Epic Parenting Fail: Erotica

In which my efforts to re-stimulate my daughter’s interest in reading are just a little bit too stimulating.

[I am back to blogging, at my daughter’s behest, after a long (2 year!) hiatus. Jessie is now 25, still dancing with Propeller Dance, still dating Drummer Boy (who has morphed into muscleman, but more on that in the next blog), and getting ready to move out. It’s been a bumpy road, but she is still keen, for some reason, for me to blog about her transitioning and my particular challenges in teaching her anything! I have a whole long list of parenting fails since the last time I wrote, but let’s just start with the most recent].

While Jessie used to be an avid reader, she now prefers to devour episodes of Say Yes to the Dress or Buffy the Vampire Slayer on YouTube. She is beyond the age where I can make her do anything that might be good for her, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. And failing. You think I might learn at some point, but this letting go is a difficult business (even with therapy). My most recent parenting fail on this front was particularly epic. I share it with you to let you feel much better about your own parenting skills. You’re welcome.

Jessie learned to read when she was about 5 years old (using perhaps the very first edition of Patricia Oelwein’s Teaching Reading to Children with Down Syndrome) and was an avid reader—devouring first Frog and Toad, then Beatrix Potter (hence her bizarre vocabulary), then Mr. Putter and Tabby Pour the Tea, and anything by Stephanie Calmenson. There were a whole slew of books read in our local library’s Mother-Daughter book club, and of course the Harry Potter series when it first came out, and then Ella Enchanted, and Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles. I do have to say that reading is highly valued in our house: Jessie learned to pull herself up on a bookshelf, to pull things down from a bookshelf, and to stack things on a bookshelf. Our house is filled with books—on tables, under chairs, in boxes, and sometimes even in bookshelves. It is a habit or an addiction, depending on your point of view.

So you can imagine our despair when, towards the end of high school, Jessie just sort of gave up on books and transitioned easily and totally to the Internet. TV was (and is still!) limited to set times in our house. As is the Internet, except as it relates to work (for Jessie, that means advocacy or dance). Perhaps this was her way of stating her individuality, or maybe she was just needing to put less effort into her down time. Whatever the impetus, it was not something I wanted to add to our list of things over which to fight. I did, however, keep picking up books that I thought she might like from the library or the bookstore, and left them lying around on the coffee table or in her room. So in addition to her Archie comic addiction (fed on the same now falling apart compilations over breakfast), she did read (and loved) Wicked, The Notebook, the biography of Taylor Swift, and Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit. But it’s been a while since we found a book that appeals.

So, you will have to forgive me if, last week, when she and I were at the downtown main library, I quickly perused the “new releases” and “recommended” sections and came across what looked like a quick summer read. It looked romantic (see for yourself). And the author was a so-called “best” seller. And I thought it was from the young adult section. Really. So it would be appropriate, right? And would fit right in to the romantic life she is leading and aspires to.

So we took it out.

Then, that evening, the inimitable Gray sisters came over (Jessie’s friends “since elementary school,” and an integral part of both her our lives) and were, of course (in their campy and curious way), intrigued by this book sitting on the coffee table. They picked it up and began to read out loud. And then louder and louder. And Jessie yelled “NO!” and covered her ears.

That’s when I walked in. In my apron, my hands covered in whatever I was preparing for dinner. And I said, innocently, “I picked that up for Jess, I thought she might like it.”

And they said: “YOU picked it up for Jessie? Do you even know what this is Nancy?”

“A book?” I knew I was on thin ground here, but I wasn’t sure why.

“It’s erotica! You got erotica for Jessie! Listen!” And they began to read me the opening paragraph. Which I can’t even copy here because it would, well, not be fit for family consumption. Let’s just say it involved flesh and seduction and maybe even a few shades of gray. In graphic detail.  

In my defense, I had read the back cover: Breathe Into Me is a story about a broken girl called, Lacey. She has a stalker ex-boyfriend, a bad reputation, and not really much else going right in her life. Enter gorgeous Everett..... He's dropped into town to house-sit a mansion..... He's drawn to Lacey and wants to show her how good life can be. Can. She. Trust. Him???  Now that kind of sounds Twilight-ish, doesn’t it?

The girls, all three of them, could not stop laughing:

“You got Jessie porn! You got your daughter porn! O. M. G!”

“You got me porn Mom!” Jessie yelled, both embarrassed and delighted.

“Just wait ‘til I tell ….”

I made her promise NOT to tell my mother.

And then I made sure it was Dan, not I, who returned it to the library. After all, I have a reputation to maintain.  

