Re-Thinking the Over-Thinking

I don’t consider myself particularly intellectual or erudite, but I have always been a library lovin’ card catalog addict kind of researcher. The kind that comes home with stacks of books, knowing full well that I will never get to read all of them and even if I am writing on the topic found within the pages, I may never even crack the spine, or if I do, it’s to skim one paragraph. I really actually just want the books there, in my presence as a form of security blanket. I also tend to think a lot about things- some would say too much, (I’ve been accused of over thinking more than once and by more than one ex-boyfriend) though it is a trait I got to nurture into a reflex-like habit while in graduate school.

When it comes to parenting, I’m no different. I research a lot. I read a lot. I promised myself I would when I was a teenager; that I wouldn’t parent like I was being parented- not that I didn’t have parents who meant well and not that I haven’t learned a lot from the vast amounts of things they did that worked. Yet now as I am writing once a week on my parenting life, I am starting to feel a bit self-conscious as I reveal myself in all my neurosis. I start to wonder if other parents think as much about things. I take comfort in my friend from Australia who thinks about things as much as I do. She has four children. She too battles this, and confides in me, that one of her sons could spend hours watching television and playing video games. She doesn’t want him to; she’s read all the same studies as I have about the potential effects to creativity, the ability to entertain one’s self, or what happens to a child’s emotional development when they learn a lot with no face-to-face interaction. She says to me, “I’ve been told to just let him do as he wants, and that if I don’t let him it’s because I’m too controlling. Is that true? Does that make me too controlling?”

I don’t want to say yes, because I agree with her – I don’t want my son to watch hours of television or play video games for hours either – and I know if I say yes, that it does mean she’s over controlling, it means I’m over controlling too. And I’m guessing – given my added number of things I don’t want for my son – I’m way more over controlling than she is.

And over controlling is just the beginning of negative connotations that I imagine get connected to how much I over think things. Probably I’m overly critical about most of what’s out in the world for kids in terms of education, toys, clothes and videos (I know of only two other parents who dislike Thomas the Train as much as I do). Probably I’m picky – about who baby sits my son, what he eats, what he plays with, what he does watch on TV, or that while most of the children’s programming on PBS is so surprisingly crappy I prefer he not watch any of it, and if he does watch Sesame Street, I prefer he watch the older episodes of Sesame Street, before it got turned over to Elmo and what’s-her-face-fairy-wings.

The scenes in When Harry Met Sally, when Sally orders in her “this, but not this, and that, but that in a certain way and I want it how I want it” way – I’m the parenting version.

Sometimes I catch glimpses of how I must look through the eyes of others, when I share my disappointment in PBS, and my mother-in-law says, “It’s far better than everything else out there.” My father-in-law pipes in, “They’re the only ones not selling something.” I don’t say anything else, except that this is not saying much about the overall quality of children’s television. While in my mind I begin my rant, that after every show on Oregon Public Broadcasting, they show the show’s sponsor. It turns out Chuck E Cheese is responsible for most of the morning’s television. Before OPB, my son had never heard of Chuck E Cheese. I never went there as a child; needless to say that I don’t want him going there either. I start to think maybe I should admit to being full-fledged neurotic.

Then I wrote a post about toys and I wrote it while in one of my moments of wondering is there really just a few of us who don’t want their children playing with battery operated crap? Is it just me? Do people think I bitch about everything when it comes to what’s available for children?

Some might, but plenty agree with me I learned in the days after my post. I don’t know why company is comforting, but it is. I felt reassured again and again as people left their comments. It had me re-think my over-thinking, that maybe it’s not over-thinking, but just thinking and questioning.