As I’ve been working on writing, I’m doing a lot more reading. Everything from Parents to Office Solutions, from the Toastmaster to The Sun is on my reading list these days. And I’m having a blast reading like a writer – paying attention to tone, length, use of authoritative sources, quotations, bulleted lists, anecdotes and visually evocative wording.
A publication that recently caught my attention is Motherwords, a Boston-area parenting magazine chock full of mom’s first-person essays on life in the trenches (so to speak). Actually, some days it sounds kind of blissful to lie down in a trench while the bullets fly over head. At least I’d get to lie down, right?
In Motherwords, you won’t find the usual how to choose a pediatrician or when to allow kids to use cell phones kinds of parenting advice. Rather, you’ll feel the burning frustration of parenting teenagers who know they know more than you and laugh as you read toddlers’ outrageous escapades, thankful for once it is someone else’s unruly teenager and not your own Play-Doh-eating toddler.
Sarah Teres, Motherwords’ Publisher and Editorial director, made a statement in her last editorial column that caught my attention. She wrote, “I’ve noticed that when I see my children going through a new stage of life, there is something in my own life that mirrors it.”
Teres’s comments resonated with me because right now I’m focused on finding my voice as a writer – getting the words out in a way that both makes sense and sounds like me, rather than someone else. At the same time, my son is finding his voice – getting words out in a way that makes sense and doesn’t sound like the sound effects track from a movie about aliens.
Classic Carsonisms such as “yeesh” and “whuzzat?” persist, but he’s added “no” for nose and “mow” for mouth and started using them when we aren’t pleading “Can you say nose?” like the desperate parents of a boy who isn't meeting the developmental milestone for language. This week he approached a fellow toddler at the playground, touched her nose and said (with great pride) "no." That seems like a good start to me.
Perhaps it’s coincidental that our own life issues overlap with our kids’. Perhaps there’s no coincidence at all and the perceived parallel is nothing more than a priming effect.
Priming refers to the fact that exposure to one stimulus makes us more aware of other similar or related stimuli. For instance, when you’ve just read an article on the dangers of bisphenol A in plastic baby bottles and you’re feeling really good about breastfeeding (despite waking up 8 times each night to nurse the little sucker) you suddenly notice your toxic food storage containers, your poisonous Nalgene water bottle, and the hard plastic rattle your kid loves to chew. When you’re trying to remember the last time the dog went out to poop, your toddler’s brown leather booties cause a complete freak out until you confirm their not-so-poopy status.
What do you think? Do you notice issues in your own life that mirror the stages of your kids’ development? If so, do you think it’s coincidence, priming, or a more meaningful pattern? Let’s hear your voice on this.
