adrienne_bich

This summer my dad, my siblings, and I took a camping trip to Ojai for Labor Day weekend. We wanted to replicate a childhood tradition where our dad would take us camping. These were special and exciting times, as our mom had primary custody of us at the time. For some years in my childhood I remember hardly even seeing my dad. When he first left my mom he was essentially off-grid. My mom would constantly drone to the five of us, “I don’t know where your dad is,” and I would imagine the several different fun and exciting lives my dad could be living in Idon’tknowwhere. 

Also around this time, my mom adapted a new hobby: using the family landline to hound our dad at work. She called several times a day in succession to try and get a hold of him, she’d tell stories of his missed child support payments to guilt the receptionist into compliance. When she was unsuccessful she enlisted one of us to—using our most pitiful voice—plea on the phone for our dad. Each time the phone dialed, I felt like a child actor nervously getting into character. If we did not reach him we were to hit *66— my introduction to redial as a convenient technology to badger an otherwise quiet outcome into a reachable one. One of my mom’s specialties. 

At some point, I became accustomed to seeing my dad one night a week and/or every other weekend. Often less than that when plans fell through without explanation. This would be the opportune time for my mom to affirm: “your dad is such a flake.” 

I still remember the one day in all my childhood that my dad picked me up from school. He must have gotten off of work early or had the day off to pack for our trip. I was looking forward to pick-up time the entire day. When I saw that he was actually there to pick me up it was like a dream come to life. The car was ready to go and packed with camping gear. I was thrilled. I remember our camping trips very fondly. These were rare reprieves where we weren’t being scolded by our mom to complete a neverending list of household chores. These were near impossible tasks due to my mom’s hoarding problem that worsened after my dad left. 

This summer we were joined by my sister’s boyfriend and my brother’s partner. In late September and landlocked in Ojai, we were met with low 100s temperatures as early as 10am. Our campsite was a likely host for heatstroke. It took all of our effort to get breakfast started, clean up, pack up and leave our sweltering campsite before we were met with the worst of the heat. We divided our 8 person group into two cars and headed to the beach. After battling for parking and unpacking our respective cars, we reunited. Finally on the sand and feeling the beach breeze we were all quiet and exhausted, basking in the relief from both the heat and coordinating logistics. 

This is how we were when the tide came for us, quickly and quietly. With little words, we were all jolted into action, reaching for phones, shoes, snacks, as we ran up the beach. We laid the blanket out at the new location, hung wet clothes on the umbrella, returned flip flops to our beach neighbors, and resettled. The memory of the tide reaching us plays back to me quickly and silently like an old film. 

Months later, I kept dreaming of lounging on an idyllic beach with friends. We are at total rest and ease when suddenly a fire meets us like the tide reaching the shore. We are forced to run and find shelter away from the beach. As we are moving away the fire seems to follow us. We watch fire ignite on sand and concrete—surfaces we never imagined would ignite so easily. This new information is terrifying. 

When we are able to catch our breath different voices in the crowd surmise “it’s the earth, it is getting too hot.” I picture the magma at the earth’s core, kicking and screaming, no longer interested in being tamed. The heat within is spreading, reaching for the surface, sparking up on sand and water alike—it’s burned past all social niceties, deciding it doesn’t need an invitation. It’s as if we had been on different earths and now this earth wants to be one, for its fire to become our fire.

There’s frequently a point in our family gatherings where we take an inevitable turn into a popular topic of conversation: our mom. Someone will start with a pointed memory that showcases some of her worst traits. We all laugh with our guts and take turns dishing out old stories in a similar fashion.

I picture my mom, alone, uninvited, buzzing with a million and one ways to craft distraction. Remember the pictures of the penguins she texted me once from the San Francisco Zoo. Under the crossed out bell which indicates “do not disturb,” I see the text “March of the penguins” in my messages. “Cute,” I respond

“Sometimes I go alone.” She replies. “I really loved going on Valentine’s Day by myself. It was very sweet there…” 

Picture dad’s front door shaking violently, the kicking, screaming, and banging fists on the other side of it. The rest of us quietly wait inside for her to fuse out and leave, though it doesn’t seem like there is an end in sight. We’ve drawn the curtains to avoid confrontation. 

In my dreams, I’m terrified, watching the fire outline the coast—it stretches the entire shore. The crowd comes to a consensus, an alchemy distilling fear into anger.  It’s our earth that is betraying us, turned against us after centuries of good behavior. The world in flames and this is the only protection we prepared—speculation for who’s to blame.

