Tag: #naturenurture

  • Parenting: Organizing Nature/Nurture

    I’m pretty tired from the weekend, and I didn’t sleep well, come to think of it. (To really “come to think of it” I haven’t slept well in three years.) It was too cold to do things outside this weekend, so we were all stuck in the apartment together. We decided to deep clean the apartment, and finish the ongoing project of organizing the kid’s room. We hung more book shelves in her room, since I can’t stop buying her books, and got lots of bins for the kid to put her toys in. This is all in an effort to make her small space more efficient, and to also make it easier for her to clean up her room. As that seems to be a constant battle; cleaning the room!

    On weekends like this, I start thinking about nature/nurture when it comes to the kid. How will this cleaning, and organizing affect her? Will having a room with white bins of different sizes, labeled, cause her to be an organized person? Will she rebel against organization in adolescence? Will this cause her to flourish in analytical endeavors, or crush her creativity?

    My parents were very organized people; Scheduled and regimented. To this day, at 77, my father keeps a schedule for each day, of things to accomplish. I never felt that my folks pushed “order” on me, but I can clearly say that I rebelled against anything that had any order to it in my teens and twenties. I hated patterns, and well, anything scheduled and consistent. Only when I started my professional career in my 30’s, that this inclination to be orderly and organized became an advantage. Now in my 40’s, I can’t stop organizing and scheduling.

    So, as I look at my kid, I wonder how this will play out, or if it ever plays out; does putting things in a box matter?

  • The Unexamined Life Sucks…

    Which I think is a more accurate translation from ancient Greek.

    I watched a documentary on Freud last night, and it didn’t help me sleep. What struck me in this program was that it claimed that in moments when Freud was stuck and frustrated by his own theories, he would apply them to his own life to see if they stood up to objective scrutiny. Depending on how you feel about Freud, you may feel that he succeeded or failed.

    It reminded me of Socrates’ quote, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I know that he said it, or supposedly did, at his trial, choosing death rather than exile. Now, my interpretation is that the ancient world was about examining the external, and the modern world is about examining the internal.

    I remember wanting to write books from a very early age. I remember wanting to have as many books around me as possible. I can even remember memorizing the books my parents read to me, so I could act like I was “reading” them. (My daughter has started to exhibit the same behavior now.) I remember “scribbling” with wavy lines on paper, like I was handwriting a story. When I did learn how to write, this might have been when I was 9 or 10, I asked for and received a child’s typewriter for Christmas. I also remember wanting to tell stories; make them up, read them, perform them, etc.…

    But where did this come from?

    I understand the nature/nurture dynamic, but it can’t be all nature, can it? Being given books by my parents clearly had an impact, but is that it? Did books give me a feeling of power? Were books my “friend” when my older brothers left me alone to do older brother things? Was it playing by myself in those situations where I was forced to use my imagination to create my own stories as I did not have the interaction with another child? Or is it just something that is in me that was inevitable?

    I’m not sure if there is a clear answer here, or even a need for an answer, as in, what does that answer really “give” me? I am who I am, and I don’t regret it.

    But…

    As I mentioned above, my daughter has exhibited one of these behaviors. Is that coming from me, genetically, or from the example I set?