Sunday, October 13, 2013

Independence, Parenting, God: Part 3

So I've been pondering questions like "Is independence a worthwhile goal to strive for (as an individual)" and "What kind of actions am I going to take to inculcate independence in my infant son?" At what point do I make choices to let him cry himself out, and what are the deeper ramifications of such decisions?  Why am I making those choices?  Will never allowing him to cry himself to sleep make me a helicopter parent who spoils my child?  Will doing it too early teach his infant brain that his tears and screams have no effect on me?  I certainly don't have answers to these questions.

Yet I keep thinking about them, and wondering if they say anything about my relationship with God.  I grew up in an evangelical church context where some of the most serious questions were about theodicy and suffering: How could a good, loving God allow _______ to happen (to me)?  I know people who had significant crises of faith wrestling with the tragedies in their lives and their image of God and all the ways the two just never fit together.  They couldn't imagine that the God of love they worshiped condoned or caused their suffering in any way.  Sadly, so sadly, some lost their faith in any God in the midst of these tragedies.  "How can love co-exist with my suffering?"

Shusaku Endo's novel Silence made quite an impression on me when I read it as a college sophomore.  I highly recommend it, both as literature and theology (my friend Kyle is figuratively screaming at me in my figurative ear THEY'RE THE SAME THING (often)).  Essentially the novel builds up to a climax where a character asks the question "Where is God in my suffering?"  The answer, which holds little weight out of context, is "I AM right here suffering with you."  It's a difficult answer, nearly incomprehensible, not least because some branches of theology can't abide the concept of a suffering God (even though, you know, the crucifixion).  I can feel the triteness of the answer "God is here, suffering with you" when spoken to a mourner in the midst of a tragedy.  In the context of the novel, I found it powerfully moving.  In a hypothetical pastoral context, I'm less sure.

I find it still less moving when I consider Cyprian crying at 1 or 2 in the morning.  What good does it do him if it "hurts me" to lay in bed and listen to him cry rather than go to him and try to soothe him?

What kind of identity do I want to have?  I remember speaking with a friend about a book my professor had written on the Song of Songs.  As I was reading the book (Eros and Allegory by Denys Turner) and the scriptures it referenced, I found myself meditating on the idea of security.  The image of a woman tending a garden behind a locked door, waiting for her spouse to come, deeply scared me.  Can I be that secure in the love of a spouse or of a God, that I can simply wait and prepare the garden around me, the physical space, knowing that any preparing I do on myself doesn't matter because of the strength of the love of the one who loves me?  Can I simply be myself, hidden behind a locked door, waiting for one who loves me totally, fiercely, no matter what?  

It frightens me because it leaves me no task to fulfill, no set of boxes to check off, no way to earn that love.  I just have to be me, and I find that very difficult.

It challenges my notions of independence, of self-worth, of identity.  I am who I create myself to be, I am the sum of all my actions / feelings / thoughts, I am my charisma and charm and humor and intelligence, I am my pride.  How can I be any of those things without showing them off in front of other people?  Without defining their worth in distinction to those around me (and often, admittedly, in superiority over them, in arrogance)?  Aren't I independent?  Can't I get along on my own, without them, carving out my own identity and solving my own problems, not needing the love or "helicoptering" of someone else to save me?  Should I, as it were, be able to cry myself to sleep and learn to get along on my own?  Is it the mark of how badly I've been spoiled to imagine anything else?

In a great little StarWars book I read in high school, an ancillary character repeats like a mantra "Why is always a question deeper than the answer."  I have many (stream of consciousness) questions but few answers.  

The short: I want to be a good parent!  I want my son to have a healthy emotional / psychological life (despite the fact that watching the movie Magnolia makes me severely doubt this as a possibility).  I want his identity to come from a place of security in our love for him.  I want my identity to come from a place of security in God's love for me.

And I think the notion of independence might get in the way of having the mindsets and taking the actions I need to do to be and do those things.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Independence, Parenting, God: Part 2

"Babies need security."  Clara's granny e-mailed us those words last week, in response to a thank-you note that also gave an update about how our first week was going.  Cyprian's first night was lovely: other than nurses coming in all the time to check on things (and poke him in the foot with a needle to run some blood work), he slept pretty well.  We didn't really think we were going to lose as much sleep as we had been warned we would!  Why did everyone keep telling us to sleep when he was sleeping?

The second night was AWFUL.  Basically, he tried to feed all night long.  At about 2 a.m. Clara asked me to hold him and I managed to coax him to sleep and hold him until about 4.  But then it was back to feeding again until 7 or so.  Clara was exhausted in every way possible when the pediatrician came in to check on Cyprian that morning.  She was lovely, and told us that everyone talks about labor and delivery so much but she felt like people need to know more how hard it is to have those first few nights.  So if you're reading this and you don't already know, this is your warning: Night #2 breastfeeding is tough.  Basically, your prolactin levels stimulate more milk production overnight than during the day, and baby is auto-conditioned to know about it.  And he (or she!) will want to feed ALL THE TIME.

