This is great! My partner and I both attended awful controlling Catholic schools followed by a brand new engineering school at which students were encouraged to take part in reinventing engineering education. An unusual combination of experiences that conveniently resulted in us forming incredibly well-aligned ideas regarding education but inconveniently makes it harder to connect with other homeschoolers essentially none of whom had that set of experiences.
What a formative contrast to carry into parenthood, you are familiar with both rigidity and intellectual freedom so closely. Experiences like that tend to sharpen your educational instincts. Once you’ve seen what control can suppress and what trust can awaken, it very hard to settle for anything unexamined. Thanks for reading!
I love this. My husband and I grew up very differently, and in addition I got two “bonus” kids that he was already raising when we met. We both appreciate and respect the culture each of us came from (and, in his case, built with his previous partner), because we love the people who emerged from it.
It does take open conversations, though, for sure, and give-and-take. One recent Halloween season when he was swamped with work, I tentatively proposed buying costumes - he got a pained look but agreed, surrendering (for that year anyway) the family tradition of homemade costumes that he’d honored every year up until then. And I know any extracurricular activity that demands a lot of parental time commitment (performing arts, team sports, competitive anything) will be a tough sell, formative as those were to my own development.
One delicate edge right now is that both of the older kids, now in their 20s, are struggling. While we puzzle through how best to support them, it throws uncomfortable questions into the mix: is this the result of earlier parenting decisions? A product of the culture and circumstances they were raised in - including introducing me into the mix? What does that imply for how we should approach raising our youngest now?
What you're navigating sounds incredibly delicate and full of love. Blending families and cultures and honoring what each person brought to the table takes such thoughtfulness. It's clear you and your partner are doing that work with real care and respect. As for the older kids struggling in their 20s, be extra gentle with yourselves about this. People in their 20s now struggle for so many reasons that can have little to do with their parents. The world they're inheriting is genuinely harder in many ways and their brains are still developing. You can't really know if different decisions would have produced different outcomes because there are just too many variables, too much complexity, too much that was already beyond your control. Looking into earlier choices might help you parent your youngest more intentionally, but try to resist the urge to retrofit the current struggles into neat cause and effect, chances are, there are a lot of things you might not even be aware of, that might have been a part of it (the pesky variables again). Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Such an important point - what will your family's normal be?
My partner doesn't much like walking. I LOVE walking. He grew up in a single-parent household so was allowed much more freedom than me. I tend to cook food. He likes to eat ingredients.
We've come to a place that's trying to get the best of both of our upbringings. But it's always an ongoing conversation - I hadn't really reflected on it so much until I read your piece! Thank you for writing.
Children benefit enormously from this kind of conscious blending. And yes, normal is never static, it evolves as we do, according to the circumstances we’re in and the goal we have in mind.
We are all comparing our invisible maps, all the time, unconsciously. But bringing it to the surface and understanding how and with what goal, can help us do it in a gentler, more constructive way.
This is great! My partner and I both attended awful controlling Catholic schools followed by a brand new engineering school at which students were encouraged to take part in reinventing engineering education. An unusual combination of experiences that conveniently resulted in us forming incredibly well-aligned ideas regarding education but inconveniently makes it harder to connect with other homeschoolers essentially none of whom had that set of experiences.
What a formative contrast to carry into parenthood, you are familiar with both rigidity and intellectual freedom so closely. Experiences like that tend to sharpen your educational instincts. Once you’ve seen what control can suppress and what trust can awaken, it very hard to settle for anything unexamined. Thanks for reading!
I love this. My husband and I grew up very differently, and in addition I got two “bonus” kids that he was already raising when we met. We both appreciate and respect the culture each of us came from (and, in his case, built with his previous partner), because we love the people who emerged from it.
It does take open conversations, though, for sure, and give-and-take. One recent Halloween season when he was swamped with work, I tentatively proposed buying costumes - he got a pained look but agreed, surrendering (for that year anyway) the family tradition of homemade costumes that he’d honored every year up until then. And I know any extracurricular activity that demands a lot of parental time commitment (performing arts, team sports, competitive anything) will be a tough sell, formative as those were to my own development.
One delicate edge right now is that both of the older kids, now in their 20s, are struggling. While we puzzle through how best to support them, it throws uncomfortable questions into the mix: is this the result of earlier parenting decisions? A product of the culture and circumstances they were raised in - including introducing me into the mix? What does that imply for how we should approach raising our youngest now?
What you're navigating sounds incredibly delicate and full of love. Blending families and cultures and honoring what each person brought to the table takes such thoughtfulness. It's clear you and your partner are doing that work with real care and respect. As for the older kids struggling in their 20s, be extra gentle with yourselves about this. People in their 20s now struggle for so many reasons that can have little to do with their parents. The world they're inheriting is genuinely harder in many ways and their brains are still developing. You can't really know if different decisions would have produced different outcomes because there are just too many variables, too much complexity, too much that was already beyond your control. Looking into earlier choices might help you parent your youngest more intentionally, but try to resist the urge to retrofit the current struggles into neat cause and effect, chances are, there are a lot of things you might not even be aware of, that might have been a part of it (the pesky variables again). Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Such an important point - what will your family's normal be?
My partner doesn't much like walking. I LOVE walking. He grew up in a single-parent household so was allowed much more freedom than me. I tend to cook food. He likes to eat ingredients.
We've come to a place that's trying to get the best of both of our upbringings. But it's always an ongoing conversation - I hadn't really reflected on it so much until I read your piece! Thank you for writing.
Children benefit enormously from this kind of conscious blending. And yes, normal is never static, it evolves as we do, according to the circumstances we’re in and the goal we have in mind.
We are all comparing our invisible maps, all the time, unconsciously. But bringing it to the surface and understanding how and with what goal, can help us do it in a gentler, more constructive way.