Simplicity Parenting (24 page)

Bedtimes should be some of the family’s most inviolable rhythms. I counsel a twenty-minute window—ten minutes grace on either side of an otherwise fixed time. Bedtimes that vary or are vastly different on weekday and weekend nights have the same physiological effects as jet lag. You might also remember that sleep your child has before midnight is worth more than that of a postmidnight hour. Your child’s internal rhythms are set so that the deeper somatic sleep happens earlier in the night.

Bedtime Stories

Stories are wonderful pressure valves. The day’s events and the questions stirred up by them can be given flight by the adventures of mythical creatures and fantastic lands. Children recognize themselves in the characters; they sense their own worth as they feel the heroine’s fears, experience her bravery, compassion, and hope. They follow along with their heads and their hearts, recognizing the consequences of deeds, navigating the path of right and wrong. As they ask themselves “What would I do?” or “How will it end?” their own day releases its hold, washed by the power of imagination.

I’ve never met a child who didn’t like a good story, well told. Such a child may exist; I’ve just never met them. Most children delight in stories, to imaginary worlds spread out before them as they snuggle close to the teller or reader. Nothing is required of them; they can relax into their bodies and their breathing as they conjure all of the details in their mind’s eye. Stories have their own richness and rhythms, a musicality of language that children love. I’m sure you’ve heard images and phrases from stories come through in their play. Kids learn about the world through stories, and about a world of possibilities that stretch far beyond their bedroom walls. By lending their hearts and emotions to the characters, children carve out their own identities and dig inner wells of compassion and empathy.

Stories affect the way children learn to narrate their own lives, and influence the stories they will tell themselves. Einstein once said, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” It is all there,
in fairy tales: truth, beauty, goodness, struggles and second chances, mistakes, conflicts, promises, and magic; archetypal lessons for a lifetime.

In Chapter Three we discussed how small children thrive on repetition, and it bears repeating. A child under four’s most common response to any story—read or told—is usually “Again!” Even for older kids, ages four through eight, it can be very affirming and relaxing to reread or retell familiar stories several times. With repetition the story becomes deeply known—not just tasted—and assimilated into the child’s learned experiences.

What are the family stories we tell over and over again? They’re tales with beloved characters, tales of humor, of danger and fear, hardships and heroism. “Remember when Anna cut her cheek and had to get stitches? Remember when we finally got home from the hospital and had milkshakes for dinner?” The worry and relief are transformed in the retelling; with repetition the story becomes like a family creed: “Look at our strength! See what we can do!” We relive the memories, but we also reinforce what we believe about ourselves. What does your child value most about your family? You can tell by the stories they ask to hear, again and again.

Sharing stories and reading with your children is a rhythm that extends your power as a parent. Food and shelter you may have covered; college can seem like a remote possibility on a good day. But can you provide a childhood rich with stories? Remarkable! In doing so you offer security and connection—true of the best of rhythms. You also provide magic, with the circle of light from the bedside table as the stage. You throw open doors with stories, to other lands, to the magical, to the past and the future; you emphasize the importance of now while introducing the infinite.

A bedtime ritual of stories can be a very valuable path of connection and communication. This point is best illustrated, coincidentally, by a story; the story of Amber and Lola.

Amber was well into her first-grade year, age six. She was doing very well in school, eager to go each day, and happy with her world there. The day Amber’s mother, Lola, came to see me, she explained that there were no issues at school. But at home Amber was very angry and short with her. Lola went on to say that her brother, who lived in California, was seriously ill. He had been sick for some time, but it was now clear that he was dying. She had been making a trip west every few weeks, staying for about five days at a time. A single mother, Lola had
worked hard to build a strong network of family and friends with whom Amber felt at home. Still, Amber was terribly angry with her mother … not only for leaving, but for being sad.

“What are you telling Amber about what is happening?” I asked her. “I am being as honest as I can,” she replied. “She loves her uncle, and knows that he is very sick. I think she deserves the truth. I didn’t want to make up some story about it.” In her words I heard the echo of what I wanted to tell her. “Yes, she deserves both,” I said. “She deserves both the truth and stories. But she needs more stories now, to help her with the truth.”

I suggested that Lola speak to Amber about this difficult time indirectly, through the stories she told her at bedtime. I suggested that she tell stories—or one story, in various forms and repetitions—about someone in a scary situation who finds a way out. He or she might be lost in a forest, truly lost, in a dark and perilous place. There were dangers involved, and challenges to be overcome, but there was also, eventually, light and change. There was a resolution, a better place that the protagonist (who, by any other name, would be Amber) would find her way to.

I ran into Lola much later, possibly even a year after that day at my office. She told me that her brother had passed. She also said, with a sort of embarrassed smile, that right after we met, she had felt irritated by my advice. “Please understand,” she explained. “This was a very difficult period for me. I was overwhelmed, and it annoyed me that your ‘prescription’ was fairy tales. But it really worked… The stories soothed her. She got through it.” “Does she ever ask for that story now?” “Yes!” She seemed surprised by the question. “She does ask for it, and I tell it to her still. She doesn’t want any changes to the story, but it feels different to me now, when I tell it.” I knew why. “You believe it now yourself, don’t you?”

Children need to nurture themselves, and stories can help. Very powerful, healing balms, stories give children the strength and the images they need to make sense of their world. In Amber’s case, her mother was her “world,” her safety, and to see her mother shaken was not only frightening, it was maddening to her. How could this be? It conflicted with the proper order of things. The stories gave Amber an outlet for her feelings, reassurance, and the hope that the world’s “order” might one day reassert itself.