“I take after dad’s side” I recall my older sister frequently reminding me growing up. She would always say it as if it was something to be proud of, but mostly what I heard was the implicit rejection of any and all resemblance to our mom, with an air of disdain for those of us who do take after her, even if only in the most rudimentary of ways, determined by physical features. 

I used to not think too much about this ritual of ridiculing our mom. It served as a cathartic unloading. An outlet to unleash angst, anger, pain, confusion—and distill it into a string of comedic episodes, ripened for the most relevant, most hungry audience. Though lately I find myself suspicious of the premise: that our mom is this furious ugly thing that the rest of us are far from. That somehow we have escaped this. With a narrower nose or rounder face.  

Later in my dreams, the crowd rests. I watch the shore blaze from a distance, alone and petrified in thought. I can’t help thinking that it’s me who’s betrayed myself. The heat at the earth’s core is something that we’ve always known about. Lurking inside our earth, pumping the world’s blood below our feet, but we never stopped to think about it as a potential threat, why hadn’t we considered it?

This past year I started babysitting a little girl named Eva. I had just moved to a new city and was excited to meet Eva because at that point my entire social network consisted solely of people my age—a phenomenon which I dislike and find totally bizarre, like freshman year of college or accepting a job at a Google campus. As an investment in reaching my fuller humanity, I maintain cross-generational relationships for, if nothing else, the refreshing break they provide from the twentysomething conversation circuit of who we are dating, why we have chosen polyamory, why we are now considering sex work, what trauma we still blame our parents for, yet empathize with as we stretch toward self-actualization and so on.  Sometimes I just want to talk about why we have thumbs. Or fill my hands with slime until I can’t tell where my hands end and the slime begins.

When I arrived at Eva’s house for the first time, I saw her face light up through the window before she excitedly ran to greet me. I was met with a whirlwind of energy that remains unmatched by any other kid I have interacted with. She immediately threw me from the driver’s seat, showing me around the house, giving me a tour of her room, and dictating our plans for the day. I tucked away my childcare instinct to guide, steer, scaffold, or affirm Eva. Her self-assuredness was so strong any of these would prove to be trite, I assessed. Instead, Eva would conduct our time together and I would set boundaries when needed.

As our time together went on, I realized I didn’t love every minute of being with Eva. It was draining keeping up with her and some things she said were plain off-putting. Like when she pointed out, in disgust, that I have a “mustache” (uh, barely…). Or when she told me my black worker boots were ugly and asked why wasn’t I wearing pink ballet flats like her? (*sigh* brainwashed). After the three vexing hours together were up, I started questioning my desire to continue childcare, more specifically, childcare with Eva. Aside from being wiped out from caring for other people, I seriously adored the last kids I nannied, which pardoned many of their obnoxious moments. While working with Eva, on the other hand, felt more like constant work. 

Regardless, it was extra money I could use and so I continued to spend time with Eva. Initially I felt a bit guilty. Was it wrong of me to continue babysitting a kid I didn’t particularly like? It later occurred to me that it wasn’t particularly important or necessary that I like Eva, just that I respect her. And while Eva was not a sweet or charming child that kids regularly get held to an unfair standard of being; she was unapologetically herself, which I felt extremely compelled to protect. 

Everytime Eva and I went out we’d meet someone new. I learned that it wasn’t just with me that Eva was blunt, it was with everyone. I started noticing a few different reactions people had when meeting Eva: some were surprised, yet charmed by her forwardness; others felt uneasy in the face of her audacity. I was most curious about the uneasy reactions some parents showed. This happened, for example, when Eva randomly joined a family’s picnic and started offering them her own snacks. Or when she yelled from across the play structure at another family for allowing their child to pee openly on a nearby tree. After reproaching the family from 100 feet away she walked directly up to them to share a formal conjecture: “that is disgusting.” 

 Instead of expressing their discomfort and confronting the situation I watched them look away awkwardly and wait for the moment to pass, as if she wasn’t there. But, with Eva, this was rarely foolproof. She would continue to linger until she was satisfied. As we all stood at an impasse, I witnessed parents silently wince in frustration. I was confused as to why a child being herself was so uncomfortable for them. And if she really made them uneasy, why not use this as a teaching opportunity and address her honestly? Were they forgetting she was a child: empirical and continously learning? 

I got the feeling that the other parents were deferring to me to “handle” the situation and “dutifully” move Eva along. Aware that this was an expectation they may hold, I chose not to fulfill it. I felt like I was breaking some unspoken code of conduct, but I did not want to act on an assumption of what another person’s boundaries might be and police Eva’s behavior based on this. I imagine that would model a fraught understanding of agency for Eva, as I would be acting based off of fear of judgment, rather than in response to a real and expressed request. 

