A beneficiary of the Civil Rights Era, I entered integration in third grade carrying with me the missive delivered to many middle-class African-American children around the country: “Integration [of schools] offers an opportunity to work even harder. You may sit next to white students, but you will need to prove yourself. You will need to work hard and be better at all that you do.”
While my mother and father loathed slothfulness and laziness, this missive added pressure to an already weighty responsibility.
The result has been that I, like many African-Americans of my age and social class are and continue to be over-achievers.
The concept of always giving your personal best at whatever job you set out to perform has brought me far.
And yet as with all things it possesses a downside.
Or rather the manner in which my mother instilled this value left its mark.
I have a huge inner critic.
Much like what psychologist, Alice Miller, describes in her book, The Drama of the Gifted Child, my life has been one of performing, seeking to do well in an effort to not simply achieve a work well done, but stemming from childhood, also trying to garner my mother’s attention and love.
This aspect my own internal drama, the fight between the halves of myself–the desire to offer my personal best because to the sense of accomplishment it bestows upon and within me versus doing this to attract attention–has become clearer in the nearly 16 years that have followed in the wake of my mother dying.
How to pass on these values without the toxic minutia I experienced with my mother?
Reading Amy Chua‘s memoir, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, was like traveling down memoir lane of an awful nightmare, while at the same time remaining aware of my present role as mother to three daughters, one of which–our middle child–who often rebelled against my desire to remain loyal and loving in the face of her competitive personality that often expressed itself in a manner that reminded me of my mother.
And yet I also saw pieces of myself in this our middle daughter.
Likewise, the rebellion of Amy Chua’s younger child and daughter forced Chua to confront aspects of Chua’s own self.
With our middle daughter now in college and both of us able to discuss the forays of our battles in retrospect with perspective gained by distance offered in time I can say this trial by fire reframes the process of parenting as also a path of growth.
Employing awareness and reflective humility the process of parenting provides not simply the opportunity for a strong and confident young to emerge, but also allows for the growth and personal transformation of the parent as both a mother (or father,) and ideally one who evolves into a better person–a human individual possessing greater mercy and compassion for her children and more importantly her own self.