Oh I do love some Gopnik early on a Sunday morning! (He's a writer for the New Yorker, one I have liked for a long time, ever since he wrote a book about his experiences living with his then very young family in Paris.) And I love that the New Yorker occasionally sends me articles it thinks I should reread. One came into my mailbox today and pretty quickly I lost myself in Gopnik's reflections about raising prodigies (and now you can read it here!).
As you may have noticed, I do think quite a bit about goal-driven child rearing. You get to reflect about such stuff when you're a grandparent. You've gone through the process already with your own kids. Now is the time to think more broadly. What if you had done this instead of that? What was the purpose of choosing that over something else? Gopnik's essay is beautiful, all the more so because I agree wholeheartedly with his key point (even though I admit that I had a tough time implementing much of it when my own kids were still school aged; not everyone was on board, so it was a bit of an uphill climb). Gopnik quotes the philosopher Alexander Herzen (it should be noted that Herzen lost a child to drowning): “Because children grow up, we think a child’s purpose is to grow up. But a child’s purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn’t disdain what only lives for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment. . . . Life’s bounty is in its flow, later is too late.”
At the same time, Gopnik acknowledges (and I do too!) that as parents, we obviously are tasked with teaching behavior: "The trick is accepting limits while insisting on standards. Character may not be malleable, but behavior is. The same parents can raise a dreamy, reflective girl and a driven, competitive one—the job is not to nurse her nature but to help elicit the essential opposite: to help the dreamy one to be a little more driven, the competitive one to be a little more reflective. The one artisanal, teachable thing is outer conduct."
But it's not success at some adult age that should be our focus. Again, reaching into Gopnik: "If kids are happy and absorbed, in the flow, that’s all we can ask of them, in Berlin or in Brooklyn. Nothing works in the long run, but the mistake lies in thinking that the long run is the one that counts"
Childhood matters. In its own right. Every single day of it is meaningful. Just as it is for us, the adults in the room. We, the grandparents may never live to see the professional or artistic or athletic attainment of our grands. It doesn't matter. We know that the happy moments of engagement that come to them when they are young and when the adults in their lives are still allowed a look and have a say in their everyday -- are what matter.
In other news, the day is lovely and thankfully a bit cooler. Though still with a breakfast on the porch...
(My morning walk through farmette lands...)
The rhubarb is spilling out too much on the walkway so I picked it, chopped it and baked it into a cake.
Nice to have around, and, too, nice to serve to the young family...
... for dinner.
