Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

So one day after posting a piece reminding me to keep smiling and appreciate every moment, I had a crappy day. I woke up in a crabby mood, was incredibly short with my kids all morning, and returned from dropping off my son feeling very down. I napped for most of the morning, while my son played and watched some television, and that helped a bit. But then, after lunch, I grew impatient with my two-year-old when he wouldn’t stay in bed for his nap, yelled at the kids and the dog, and broke down crying for a good ten minutes before I could come downstairs.

The afternoon was a little better, but not much. My husband was home, so I didn’t have to handle the kids alone, but it’s not like they were being particularly bad or anything; it was me. I needed to get away, by myself, to stop feeling so trapped. My husband offered to hang out with the kids while I escaped to a coffee shop for a couple of hours. Instead, I chose to drag them along shopping, hoping to buy bedding (even though we have yet to order a bed) for the boys’ room. I wanted to feel like I was accomplishing something. Instead, we wasted two hours at Target. And bedtime again found me yelling at my kids.

So why am I sharing all this? I think I determined this morning that I was going to have a bad day, and the rest of the day was pretty much written. As I look back, I have to think hard to remember the good moments, like when my kids giggled like crazy as their dad read, and acted out, “The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear.” So once I had named today a bad day, it was destined to be a bad day. On the bright side, I only messed up one day, and tomorrow will be better.

My mother-in-law recently got a book on numerology (or something like that). She wanted to know the date and time of birth for each of us, starting with her grandkids and then asking me for my birth information. She never did tell me what she found out about me, but she mentioned that my second son is exactly as this book determined he would be. I’ve also, in the past, looked through this website, Kabalarians.com, to look up baby names and meanings. I used to, anyhow, until they started charging for the information. They do a pretty comprehensive listing of what your name means, including what physical ailments a person of a given name is likely to suffer. And I’ll admit that when I was pregnant with my firstborn, I searched the web for the particular name I was considering, and, discovering several personal websites for geeky Indian guys, vetoed the name. In all fairness for the name, the likelihood of non-geeky types having websites was generally pretty low, since they would be too busy having lives to maintain a website, so the search was kind of biased to begin with. And in defense of geeky Indians with websites, well, good for you. Be yourself. Have fun.

But my point is (and really, there is a point here) that I don’t think you can judge a person by his name (and maybe I’m just trying to make myself chill out a bit about not yet having a name for my third kid), nor do I think that a person’s personality and future are determined at the time of his birth. This numerology book, in predicting careers for my nephew, listed so many disparate careers that it really allowed itself to be true regardless of what my nephew ends up doing. I mean, it didn’t list rickshaw driver or beggar, but shy of that, it pretty much covered the gamut. Kind of like daily horoscopes, if you will.

But my problem is that based on this information, which seems to fit my two-year-old son perfectly, certain characteristics will be noticed more and others (which did not fit the profile) will be overlooked. My son will then be treated accordingly, and perhaps he will be destined to turn out exactly as this book says because of the presupposition that he will become a certain way. Did that make sense?

In my favorite parenting book, there’s a chapter about overcoming stereotypes. It says that if a kid sees himself, for example, as irresponsible, and everyone notices every time he is irresponsible, then it reinforces his belief. On the other hand, if you downplay the irresponsible acts and treat him as if he’s already responsible, and praise him and point out when he acts responsibly, then he’ll start to believe and thus become responsible. I mean, the dumb jock will always act like a dumb jock. The princess can get away with being selfish, because it’s expected of her. People enable bad behavior by fitting people into roles and treating them accordingly. I say it’s okay to use this for good traits (you are so considerate toward your brother, you do good sharing, etc.), and I do.

But I don’t want my sons treated as though their futures are known. I don’t want some book to shape their personalities by affecting how people treat them. It’s hard, I know. I just messed up a whole day that way.