Of late, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my potential children and what they may be like. If you know me well, you know that I take the rearing of children very seriously. Particularly after my time working with maladjusted youth, I see the necessity of concerned, loving, involved parenting.
But there are some questions that arise, some of which definitely give me pause.
What if my child isn’t particularly smart?
I was my mother’s only child, so I don’t know how another kid would’ve turned out in my mother’s house. However, I know what kind of kid she produced. I was fiercely competitive and took my intellectual growth very seriously. I’ve been writing stories since I was first able to string together a sentence. When on punishment and unable to play outside, watch cartoons, draw or write stories, I read a dictionary cover to cover in ’92. When a new kid came to the school and touted him/herself as a “smart kid”, I took it as a challenge to surmount. And, honestly, I don’t know who/what I’d be if I weren’t so fiercely driven to be “smart”. I know some of this was fostered by a mother who tricked me into learning a wall full of vocabulary words before kindergarten (told me there was a test on day one), but I also know that there was something down on the inside that drove me. As soon as I knew that Ivy League schools existed, I decided that I was going to graduate from one. A school for smart people? That was THE place for me.
But what if my child shows no aptitude for intellectual endeavors?
I won’t know what to do with him. “Hey dad. I pulled off a C in Algebra.” WTF! I’ve worked with kids who had deficits intellectually, but they weren’t mine, so I wasn’t personally bothered by their inadequacies. However, I don’t know what’s going to happen if Donovan comes home from school talking about how he failed English or complains that he doesn’t see the purpose of learning about variables and constants. I do find solace, though, in the fact that intelligence has been found to have a hereditary component and a component of environment. So I’m hoping that, between the passage of genes (which is why I can’t reproduce with an underachiever) and my personal interest in fostering my child’s intellectual growth, this won’t even be a situation that I have to worry about.
What if my child is “bad”?
I don’t technically believe in bad seeds, but I’ve seen so many children who I deem out of control that the worry definitely worked its way into my head. If my son was prone to fight at school or talk back, how would I handle that? Now, I’m not talking about acute behaviors. I’m talking about patterns of behavior. I firmly believe that effective parenting circumvents having a “bad” child, but, if that’s true, are all of these people just not bothering to raise their children well? Is that why little Raheem curses like a grown man even though he’s 10? Is that why Ray-Ray comes in at 2am despite being 16? Or why Baby Girl is having her third kid at 15? Do we just need to take the rearing of our children seriously, or is there something else that needs to be done?
What if my child’s priorities, values and beliefs differ greatly from my own?
This is probably the question which concerns me least. Many people believe it is a parent’s job to pass on their values and beliefs to their children. Though I do believe in a certain amount of moral steering, I’m not sure if I agree with indoctrination. I fully intend to teach my children the fundamental pillars of my life philosophy (love, respect for life, belief in equality, etc.), but I don’t necessarily expect to produce a Donnie II. I’m much more interested in producing Donnie 2.0. More specifically, I want to provide a launching pad from which my child can grow and evolve. Do I want him to be as rigidly logical as I am? Not particularly. But do I want him to see the fallacy of illogical behaviors? Hell yes. Do I expect him to have my take on human/civil rights? Not particularly, but I won’t tolerate a racist, misogynist, homophobe, or anyone else who devalues the humanity of others in my house. On a lighter note, what if he is a sports fanatic? I don’t know the first thing about it, but I definitely know who in my social network (who will have a vested interest in my child’s success/growth) I can steer them toward in that situation. It’s a strange prospect, but I’m sure that I’ll be fine, even if my son turns out to reject elitism, embrace eastern religion, and prefer a simple life in Barcelona, Spain rather than pursuing a path that looks anything like mine (though he’s still going to Princeton regardless, lol).
I don’t know. There are just the kinds of thing I think about. Perhaps I’m neurotic, but I think if more of us pondered these questions, we’d be more prepared when we had our children, so we don’t have to be confused when our 6 year old kid can’t write his own name or when we have a child who wants to be a physicist and we don’t know the first thing about photons.
