Love Trafficking

My son just defined this for me. Love trafficking is any of those seemingly loving actions that is actually just a form of currency, benefiting the person who's doing it (but only in the moment).

Here are some examples, not at all taken from our personal lives, but just to illustrate the point:

• You're angry with your daughter, so you treat her friends with extreme kindness, while maintaining an angry attitude with her, privately.
• You're loving the baby extra-expressively to make the older sibling feel jealous or unwanted, because she did something you disapproved of.
• You're calling the cat to prove that she'll come to you instead of to your partner. Because she loves you more.
• You drop by your sister's house to make her feel extra special... because you just fought with your partner.
• You give your Dad extra affection because you're mad at your mother.
• You use your love for someone as a punishment for someone else.
• You behave in a loving way in an effort to gain favour or something else you want.
• You love someone but take the love back as punishment.

Love trafficking is not uncommon. My kid noticed it happening in his world and came up with the name, and I think maybe we all need to take note. Maybe people who grow up dealing love as a currency haven't even noticed that that's what they're doing, and maybe they're not intending even to do it.

Love trafficking hurts. Especially when we realize our emotional response to the love we received was just us catching a spear on someone else's battlefield. It hurts when the love we were handed is rescinded with interest, and we realize we were just an investment. If you are the recipient of someone else's love-trafficking affection, you will one day be the indebted, too. If you are trafficking in love, yourself, you will always feel indebted. 

Love isn't a currency. Love is a boundless self-perpetuating energy source. I still love everyone I have ever loved, no matter what has occurred between us. Love is that undefinable billowing blindness that allows us to carry on living. It's the food our spirits need to survive, and, like food, when it's used as a currency it can lead to disorders.


Ask yourself when you are giving love, whether that love bears a cost; ask yourself when you are accepting love whether it comes with a price. Ask yourself when you're reaping the spoils of your love in resentment and jealousy and tears whether the cost is worth it.

I'd like to suggest that many of us use love as a currency, at least unintentionally.  I'd like to suggest we stop, now.

Gratitude

It has been an interesting year, full of changes and surprises. I am as always grateful for those who love me, and who love each other, and for those who allow me to love them. Sometimes we have to reach blindly with trembling arms and choked voices to accept others despite our preconceptions, shame and broken hearts; sometimes we have to close our eyes and let the compassion of others encircle us even when it terrifies us. Love isn't ever easy; isn't ever straightforward or predictable, but without it we are nothing. I am grateful for love.

Autumn Gifts

Such a beautiful time of harvest and gratitude. Our family has been rather more busy than usual, and we haven't taken very many photos, but I thought it was time to update with a few photos of the gifts that have come into our lives, this season. Happy Thanksgiving!

Beautiful chilly autumn rains and winds and sunshine, inspiring the mushrooms to pop out and decorate the forest.

Sunflowers in their final glory.

Annie's quinces heading for their final glory.

 

Firewood season!

My beautiful 12-year-old.

Our blooming turmeric!!

The single little (delicious) cantaloupe we managed to grow...

My happy children enjoying their new city life.

...and their island life. How blessed we are.

Talking with Kids about Sexual Harassment and Objectification

A line in the sand. Photo by Taliesin.

It seems that people all over social media are talking about sexual harassment and objectification in the wake of Trump's pussy-grabbing comments. People ask whether objectification even matters, or whether it matters more for women than for men. Women and men are talking about whether there's a line to be crossed, where it is, and how grey it is. Is all objectification bad, and when does it become sexual harassment? Men are confessing to having made lewd comments in the past and valiantly declaring they'll stop now. Parents are talking about how and whether to discuss this with their children, how to raise liberated girls and thoughtful boys, and many of us are claiming that our children are either too young to think such things, or too mature; too thoughtful to say them. And we know they don't do it. So I decided to talk with my children about it.

The first thing I discovered is that we parents are deluded. Some of the kids who are touted on social media as the kids who would never say such things are, in fact, saying such things in the presence of my children. Apparently, according to my fourteen-year-old son, “most boys” talk like that, or play video games, watch videos and read things that objectify women. They just don't do it when adults are listening. The word pussy doesn't phase my son, although he suggested I don't include it in this article. He didn't even blink when I said it. My daughter just squirmed in her seat, but declined to respond. So enough of pretending my kids are innocent, and onto the issues. I can suck up my feigned parental innocence when I need to.

