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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Pos­i­tive Par­ent­ing

Give kids something great to imitate

by

20101025

��I once re­ceived a 'new ba­by' card that read some­thing like this: "Maybe she will look like you, talk like you, smile like you. Maybe she'll sing, paint or dance like you.... But she'll dream her very own dreams." The part about her dream­ing her own dreams still takes a lot of get­ting used to. "Mom­my, I hope my purse doesn't look like yours when I grow up." Those words were said to me as I drove my daugh­ter to her dance class. She rum­maged through my bag con­fi­dent­ly, neat­ly ar­rang­ing hap­haz­ard re­ceipts, her slim brown fin­gers deft­ly mov­ing over loose coins that had fall­en out of the zip­pered wal­let. She pulled the mon­ey out and arranged the notes smooth­ly be­fore re­plac­ing them. At the time, the most dom­i­nant of my emo­tions was a deep sense of shame. I felt in some deeply af­fect­ed way that I had let my­self down, falling short of the mod­el good moth­er/good woman.

My mind wan­dered over at least ten jus­ti­fi­ca­tions as to why it was so dif­fi­cult to main­tain a tidy purse... I usu­al­ly had to jug­gle two younger chil­dren when I shopped. Most times I was in a hur­ry and the eas­i­est thing to do was to toss every­thing in my bag and keep mov­ing. I was per­pet­u­al­ly busy, cook­ing, clean­ing, wash­ing, fold­ing, coun­sel­ing, tu­tor­ing, ref­er­ee­ing. I even said some of that to her, in my de­fense, but she looked at me as though she wasn't quite con­vinced. Who was I kid­ding any­way? Paci­fiers, lip gloss, nail clip­pers, di­a­pers, sip­py cups, hand san­i­tiz­er and cell phones all have been known to be swal­lowed by the dark re­cess­es of a good purse. I've tried that small­er satchel look too. All that gave me were bulky pro­tru­sions and un­sight­ly wads of junk (most­ly re­ceipts) stick­ing out. And what is with that fine dust that set­tles at the bot­tom of a purse? I can nev­er fig­ure out where that comes from.

The in­ter­est­ing thing is, I re­mem­ber say­ing some­thing sim­i­lar to my moth­er a de­cent two decades ago, ex­cept my con­vic­tion went some­thing like this: "I will nev­er put on make up while I'm dri­ving to work."

I'm sure my cock­i­ness and dis­dain would have reg­is­tered with her. "I will make sure I'm or­gan­ised enough to get my­self ready at home" was ba­si­cal­ly what I was think­ing. My moth­er had laughed, her eyes meet­ing mine in the rearview mir­ror. Maybe there was some­thing to her laugh­ter. Per­haps she sim­ply ac­cept­ed her own short­com­ings and recog­nised the fu­til­i­ty of al­ways try­ing to ap­pear 'put to­geth­er'. Hope­ful­ly, one day my daugh­ter will un­der­stand what I am just be­gin­ning to ap­pre­ci­ate–sim­ply that par­ents have to cut them­selves some slack. Some of us will pass on strengths re­lat­ed to or­gan­is­ing and time man­age­ment. Some will give our chil­dren dis­ci­pline. Some will in­still a deep rev­er­ence for life and com­pas­sion for fel­low hu­man be­ings. Some will help their chil­dren mas­ter aca­d­e­mics.

But in what­ev­er way we fall short, the mes­sage to our chil­dren should al­ways be to try our best. That said, I did go back in­to my purse and do a lit­tle re­or­gan­is­ing. Chang­ing purs­es helps! (Ladies you know what I mean). I'll try to main­tain it, but I'm not mak­ing any guar­an­tees. As for my daugh­ter, I'm guess­ing that if she is lucky enough to have a daugh­ter of her own, she'll ex­pe­ri­ence some of this cathar­tic self-re­flec­tion and al­low her­self a mo­men­tary chuck­le. If you're won­der­ing about the kind of child I'm rais­ing–a child who wants most things to be arranged neat­ly or put in or­der, and with an un­can­ny urge to point out the ob­vi­ous–well, it seems like she in­her­it­ed that from her moth­er.

Tamee­ka Warn­er is an ed­u­ca­tor and moth­er of three. She has a Bach­e­lor's De­gree in Psy­chol­o­gy and a Mas­ters' in Ear­ly Child­hood and El­e­men­tary Ed­u­ca­tion from New York Uni­ver­si­ty.


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