metaphortunate | every day in every way...

I was saying elsewhere, in context, that I have a job and a toddler and I just do not have time right now for personal growth and learning. I've been thinking more about that. It's a lie. Let me do myself - and Mr. E - justice. Right now we are both having personal growth out the ass.

See, we had a really good decade-long relationship based largely on extremely good boundaries about our personal decisions and understanding what wasn't any of each other's goddamn business. That sounds harsh, but it really isn't; it's based on respect and mutual trust. You might be surprised how many decisions just don't have to be joint ones, even when you live with someone, if you don't want them to be. And when we did make joint decisions, we had developed this skill of being able to tell pretty well who the decision was more important to, and having that person make the decision. I mean, as a system it sounds really vulnerable to abuse and I guess it is, but if you're both doing it in good faith, it works great. It did.

And now we have the Junebug, and every single goddamn decision about him is a joint decision. Every single decision is both our business, and we both care. We both care so much. So we're having to develop entirely new ways to talk to each other and make decisions and manage conflict and I'm so tired. I mean, and I'm so lucky. I know that. I'm so happy I have a partner who cares that much. I'm so happy I have another parent for the Junebug instead of a guy who "helps". But my Christ, are we having personal growth.

There's no personal growth from fun that I know of. You never hear people say "You know that relaxing vacation where nothing went wrong, I wouldn't give up that experience if I could, it made me who I am today." No fucking growth in your comfort zone, you have to have it in your Uncomfortable As Shit Zone. Which is where I live now. To be fair, I must admit that the company is great here. But the theme activities suck.

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More and more often I think when people (*cough* my mother *cough*) say stuff like "children keep you young" I think what they actually mean is that having kids actively regresses you to childhood, and so you deal with shit like getting extremely irritable when you haven't napped and oh yeah, growing pains, remember those? Weren't those great? Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

*solidarity*

ahaha there is certainly something to that. :P

I've been growing this theory that a lot of the things people say about parenthood are actually koans where you have to meditate on them to figure out what they really say, and it's nothing like what they appear to mean when you first look at them. Like the way I was appalled to discover that "parenthood really changes your priorities" did not mean that I would suddenly have a clarified priority list with kids at number 1 and everything else falling neatly in line like some zen scheduling master. It meant that there would now be kids' needs perpetually in spots 1-5 and everything else could fight in some messy eternal death match to see if there even was a #6 spot to take.

I'm totally adding "children keep you young" to my list of parenting koans, thanks!

You know how deeply I feel this. Not only this, you are learning to be a parent, and the time management and ego-sidelining and persistence that comes with that, and just as you have learned it the baby grows and the goalposts shift and you are learning it all over again. So you're not taking night classes - parenting (and co-parenting) are some of life's most hard-core OJT.

YES he keeps GROWING and today I looked at him and was like - who is this small boy? I don't KNOW this small boy! I had a BABY yesterday, I knew the BABY, where is my baby?? This is a child! I don't know how to take care of a child! Panic time!

Possibly I need to get more sleep.

It does sound entirely exhausting. ::hugs:: But worthwhile, as you've said.

The baby is worthwhile. The learning and growing? Not so much! I didn't WANT to be a better person! I wanted to be a better artist! But I made choices that are gonna take me in a different direction for a while. *grumble*

Yes, this.

Dude, I feel that way all the time and I don't even have a kid. I am fine as I am, I don't want any more personal growth!!! Alas, it seems to keep coming whether I want it or not.

Really? I think that makes me feel a little bit better. :)

Glad I could help. (:

There are reasons why I always say I learned far more from my kids than I taught them.

Yes. And modeling a little of what one wants the child to pick up--not only the positive things, negative ones too, when they happen. Trying to model coping when it's really a little deal is weirdly meta and kind of hard. (I have no problem with showing my daughter that sometimes stuff is way too much and breaks me down, but obviously, stuff is not always too much, and she's already verbal enough to tell me when something scares or frustrates her, which is a big incentive not to scare her needlessly. This whole parenthetical makes me sound more emotionally fragile than I feel, but then, as you say, the major rubric is Personal Growth.)

Ugh, yeah. Actually sometimes it can work for me, though. Sometimes I can get that extra boost of motivation I need to not, IDK, freak out or cry or something because I tell myself that I am Teaching the Junebug how to deal with frustration or mishaps by breathing through it and verbalizing my feelings and working out the next step in the solution and maybe asking for a hug afterwards. And I feel good about teaching him things I want him to know!

I've never really seen anyone else articulate this, but it is so familiar to me. And it stinks to have to have renegotiation of boundaries and sleep deprivation at the same time!

Eventually the spouse and I worked out a deal where each of us got a shift; during my shift, I was primarily responsible for the kidlet, and I got to make all the decisions relating to her. (Does she need a hat? can she skip her nap? what does she eat for lunch?) And if it wasn't my shift, then I had to keep my mouth shut about the decisions he made, but the plus side was that I could take a nap or leave the house without negotiating for the time.

I totally recommend this system for introverts. God, it was such a relief when we finally hit on it.

And of course in reality most of the decisions you make about a baby/toddler/preschooler are pretty minor, and if I thought it was OK for her to go out with her coat unbuttoned and he thought it was OK for her to go to bed with her shoes on, neither of those turned out to be a big deal at all.

God. I would love to do more of this.

An issue we are running into is consistency: I mean, we both think consistency is important, but then in practice, does that mean that we police each other's decisions all the time to make sure they're consistent with the decisions we would have made? If so, we're going to go nuts, or at least I am. >:/

We should also both try and remember that a lot of these decisions are not as big a deal as they can seem like. (For example, the great Blanket Wars of 2012.)

FWIW, in regards to consistency, the concept of "different rules for different people" has worked well for us at various times.

My authority for this is having raised one very easy kid to the age of fourteen, so take or leave as it rings true to you:

My feeling about consistency is that it only needs to exist in very limited contexts.

It doesn't mean that both parents always have to have rules that are consistent with each other -- a kid, even a very small kid, is quite able to understand "When Mom's cooking, it's OK for me to play on the kitchen floor, but when Dad's cooking he says I'm a tripping hazard," in the same way she can understand, "It's OK to go naked in the living room but not at the mall."

Where you do need consistency is:

"When Dad says I can't play on the kitchen floor while he's cooking, I can't whine and wear him down until he changes his mind" *

and

"When Dad says I can't play on the kitchen floor while he's cooking, I can't run to Mom and get her to give me a different answer while Dad's got sovereignty over the kitchen."

* As the kidlet got older, I began to express exceptions to this rule thusly: "I can be negotiated with, but I can't be wheedled or worn down." Another example of where making a consistent decision isn't as important as having all parties concerned understand that the parent is consistently the person who makes the decision.

every day in every way...

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