How do you navigate a friendship with fellow parents when their parenting style differs wholly from your own?
I consider myself a fairly average parent, middle of the road, firm and involved, without being punitive or overbearing. I think of myself as being fairly relaxed. But my understanding of myself as a parent changed last year during a playdate with a good friend.
Our children were playing together in the park the day after a serious rainstorm. In the long meadow a great puddle had formed and in this puddle my friend’s children were essentially swimming, or more accurately, rolling. My daughter stood at the edge the puddle watching. And I silently thanked god that she didn’t like “getting messy” and stayed out of this quagmire that I imagined was basically raw sewage and rat feces inhabited by some sort of aquatic cockroach.
Normally, I’m not squeamish about dirt. I’m a big proponent of playing in the dirt and getting messy with paint, encouraging my girl to overcome her Puritan instincts, all to no avail. But as I stood and watched my lady observe this crew of children having the best time, I had an epiphany. I am not a relaxed parent. I suddenly saw myself through the eyes of my friend. I wondered if she thought I was being square or controlling. I paid lip service to the relaxing parenting in my mind, saying, “you can if you want to,” and we all know what that means. I felt as if my aversion must have been palpable.
That one moment brought all my other interactions with this friend into a subtly different light. I began thinking back to previous playdates at the playground, where I would shift my location, staying within close proximity to my girl; while my friend, a mother of twins, gave her kids the run of the place. And my friend, being a wonderful and laidback person, probably never gave it a thought. But I did.
I thought of other parents I had been on playdates with who seemed unconcerned as their children jumped off furniture or showed off their throwing star collection or how they could mimic the kickback of a hand gun when they pantomimed shooting their baby sister in the head. Some of those playdates reminded me to be more open and others reminded me of how important limits were to me. Clearly, there is a wide spectrum here.
The question is how far apart on that spectrum can you be from a fellow parent before a friendship between the two of you becomes impossible. Often, what is exposed in this dynamic is not rigidity on one parent’s part or another, but in the case of a preexisting friendship, the revelation that you have different values. The way we parent is often a direct reflection of who we are, or who we hope to be. A difference in parenting style could reveal profoundly differing values that had previously been avoided or glossed over in the pre-kid friendship. Or it may just be a reflection of different personalities and differing levels of tolerance for mess, noise, and general mayhem. We are all judgmental jerks occasionally. And sometimes we are generous of spirit and remember that we are all carrying some serious baggage and that we all fail as much as we succeed. Most of the time we vacillate between the two, often saving our generosity for those we know and saving our vitriol for the Daddy who is asleep on a bench at the playground (or maybe vice versa).
So, to be sure to preserve the friendships that matter to us, despite parenting difference, first we must identify our own parenting values (not styles, not practices). Then we need to identify our friend’s parenting values, hopefully through an honest and intriguing conversation (or maybe a wine fueled bitch session, or maybe, if you’re a WASP, a series of nods, smiles and silent guesswork). We can hope that the differences become something that draw us together. The potential for that is dependent on the respect you have for that friend to begin with and the level at which you share values.
Maybe instead of breathing a sigh of relief when my daughter didn’t go in that perfectly clean puddle of rainwater, I should have truly encouraged her to join her friends. That by pushing my own comfort level a little I would have helped her learn to be more flexible, more willing to get messy in all ways. And I would have opened myself up to the positive influence of my friend. Better late than never.