So the nights continued.  Neither Clara or I are great nappers, and we still find it hard to "sleep when baby sleeps," even though we know we should.  I napped once this week during my last few days off before heading back to school on Friday.  Clara naps every other day, but it often takes her the entire time she has between feedings to settle down to be able to sleep, and she just has a hard time thinking it will be worth it to even try.  So we're gradually getting more and more tired, incrementally more irritable, and missing the bygone days of as much sleep as we want!

And I've been ruminating.  What kind of parents do we want to be?  Do we want to ignore the warnings to have Cyprian sleep with us so we can both get some semblance of sleep, in the name of developing Cyprian's infant independence?  Or do we want to figure out how to let him cry himself to sleep on his own?

"Babies need to feel secure."  Somewhere I saw something saying children need to know their parents take them seriously.  When Cyprian communicates his needs to us, all he can do now is cry.  But if I start to discount that crying, assuming now he just needs to "get it out of his system" and "learn to be by himself," what kind of habits am I building in myself for the future?  Perhaps more importantly - and much more worryingly - what kind of expectations am I creating for him?  That his crying doesn't matter (and how will that work as an issue of gender)?  That his problems don't matter to his parents?  That weakness or inability need to make him insecure because his parents can't or won't do anything about them?

Babies have a hard entrance into the world.  Warm, dark, safe and secure is the womb.  Cold, loud, boundless and uncertain is the world.  Babies are wrapped in their mother's protective embrace for their entire fetal development, and then (in this culture, apparently) encouraged to be alone and independent. Should Cyprian right now start to experience most of life on his back?  Or do I want to be a parent who rides closer to the risk of "spoiling" my child in the interest of taking all his problems seriously?  Is independence a worthwhile goal?

I don't want to get caught up between two opposite positions.  Yes, sometimes I suggest to Clara that maybe he doesn't want to feed, and we need to experiment with other ways of calming him down.  And sometimes I hesitate just a few moments longer than she would when he starts to fuss.  But I'm going to go over and pick him up and try to calm him down, to let him know that I am there and I'm concerned about whatever it is he's fussing about, even if it is "non-specific baby angst."  And I'll ride the line between always holding him and trying to control his future independence even at the stage when he is most vulnerable and needs me the most.

I'll try to find the middle way, the golden mean, the via media between independence and total dependence.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Independence, Parenting, God: Part 1


I've had a lot of time to ruminate in the last week and a half.  I've been surprised and pleased at having the time, but less enthused about when I get it: usually from 2-4 a.m. while I'm holding the baby so my wife can get some sleep.  Cyprian won't sleep anywhere there isn't a warm body right next to him.  It's adorable and precious yet frustrating, since we both feel, as one book on parenting put it, "slaves to a tiny relentless dictator.

In any case, Parenting has gotten me thinking a lot about independence.  Any search, no matter how short, will reveal a wide range of heated opinions on how to best encourage infant independence.  A lot of this ranges especially around what to do with a sleeping baby.  Articles on Co-Sleeping range from distressingly negative to gushingly positive.  Some parents say they don't know how baby will sleep any other way (which is largely our experience); others legitimately wrestle with the tragedy of SIDs and suffocations.  One article makes the claim that any SID that happens in the parents bed is automatically classified as caused by strangulation / suffocation, assuming and assigning fault and blame onto the parents for practicing something so "dangerous."  Other articles point out that the one-bed-per-family-member practice is both an extremely recent and a distinctly cultural phenomenon.  Many sometimes have entire families sleep together, and few can afford to have one bed and one room per individual sleeper.  Huffington Post has a great article on kids and milestones and the ways that our culture encourages and praises some milestones while other cultures focus on different ones.

With all this going on, though, the two reasons I hear most often to have baby in a separate bed are the danger of co-sleeping and the need for infant independence.  The combination of these two has the interesting effect of relegating any loss of independence do a legitimately dangerous level.

In the background of my ruminations I remember sitting in a circle in a professor's house listening to a PhD student from Romania get quite angry talking about the "american myth of independence."  At the time I took her words on a fairly superficial level, merely nodding in agreement.  Further study and reflection have increased my appreciation for her wisdom.  Reading several articles on the necessity of "social capital" for a class on "Jesus and the Disinherited" began to point out to me the drastic importance that the community from which you come has on your life.  Teach for America, the organization that got me into the teaching profession, uses a lot of statistics in its promotional material.  One of the most frequently cited is that for many children, the quality of their education is determined by little more than their zip code.  Jonathan Kozol's book Savage Inequalities details in distressing form the brutal realities of exactly that claim, looking at failing schools right next to wealthy districts in St. Louis, San Antonio, New York City and Newark.

So now I'm asking the following question(s): Is independence a worthwhile goal?  Is it a milestone by which I should gauge my infant's development or health?  Is it a category I should use to evaluate what is happening in my home or in my life?