Yes, Yes, Yes! No, No, No!
Setting limits, giving-in, and hate-reading Real Simple Magazine
Real Simple Magazine, a publication I thoroughly enjoy hate-reading, usually sticks to first-rate journalistic exposés like “How Many Feet of Christmas Lights You Need for Every Tree Height” and “6 Clever Ways to Repurpose Your Old Candle Jars” (spoiler alert: number six is Make a New Candle!).
When I’m in a particularly bitchy mood, I like to buy a copy, settle in on the couch, and dare it to recommend that I reorganize a room that doesn’t exist in my 1400 square-foot apartment (Did you know some people have something called a garage??? I think it’s a French word that means “separate apartment for the shit you need to bring to Goodwill.”)
This week, when the urge hit me to scoff loudly at no one in particular, while secretly squirreling away a clever use for an old sock, I picked up a Real Simple. And do you know what I discovered??? The people who are helping us find the 9 Crazy Coffee Flavors You Need to Drink to Believe are now dishing out parenting advice. Because, what could be real simple-er-er than parenting?! Real Simple’s team of experts promised that I could “Flip my parenting mindset” in 15 easy steps. Thank. God. Some of the ideas weren’t bad. Others were: “Smile often.”
Of all the real complicated topics in parenting, setting limits and following through on consequences is a doozy for me. The experts agree: we should both set boundaries (say NO!) and also not traumatize children by using that word. My favorite commentary on this absurd paradox comes from the show Veep, when Selena Meyer’s daughter critiques her interaction with her grandchild in the following exchange:
Catherine: “Mom, you cannot tell the baby “N-O.” “N-O” is a negative rejoinder. We don’t want to constrain Little Richard developmentally….”
Selena: “What are you supposed to say when the baby is being an asshole, for instance?”
Catherine: “You’re supposed to say, “that’s not our plan.”
Selena: “I don’t even know where to start.”
I am guilty of every single YES/NO-related crime against children. I say NO to things that I don’t really care about, and then later say YES, which supposedly causes kids to always negotiate and never achieve real intimacy with others. I say YES to things my husband says NO to, resulting in a pitting-parents-against-each-other battle that teaches our children that our relationship is weak and easily manipulated. I let my kids walk all over me with an endless series of “fine, whatever”s and then yell NO!!! to the first thing they ask for after I have hit my limit, even if it’s permission to clean their room all by themselves.
Much of the literature on limit-setting reminds us that the REAL WORLD involves plenty of NO’S (“It’s never too late to start taking back your authority so you can help your child develop the skills he’ll need to cope when people tell him “No” in the adult world”). Preparing our kids to handle disappointment and creatively bounce back from a closed door is preparing them for life. Saying NO can be very difficult, but it builds resilience. Saying YES builds people wear their sunglasses on the backs of their heads, whine to their bosses, and make their girlfriends do their laundry.
It’s not that I think negative rejoinders will traumatize my children, it’s that saying NO, and following through on said NO, is exhausting, and I suck at it, so I try to reserve it for things like violence and playing the Chipmunks’ version of Jingle Bells one more time. More importantly, in the last 8 months, the REAL WORLD has really upped its inventory of negatives, and I’m trying to offset that a bit. Every day that my children rise, much too early, the NO'S are already lined up and ready to go. Can we go to the park? NO. Can we visit Grammy? NO. Can I climb on you, pantless, while you teach over Zoom? OH GOD, NO. My children, so so privileged to have encountered little adversity up to this point, have spent what is now a sizable chunk of their lives fending off NO’S like ninja stars. They have learned about death and fascism and the failure of the health care system and loneliness and if 2020 is the REAL WORLD, can’t I give my children a little break from that shit???
My friend Dan does an annual “Yes Day” with his two children. They travel from LA to the San Francisco, and for one glorious afternoon he takes them to the San Francisco Pier, buys them whatever they want, and lets them eat garbage. I have seen photos of his children, with wild, free, looks in their eyes, standing on the roof of a stranger’s car on Yes Day. During the first wave of peak parental desperation, around late April, I attempted some mini Yes Days at home. Yes, you can have a popsicle at 7am. Yes, you can apply my very best lipstick to your butt. Yes, you can open up every puzzle box and slowly slide mixed-up pieces into my bra as we watch the music video for Draft Punk’s “Around the World” on repeat. I gave up. And it felt…good-ish.
But then, there was a call for some semblance of normalcy, for keeping our kids busy and boundaried and protecting their butt cracks from cosmetics. And they were a bit lost in the YESSES too. They needed to learn how to be in the world and there was no on else around to teach them. It was back to the old YES-NO tug-of-war, the battles, the whining, mostly from me. I tried my darnedest to be consistent and to have something like standards for what my children ate, how they slept, what they wore. One article I read explained that parents say YES because we are more focused on temporarily maintaining the peace than upholding limits and their long-term values. Was that an insult? Maintaining the peace sounded pretty brilliant. I struggled to aim for anything more.
Janet Lansbury, the only parenting expert who has co-starred in a film with Christopher Walken, gave me the easiest-to-swallow advice on NO’S. Be a “compassionate brick wall,” she advises, being there for the feelings of anger or disappointment your children have at not getting what they want, but not letting that dictate your decisions. I have the sinking feeling that learning to be a compassionate brick wall is like doing kagels: you have to do it often to see results, and if you’ve really let things go in that department, it’s gonna be a steep climb.
And, on the other end, Real Simple has also given me something useful. “Say Yes With Joy!” If you know you’re gonna give them dessert anyway, why bother with the negotiation? If you’re gonna say yes, don’t be a dick about it. Maybe it’s not a Yes Day, but it stores up some uncomplicated joy for when those brick walls go up. Maybe it IS that simple.
What parenting goals are you attempting/giving up on right now? Comment or write back!
Saving Chewy for the end. That's an inspired rim shot.
As always, there are so many parts of this I love. My favorite in this one might be, "Yes, you can apply my very best lipstick to your butt. Yes, you can open up every puzzle box and slowly slide mixed-up pieces into my bra as we watch the music video for Draft Punk’s “Around the World” on repeat." And "say yes with joy."