Model Behavior
By Karen Matlock
Added Sunday, September 02, 2007
It's a leap, this parenting business. A leap into the unknown, falling on faith and the blind hope that you’ll grow wings in time to keep from crashing. Wings you can model, so that someday small winged creatures will fly from your home, making their way unerringly toward the Light.
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I picked it up from the newsstand on impulse, a celebrity-fueled rag I don’t normally buy. The sleek faces smiling on the cover, however, illustrated what the magazine gushed: Look Who’s Turning Forty!
"I am, that’s who," I thought as I thumbed through the issue. I was in high school at the same time as these people, I realize. My pimples were theirs. Trouble is, I still have mine. Theirs are airbrushed.
I wonder if any of them even keep up with which magazine is featuring them. There are quotes and cute stories, all with the publicist’s stamp of approval. I wonder if any of them sit contemplating a career change, if they watch their children grow or just get updates from the nanny.
I am certainly not in the autumn of my life, but let’s say there’s a whiff of Indian summer in the air. It’s the time of year for birds and body parts to migrate south. My days are filled with learning with my children, chores, housework, laundry, playing with the dogs, gardening. Somewhere in there I am supposed to make time for me, including rigorous attention to diet and exercise. Certainly the sculpted models in the magazine are paying quite rigorous attention to theirs. Says here they have personal trainers. I fantasize a moment about a personal trainer, and realize mine would have to be adept at laundry and housecleaning. We might never get around to the exercise part.
I am a model, though, however I’m assembled. Daily I model behavior to two most unsparing critics. Most of it is good behavior, some of it is used later to demonstrate what not to do. Pointing out what I want them to notice, however, is worse than useless; it assures they’ll ignore just that point. I’ve heard my small daughter scold her dolls and cringed, knowing where she had heard that scolding. I’ve also heard her tenderly tuck them in and read them a story. I don’t know which behavior has more influence, which things she has incorporated into her burgeoning sense of self. I can only pray she comes to realize what’s best for baby dolls is also what’s best for babies.
Today we talked about prefixes and suffixes and fractions, we read about the life of a pond, we took meals to ten elderly people for lunch, we examined lizards and ferrets and fish and coral in the pet shop. My children were exposed to hundreds of separate but interrelated facts, all of them trickling down to lodge somewhere. I think about it as I water my new trees; too little and they’ll die, too much and it just runs off. I let the water trickle slowly, knowing that it will get down to the roots that way. It’s the same with children; a little here, a little there. Trying to reach their roots.
It's a leap, this parenting business. A leap into the unknown, falling on faith and the blind hope that you’ll grow wings in time to keep from crashing. Wings you can model, so that someday small winged creatures will fly from your home, making their way unerringly toward the Light. No other job is so bent on making itself obsolete. It’s my whole goal: guiding them so that they won’t need my guidance. And the payoff?
I get to be a model.
Karen Matlock is a native Texan, with a sojourn in Oklahoma for high school and college. She graduated from Oklahoma State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine in 1986 and was in private practice in the Dallas area for 15 years. She's married to David and the mom of Sean, 11, and Emily, 6. They are beginning their fourth year of homeschooling, and are active with the Grapevine Area Homeschoolers, where Karen is group coordinator. They enjoy field trips and activities with the group and take full advantage of all the Metroplex has to offer. They are members of Garden Ridge Church of Christ in Lewisville, TX, where Karen helps in the children’s ministry.