I called a family meeting and went straight to the point: Complimenting people. When does a compliment become objectification? Do you believe that there's a line to be crossed? And where?

My husband stepped in first: “To say that there is a line that you can be on the right or wrong side of is an over-simplification.”

And my daughter replied, “If you're talking about someone, it depends on what they think the line is. If they don't think it's offensive, why should you not be able to say it?”

Her father pressed his point: “So if it's a complete stranger walking past you downtown, how do you decide what you're saying?”

“Well that's not OK,” she said.

“How do you decide?” He pressed again.

Things always seem simpler to my twelve-year-old daughter, and she looked at him incredulously. “Don't say things about strangers. I don't say things about strangers. I don't need to. I don't know them.”

But her father has grown up in our culture, and could not be talked over so easily. “People constantly tell me I have a nice beard, especially if they have one of their own. I think it's nice when they say it.”

And my kids both sat thinking. I think we all know that's a classic argument. It's OK for me to pet a black person's hair because I wouldn't mind if someone petted mine. That's the all-lives-matter stance, and it's wrong. It's wrong because certain minorities live in a constant state of oppression because of our actions, and we need to be very mindful of that. That issue needs our attention right now more than the issues of all of our lives. For a man to feel justified in complimenting a woman on her hair (or her breasts, legs, or smile) because he enjoys it when people compliment his beard is a fallacy for the same reason. Women have lived for thousands of years in a state of oppression because of the objectification of our bodies, and men haven't. My husband thinks he's making this point for the sake of argument, to incite conversation. But it takes away from the important truth that compliments being made about women come with a cost to women – an expectation of something given back: love, sex, thanks, a smile, etc. If we aren't outrightly told what is expected of us in return, then we know simply because we've heard it before, from the moment of our birth. For thousands of years girls and women have been objectified. It's just the way the world works, so that by the time we enter school we understand that our value in the world does not depend on our contributions to that world, but upon our physical usefulness.

So no matter how lovingly compliments are given to us, we lose something in every compliment given.

Should men then never compliment women? My husband feels worried about complimenting women. He feels like he can't take any step in the right direction. My son is learning this from both of us, but he's also witnessing how much it hurts his mother to never receive a compliment. I think if we don't want to be objectified, we also have to give our men some avenue towards success. I asked my kids how they think we can make women feel good about who they are, without objectifying them.

For my daughter, this is as straightforward as the last question. “Girls that I know never compliment people. Sometimes they say 'nice haircut' or something if someone got a new haircut, but only to their friends that they know well. Not to someone who's just sitting there. There's always a reason. I don't think they'd ever compliment someone they don't know.”

My son says, “It seems like men who love women would respect women more, because they love them.” But when I ask him how to respect them; how to compliment them, he is dumbstruck, and eventually mutters, “you could talk about their personality, I guess.” But do people do that?" I asked him. He doesn't know.

There is a lot we don't know. There is a lot we don't talk about. There is a lot that we shove to the back of our minds under pretenses that all-genders-matter and our-sons-would-never-do-that. There is a lot that we do that needs to be brought out in the limelight.

I don't think the rampant media coverage of Donald Trump's despicable behaviour has been a good thing, in the present, for our culture. He is bringing out the worst in us all. But it's also bringing it up for conversation, and that, after all, is the best way to move forward.

I have faith in us as a species to take the dirty shameful realities that are now being paraded out in the sunlight and do the work to heal them. I have faith in us as parents to not hide behind the pretenses we need to believe in, but to be the change our children need to see in the world, and to talk about it openly, all the time. Don't tell your children the way the world works; ask them how their world works. You may be surprised to hear what they know. You may be surprised to discover that your children are not innocent after all, and that is precisely why their voices matter so much in this conversation. Let's pull on our boots and wade into the mire of this murky problem with open ears, open minds and open hearts.