Everyone Needs a Little Sophie

The glorious, incredible, effervescent Sophie! Sophie is the facilitator assigned to Jessie for a futures planning session (for and directed by Jessie) that we will be doing in the spring. Committed to person-centred planning (and having done PATHs and MAPS with Jessie and her friends and supporters in the past), we jumped at the chance to participate—for free!—in a new planning initiative for persons with disabilities in transition offered through a local organization called Citizen Advocacy. We get a newly trained facilitator to work with Jessie and ourselves as we gather friends, colleagues, and important (to Jessie and us!) community members and builders to help plan a future for Jessie that is rooted in her own dreams and goals. And the newly trained facilitator (in this case, Sophie) gets a focus person and family to practice on! Below is Jessie’s video of Sophie who, you might notice, is very pregnant and due at the beginning of March! (Jessie intends to chronicle the planning process by video with her Flip camcorder.)

This opportunity to do a person-centred plan fits in perfectly with our plans to try to sort out the miasma of a mess that life after school is turning into. We are feeling stumped by what comes next. The field is either wide open, or infinitely narrow, depending on your point of view. Jessie jumps from wanting to go to college or university, to wanting a job, to wanting to be an actor for the Disney channel. On Friday, she wrote:

“I would love to be a writer and a director. I want to be able to learn about behind the scenes and to learn new skills and to meet new people. It would be hard work, but I am willing and able to work and do the best I can. I’ll work hard. I will believe in myself, do the best I can and I want my voice to be heard. I am determined and I will be self-driven, but I would need lots of help and support from my friends and family.”

And then yesterday:

“I would like to pursue my acting and my dancing. I want to be motivated, self-driven, and dedicated to my work. I want to do something in my life. I want to change the world with my acting and dancing. I would like to take more acting classes and more dance classes in order to climb the high mountain to my dream. I want to combine these two elements together so I can audition for the TV show Glee.”

There is a part of me that knows, from past experience, to trust in the process—to always keep Jessie out there in the community doing what she loves and to be mindful of the opportunities that arise and coalesce to create a rich, challenging, “now.” That’s on my good days. When I have gone to church AND meditated.

On my bad days, well, on my bad days, I am afraid to admit, I alternate between making random panic-stricken unintelligible phone calls to programs/supports/schools/people and going back to bed and pulling the covers over my head. Oh, and I talk really fast so it sounds like I know what we are doing. I’m afraid that’s what I did when I met with Sophie for tea the other day. When she asked me what we (Dan and I) thought were the biggest roadblocks to Jessie heading toward her dreams I think I spewed a breathless monologue that went something like this: sheforgetseverythingandisveryimpulsive and nevergetsoutthedoorontime and wouldrathershakeashakerthanfinishalessonplan and oh myatherdaycareworkplacement shefoughtwithathreeyearoldoveratoy and Iamnotherbestteacherandshe . . .

To Sophie’s credit, she did not scurry away mumbling “OMD (or Oh Mon Dieu ... since we live in a bilingual country) what have I got myself into, this family needs a therapist not a planner!” She actually sat and listened and then redirected me without me even noticing it so we got back on the isn’t-Jessie-wonderful track where she, in her subtle way, refocused me on Jessie’s strengths and passions. (Did I mention that Sophie is a trained social worker?)

You see, while I am sometimes Jessie’s best advocate, I am also her worst nightmare: a babbling gray-haired, middle-aged Mom tired of reminding cats and other household inhabitants that the litter needs to stay IN the box (or the clothes in the laundry basket or the used pads in the garbage or the … well, you get the picture).

And I have to admit that, at times, oftimes, I descend into a fearful diatribe that includes “If you don’t get a handle on [insert task], you will end up in a GROUP HOME!!” Group home, in our house, being synonymous with hell. Jessie has learned to include this little tidbit in her own comebacks stomping up the stairs saying: “I am NOT going to [do my laundry, have a shower, brush my hair, insert any other task of choice]. I don’t care WHAT you say; I am NOT going to live in a GROUP home.” Lovely. I am not proud to admit this part; but I figure it should make any of you reading this feel much better about your own parenting skills because I doubt you have ever sunk quite so low.

Yet, just at the nadir of my fear and loathing about the future, Sophie was dropped into our lives. A bright, colourful, whimsical pregnant bundle of positive energy that immediately transformed our petty bickering into a joyful and exciting exploration of Jessie’s gifts, strengths, and passions.

Okay. That’s a bit over the top. But Sophie is like when, in the deepest darkest of winter you suddenly realize that the sun is coming up a wee bit earlier and setting a wee bit later and that you are actually aware of the sun—during the day, not just as a distant memory—and that it actually might, at some point in the future, warm your skin and even entice purple crocuses and yellow daffodils from the frozen ground.

So Sophie is just that little bit of hope that makes it easier to wake up in the morning and to feel that things can and will continue to grow. Everybody needs a Sophie, even just for a day!