Dear Tristan: on becoming

Dear Tristan,

I love watching you become who you are. I love watching you become able to do things. There is very little that I can “teach” you right now. You are learning constantly, but not because I am teaching you – as you get older you just “become” able to do things. Like roll over. I laughed as I “helped” you roll over a few months ago, but I know it didn’t help you get there any sooner. Your brain is so busy wiring neurons and making connections, and when those connections are made you become able to do something new.

Right now you’re working on crawling…probably the hardest skill so far. You can get up on your hands and knees, and you can scoot yourself backwards, but you’re not quite figuring out the forward motion yet. You pick up one hand, then the other hand, but your knees stay put, then collapse under you. But I have this feeling that one day all the neurons will get wired, the myelin sheath will be complete, and you’ll take off across the house and life will never be the same for either of us.

I wrote in yesterday’s letter about expectations, and it got me thinking about “becoming.” I’ve been thinking lately about how it seems like parents often expect their kids to be able to do things that aren’t developmentally appropriate for their age. They expect babies to sleep through the night, one-year-olds to have impulse control, two-year-olds to finish what they start, and on and on. Then, because their child acts like a baby or a one-year-old or a two-year-old, they “discipline” them. For being a baby. For being a one-year-old or a two-year-old. It’s something I haven’t quite figured out yet. You’re seven months – you’re about ready to crawl. But it’s something that I can’t help you with. I have to stand back and let you “become able” to crawl. And it would be absolutely preposterous for me to discipline you for not crawling yet. Because the neurons in your brain haven’t been wired yet. Because even though some seven-month-olds can already crawl, you can’t yet, and that’s okay.

But those babies that aren’t sleeping through the night don’t have a circadian rhythm yet (comes around nine months old – and it’s still rudimentary then), and the one-year-old who “understands no but does it anyway” doesn’t have the impulse control part of the brain developed yet (that develops slowly over many years.) Asking the baby to sleep through the night – asking the one-year-old to “obey” – is asking them to do something that their brains are not capable of yet. It’d be like asking you to do algebra. Because “eventually you have to.” But “eventually” doesn’t have to be “today.”

It’s okay to live life as a process. As a journey. You don’t have to be everything you are meant to be today. You don’t have to know everything today. You don’t have to know who you are are today. It’s okay to become.

But in our world, sometimes faith becomes moralism, and obedience NOW becomes the point of childhood. And sometimes impatience is a cultural virtue, and it’s not okay to wait until you become able to sleep through the night – no, it must be forced by letting you cry-it-out alone. And since you’ll need to function in a world that uses rewards and punishments, let’s use those on you in our parenting. On and on it goes.

Really, everywhere you look, there is tremendous importance placed on the next thing. One of the things that I love about you as a baby is that you live where you are. The only moment is now. But the world around you will try to get you to focus on the next moment – whatever is next will be better.

I want, somehow, for you to keep the wonder of being a child, the “now”, the becoming, rather than the rush to do the next thing. I want to give you that freedom as your mom, to sit back and watch rather than try to lead you into the next thing all the time. And I hope that you will give that same grace to yourself, that somehow you’ll be spared from the rat race, the need to be “accelerated”, and just let yourself be.

And become.

love,
mama

other letters in this series:
on failing to live up to ideals
on curiosity
on intrinsic motivation (and why we won’t do sticker charts)
on disagreements and choosing a different path
on being open
you are not what you do
on perspective taking
on the most important thing
when the going gets hard
on falling in love
on feelings and needs
on empathy
on differentiation and self-validation
on insecurity
on expectations 

Daddy’s letters:

I love you
I’m sorry
Be Yourself
Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be
Be Powerful
Be…just be
Do it for you
On Rewards and Punishments
Choose Wisely
Hold onto Yourself
Cultivate Empathy
Be Differentiated
an invitation
no expectations
have regrets
what do you want?