I love you, but I don't own you

Today on the bus I listened to a passenger talking to the driver about a female driver he finds very attractive. The passenger described her, saying that she should wear her hair down, because he'd like to see her with her hair down and wearing makeup. Because she's beautiful, so she should. I'm sure you can imagine what I was thinking. I was livid. Obviously. And so very tired of listening to women being appraised like used cars, and told what to do to increase their value. I imagined the bus driver felt the same way, listening to one of his colleagues degraded like that. He seemed like a nice guy, after all.

But no. He proceeded to give all kinds of information about his colleague: her name, her relationship status, the relationship and school status of her children, and which bus she was driving, today. The passenger got off grinning, and said he was on his way to find [her name].

Yes, I wrote to the bus company. But that's not enough. The bus driver is a nice guy. He was trying to be friendly to both his passenger and his colleague. The problem is that neither he nor the passenger sees the problem. Our cultural problem (which translates to a public safety problem, among many others) is firstly a lack of understanding that women are not property, and that is something that we as parents actually have a huge capacity to change.

It starts when our babies are born. It starts with the moment we realize that their lives depend on our decisions, so we start making decisions for them. We know better than they do. Necessarily, we teach them to follow our schedules and to grow to be like us. We reward them with affection when they please us. And then it begins to change. We begin to reward them for their accomplishments... and along the way we do this more for boys than for girls. We reward girls more for prettiness. Don't imagine it's not true. Look around. Even those of us who tried very very hard not to gender-stereotype our children, who bought our little boys dolls and pink tutus and took our girls out adventuring and playing with trucks -- we fell victim to our own gendered history and we told our girls they were pretty. We taught our boys they could be pretty too, especially if they wore a head full of butterfly clips and nail polish, and we thought we were being gender-neutral. We weren't. We were teaching them the conventions to which they would need to adhere when they left the security of our embrace. It's a different world outside the security of our embrace, and we are complicit in that.

Today at the library I heard two men talking about the many times they've been harassed by 'gay men' who pursed their lips at them, who looked at them too much, and who talked to them too kindly as if they thought they would be "interested". They knew these men were gay because they had done these things. They talked about how they wanted to kill these men; how maybe next time they would break their necks. This is the world our tutu-clad boys walk out into, and I promise you they will not be safe there, with butterfly clips in their hair. It's not that we're endangering them with the false idea that their gender doesn't matter; it's that our sons will be those men who are so afraid of other-ness that they want to destroy it. 

By the time our boys are four or five they know that it's dangerous to be "pretty" in public. By the time our girls are the same age, they know that their social status and even safety depends on being pretty in public. Have you ever passed out an assortment of coloured objects to a group of kids? How many girls will fight tooth-and-nail to get the pink ones? How many boys will fight equally hard not to? My daughter tells me that she and her friends only used to like pink because everybody else did. Every other girl, that is. At four years old, my son's favourite colour was pink. But that was a secret. At four years old they were already trained to conform or be left behind, to please or be rejected; to fit into the gender roles we taught them, or to perish.

Perish. Does that sound extreme? It's not. A baby knows that its life depends on its parent. A baby screams for food and affection, and eventually learns more positive methods of getting these essential needs: cooing, pleasing, pleading, and eventually asking. So as parents we reward them. In this simple exchange we have taught them that their lives depend on pleasing us.

As new parents we were aware of this, so we tried hard to allow them to be their own people. But as time went on we told them that if they cleaned their rooms they could have dessert. We told them that if they asked sweetly they could have a ride to school. We told them that if they said they loved us they could have a cuddle. We praised them for doing as they were told. Silently, we told them that their value depended on how well they pleased us. We owned them. 

And as mothers we taught them how to be in relationships. In the evenings when their Daddies came home we rewarded their hard days' work with dinner, and their Daddies rewarded us with affection. They told us we were beautiful and in an effort to honour us they told us we should take time to go get our hair done. Make ourselves pretty. And our daughters heard them, and asked to get their hair done too. And our sons heard them and checked out the girls at school, wondering if they'd had their hair done, or what that even meant.

And our children went to school and to friends' houses, and to parties and coffee shops and their first jobs and their second jobs, and they fell in love and told each other they were pretty. And they had babies, and they loved their babies so much that they kissed them when they cooed and they bought them ice creams when they followed the rules, and they dressed them in pretty clothes and taught them how to please their superiors. 

