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Back to school

BACK TO SCHOOL By Alison van Diggelen September, 2000 Think of education as a marathon, not a sprint to Dot-com Land This fall, my son starts Kindergarten, my daughter a new preschool. It’s something I’ve awaited with excitement and trepidation, sadness and joy. The last five years seems like a haze of constant commotion: a frenzy of sleepless nights; diaper changing to potty training; colic to crafts; an endless whirl of activity, overstretched outings and cabin-fever. All this interspersed by those magic moments: quiet periods of bliss: eager breastfeeding in the dead of night, stories read to a captivated audience; tight hugs and little fingers clasping my hands, at the park, on the beach. Then there’s the milestones: those first steps, the first smile, the first time they said “mommy” and looked at me with adoring eyes. When my children were born, my bible was “What to expect the first year.” I read it religiously. In fact it was about all I had time to read for the whole first year. It has these little “milestone” markers at the beginning of each chapter; helpful little guidelines of what your baby should be doing at each month. For example, at Month Five did you know your baby should be rolling over one way? My problem was, I became a fundamentalist. When The Book said, your baby should be rolling over or sitting up I considered it written in stone. In my sleep deprived state I ignored the caveats. For me, it read, “must be or else there’s something terribly wrong”. I’d go into a stomach churning panic if he/she wasn’t achieving the norm. When one of Lewis’ buddies began the commando crawl, I knew it was time for extra “training”. I’d lay him down on his stomach (though he whined profusely) to encourage crawling, even lie down there with him, with my legs tucked under me like a frog, to show him how to push up. When a friend of my daughter came round and recited her ABC’s at age 11/2, I had a mild panic and dragged out the Pooh ABC book and drilled it until my daughter was ready to tear it up (quite literally). In those early days, my mother’s frequent comment to me was, “Let him be a baby, let her be a baby.” Of course, I’d ignore her or shake The Book at her. When you have kids, no matter what decisions you make about your career and family balance, professional ambitions must take a hit to some extent. There is another life to juggle in with your life and only the same number of hours in the day. It’s inevitable that some of your personal ambition transfers to your babies. You want your baby to be perfect in every way. It’s only natural to want them to be the best and first in the class. It’s all too easy, especially in Silicon Valley, to get carried away with ambition for our children. We’re in the hotbed of the technology revolution; the area is awash with success stories and money, drawing in the best brains from all over the world. It’s easy to equate success with money, intelligence with competitive advancement over peers. Our consumer-oriented society underlines this further; selling us the idea that intelligence can be bought, that CD-ROMs and interactive toys can replace our nurturing. But do we want to push our kids into the burnout lifestyle of the twenty-somethings in Silicon Valley? Education for our kids should not be a sprint to work at a Dot-com and a quick million, instead we should think of our kids embarking on a marathon. We need to slow down a bit, go steadily and teach them to enjoy, be creative and have fun along the way. It’s important to remember that the success of Silicon Valley was based on creativity, not just grades and rote learning. We should get off our kids’ backs sometimes and give them the space and time to be inventive, to just play a little. Now, five years later, I see the wisdom of my mother’s words and when I catch myself being overly ambitious for my two children I repeat those words, like a mantra. So, whether your bookmark is in the five-month-old expectations page or the Grade Five notebook, put aside the books sometimes and just let your little Einstein be a baby. Reference: What to expect the first year by Arlene Eisenberg, Heidi E. Murkoff, and Sandy E. Hathaway, B.S.N. Workman Publishing, New York © siliconmom Alison van Diggelen is the Editor of www.siliconmom.com, an online forum and resource for moms in the high-tech world.

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