year-old legs could carry him as I stalked behind him like the grand executioner. He reached his mother a few seconds before me and sputtered out his story as quickly as he could.

  “A bunch of us…I but I wasn’t…I mean, I did, but not the bad stuff…It was Henry. I didn’t…”

  His mother looked at me questioningly and tried to calm her apoplectic son. I smiled and attempted to explain the situation, which in the retelling seemed significantly less grave. She nodded at me.

  “Yes, Miro is experimenting with his language skills.”

  “Right. Well he seemed to have a pretty good grasp on what he was saying.”

  We laughed. She nodded. I nodded. We both stood there, nodding at each other until I realized that she had no intention of reprimanding her kid. Instead, she gently suggested that her son go into the house and calm down for a minute, and when he reappeared she bent down on one knee and proceeded to question him about how he felt. It was a self-help parenting book in action. Wait a minute, I thought. Are we seriously talking about his feelings? What about my daughter who was called names for the last ten minutes? Meanwhile, another mother wearing a baby in a sling (the mother of Henry, the worst offender) corralled her son to stand before me. I stood and waited for her to explain to her son the error of his ways.

  “OK, Henry,” she said to her son. “This lady has something she wants to say to you.”

  I gulped. I didn’t want to say anything to her son. What I wanted was an apology. What I wanted was some form of parenting that resembled my own in some small way. Were these kids being raised to become politicians? Learning never to apologize at the risk of appearing wrong? Henry looked up at me with an expression like, “Come on, lady. I got other people to harass.” I improvised something along the lines of how he was welcome to come over and play, but that we have rules about name-calling, etc. He looked at me blankly. “So, that’s it,” I concluded. “Thanks for talking to me, Henry.”

  “OK?” the mother said, adjusting the baby sling. “Are we good?”

  When I got home, my husband was doing dishes in the kitchen. He smiled at me.

  “You’re such a badass!”

  We all have models of what we consider to be good parenting. If we’re lucky, we have a positive personal example from which to model our own unique brand of parenting. Both my husband and I were lucky; we have good relationships with our parents and, for the most part, very fond childhood memories. I feel that my parents set the bar pretty high. My mother never let a holiday or birthday pass without doing something incredibly crafty and creative. Homemade decorated gingerbread cookies. Hand-sewn Halloween costumes. Decorated doll cakes on our birthdays. She never failed to deliver.

  Even so, there are ways that we choose to do things differently from our parents. A lot of it is based on the fact that times change. My parents were products of the fifties—postwar, pretherapy. Children were expected to speak when spoken to. My parents broke away from their upbringing drastically to raise us, but there was still a level of one-sided communication and unquestioning obedience that seems out of touch in today’s world of psychological nuance. Communication and reflection are undeniably important. As annoyed as I was by Miro’s parents’ obsession with their child “communicating his feelings,” I was only annoyed that it so clearly superseded—even ignored—thinking about someone else’s feelings. But I do think it’s important that children learn to express their feelings, to understand how and why they feel the way they do about things. Sometimes, though, it can go too far and veer into self-obsession. This is the tricky part of promoting intensive self-awareness. We all know someone who’s been in therapy for years, who is tuned into their every slightest motivation, impulse, and emotion, and yet who at the same time remains painfully oblivious (or uninterested in) how other people are feeling. Raising a child who is emotionally aware, yet not destined to become an egotist, takes finesse, persistence, and frankly, a bit of luck.

  The other problem with the belief that every problem can be solved if you just allow your child to communicate his or her feelings—what I call Talky-Feely Parenting—is that it overlooks that you’re dealing with a child. While I’m often amazed at my daughter Mathilda’s command of logic and her fresh perspective on everything, the fact remains that she is five years old; there are certain things she can’t communicate, nor should she be able to. I don’t even think it’s healthy to try to engage in that kind of communication 24/7 with our children. I don’t like it as an adult! Do you remember how annoying it is when someone is trying to find out how you feel all the time, even before you yourself have had a chance to feel it? “Why aren’t you smiling? Are you in a bad mood? What’s going on?” Why would I want to subject my own child to this emotional cross-examination?

  THINGS NOT TO FEEL GUILTY ABOUT WHEN YOU HAVE A CHILD

  THE HOUSE WILL BE A MESS. Not only will it be messy almost all the time, but it will also be full of the ugliest purple and green and striped pink plastic contraptions ever designed by childless toymakers. Instinctively, it seems your child will only play with something if he or she knows you are embarrassed to own it.

  YOU’LL GET MAD AT YOUR PARENTS. Whether your parents are the types who mysteriously lose all ability to care for a child as soon as yours appears, or whether they suddenly manifest a heretofore nonexistent obsession to play with kids, you can be sure that somehow they will still manage to annoy you. Get over it. Save your therapy dollars for diapers.

