Last fall, when my son was three years and a few months old, I left my house one morning to meet my neighbor for a walk. This was our weekly ritual at the time. She is from Southern India, and is a seasoned mommy of two children, one in graduate school and one in high school. She is a woman whose body and mind is in the United States, but whose heart and soul remains in her hometown in India. She sensed I was out of sorts and asked what was going on.
Over breakfast my son asked me to feed him, again. It was the fourth time in a 48 hour time period. It was an unusual request and each time he wouldn’t let up. The first time caught me off guard and I wasn’t sure how to respond. Initially I was patient and suggested he feed himself as usual. But he pushed and pushed, and my attempts at keeping us on routine weren’t working. Eventually I relented, but with a degree of ambivalence about doing so that was surely noticeable. Multiple times he asked, and multiple times I said I would not, but each time ended with me sitting down, exasperated, and feeding him. I left each encounter feeling pretty lousy and like a wishy washy mama who couldn’t navigate these moments with grace and ease.
As I walked to my neighbors house, the soundtrack of parental rumination was as loud and present as ever. He is three years old, why is he asking me to feed him when he can do this himself? He needs to be independent and do this on his own if he can. I can’t be feeding him for the rest of his life! I shouldn’t have given in the first time, now look where we are. This behavior is never going to end.
You see where this is going.
Enter my neighbor, always direct and never one to suffer fools. And I love this about her. After my long explanation, she seized the moment. Samantha, she said, in our culture, feeding a child is seen as an act of devotion and love. She went on to point out that it is common for young children and adult children to request that certain foods to be fed to them by parents on certain occasions. As a child her father would hand feed her a special seafood dish, and as an adult when she visited her parents in India, if that dish was served, she would ask him to feed her. My eyes are wide at this point in the conversation, as I simply cannot imagine my own father feeding me and either of us enjoying it. But in her relationship, the memory is a warm one and the request was always greeted by her father a bid for connection; he happily obliged. I was a mix of pleasantly surprised, skeptical, comforted, and above all, curious to hear more. I asked if she practices this with her children here in the states. The answer, a resounding yes. Her teenage daughter will sometimes ask her father to feed her when she is sick. It doesn’t happen often and happens less and less as the children age, but many Indian parents in her village view the end of feeding their children with nostalgia, not relief. She told me the last time she fed her son was when he was 20! I was gobsmacked.
I marveled and shared how much this practice and mindset deviates from our deeply held American values of independence from a very early age. I explained how worried many American parents are that their children are not dressing, feeding, or doing any number of things on their own by a certain age. All this, despite the fact that so much research shows us that independence among children unfolds naturally to them if it’s facilitated, not forced. There is also a wide age range for what is considered “normal” as it relates to self care tasks like eating, dressing, and sleeping. Attachment theory tells us that it is the comfort, consistency, and reassurance shown by parents that fosters developmentally appropriate independence in children, and is not something that needs to be rushed. She laughed when I said I was worried his requests for feeding would never end. “No no, being fed by my father now and then didn’t make me any less independent. It just made me feel close to him.”
I realized as she and I talked that William had been sick with a mild cold for the past few days. He is used to a little extra doting when he’s not well, and who doesn’t love that when they are sick? When he was younger, he wanted to nurse and snuggle more when he didn’t feel well. At three, this was his way of expressing a desire for more closeness and attention. I told her I was dying to go home, scoop him up and feed him, to which she replied, “Let’s turn around then!”
Parenting practices are deeply personal and deeply cultural. I try to remember that when I am doing something differently than what others around me are doing. I remember when my instinct was to sleep with our son when he was newly born. The bassinet within arms reach (that was actually the name of it) wasn’t close enough for me. I needed to feel him in the crook of my arm. I remember questioning my urge to continue sleeping together when murmurings of sleep training arose in conversations with friends. My neighbor, again, reassured me that most mommies in the world sleep with their babies, if not in the same bed, then the same room, for as long as nursing is taking place. What has become customary in the western world is the exception, not the rule, she seemed to suggest. More perspective. Her daughter slept in the same bedroom (not bed) as her and her husband until around the age of 11. She decided on her own she was ready for her own sleep space, and that was that. Like me, my neighbor found a deep and enduring sense of closeness and comfort having her daughter nearby for the most intimate of experiences, that of sleep.
I recalled a friend of mine, from Iran, telling me how sleeping with children was much more common in her parents generation than amongst the newer generation of parents. Her nine year old niece, (whose parents were struggling with their daughter’s resistance to sleeping alone in her own bedroom), said to her parents, “I don’t understand why you and Daddy get to sleep in a room together and I have to sleep alone.” There it is, from the perspective of the kids. It’s hard to argue with, though of course I see it from the other side as a mother who enjoys having some semblance of private space to share with my husband. I also remembered how, prior to my son being born, I often felt slightly homesick sleeping apart from my husband, as sleeping together was a most cherished experience for us.
The experience of understanding how other parents in other cultures nurture their children can offer some useful perspective. In some ways, every family is its own tiny culture within a culture, and our practices are born of some pretty idiosyncratic experiences, merged with the idiosyncratic experiences of our partners. Someone, somewhere is probably doing things like you, no matter how unusual it may seem.
Later after our walk, my neighbor stopped by with a jar of soup she’d made specially for William to help with his congestion. I opened it to smell it and to taste it. Bold flavors of ginger, turmeric, coriander, and fresh curry leaf hung in the air. Any bets on what I did next?