I didn’t see a need to intervene and pretend the adults could not speak for themselves or that Eva couldn’t handle being spoken to like a fellow person. Doing so would do a disservice to both. A better lesson would come from direct communication from the adults regarding their boundaries. And their misplaced frustrations spoke more to their own limitations in this regard, than it did to Eva as a person or me as a babysitter. Eva is her own person, after all, and not an extension of me. 

When our schools regularly operate by shushing and silencing students in the classroom,  when we use language which chastises “backtalk” and demands that children “hush down when adults are talking,” the deeply embedded disrespect we have for children’s autonomy is clear. When children are regularly and unquestionably marginalized in these ways, asserting autonomy is a vital rebellion from this dehumanizing standard. Unfortunately, many adults have been shamed out of or discouraged from exercising our autonomy ourselves. And I imagine it is hard to see a child empowered in the ways that you are not. But this does not mean we should use this as breeding ground for the inheritance of the “obedience to authority” trait. 

No question, Eva is ruled by her own autonomy. She pulls a lot out of you. She is demanding, remains where she wants when she wants, and says what is on her mind–be it kind or stinging. She isn’t unkind or ill-intentioned, but she certainly isn’t susceptible to pressure to be polite when she wants to be honest. She also isn’t unreasonable. But, just like any reasonable person, she needs the opportunity to be reasoned with for her to consider a change in her actions.

Eva will learn an incredible amount in her lifetime. She is bold and empirical. And if we are to say that we care about kids, about their safety and protection it is so necessary that we nurture this intuitive sense of autonomy rather than view it as a nuisance and attempt to repress it either through scorn or force.

When I was a school-aged kid I remember being fascinated and so impressed by my younger cousin’s intelligence. He would recite the scientific names of dinosaurs, name all the planets and their moons, point out constellations on his map of the stars–and he was only 4 years old! I remember thinking, this kid is advanced, and not only is he advanced, but he also has a leg up compared to the rest of us, those of us kids who weren’t encouraged to absorb all of this information in our spare time, nor provided with the resources to do so. 

A decade later, I began working as a preschool teacher. The school’s curriculum introduced the kids to different units which were simplified, category-oriented, and compartmentalized, and left little-to-no room for ambiguity. The themes were similar to the ones my younger cousin knew about: outer space and the names of planets, the names of different animals on a farm, and parts of the body–to name a few. 

While “teaching” these themes, I realized that these were the same topics I’d learned as a kid, and that I was prompted to absorb and memorize in a similar pursuit. Given the dry nature of the topics my knowledge or engagement with them had not changed in any meaningful way, nor did it seem that there was room for it to. We were teaching in a “here are the facts, aren’t they interesting? Memorize them, know them” format. There was a glaring contradiction between the wonderfully creative instincts of the kids and the content we were teaching them. 

But children already have access to a content-rich site of knowledge which is stronger than adults: intuition. Children are born with their intuition fully developed. A child’s inner wisdom helps alert them to danger, provides guidance in decision making and aids in problem solving, moving children to jump more quickly to a solution. When we teach children to absorb and memorize as a precedent for learning, not only do we miss an opportunity to nurture their intuition, we actively encourage them to suppress it. When the lessons we teach children only and always insist on memorize, absorb, repeat, the lesson becomes: knowledge is always created and negotiated outside of me, never by me.  

When we reward children for acquiring knowledge that is static, we affirm a misguided view of reality and our roles in creating it. The world we live in is not a fixed one. Equivalently, the inclination to delay children’s engagement with more “complex” topics is a construct created by adults and imposed on children; it is not immutable. We enable this kind of thinking in kids because we have enabled it in ourselves first. And when the promise of thinking for yourself comes far off in the future, many of us will find that it will not come at all. Because it is not a guarantee, it is something to work for. And we cannot expect this from children nor from ourselves if we are not committed to nurturing it from the beginning. In the words of Paulo Freire, “the future is not something hidden in a corner, the future is something we build in the present.”

With climate change’s deadly arrival, a global pandemic well underway, and America’s descent into fascism a looming possibility–we see the need for creative responses is not going away. And there are real dangers with waiting passively for the solutions to come from elsewhere. 

And while I am not advocating for kids to stop learning the names of dinosaurs, I do believe that a decentering of sites of fixed knowledge that are imposed from the top down is necessary. The curriculum prioritizes sites of knowledge which are determined to be true by scientists and researchers—experts and institutions which are out of reach to so many kids. Where is support for the knowledge production that begins with the child?