  YOUR KID DOESN’T PLAY THE PIANO. JUGGLE, SPEAK MANDARIN CHINESE, AND SWIM COMPETITIVELY. While this phenomenon is most apparent in the cities, the suburbs are certainly no strangers to the one-upmanship that parents engage in. It’s OK if you think Baby Einstein is unbelievably irritating. It is irritating. Einstein never watched Baby Einstein—and he did all right.

  YOUR KID IS A PICKY EATER. At times it feels as if our eldest daughter exists on air and Pirate’s Booty—which is just cheese-dusted,
packaged air (ohhh, but it’s organic!). Yet she is tall and healthy and has enough energy to wear down two adults every day. So why then do I feel like a bad parent? Because on her first day of kindergarten, as the children were volunteering their favorite food during circle time, half of them offered up “sushi.” One especially hard-core kid specified and chirped, “Seaweed!” My husband and I felt ourselves sinking deeper into our seats. Just as we were about to slink out of the room, branded as the world’s worst parents, a little girl proudly declared her favorite food was “Sugar!” Guess who’s coming over for a playdate?

  YOU SPEND TIME WITH YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER. This one should be completely obvious, although it’s strikingly difficult to implement. The flip side of having kids that really like you is that it becomes nearly impossible to carve out time to spend with your significant other. As hard as it is to explain to your child why Mommy and Daddy need special time with each other, it is absolutely imperative to the health of your primary relationship. I believe it’s better for your kids in the long run to have parents who still want time with each other than ones who see the other as a mere coparental custodian. There are only so many episodes of Blue’s Clues that you can endure together before it’s time to banish your adorable tyrant, order in Chinese, and spend time with your “better half” doing what you do best…

  Assuming that everything can be resolved solely through communication is a somewhat utopian idea of child rearing. It discounts so many other elements. Desire. Impulse. Conflict. Too much chocolate milk. There is nothing that I find more maddening than being somewhere with my child and waiting while a Talky-Feely Parent enacts an impromptu therapy session and makes their child go through a litany of “feelings” to explain away bad behavior. Sometimes the kid gets so into it; I watch them squeeze out a tear as they eye the toy that is just out of reach, knowing that they just need to provide the right buzzwords and they’ll get it back. I feel like yelling, “You’re being suckered! How can you not know that?!”

  Not to say that my children are perfect, or that I am the perfect parent. There was a long week when my daughter Mathilda’s response to any question was “Liar liar pants on fire.” This was a vast improvement upon the previously and often used “Nana Nana, butt butt.” I don’t ask her why she says these things; I know she’s picked them up at school. She’s just trying them on for size, and eventually she will find the words for what she feels. I trust that. We are all works in progress. And believe me, I’m no expert when it comes to being a mother. I just like to say that my expertise lies in the fact that I am a mother and incidentally, I play one on TV…

  It’s hard being a parent. There are so many conflicting models out there, all of them with their pros and cons. The Crunchy Parents, whose child has never eaten anything that isn’t sprouting. The Luddite Parents, who won’t allow their child to watch a movie-ever—because their child could get “overstimulated.” The Let-It-Ride Parents, who give their children complete and utter free rein. The Never-Too-Young-to-Learn Parents (my husband often falls into this category: he started teaching Mathilda about gravity when she was two years old, using soap bubbles to demonstrate; by the age of four she was a staunch advocate of evolution, announcing to everyone she met, “I believe in apes!”) and their nemeses, the Don’t-Ask-Me Parents.

  The variety and degree of difference among parenting styles can be overwhelming; it extends to every facet of child rearing. There’s no better example than breast-feeding, an issue that seems to inspire judgment and disagreement wherever it rears its head. I try to be as open-minded as possible, but I have to admit that it’s still difficult for me to understand the appeal of breast-feeding children until they’re in elementary school. It’s a personal choice, though, and I respect it accordingly. To be fair, it’s one of the most personal choices you can make. I chose to breast-feed for as long as I possibly could, and then pumped so enthusiastically that I had an additional three-month supply waiting in our freezer like some kind of Ben & Jerry’s for babies. This was mostly due to my husband, whose Mussolini-like fascination for order and scheduling extended to the breast pump. My breasts were pretty sure that they were out for hire—and feeding a royal army. The weekend I attempted to wean “naturally” turned me into a sorry sight. For two days, I lay on the couch, sipping sage tea with two cabbage leaves pressed to each breast. I looked like I was wearing a bikini in Land of the Lost. On Monday, I broke down and went to the doctor and had him prescribe me some medication. My husband swung by the pharmacy on his way home from work to pick up the prescription.

  “These better make you really high or something,” he said, handing me the bottle. The pills cost $280 and weren’t covered by insurance.

  “Why did you buy them?” I asked. “That’s crazy!”

  “Well, you looked like you were in so much pain.”