And I still long for someone to tell me I'm pretty.

Today is my daughter's birthday. She's twelve years old and right now she wants to be a pop star. She really loves pink and frills and powerful female vocalists and building stuff in the wood shop at school and sitting in trees writing stories and plays and essays. But this morning I thanked her for being so wonderful. As if she's doing it for me. I told her she's beautiful. As if my assessment of her should matter; as if somehow on the market for pre-teen girls I've just upgraded her value.

Shit.

I don't want her to be the bus driver whose life and safety is determined by well-meaning men, but I told her she should wash her hair so people don't see it greasy at school. I don't want her to be the pop singer whose lyrics are secondary to the way she moves her bum, but I put her in ballet to help her acquire poise for her desired singing career. I don't want her to be the mother who longs for someone to tell her she's pretty just so she can go to bed at night feeling that she was worth something. But I do that every day.

I've tried so hard these past twelve years to raise my daughter with the knowledge that my opinions are less important than her own; that her value depends only on herself. But in a million small ways I have owned her and judged her and made her dependent on those things.

The kind of massive cultural change we need doesn't happen overnight, or even over a generation, but with each action I take and each thought that transits my mind I have an opportunity to push a little further in the direction of equality and freedom. The prize right now is not the end-goal. I don't know if there's ever an end-goal. But the prize is to be mindful of the work we're doing now, in this generation. Today. It is to look into our children's faces right now and say, "I love you, but I don't own you".

My darling daughter, you are beautiful to me, but it doesn't matter what I think. You are cherished by me, but there is nothing you can do to change that. I appreciate when you help me, but your usefulness as a person does not depend on that. I feel wonderful when you hug me, but only when you want to hug me. I feel happy when you are happy, but I appreciate the times we've been sad together, too. I don't like all of the songs you like, but I like that you have your own opinions. I like the way you've cut your hair, but what I like most is that it was your idea, and that you did it because you wanted to. I love you, but I don't own you.

There are no Theoretical Children

Photo by my son, as published on his photography blog.

Recently I attended a wonderful training session with Arthur Brock and Eric "Bear" Ludwig, founders of New York's Agile Learning Centers. During this session, Arthur explained that "there is no such thing as theoretical children".

You know those 'theoretical children' parents and teachers sometimes ask about in terms of  'what if a child is afraid to ...'? Those kids don't exist. Either they are in fact real children, in which case they're not theoretical, and need to be discussed in terms of their actual individual situations, their relationships and history and needs... or they're irrelevant, because they don't exist. As a teacher, parent, director of a program, etc. you can't worry for (or even worse, design a program for) children who don't exist, because their individual nature and needs are totally unknown quantities, and you can't prepare for something undefined.

I thought this was a wonderful direction of thought.

We in the education world design programs with theoretical children in mind. We consider the children we know and have known who might benefit from our plans, and we expect to modify them as we get to know the real children who participate. As parents we also consider theoretical children. We read articles, gather parenting advice, follow programs and regimens we hope will help us parent well. We adjust when we see things going awry, and we seek new advice.

But it's easy to lose sight of the needs of our real children. You know how if you've grown up being warned that dogs bite, you may not recognize a gentle dog when you see one? Well maybe when I believed that all children need a hug when they get home, I didn't recognize that my son really needs some space first. For example.

And about my son. Let's say there's this theoretical child. He's made friends with some people in the grade above him, and really wants to participate with those kids in the activity they're doing. But we assume, as educators or parents with all the theoretical children in mind, that the group as a whole will likely be served best if we put him in the group with kids his own age. This is because, first of all, he needs to learn the things they're learning before progressing onto the subject matter the older kids are learning, and secondly, he'll make friends there anyway. Right? Except he's not a theoretical child. He's my son. We've tried that experiment, based on the values ascribed to the theoretical child, and it bombed.

Yesterday we tried again. My son is now attending a new program, with all new kids. And guess what? He's made friends with some kids who are older than he is! And guess what? Once again he wanted to join them in their science and social studies program, instead of the one for the kids his own age. But here's the big news: they let him do it! 

