Ignore Your Kids and Write

It's good for them.

My sister and my mother in 1965.

I will never forget the look on my sixteen-year-old daughter’s face. Advance reader copies of my second book had come in the mail, and I handed Mia one.

“Look at the dedication page.”

She opened to the title page, and was like, “What?”

“No. The dedication page.” Which reads, To Morgan and Mia.

She found it and broke out into the biggest, sweetest, most genuine smile. A smile of full-on, childlike delight. Which those of you with teens know, you might not get all that often from a sixteen-year-old.

When I got my first ever offer of publication for a short story in a very good literary magazine, I was picking up this very same Mia, then age eleven, from soccer practice. I stood on the grass, nearly breathless, saying “Oh my god, oh my god.” Mia of course was like, “What’s wrong?” She didn’t understand then how huge this was for me. My first ever publication. And in The Missouri Review! But she understands now.

Mia and her older sister Morgan are the kids who, for the last ten years, have watched me sitting at the kitchen table on my laptop, off in my own world. Who got their own snacks and found their own socks. Whose rooms went uncleaned, and clothes laundered but unfolded. Whose mom (and dad for that matter—he’s a professional musician) did not join the PTO and only once or twice went on field trips.

These are also the kids who celebrated with me when I signed with my agent, and danced in the kitchen with me when I got my first offer of publication. They have seen me deep in the process, elated, dejected, frustrated, lit up. They have listened to my story ideas, explained slang to me, and helped me figure out TikTok (though it didn’t stick). And they know that any success I can lay claim to, they had a part in. They helped me become the writer that I am. They are invested, and they are proud.

Do I regret not joining the PTO, not going on the field trips? Telling them to figure out whatever it was on their own because I wasn’t available? In short, do I regret the hours I spent writing instead of “parenting?”

No. Not one little bit. Because, as they enter young-adulthood, it is clearer than ever that writing is parenting.

Along with all the the things we do as parents for our children—the snuggling, bathing, feeding, driving, dressing, guiding, talking, teaching, and laundering, the being present and paying attention and validating and supporting who our kids really are—we are also doing something very important that doesn’t get enough attention. We are showing them, for better or worse, what work means.

I grew up with a stay-at-home mom and a dad who went to an office. When I was ten, my mom went back into the workforce and also went to an office. They had interesting jobs that I think they liked but rarely talked to me about, and which I never saw. What the adult world of work looked like to me was stiff clothes, leaving the house early, coming home tired and desperate to get out of one’s tie or panty-hose. I knew early on that I wanted nothing to do with that kind of life, but I had no idea what any other kind of work looked like.

That will not be the case with my kids.

There is a lot of cultural programming standing in the way of validating time spent on creative work. And here are a few of my counter-arguments.

• Believing that our work only merits priority time if it is going to bring in money or prestige or something. Your creative work matters because you care about it. Full stop.

• The idea that one’s creative life is the least important thing in the family time-economy (e.g. less important than the relaxation time of the parent who makes more money). The more you assert that writing time has value because it has value to you, the more other people will start to believe it.

• The idea that our partner/spouse/village won’t do it right if we hand over the kid duties to them. (This is a nasty little feature of the glorification of motherhood in particular. If we’re going to do all this unpaid labor, we should at least get to be the Authority.) Yielding up some of that authority about how to do it “right” is a small price to pay for writing time.

• The struggle to say no to our kids in the moment. Kids are very persistent, but they are also quick learners and will get the message if you are persistent back.

• Wanting some actual Me-Time, i.e. where you get to do whatever the fuck you want. That’s legit. But let’s not get it confused with claiming time for creative work. The two do not draw from the same bucket.

• And, IMO, the most insidious of all? The idea that you have to “treasure every precious moment.” You know what? No, you don’t. What does that even mean? Yes, kids can be delightful, and childhood is relatively short, but does that mean you’re going to back-burner what is really important to you for years whenever there’s a “precious moment” that needs “treasuring?” Because there are a lot of moments. It’s all moments. This is big old recipe for unnecessary-guilt soufflé.

Creative work is important. But what’s even more important is that grown-ass people get to be in charge of what’s important in their lives. And that means the grown-ass person gets to decide that their creative work is more important than whether the toddler’s clothes are folded (for the love of god, do not fold toddler clothes), or whether the dishes pile up, or whether the kids spend another hour on screens, or whatever else it is that needs to move over to make room for that work.

Will your kids be harmed if you spend and hour a day writing? How about three hours? How about even an overnight somewhere out of the house if you can swing it? If there is another kid-wrangling candidate in your picture, will it harm anyone for that person to cover you for some period of time? No. It will not.

Having a parent who is passionate and dedicated to something in addition to their children is good for children. It helps kids learn independence and self-efficacy. It fosters respect for creative work, and for the parent who does it. And it gives kids permission to be passionate about something, to work hard on something simply because they care about it.

There are many ways to do it, but the point of learning to “ignore” your kids is to claw back time for your creative work from the great swaths of time when other people think they need you. There are advantages to cramming your creative work into time when other people don’t need you. You can get a lot done that way. But it is good for parents and kids alike to let the work be out in the open. To let the kids see it. And to let them become invested in it.

Let them know that being independent and doing things for themselves is how they help you do your work. That you can’t do it without their help. Kids love to feel necessary, and they love to do things themselves, so it can be a winning combination.

So, let’s say you’ve finally got some writing time. You sit down with your laptop and you feel… guilt. (If you don’t, good for you. Knock out some words!) First of all, don’t put yourself down. The guilt isn’t your fault. It’s a feature of a culture that does not value creative work as it should. And you’re showing your children how to value it properly.

Write in spite of the guilt. Give yourself permission. And if you can’t, then I will. You hereby have permission to do your creative work for no other reason than because it matters to you.