family relationships

Just Wait Until You Start Saying “Just Wait”. Since becoming an expecting mother and even more since my baby was born I notice many parents speak about their experience raising their children in an externalizing/universalizing/“unsolicited advice-ifying”sort of way. The “just wait until…” sentence stem is one cardinal example (where a parent expresses an exhortation toward a less experienced parent to expect some experience they have had) but the posture I’m gesturing seems diffuse throughout a lot of parenting culture I am exposed to.

Two and a half months into being a Mom I have yet to myself tell a less experienced or expecting parent to “just wait…” but a clowny humility in me jokes at myself - “just wait until you start saying “just wait”…”

I think part of what my little joke to myself is guessing at is that this posture is not just some sort of relational sloppiness that our culture is too permissive of - I give it the benefit of the doubt that it is an attempt (if sometimes misguided or unattuned) to meet some need a lot of parents have for… something?

I hold together the strong emotional boundary I have held not to take on other parents’ “just wait…” frames/narratives and a curiosity of how this posture is in service of something worthwhile (even if I don’t know what that is or if I harbor an intuition that whatever the something is could be better served another way).

Do you have a guess? Why do you think parents say “just wait” or in other ways turn their experiences into unsolicited and/or generalized advice?

I'm visiting my family this weekend and staying in my parents' home. I always appreciate spending time with them. But it's also hard seeing them struggle with health issues. I wish I could do more to help them. They're the type to medicate first, which isn't my preferred first course of action. My suggestions often fall on deaf ears. They've developed their ways of being over years and while I don't always agree with these ways, I accept who they are and continue to offer ways to support them. 

Your parents are massively successful if you are more evolved/mature than they are. I hope Jack and Cecilia surpass me in emotional intelligence, wellness, rationality.

I hope I’m humble enough to recognize it, but I hope they’re more developed even if I can’t and it feels painful to me.

How to hold healthy boundaries with people we love but deeply disagree with. I have decided not to travel to attend a dear friend’s wedding because it’s happening less than a week before the election, and my friend very publicly brings their political opinions in ways I disagree with, ways that play into unhealthy and potentially dangerous interpersonal dynamics.

I want to talk to my friend about it. I think they’ll be able to truly hear me if I can find the ways to show up that don’t also fall into the dynamic. I want to be able to do what I wish my friend (and others) would do- stand rooted where I’m at without playing into an I’m right, you’re wrong. I want instead to be able to share, Your method of approach has side effects I don’t want to be around, even to the extent of missing this important and beautiful life event that I would otherwise do everything in my power to attend.

I don’t know what I’m asking y’all for, if anything. But I do have the sense that UpTrust is being built for just this type of thing.

Failing to Learn to Drive. After I got my learner’s permit, my mom took me to a large parking lot near our house to teach me how to drive. She had a manual car, because that’s what she learned back in Uruguay and she liked it better.

She explained to me how the clutch, break and accelerator work (I had no model of it before this). and how to do the gentle handoff between letting go of the clutch as you engage the accelerator. But there was a problem - she told me the clutch and the break reversed, meaning she told me the clutch was the break pedal, and the break was the clutch.

When I tried to start the car and put it into gear, the car would start jerking violently back and forth, and then stall. i did this again and again for an hour. Every once in a while we’d trade seats, and my mom would carefully pay attention to how she was doing it, and then proceed to explain it to me wrong again and again. At some point I said I must be doing something wrong and she said Clearly! in anger. I was totally convinced I’d never be able to learn how to drive.

Somehow every one in twenty attempts worked, and I was able to get the car into first gear and drive around. I would then try to get into second gear and the same thing would happen again - jerk violently and then stall.

At some point I managed to get into second gear by miracle, and after driving around the parking lot a few times, she suggested we take it out into the street and drive home. When I got to the first intersection, I got in a collision with a car that turned illegaly (I had the green light). there was no damage to my car, but the other guy broke his headlight. He then drove off in a hurry instead of exchanging information.

I was now stuck in the middle of the intersection, in a panic, with cars waiting in every direction, and I couldn’t get the car started. i was trying but it kept jerking and stalling every time. eventually we traded seats, in front of everyone, and drove home. I was super embarrassed.
I never asked my mom to teach me to drive (or anything else) after that, and for the next two years I commuted to college via subway, an hour and a half each way, every day.
It wasn’t until late sophomore year that I made a friend, Elkin, who was willing to patiently and kindly teach me to drive manual. He drove me to the driving exam, which I then failed. Three times. Motor skills don’t come easy to me. Finally the fourth time I passed.

Thank you Elkin for your help. you were a great friend.