  Honestly, I was. I took the pills and started to feel normal within twenty-four hours. When I saw my doctor a couple of days later and asked why the pills were so expensive, he seemed shocked. It was only after looking up the medication online that he found out that they are also prescribed as a new and better form of Viagra.

  I am grateful that my body was able to nourish my child, that she was able to get all of the antibodies needed to bolster her own immunity. I think La Leche League is a wonderful organization, and I’m happy that they have gone a long way to abolish the bizarre stigma that was still quite prevalent when my mother was raising her babies. But color me old-fashioned, I personally feel that it is a good idea to put the kibosh on breast-feeding when your kid can clearly verbalize a preference for left or right.

  And then there are our own parents. It doesn’t matter how old you are, there is something about having your own parent watching you parent that always feels like you’re at an audition. Did they like the way I tested the formula on the back of my hand? Did they approve of how I took “colorful rainbow kitty-cat” off the table until she finished her pasta? What about how I let it pass when she told me I was a “mean mommy” because I wouldn’t let her go down to the swing set until she put her toys away? I find myself having to remind myself that I already have the job!

  This is, of course, in my own mind. My parents don’t necessarily judge us on our child rearing, or if they do, they are polite enough to keep it to themselves. Once in a while, though, they can’t help but let it slip. “She’s playing you,” my dad will grumble. There are certain things they can’t understand about the choices that we make.

  At the moment, our family has to commute back and forth between Los Angeles, where I work on a television show, and Palo Alto, where my husband attends Stanford Business School. Mathilda takes it badly each and every time her father leaves Sunday night. I know how heartbroken she feels; I feel the same way. Every Sunday and Monday are the same. She cries and says “I miss Daddy” nonstop, as a mantra. My own father was visiting on one of these weekends, and I tried to explain to him that it was a hard adjustment for her. My father’s response was, “Well, she’s just got to deal with it.”

  “What do you mean, ‘she just has to deal with it’? She is dealing with it. She just misses him.”

  “Well, sure. But she has to deal with it. That’s life.”

  I found myself prickly with anger. How can he be so unfair? Why am I made to feel like a sucker because I know that it is the healthy thing to let her cry and express how much she misses her father, instead of imposing the “stiff upper lip” maxim that I grew up with (to some extent, my father to a greater extent). It occurred to me that my father’s father worked on the railroad and must have been gone for long stretches at a time. How did he feel about it? Then there was the time when my own family was separated for close to a year while we made the move from Sacramento to Los Angeles. Change is hard for anyone, but especially for children who have no real frame of reference for time. A day can seem like a month, a month can seem like a year. I remember that, and I feel for my daughter. I let her know that it’s OK with me if she wants to t
alk about how she feels. OK, I confess. Sometimes, I am one of those Talky-Feely Parents too.

  Then there are my husband’s parents. They were Greek immigrants who raised their children in Massachusetts and moved back to Greece as soon as my husband entered college. Our daughter Mathilda is the first granddaughter in the family, and the second we arrive in the country, the grandparents, aunts, and uncles greet us at the airport armed with gifts. And Papou (as her Greek grandfather is called) makes sure that there is more where that came from.

  “They’re spending too much money,” I whisper to my husband.

  “Let them. They want to.”

  These are not wealthy people. They are hardworking former immigrants who put their children in the very best prep schools in Massachusetts by owning a pizzeria. And yet every time they see Mathilda, it is Christmas and Easter and the Fourth of July. They look for every excuse to spoil her, and they do.

  Since we live in the United States, we try to spend one month a year in Greece so they can spend time with their firstborn granddaughter. Having not lived with my parents since I moved out of the house at eighteen, I lightly asked my husband, the first time we made the trip to Greece, if we should be staying in a hotel near the house.

  “Sure, if you want to mortally offend them,” came the reply.

  We stayed in the house. And thus began my big fat Greek life.

  Mothering around your mother is one thing; mothering around your mother-in-law is another. What do you say when your mother-in-law says or does something that is completely different from the way that you like to do things? When it’s my own mother, I basically just snap at her and act like an obnoxious teenager. “Don’t tell me what to do. I’m a grown-up.” I’m surly and immature. Defensive and overly sensitive. But my parents know me. They know that there is a pure beating heart underneath all of the fear, and having lived with me through my teen years, still loving me, I never worry. I know they love me beyond measure, and at the end of the day, nothing else really matters. When it’s your mother-in-law…it’s a little trickier. It’s nice if you are loved by your in-laws, but there is still no familial obligation. They are basically taking their son’s word for it—that I’m worth it. But in truth, it takes years to really get to know someone. Factor in another language, and this learning curve can get even steeper. Even more than the difference in language, however, is the difference in culture. I fell in love with a man in New York City, who was raised in Massachusetts. Then we got serious, and I flew halfway around the world to meet his Greek family, where everything is different.