Parents Just Don’t Understand

Filed Under heteropatriarchy, movies, people, pop culture, questions

Yesterday the theme of parenting reoccurred throughout the day. At lunch with my grandmother, the issue of spanking came up; and while watching The Last Mimzy it became overwhelmingly apparent how typical it is for parents to not listen to their children.

During lunch, my grandmother spoke about how she got spanked more than her sister because, as the oldest child, she was expected to know better. She still believes in spanking, and tends to equate spanking with discipline: Parents who don’t spank their kids are letting their kids run wild; some kids need to be spanked more because they’re bad/hard-headed, and so on. At one point she admitted that she probably didn’t benefit from spanking, but she still thought it was the right thing to do.

When the LH told my grandmother that he’d never been spanked by his parents, she said, “Wow. You must have been an angel.” He laughed and said he had most certainly not been an angel. But his parents were the “hippie” parents who sent the kids to their room to calm down, and then talked about what had happened; the kids even had input into what their punishment would be! And both kids and parents were expected to apologize to each other if they’d been disrespectful in any way. A consequence of this is that the LH and his brother actually liked and got along with their parents when they were teenagers. Unlike most of their friends, they didn’t feel the need to lie, and they trusted their parents to be fair and reasonable.

My grandmother thought this was pretty interesting, and shocked me by offering that, because of this, the LH and I were likely to have well-behaved children even though we weren’t going to spank them! Later, when the LH mentioned that he was raised as an atheist, she shocked me even further by agreeing that belief in God had nothing to do with whether you could raise children to be good, moral people. I swear, if I had proposed these things I would have gotten no end of argument. The LH has a way of getting my family members to agree with him on pretty radical points. Just a few weeks ago, with a few sentences, he had my religious, anti-evolution brother conceding that human beings were descended from the same ancestors as apes!

Anyway, back to the subject of children: last night we were watching The Last Mimzy, a science fiction family movie about two siblings who find relics from the future. Weird but truly exciting things start happening to the kids, and the parents (mom in particular) get freaked out. But instead of asking the kids what’s going on, or where they found the “toys,” they become very reactionary, trying to get rid of the toys, or calling in experts. It doesn’t ever occur to them to get the full story from the children before drawing conclusions, or to take the time to observe their children’s relationships to the objects.

Somehowthe desire to protect one’s children didn’t include being in dialog with them. Instead there was a real pattern of interrogation followed by assumption followed by decision. And it didn’t matter how the kids responded to any of these steps - that was the trajectory the parents were on.

All of this has me thinking about how, from birth, I’ve been conditioned to ask questions, gather information, and make decisions. Often it’s just easier to make assumptions - it saves time - in the short term, but the misunderstandings can cause confusion long after the initial interaction is forgotten.

It’s also astonishing to me how what many parents want more than anything is for their child to be normal. In Mimzy, the mom is really upset that her kids are exhibiting qualities of genius. “Something’s not right,” she says. The dad doesn’t get it at first. After all, what’s so wrong about suddenly excelling at science? But when his daughter demonstrates telekinetic abilities, he jumps onto the same page as mom: surely something is wrong with his child, and it must be examined and corrected so that she can be normal again!

What we don’t understand is frightening, I know. But I wonder how much confusion and pain it causes when we stop listening because we think we know our children or the other people in our lives. Is it really any less than if we just admitted that we don’t?

Comments

4 Responses to “Parents Just Don’t Understand”

uuMomma on September 12th, 2007 2:44 pm

The movies (and any show on the Disney channel) tend to exploit this idea–that parents can’t handle the truth. It’s a shortcut for them, so they don’t have to get too deep into character development or anything really interesting, like how do parents and children really interact with each other when the world gets messy, when they are different. Have hope. A new generation of parents is in charge now. Let’s hope we can get a new generation of movie and television writers–ones that actually accept that some parents are involved in their kids lives appropriately (neither micromanaging nor AWOL–the only two types of parents in TV land anymore).

Oh, and belated happy birthday.
hafidha sofia on September 12th, 2007 3:18 pm

It will really depend on the writers, I agree. On the one hand, I suspect the parent/child divide we see in pictures is reflective of reality. Not that parents don’t love their kids or even talk to them (mine certainly did), but I see adults making assumptions with kids very often, talking to them, but not really listening back. If adults don’t it with each other, what would spur them to act differently with children?

At the same time, I agree that we are becoming more open about respectful communication - there are even movements dedicated to listening. I haven’t read much juvenile literature recently but one example of parental figure involvement is the Harry Potter series. Harry’s relationship with Sirius was different, and despite their separations, they were very simpatico. But his relationship with his guardians was horrible, and although the other adults in his life cared about him, both adults and kids hid a lot from each other out of lack of trust and desire to protect.

Maybe other folks have suggestions for pop culture models of trusting relationships between parents and children.
Comrade Kevin on September 13th, 2007 10:37 am

I think a lot of parents don’t know how to let go. This was certainly true with my parents.

They’ve set forth this idea of “the right path”, which is their own idealized conception of the way things ought to be. They want to pave the smoothest path possible for their progeny to make sure they don’t have to experience the pitfalls that they experienced in their own lives.

The problem with this, of course, is that in adolescence, the natural inclination of all children is to rebel against the status quo. Thus you have a pretty tragic conflict between a parent who can’t understand why his/her child would want to deviate from the path they’ve paved and a child who wants to form him/her own identity outside of that paradigm.

It wasn’t until I reached my mid-twenties that I realized where my parents were coming from. Until then, I often believed that their behavior and conduct towards me was stifling and didn’t allow me to be myself.
lamadrion on March 17th, 2008 10:35 am

the last mimzy, while droll to most of you, made a point i’m surprised you missed. it dealt with the tree of life and the akashic records. the film was filled with symbolism. watch again and see for yourselves. i.e. the bridge through the universe.