Dirty Little Secret

When two little pink lines formed in the window of that little plastic wand, my heart burst. I had worked hard–in the traditional sense–to make this happen. And after a relatively short but intense period of trying, there I was, expecting my very first child.

And then the countdown began. At 20 weeks an ultrasound could reveal the sex of my baby.

“Boy or girl–doesn’t matter!” I proclaimed. And it didn’t really. (Forgive the gender emphasis here–this was 22 years ago.) But deep down, I knew I was hoping for a girl. As the middle of three daughters, I thought I was prepared to understand and parent a daughter. She would, in some sense, be known to me from the start. We were both girls, so we would surely get each other.

Convinced that a boy was growing inside me, I was surprised and delighted to find out, in fact, my firstborn would be a girl. I could start buying flowery outfits for her to wear immediately! One day, I imagined, we would get pedicures together, sitting side by side having our toenails painted in pretty colors.

I bet you can see where this is going. Little Madeline came out, and for the first few years, when I was in charge of everything about her, Maddie was the girl I’d imagined. There are pictures of her draped in plastic bead necklaces, chunky bracelets, and cute hats. She liked Hello Kitty and tutus and pink. And then, for a while, literally EVERYTHING she wore had to be red.

That was new. At age four she’d discovered that she could make choices about these things, and so she most certainly did.

Shortly thereafter, my dreams of all the mother-daughter stuff I’d imagined began to fade away. She could not have been less interested. She hated shopping for clothes so much that I began to just bring things home for her to try on, and I would return the rejects. She was so opposed to the entire process that I ended up paying her a dollar for each item she tried on. A kid does need clothes, after all.



It seemed that as she got older, we had less and less in common. When she was still small we could have lightsaber fights, and I managed to learn how to play a few video games as a way to spend time together. I always kept things silly, which we both enjoyed, but mostly the things that intrigued and inspired us were entirely different. She liked anime and fantasy and role-playing. She liked crafting and gardening. I couldn’t wrap my brain around those. I liked reading, art, fashion, and design. I liked writing. She was terrified of it.

Sometimes I felt a bit sad when I heard my friends talking about their mother/daughter adventures, the kinds I’d fantasized about. It feels absurd and a bit superficial to say that now, but it was the truth: I’d expected Maddie to be like me. And she wasn’t. And I had to figure out how to process that. I would even say there was a little mourning.

Even more challenging for me was her dislike of school. She had all the intellectual capacity I ever had, but she just didn’t like school. She wasn’t motivated or interested. She didn’t want to read books. She would have much preferred not to have anything to do with school at all. I was just trying to get her to finish an assignment once in a while, whereas my own academic goals had tended toward the “highest grade in the class” kind of thing.

My son was equally intelligent. And equally disinterested. Eventually he was so opposed to the whole idea that he opted out of high school to pursue other things.

Where on Earth did these kids come from? I mean, I was quite certain of where they came from, but why weren’t they more like me?

I couldn’t comprehend anybody forgetting to do their homework. Or not particularly caring about school. Or not wanting to read. Or not liking clothes more (although, to be fair, my son did fill that little spot in my parenting life).

The question I should have asked myself, instead of “Why aren’t they like me?” should have been “Why on Earth should they be like me?”

I think most of us wonder about the WHY because we’re so perplexed by the WHAT. And that’s because secretly (often even secretly from ourselves) we expect our kids to be an awful lot like us. And when they’re not, we’re challenged to make some pretty radical shifts in our thoughts and beliefs.

We’re challenged to view our children as whole human beings, right from the start, whose hopes and dreams and talents and gifts will have absolutely NOTHING to do with ours. From the moment our babies take their first breath, they begin their unique life journey.

So what if, instead, we could look into their little faces and wonder, “Who are you right now? Who will you become?”

And, most importantly, “How can I best love, support, and guide you along the way?”