Most of the answers a young child is looking for can be found through story. This is a good example of the difference between our worlds as children and adults. As adults, we sometimes assume a direct
correspondence between our worlds. So we figure that communication in a difficult situation should be direct, and thorough. After all, with all of the facts at hand, anything can be understood. Yet children are not fully emerged in the world of facts, nor do they process information the same way we do. They need simple truths, plainly spoken, especially in response to their own questions.

But children also need containers for the truth, for situations that may be difficult for them to understand. With stories they have an arena for their own feelings and questions, a place to process the truth through their imaginations. With the stories, Amber was able to develop a relationship with analogy, and through that analogy to cope with reality. Stories give young children wings, letting them fly free of the tyranny of facts.

Lola learned the power of story when she and Amber needed it, in the midst of a difficult situation. But it was one of those lessons that as a parent she’ll remember and use again. We often have hunches about what our children need, what they may be grappling or having difficulty with. Sometimes a story can have no real parallel with your child’s reality, but it can still be a gift, a bridge to a new perspective. It can present images that create a mood as palpable as a cool breeze coming through an open window. Stories can speak of beings and powers well beyond our control, of small kindnesses with enormous consequences, of courage and humor and the wonder of home. In their images, their malleability, and possibilities, stories offer emotional engagement and release for children. They offer sustenance.

As we end our look at rhythm, I hope you’ve found examples of regularity and connection that you can build into your family’s daily life. I also hope that you’ve come to see rhythm as a remarkable gift—no savings plan necessary—that will provide lifelong dividends to your child.

Imagine …

• your family’s days acquiring a sense of order, rhythm, and flow.
  

• difficult transitions being smoothed by reliable patterns.
  

• a growing sense of consistency in your home, and with it the joy of anticipation and the security of things that can be counted on daily.
  

• the opportunities for connection and moments of pause increasing as rhythms take hold.
  

• the security your child will feel having a mental picture of how their day will proceed.
  

• your child having a place in the tasks and rhythms of daily life, their roles growing as they do, from involvement toward independent mastery.
  

• family dinners becoming more regular, the food familiar and comforting, the connections evolving with repetition.
  

• having a family fortune of stories that you share.
  

• your family’s sense of identity growing along with the number of activities you do together.
  

FIVE
•
Schedules

Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop
.

—OVID

T
welve-year-old Dylan is in an all-year soccer league and preparing for his test for a purple belt in tae kwon do. He plays the trumpet in both band and jazz orchestra, and has, on average, between one and two hours of homework a night. Dylan’s mom, Carol, a financial consultant, described Dylan to me as “laid back” in comparison with his nine-year-old sister, DeeDee. “He hasn’t found his real passion yet, but we are going to make sure he’s exposed to all sorts of possibilities.” Two years ago Carol noticed that among DeeDee’s many after-school activities, she seemed most interested in gymnastics and horses, so Carol got her started in vaulting, a high-level combination of the two. “That was the end of our free time!” Carol says, “But DeeDee loves, it; she is absolutely driven.” Most weekends Carol or her husband, Rob, take Dylan to a soccer tournament while DeeDee and her coach load up the horse trailer and set off for a vaulting competition in a neighboring state.

Carol and Rob are smart, busy people, devoted to their work and their family. They’re equally involved in the effort it takes to raise kids, to help them get what they need to succeed in school and to pursue their interests. I met Carol after she wrote to me to take issue with a comment I had made about “overscheduled kids” in a radio interview.
Carol listens to a lot of radio, needless to say, given the time she spends driving the kids around.

The factor I failed to take into account, Carol insisted, was motivation. She felt that the term “overscheduled” was overused. Some parents may push their kids into activities, driven by a desire to see them achieve, or by a need to have them occupied while they—the parents—are at work. “That’s not us. Rob and I want to give our kids opportunities that we never had as kids.” She acknowledged that for children, activity without interest could be stressful. But when kids love what they’re doing, when they’re self-motivated, then their busyness is productive, exciting, and even energizing.

Carol and I exchanged several letters, and I had the pleasure of meeting her when she attended a lecture I gave near her hometown. We’ve remained friends, which pleases me. Carol could have been offended when I compared her children to crops, her efforts as a parent to farming, but she wasn’t. More on that in a bit.

First I’d like to make it very clear to you—as I did to her—that I’m all for kids being active, and engaged in all sorts of interesting pursuits. I don’t believe in childhoods spent in lotus positions: serene, quiet, and stress free. Children thrive on activity. My daughter’s highest praise for an afternoon well spent is “Before we knew it, Daddy, we were playing
really
hard!” We all delight to see a child flushed and happy, a little out of breath with damp curls pressed against their face, fully involved in something they love.

It wasn’t just my comments about “overscheduled kids” that Carol took issue with; she was responding to an issue that has been debated for some time now in the media. It was in the early 1980s when David Elkind’s now-classic
The Hurried Child
first questioned whether kids were being pushed toward adulthood or “super-competency” because parents lacked the interest or time for child rearing. His more recent
The Power of Play
looks at what he feels has been lost in the rush toward early maturity. In
Children of Fast-Track Parents
(1989), author Andrée Aelion Brooks noted a growing trend among upper-middle-class parents seeking extracurricular enrichment for their grade-school-age children. Brooks saw a competitiveness in this increased focus on children’s “accomplishments.” In 2001, Alvin Rosenfeld and Naomi Wise’s
The OverScheduled Child: Avoiding the HyperParenting Trap
looked at “parenting as a competitive sport” and how it has led, among other things, to a loss of leisure time for parents and children.