DADWAGON

This week’s Tantrum has an obvious answer. Arguing in front of your kids was part of the recent definition of ghetto parenting, and with good reason: you don’t need to be Phil Zimbardo to realize that a child of a hostile environment may well turn out hostile themselves.

And yet, I’d like to argue in favor of arguing in front of your kids, but only if you’re eventually going to get divorced.

It goes like this: some of my earliest memories of childhood were of hellacious battling between my parents in our little wood-frame house on Virginia Street in Key West. No violence except toward dishes or dressers, if my memory serves me, but lots of shouting and argument. And, in the way that pregnant women all of sudden see other pregnant women everywhere, it seemed like every house on the block had the same rituals at night: the children were put to bed, then ten minutes or so of humid silence, and then suddenly an orchestra of anger erupting from every upstairs window.

The fighting in my house, I have since learned, was my parents trying to work on their relationship. When they gave up that hopeless endeavor—maybe I was six?–the arguing just stopped. It never occurred to us to wonder why. My brother and I accepted it, and we were a house at peace for the next four years, when our parents revealed to us in a somewhat life-changing conversation that they were getting divorced and that we were moving to California with our father.

This, of course, made no sense to us. For years it seemed like everyone had been getting along so well. But the memories of the arguments would come to save me. In the years that followed, I never once suffered under the delusion that some children have that their parents might get back together again. I never once thought it would even be a good idea. Whenever the future felt too uncertain, I had at ready recall all the images and sounds of those flammable nights on Virginia Street to remind me that the past was no better.

So to Theodore, I say, go ahead and argue with the ex-wife in front of JP. Not constantly, but just enough so that he can see and feel what a horrid a match you two are. He will thank the gods that you are no longer together, he will come to love the stresses of your custody schedule. His biggest problem will be trying to figure out what kind of idiots his parents must have been to ever marry one another. And that’s a pretty good problem to have.

Interesting that Theodore should include a photo of Oscar the Grouch in his post calling me a liar. I’ve long blamed Sesame Street for my inability to fight or otherwise express anger and aggression. That is, whenever the beloved show deals with negative emotions, it’s all about controlling them or channeling them into productive outlets. Even Oscar’s just a Grouch—his is the whingeing of a nonconformist, not the outpouring of inner torment. (And when will we meet Arnold the Bully, his dickwad cousin?)

This is a great strategy to use on children, of course, except when it doesn’t work and instead creates massively repressed anxiety monsters who have more built-up negative emotion than can possibly be released through, say, regular intensive long-distance runs. Not that that’s me (anymore). I’m just saying.

All of which is to say that I’m not good at conflict, in part (perhaps) because I saw so little of it at home growing up. (And I am not lying.) When my dad read yesterday’s Tantrum post, he wrote me to say that neither he nor my mom had any memory of the fight I witnessed. So, maybe it didn’t happen at all and was really just in my head. At the same time, he did remember my mom once coming home from a long day at work and getting pestered about dinner. “She blew up, we all apologized, and later we had dinner,” he said. So it goes with the Grosses, in that generation and this one.

My question to Theodore, I guess, is: What do you fight about? What happens between you guys that gets your hackles and voices up?

When I try to imagine really going at it—yelling and everything—it seems so draining, such a pointless waste of energy at (most likely) a time of day when I would have no energy anyway, that I think: Why bother? Jean, I’m pretty sure, feels the same. The fact is, we’re both just way too lazy to yell at each other, let alone in front of Sasha, whose shocked tears we’d then have to deal with.

So, Theodore, yeah, maybe we’re boring. But I think we’ve got enough drama in other aspects of our lives that it’s nice to come home to a conflict-free household where at worst we’re grouchy.

Front page of the Times today reports an “explosive” study from the world of education: that a good kindergarten teacher appears to make a huge difference in a child’s life, in everything from future family life to adult income. I have to admit, I’m skeptical, at least until I see more about the study’s methodology. From the Times capsule description (and we in the profession certainly know how imprecise journalistic shorthand for anything scientific can be), it appears that the study is only somewhat able to control for economic and other conditions at a child’s home. Right there, you’ve gotta wonder.

But even if it’s only semi-plausible, it comes at a time when teaching, as a profession, is under assault. As my colleague Bob Kolker smartly noted two weeks ago, we’ve taken to demonizing teachers these days, in particular when it comes to their opinions on education reform. This will almost certainly accelerate over the next couple of years, as state budgets are cut and the unions howl, and as Obama tries to re-reform No Child Left Behind. And it is sure to affect thinking about universal pre-K, a Dadwagon hobbyhorse about which you can read more here.

Anyone got an life-changing-kindergarten-teacher story for us? Comments are, as always, open and waiting.

I wanted to react briefly to Matt’s contribution to this week’s Tantrum on yelling in front of children.

Matt claims that he remembers only a single instance of serious argument between his parents when he was young, and that his memory  only comes to him, as if in a dream. This provokes several responses from me:

1. sarcastic skepticism
2. utter disbelief
3. envy
4. a desire to make jokes at his expense

Let me start with point number one: one argument! Come on, that simply isn’t possible. Once? Only once? Here’s why that doesn’t pass the sniff test, Mr. Gross: if there was only one, it wouldn’t come to you in some foggy haze of not-very-importantness—it would be seared into your psyche! Thus, we can conclude that Matt is lying. (I love blogs—my argument only has to convince me.)

Point two: basically the same as point one.

Point three: Given one and two, I’m not sure that there’s very much envy to cop to here, but if it were true, and his parents (and him and Jean) never fought, that would be nice … and a little boring. I grew up in a very loud household. My parents split up when I was young (it’s hereditary), and fighting was commonplace—but so was loud joking, pointless arguing, erudite debating, merciless teasing, and questionable criticizing. If Matt’s story is to be believed—and it’s not—I would bet he missed out on much of the more pleasurable aspects of a rough-and-tumble family life. In short, he grew up in “Leave It to Beaver” and I grew up in “Good Times.” Which would you rather have?

Point four: Should I really make fun of Matt simply because his childhood was boring? Is it his fault that he’s deluded about his memories of his past? Does he deserve this kind of treatment at the hands of his blog colleague and friend? Probably not, but I truly can’t do otherwise. It’s a family tradition!