Cut to yesterday afternoon: I was waiting to pick up my daughter when I saw my beaming son, confidence shooting out his head like steam from a steam engine, come striding down an East Vancouver street alone for the first time ever in his life. He was smiling with that kind of vague powerful smile that says 'I am happy to be me in the world, today'. He discovered me waiting there in the car, hopped in energetically, and proceeded to tell me about his day. He said he spent all morning talking about science with a bunch of people who also wanted to talk about science. He spent all of a delightfully long lunch time chatting and playing drawing games with his new friends. He spent all afternoon doing a native studies program that he says was "really interesting". He doesn't even know what grades those kids are in. He's just with them, being himself. And that was what he needed to find his confidence again.

This week my real child was given a voice. He had his own real needs acknowledged and met. His needs trumped the needs of theoretical children, and everybody won. After all, there are no theoretical children.

Mama Guilt

I had a bath today. Due to our renovations we haven't had a tub in the house for about four months, so I filled the tub out in the garden. I filled it with a hose, climbed in and lay there in the steam looking out at the branches of our arbutus tree, the nearly-full moon peeking through the hemlocks, and the first few stars as they quietly became visible in the deepening blue.

My first thought was how totally blessed I am... but before I could enjoy it too much, my friend Mama Guilt came tapping me on the shoulder: "What are you doing out here?" "What about the laundry? You haven't hung it up yet." "You should have offered the kids a bath first."

She's good at these things. She's practiced. "You could have just washed your hair in the kitchen sink again."

I tried to drown her out by sinking down under the water, but came up frustrated, as she chirped, "You waited two months for a bath; why did you have to do this on a school night?"

I washed, dried, drained the tub onto the lawn and walked to the house feeling so blissfully clean. I came back inside to the smell of the casserole I'd put in earlier all baked and ready for dinner. Ahhhh... "It's nine pm. What were you thinking making dinner so late?"

Oh just shut up already.
I'm sick of you, Mama Guilt.

I hear her wagging her finger behind my ear. "You haven't made your lunch yet. You can't afford to buy a sandwich tomorrow." But anyway I'm clean. Hopefully that drives her off a little further for tomorrow. And I'm making my lunch, now.

Kids, Unsupervised

Once upon a time, when both of my kids were under ten years old, they went exploring around our local municipal hall while their father attended a meeting there. They explored all the way over to one of the local shops, where the shopkeeper asked them where their parents were. They told her their Pappa was in the chapel (not accurate - they knew where he was, but had used the wrong name for the building), and she asked them to wait while she called the police. She only meant to protect them - I know that. But they were terrified! They recounted a harrowing tale of running away from her, being chased by her and trying desperately to hide as they made their way back to the municipal hall. Once there, the police arrived and spoke to their father about (as my son tells it) "not letting his children run wild". The point was, they were never in danger. Terrified - yes. But only because of being "helped" by someone who genuinely was worried about them.

What good is it doing us to harbour such deep fears for our children? And more importantly, what harm is it doing them?

I work with many kids who come laden with fears about the woods. It can take a few brief wilderness adventures to develop the skills and knowledge they need to overcome those fears. Gross motor skills like clambering over logs, climbing up and down trees and bluffs safely, and hiking long distances help them to feel confident about the terrain. Cognitive skills like assessing the safety of their environment and activities can take a little more time, but allow them to feel confident in their own well-being. Observational skills like noticing changes in the weather, hearing wind or animals, noticing the stability of limbs or rocks they climb on... these things give them confidence too. And they need this confidence not just to feel safe, but to be safe. If you don't hear the bear coming, are afraid to navigate the terrain around you, have no understanding of common bear-encounter protocol, is it any wonder that you might be afraid of the bear? And if you are afraid of the bear, the bear will be afraid of you... and we know how well that scenario goes.

