attachment - 2/3 - CoupleDumb

          Today is Monday and for many kids in this country, it is the first day of the fall term. Welcome to the 2010-2011 school year! If you are in South Florida, we say ‘Go Coral Reef Barracudas!’ Anyways, all three of our kids are in school today and we are in the middle of some serious ambivalence. We have some sadness mixed with elation mixed with exhaustion and a smidge of ennui and a lot of ‘now what do we do’s?’. One thing we are very clear about is that it is a good thing they are in school.

          Lee says: Our opinion on homeschooling has been pretty clear. In case you missed it, here it is: We don’t like it! As former educators, we believe in the scholastic atmosphere. We believe in the need of a child to explore his educational environment, relate to peers within the academic setting and the experience of school. School was never supposed to be just a place where you learn. If it was, it would have been called a learnatorium. One important thing we learn in school is detaching from our parents.

          The concept of attachment has been discussed on this blog. We have talked about the unhealthy nature of being attached to objects. About making things the end all be all of life. We have discussed that attachment in the Buddhist faith is suffering. And if you recently left your 3 year old in pre-school and they finally realized this was a permanent gig, you really know the pain of attachment. But school teaches us how we need to become our own people outside of our parent’s gravitational pull. This is a life lesson that we are not graded on and it will never be mentioned in a college application. We hardly ever stop to realize the importance of letting our children go.

          To raise a healthy kid, a parent must teach a child the following concepts: I trust the world. I trust you. I trust you in the world. These concepts are the basis of separation/attachment. Yes, it is very gratifying to know that your child loves you and will miss you. However, if your child refuses to detach then you know you have failed to teach them that the world is a safe place or that they are safe in said world. Of course some crying and pleading is normal. It is scary to do something new. But the inability to assimilate or accommodate oneself to a new environment stems directly from a lack of safety and trust than anything else.

          So why mention homeschooling in all of this? Homeschoolers are teaching their kids that the world is scary. They are teaching them the world cannot be trusted. They are definitely not instilling their children with a confidence we derive only from separating from our parents.

          Here is a simple experiment. Remember the first time you were on a swing? You probably had Mom or Dad pushing you and you only went so high for fear that you would fly off and receive a closed head injury requiring a CAT scan. Now, do you remember when you were able to swing all by yourself? How high did you go? How exhilarating was it? You were on your own and the only thing keeping you from flying was a chain and your own desire to soar.

          The swing is an exact metaphor to life. We are attached because with love comes connection. But being attached and being enmeshed are not the same. We choose to have our children experience the world and all its flavors. Right now, Ricky is choosing to see detaching as a punishment only while we are still in his classroom. He calms down the moment we leave. I guess he feels we need the show of how much he loves and misses us. I trust this little show will end soon. I don’t know how many more ‘Please, don’t leave me’s!’ I can take.

          Paul says: The best part is that he gives Lee the ‘Please don’t leave me’ but when we pick him up, he runs past her and hugs me yelling ‘My Daddy’. Yes, it’s good to be king.

rebel flag Jingoism and other cool words Im attached to.

One of our faithful readers wrote us last week and asked these very insightful questions: ‘Hi guys! I understand that there is only so much you can address in a few paragraphs, but I hope you expand on the topic of attachments. As of now, it is hard for me to imagine anyone completely free of attachments, and see our capacity to form attachments as necessary for our survival. So I will play Darwin’s advocate with the following questions:

Isn’t being detached a bad thing too? How could we care about anything, anyone, or ourselves without attachments?’

Lee says: Andy, these are great questions and we are very happy someone asked them. When we talk about attachment, we are of course talking about unhealthy attachments. We are talking about people who just can’t let go and that attachment runs their lives.

It is very true our ability to form attachments is paramount in being a well adjusted person. It is also true that that same ability is the source of much misery in our lives. We seek out relationships or material things. Once we have them, we form unhealthy attachments to them where they become the object of our existence. When we lose them or they stop working, our entire being goes into shut down mode. We refuse to move on and lament the loss at the cost of any other attachment.

A good example of this is being attached to the way things used to be. Remember when we could go on a plane trip without having to remove our shoes or losing our tweezers? Remember when we believed terrorism was something that happened on the other side of the world? Since 9/11, our entire country has gone into depression (more accurately PTSD) and one the obvious results is our economy. We are scared, paranoid and just can’t shake that we lived better before. The reality is we lived differently. We thought we ruled the world and the USA was a force to be reckoned with. The reality is we were ignorant. However our country is attached to the idea that our image is of Doris Day with the swagger of John Wayne; innocent and tough. Now the image is distorted because someone actually gang banged Doris while flipping off the Duke. The reaction was jingoism to an absurd proportion. However the image will not be abandoned.

I can hear the country music aficionados getting ready to start a campaign against us. Let them bring it on. These are the same people that wave the Confederate flag which symbolizes one of the worst times in the history of this country. Attached much?

Here is another good example of unhealthy attachment. My paternal grandfather died 34 years ago. To this day, my father can not mention him without crying. I know, I sound like a heartless bitch but the reality is that forever more my Dad will focus on the loss of his father and not the joy that his father was in his life. He can’t get beyond the loss. Much like people can’t get passed the break-ups or the death of the object of their attachment.

I can sum this up with three good statements: 1) To everything there is a season, 2) The only certainty is change. And, for the perfect cliché trifecta, 3) everything in moderation. Oh and God Bless the USA!

Paul says: Because we are defining attachment in a spiritual context that says that we are binding ourselves to something other than the divine, I would say that all attachments are bad. That being said, truly loving a person is not an attachment since love is an expression of the divine.

Too deep! I think I sprained something. I need to get a beer and lay down.