Faking It

One of the things I hate about becoming a parent is how you are required to revisit social situations you thought you’d never have to endure again.   Horrible things you barely survived the first time.  Things that would have driven you to do… experimental things in college just to permanently block out those memories.

I’m talking Parent Teacher anything.   Those horrible Girl Scout meetings where NO ONE really wanted to make ANYTHING but was told to.  Kids sport teams where the parents were FOAMING in the stands with displaced aggression.   ARGH.   It was awkward the first time and suddenly, I’m a parent, and I’m starting to understand I’m going to do it all AGAIN but on the other side.

Look.  I’m not that social.  I’m not a people person.  I don’t believe that group meetings are done to serve the happiness of the group: the loudest or pushiest always wins.   Bullies aren’t new and there’s a lot of them that just learned how to be a better bully as they got older.   I believe that the best way to happiness is to go your own way and rely on your own abilities.

But teaching kids is to teach socialization.  They have to learn to work within a group because that’s how the real world works.  They have to learn how to exist in a social structure in order to benefit from it.  It’s their responsibility to uphold society and better it for their own future.

And at the same time they have to learn how to be themselves.

It wasn’t really until college that I understood that I wasn’t an overachieving nerd.  I was more like a misanthropic asocial repressed neurotic (try reading these wik entries: I learned a lot about myself right there).  All of that’s sort of interesting but it’s not going to be a great advantage to my kids.

So, here we go.  I’m going to have to put on my game face (haha) that I haven’t had to wear since I stopped working.  The Yes-You-Have-A-Point face.  The one that goes over the Are-You-Done-Talking-Yet-Because-You-Don’t-Understand-And-I’m-Going-To-Have-To-Say-It-Again-Using-Small-Words face.  (Have I mentioned that becoming a Mom has unleashed my true capacity for evil?  It almost makes me want to go back to work again so I can fully enjoy a supervisory position).  I’m going to have to start caring about how people judge me, because that’s another thing you accept as an adult.  People judge you all the time. (We tell our kids appearances don’t matter but what we’re really trying to instill is confidence so that they can overcome being misjudged and to remember empathy when they do the judging).   I’m going to have to be the one standing up for the rights of my kids and trying to help them be happy fitting in or rebelling, as they want.

It was awkward the first time and here it is again, awkward in the new millenium.