What do we tell the kids?

So yeah, thoughts on what you tell your kids about being multiple.

I should preface this with what I believe about being open about multiplicity (and this blog is a part of that). I think it's important, in the grand scheme of things, for people to be able to be authentic. And I think that if more multiples were able to be out, it would lessen the hysteria around multiplicity that comes from film and some of the massive surge of talk-show dramatics in the 1980s. I've been relatively out at work and to friends for years, now, and although I sometimes tire of the uphill battle it is to be believed, and the pressure at times to be "more sane than the sane" once I'm out, overall I want to interact with the world from who I really am (or perceive myself to be) enough that it's worth the costs to me.

Having said that, we are largely in the beyond after the "listen to me! this is who I am!" stage of selves-awareness. Lynn's gotten up on stage and read as Lynn. Lyria's been to SARK lectures as Lyria. And I won't get into all the things I've had to do to assert myself. It's not that I don't still want to be acknowledged and appreciated as me. But I no longer have a 30 year backlog of need about it. In the same way that I might not talk about writing in a parenting social circle, I don't feel the need to point out my multiplicity when it's not important to the relationship/context so much, any more.

Here at home, we all pretty much (with a few exceptions that we are working on) feel free to be ourselves, without the need to trumpet our presence all the time.

And I'm glad we are at that stage. Because I'm reasonably convinced that for me as a parent I believe it's not a great idea to really lay out explicit multiplicity to any young children, unless there's a specific need or reason (like they ask, or get challenged on the playground or by family, or something).

Despite the benefit to society of out multiples.

I think most kids tend to be very literal and not be able to think abstractly. I think the idea of a changing parent/parents has the potential to be too scary and unstable for a young kid. I'm not sure there are good ways to bridge the adult/child thinking gap to be able to properly reassure one's kid about it. And I think up to a certain age - after 9, and possibly after 19 - the need of the child for security may well trump the need of both individuals for explicit discussion of who mum is.

It's not about keeping a secret per se. It's about just being, and not explaining more than we need to. It's a fine line: I don't want Noah to grow up, find out, and be angry he never knew. On the other hand I don't want him struggling with too much information, too soon.

(Now this is a personal choice: I don't think there are any rules about it or overriding moral considerations. I'm not judging anyone else on their decisions past, present, or future. And I have no idea how things will shake down for us in the future.)

I sort of see it like this. It's important for kids to know that their parents love each other and to watch them deal with conflict and connection and all those things. But they don't need to know about their parents' sex lives, and they don't need to know that mummy spent two years thinking she might have to leave daddy because he was having a nasty mid-life crisis. Until they start to struggle with some of the same things and then maybe a few conversations about "how our relationship was, too, besides what you saw" are really good. (Although the sex life... anyway. :))

So for me, it will be important to maintain a space where we are who we are. It's important to me and us for a lot of reasons, one of which is that I want to be able to genuinely say we /all/ cared about him and we were /all/ there. Which means actually doing that. Which means things like Magdalynn writing whatever she wants to write, which may or may not ever be shared (but she'll have been connected.) *

But it won't be as important to explain it all.

I also think it depends on kid. And the circumstances.

For circumstances - if we continue to get phone calls for Lynn, there will have to be an explanation that is both truthful and limited. I haven't come up with that yet, although luckily being a writer provides a lot of room for eccentricity and noms de plume. If we end up on Imprint (assuming it's revived) talking about being multiple and a writer, and therefore Noah gets told his mother is crazy on the schoolyard, then we'll have to deal with those things. Or if his maternal grandparents flip out. And it will have to be something we think about before going on Imprint and outing ourselves. And about blogging, too. All those things.

For the child, only Noah can answer that. No one knows yet if he will be the kind of child who reads Descartes at 14 and pours over our published works and asks about them, or if he will be into soccer and girls at 14 and barely notice our presence. (I kind of hope for Descartes and soccer, myself, with the odd girl and glance at our fiction. :)) Maybe he'll be sensitive to our switches and demand explanations. Maybe he will be oblivious.

No matter what though, he will be loved and important and believed in. 'Cause in parenting, that sort of goes one way. He doesn't have to believe in us.

So that's where I am on it, today.

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* My reason for this is direct experience: I know really well an adult child of a multiple, who has siblings. None of the siblings reacted the same to their mother's coming out/discovery experience, which happened as they were all adults. But they all (from what I've heard, which is direct in some cases and from reliable sources in others) had one particular concern in common which was "well who's my mother" and when it was revealed, due to circumstances that were hard for everyone, that not everyone in that multiple system wanted kids or was happy with them, it was very hard for the kids. I do think that possibly the one thing a parent should never admit to is not wanting a child, even if said child is now 45.

And it's one reason everyone being on the parenting wagon to some extent is really important to me. So that if/when it does come up, the child can look back and see we were really there, just not waving flags about who was out when.

You may see a remarkable degree of unity among us on this one: that's because we all spent months hashing it out while pregnant with Emily.