The city is different, but also similar. Recently I took three pre-teens to a movie in town. I thought: surely they've been here often enough that they are gaining some confidence and can do it alone. One bus, one corner to walk around, six blocks and into the theatre. Same route back home again. But I went with them anyway. I noticed that they kept an eye on me. They didn't watch where the bus was taking them, nor when they should get off - they just followed me. All the way into the theatre. So on the way home I asked them to lead the way back to the bus: six blocks, cross the road, get back on a bus. They were bewildered! It took them about five minutes to figure out which direction to go back (eventually with the help of a city map that I pointed them towards). They became confused multiple times on the way back to the bus, had difficulty figuring out where to take the bus, and it took us over half an hour to walk those six blocks. I don't want to deride them. It was their first time, and I thought they all dealt with the situation I handed them quite gracefully. But this experience taught me that my kids need more independence.

No problem! I thought. They're unschooling in the city now! While my kids used to be the ones confident in the wilderness, now they're going to get confident in the city! And off we went. I am still accompanying them to various locations for this first week, to help them gain the confidence they need to navigate without me. After all, they are attending in various locations near some questionable drug and prostitution hotspots. Not that I have a problem with my kids being there - it's just part of our city that they need to learn to be safe in. They need skills like staying in populated areas, walking together, assessing strangers who might approach them to determine risk level, and how to maintain a strong sense of morale and dignity in a place where so many have been robbed of it.

So yesterday I received an email in red letters from my fourteen-year-old son that pleaded, "pick up time is 2:45!!!!!!!! Not 3!!!! Otherwise i'll be abandined on the street with no place to go." It was a mixture of humourous hyperbole and some genuine concern.

I'm not terribly worried about my son standing alone on a city sidewalk - but he is. And that is the problem. At the root of all our fears is the unlikely idea that they may be abducted or harmed by another person (or in the woods, an animal). Think about this for a moment. A person trying to recruit or abduct a child for nefarious purposes is going to look for a vulnerable child. I don't want my child to be that vulnerable child. That doesn't mean I need to hover over him and shadow him everywhere he goes until he's too dependent on me to look after himself. That means I need to let go of him and let him become independent.

And in the much more likely event that my children will be harmed by their own error, either of physical skill (as in falling off a cliff or crashing their bike) or of judgement (as in drugs, traffic accidents, or food poisoning) I would like them to have the opportunity to develop the skills they need. I saw many ambulances in town yesterday. Most were for presumed drug-related tragedies. One was for a traffic accident, and another I believe was domestic. These are the things I need to protect my children from. And for this they need to go out in the world without me and develop some wisdom.

Being unsupervised may unsettle kids, but it also gives them the opportunity and the need to develop some skills and look after themselves. And further, that unsettled feeling might kick-start their own determination to take stock of their situation and responsibility for their own safety.

I will always be here waiting with my arms open wide when they need my love or advice - or even just a non-judgmental ride home from an unfamiliar street or a bad trip. My dear friend said that having children is like having your heart walking around in the world separate from you. So as parents we can't just hold on and stifle those hearts until they wither; we have to be willing to pick up the pieces again and again and again.

Unschooling in the City!

It's no secret that our family has returned to our unschooling journey. But no longer will we restrict our activities to the fields and forests of our lovely island home... you know, the place were the maximum speed limit is 40Km/h, the most threatening thing in the woods is a wasp or a skunk, and homeless people mostly have a roof over their heads. It's not that we don't know anything at all about the rest of the world, but we're pretty sheltered in our everyday lives. And endlessly privileged. We used to go into the city for family adventures. But now we've cut the ropes.

This morning I walked my two to a street corner we've never seen before and left them standing with a group of kids they don't know to wait for an escort they've only met twice... to take them on a field trip. They have backpacks with lunches they cooked and packed themselves (I haven't even seen them; don't know if it's even enough food) and some swimming gear. They have their father's work number written on papers in their bags, but they don't have phones. They have change, should they find any of the increasingly few pay phones. I'll go back to that corner to get them later this afternoon. I left them the only advice I have: please don't drown in the pool, and keep their eyes on each other, wherever they go.

But tomorrow? Tomorrow they're going to separate places! I guess you might say I feel a little nervous about this. (Gulp!) But, as frankly is always the case with parenting, I just have to turn my head away and walk away from them with grace and determination, telling myself it's going to be all right. My kids have to grow up, and they're not going to do it with me clinging to their hands.