Great Expectations

A few weeks ago Eric and I had a long conversation about the baby over breakfast. (FYI, The Saw Mill Cafe is awesome!) I wish I'd written about this sooner, as I'm sure I've probably forgotten half of what was said, but I'll try now because it was very eye opening. You see, so far there hasn't been much discussion about actual parenting - the journey to get to this point, to just become parents, has been such a struggle, that there hasn't really been much time or energy left over for planning what we'll actually want to do as parents.

Well, aside from my conviction that our daughter will spend the first 18 years of her life locked in her room with no exposure to any media whatsoever. No news, no internet, no Facebook, no texting, no vapid television, and (most importantly) no Teletubbies. Oh, and no dating until she's married. Yep, now that is the proper way to raise a child! It will be difficult, but we'll figure out some way to socialize her on a regular basis without messing this up, I swear!

*cough*

Anyhow, aside from inventing devious ways of keeping our child from ever growing up or becoming an actual individual free-thinking person, parenting hasn't been much of a topic around the house. But what vague ideas I did have were weighing on me, mainly my personal expectations.

The dilemma: how do you set high expectations for your child so that s/he will be motivated to aim high, to constantly strive to achieve as much as possible, but without losing hope or feeling like s/he is being crushed by unrealistic goals?

Eric and I both already have high expectations for our daughter, although the specifics are different. Eric really wants her to excel in school, and after school, to basically excel in life. I want her to be above-average at everything. I kept revising that statement over and over again during the course of the conversation, and throughout the rest of the day. I really want her not to be average. OK, I really don't want her to be mediocre. OK, well, if she does turn out to be average, I just don't want her to be bad at anything. Well, obviously she's going to be bad at some stuff - everyone has their weaknesses. I really just don't want her to be really bad in any large/important category in life.

I want her to be beautiful, to be smart, to be successful, to be athletic, to be kind and moral. I want her to be above-average at everything. But I will be perfectly happy if she is pretty, if she is smart enough to finish school and get into college, if she gets a job/career that she likes, if she is healthy, if she is a nice to animals. But what I really don't want is for her to be ugly or fat or dumb or hopeless or a constant couch potato or mean or evil. I want her to have every advantage in this life, and not start out with a huge disadvantage right off the bat.

I spent my entire childhood convinced that I was both ugly and fat because the vast majority of people around me treated me like I was. It wasn't until I was an adult that it occurred to me that they might be wrong, and I've spent my entire adult life trying to convince myself that I'm not ugly or fat. It's not in my power to see myself as beautiful or even pretty, to imagine myself as fit or even just not plus-sized - my mind has to struggle with the concept of the possibility that I may be not-fat and not-ugly. My mind has to struggle to believe that I might possibly be something approaching average when it comes to my body. I do not want my daughter to ever have to struggle with anything that negative being so ingrained in her.

So really, all my expectations of my daughter having an excellent education, of having a successful career, of having a happy family of her own as an adult, those can all just hang. I just don't want her to start out life with a giant "X" on her forehead, either literally or figuratively. That's not really too much to ask, right? We can work on proper motivation towards excellence later I suppose.