“Many families judge people like they are vetting a candidate for the Supreme Court. Every fault is magnified and scrutinized. There’s another way to do it — more like the way people are patted down on the way into a rock concert. As long as you’re not bringing in any handguns, knives, or alcohol, you’re welcome to join the party.” — Po Bronson, “Why Do I Love These People?”

“Why Do I Love These People?” Understanding, Surviving and Creating Your Own Family by Po Bronson

Po Bronson interviewed and visited numerous families over a period of months, looking for information about how they made their family lives work. “In Why Do I Love These People?” he told the stories of nineteen of these families, one of which was his own.

Some stories are about deepening understanding between family members over time. Some stories are about loosening certain ties while strengthening others. Some stories are about refocusing family centers. Some stories are about the growth of a few family members. All of the stories are about family transformation — usually gradual transformation.

I’m not sure I would have been able to articulate this to myself at the time, but I started this book thinking there were two distinct approaches to family life: some people hold tightly to their biological families (loyalty), and some people exercise more choice about their families — including and emphasizing close friends in their family circles (creativity). I realized by the end of the book that most of the families in it — and maybe most families — drew from both approaches: loyalty and creativity. They valued their biological family ties, and they also used trial and error and choice and elasticity in figuring out how their families would configure themselves and what they would focus on.

Aunt Pillowhead recommended a book on parenting teenagers in the comments over at Stepmother’s Milk recently. I just finished reading it and liked it very much. It’s available free online: Between Parent and Teenager by Dr. Haim G. Ginott.

Get Out of My Life, but first could you drive me and Cheryl to the mall? by Anthony E. Wolf

“You need confidence, and not confidence that you are making the right decision — nobody can do that — or that you are always in control of the kid — nobody can even come close to doing that. Rather, you need the confidence that you are the right person for the job and that your efforts are definitely not in vain.

“You must understand that what you say does have an impact on your teenager, despite much evidence to the contrary. You must know that you need not be perfect, that you can make mistakes.“ — from the Introduction

This is a great, great book. It’s been on my shelf for a while now waiting to be read since we’re almost into two teenager territory here in Doughtie-land. Last week I got just sick enough to lay around in bed catching up on my reading, and once I started reading this book, I tore right through it.

It talks about the things teenagers do to create distance and assert their independence, and the things they do to maintain dependence — and how and why they swing heavily back and forth. It talks about the baby self and the adult self that are tugging back and forth inside teenagers, and about why parents so often get to see the challenging teenage baby self, while the outside world gets more of the adult self:

“Parents see their children act immature, irresponsible, lazy, and demanding, because the home is the natural realm for expressing the dependent, babyish mode of functioning.

But there is the other self beginning to develop slowly — the independent, mature self. This self reaches out and seeks gratification from meaningful interaction with the world. It sets forth to accomplish something, to develop competence. It is willing to deal with stress, to take on responsibility. It is even willing to hang up coats — but only at school, or at Grandmother’s house. It is usually on view only away from the home, unseen by parents. . .

Ultimately, [teenagers can] act nice toward their parents. But not during adolescence! Then, they very much remain children when they are home. And often, rather nasty children. This is a crucial point: operating in baby-self mode is a way not to separate from the parents.” — from the chapter “What Is Adolescence?

It talks about boys who disappear, whether by retreating into their rooms, staying out all the time, or just laying around doing nothing — literally nothing. It talks about combative girls. (According to this book, fighting with and lying to parents are most common with girls, and disappearing is most common with boys.) It talks about how to exercise and maintain a realistic level of parental influence — how to let them know what’s acceptable and what’s not without getting pulled into out-of-control drama. It’s about teaching and guiding and providing a safety net, while also gently, gently starting to let go.

This is the only book I’ve read so far about parenting teenagers. The main gift this book gave me was a sense of perspective. The kids are great, but I’ve been known to get my feelings hurt by what I’m starting to see is really normal teenage behavior that serves a purpose developmentally for teenagers and has nothing — nothing — to do with me. As a stepmom who is still growing into a sense of security and acceptance in my family this is reassuring. It makes my insecurities start to drain away. And it helps me think about what I can give the kids if what they’re going to be needing over the next few years is to be held very lightly and loosely — if what they’re going to need most from me is freedom — not to have to worry about me feeling rejected. If what they’ll need is to feel the edges of their independence, crash emotionally at home, and then go back out to try their independence again, I may need to shore myself up with lots of unconditional love and affection from other sources, so that I’m not trying to get it from them at the time in their lives when they most need to be striking out in the world and feeling space between themselves and their families. I may need a dog.

Does anyone else have any favorite books they can recommend on the subject?

Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56 by Rafe Esquith

While it’s true kids don’t choose their stepparents, it’s also true that they also don’t choose their fifth grade teachers. That doesn’t stop Rafe Esquith.

Rafe Esquith teaches in an inner city school where the kids have rough backgrounds and lots of disadvantages — and he teaches there because he wants to. He loves his work. He loves helping kids connect with their own inner compasses, their own curiosity about the world, and their own potential. He teaches them systematically how to solve problems in a way that helps them not just with their math skills, but also with problems they run across in life. He teaches them about Lawrence Kohlberg’s six levels of moral development and encourages them all year long to think about what level they are working from. His kids perform real Shakespeare plays, his kids travel to Washington, D.C. and get compliments about how considerate they are, his kids play musical instruments, his kids come back over the years to sing to and help serve food to people down on their luck on Christmas Eve, and his kids do well academically. He’s always on the lookout for how he could be doing better — how he could revise his approach to get better results. He gives his kids the tools, the attention, and resources, and the lessons they need to make choices for the good in their own lives, even after they’ve left fifth grade.

He doesn’t reach every kid. But he reaches a lot. And he does it with a class full of kids in the period of just one school year. That inspires me as a stepmom. True, my stepkids didn’t choose me, but there’s a lot kids don’t choose in their own lives. And I chose them.

We have more power than we think.

* * * * *

A few favorite quotes:

• “[F]ailure can be part of the learning process.”
• “Never forget that the kids watch you constantly. They model themselves after you, and you have to be the person you want them to be.”
• “Failure happens only when students stop trying to solve a problem.”
• “Barbara, my brilliant wife, has a question she poses to all my students. We even call it ‘the Barbara question.’ It’s simple but profound: What will you do when things go wrong? Notice the question does not say if things go wrong. Things will go wrong. That’s a part of life. A person’s ability to answer that simple question can mean the difference between success and failure…”