What new parents need from community, with Meredith Rodriguez
As a parent, teacher and group facilitator, Meredith reminds us that we learn best from one another. PLUS: An invitation to continue the conversation with us on Zoom in June
There's not a lot that you can do as a parent, if you start from connection, that you can mess up irrevocably.
– Meredith Rodriguez
I first met
during one of the most difficult seasons of my life as a parent. I had left the classroom for what I imagined would be a short sabbatical when my son was three. But then, we learned, he could not tolerate a full day of daycare without melting down or lashing out. On many days, I’d pick him up before lunch, and then head back home to attempt some version of home-schooling with him for the rest of the day. The possibility of returning to paid work became an ever-vanishing mirage. This Substack was created in the cracks and crevices of that year; I wrote whenever he napped.Meredith was the head of the parents’ association at that first preschool, and over that year, she reached out to me many times to offer support and care. Like me, she was an educator who had taken time off to care for her four kids. Like me, she was also bursting with creative energy, and the desire to build community with other down-to-earth adults who were moving through tough care seasons.
When I decided to begin hosting Zoom meet-ups to connect caregivers who subscribe to In Tending, the choice to ask Meredith to co-facilitate these sessions with me felt like a no-brainer. She’s run La Leche League groups, taught in K-12 classrooms, raised four kind and creative children, currently aged five to fifteen, and also plays a meaningful caregiving role for her partner’s parents, who live nearby. She’s got every stage of the caregiving lifespan covered. Yet she manages to (a) make it look easy and (b) stay pretty humble about it. Truly the unicorn of collaborators.
In this conversation — which is truly a conversation, rather than a traditional interview — Meredith and I talk about what she’s learned about building communities that include and support new parents.
I hope you’ll read on for Meredith’s insights on:
Learning to parent in a way that is guided by our own intentions vs. a drive to meet external expectations
The surprising commonalities between Alcoholics Anonymous and La Leche League
Discerning the difference between what we can control and what we need to accept as caregivers
A reframe that can help us feel less competitive with other parents
How to deal with negative feedback from your kid’s pre-K teachers
The ways in which “bounce back culture” can discourage us from finding real community
P.S. Be sure to scroll to the end for an invitation to join us and other caregivers in the birth-to-five trenches for an open discussion on Zoom in June!
In the meantime, let’s get into it!
WHAT DO NEW PARENTS NEED?
Ryan: So, you've been a parent for 15 years. I've been a parent for six. We've both been educators for many years as well, so we’ve built communities for kids and families besides our own.
What kind of community were you seeking when you had your first kid? What did you need?
Meredith: We were among the first of our friends to have kids. I didn't really know what I was doing. So the experience of having my mom, who parented through the La Leche League (LLL) in the early eighties, come and show me some things was helpful. She was there to remind me, “Your only job is to feed the baby.”
I've been in both AA and La Leche League support group spaces now, and in both, those little slogans that stick in your head, that keep you going, are everything. One from LLL is:“This is where you're gonna see a range of normal.” That idea — a range of normal — has stuck with me forever.
Just like AA, LLL also has their version of “take what you like, and leave the rest.” And there is a similar ethos of radical acceptance. We’re all doing the same thing. We’re all doing it near each other and together. Our process will overlap at points, and it will be very separate at points.
That space was really helpful in encouraging me to trust my own instincts. It acknowledged that we're all just kind of doing this very natural-ish sort of a thing in a very unnatural sort of system. And so, how do we live that out? You have to do you, but it gave examples of ways that it could be done.
Ryan: So for somebody who has never been to a La Leche League meeting, what is the structure and the range of parenting experiences a new parent could expect to see? Especially in a diverse, liberal NYC-area community like ours?
Meredith: We are seeing everyone from people who are thinking about having a child – either by getting pregnant, or adopting, or whatever – all the way through people who have 5 and 6 year olds who’ve done extended breastfeeding and are ready to stop. An incredibly large range.
The structure is, basically, we give an opening welcome. We explain, “Here's what we do here, and here's our norms. We're gonna share the floor, and each person is not gonna take up too much space. You're welcome to share your experiences, but we're not really here to give advice for other people. Just let us know what's working for you, and what you're struggling with.” Then at the end, it's very much a play group. There's always babies and siblings, all welcome.
We meet in library meeting rooms, church libraries, synagogues, people's houses, parks—wherever we can find a space, basically. And it's also gone a little bit more virtual. Again, sort of like AA, you can always find an online meeting, so location doesn’t matter as much at this point. But as an international organization, we're really trying to figure out how to maintain that long-term connection between people in a community.
For example, after this interview, I'm heading to a friend's house, and she also has a 15 year old. We met at a La Leche League meeting when our kids were 3 months old. Since then we’ve made different choices, instilled different values and rhythms and norms for our families – for example, this friend that I'm going to see, she ended up homeschooling and moving to a very remote location – but when everything else is taken away, we’re still there for each other. That’s something really incredible and hard to find–long term friends for both us and for our kids and family.
Ryan: That is rare. What did that teach you about maintaining the friendships you make in the baby stage?
Meredith: It helps to meet in a group that is a source of both acceptance and support, one that sets people up to parent in a way that is intentional, that comes from what you want to do and what you feel is right. Rather than parenting using a sort of checklist mentality, where you’re meeting everyone else’s external expectations.
Ryan: As we both know, that checklist has no end. After you become pregnant, then it's about, What kind of birth are you having? Then breastfeeding becomes yet another test of your gender performance. The next test might be about assessing how adorably and photogenically you dress the baby, and then it becomes how you are choosing childcare or maintaining your home. It’s endless.
So with people who are in this pre-parenthood and postpartum place, it feels very important and liberatory to begin the work of turning inward and creating our own definitions of success, our own set of values and benchmarks, rather than constantly trying to keep up with other people’s expectations.
I also think this can set the stage for people to relate to their children differently, right? Somebody who's parenting with a checklist in mind for their child is a very different kind of parent than somebody who's parenting in a way where things are a bit more open-ended, where they’re teaching the child to attune to their own inner voice.
Meredith: There is something so comforting and grounding in that. In being around other people who understand that parenting is a journey, one on which you only have to decide what you're doing right now. You don't have to think about tomorrow. You don't have to think about a week from now. You don't have to think about when this kid is ten. Just right now.
Ryan: That also feels another potential point of connection to AA, and its focus on One Step At A Time. As well as the Serenity Prayer: “Grant me the serenity to accept what I can't change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Discerning the difference between what I can control and what I need to accept is something that you and I talk a lot about with parenting, too. As educators who have worked with a lot of children, we know there’s some stuff about caregiving that just is. Regardless of how well you're performing or not performing each item on the checklist. Regardless of how much money you have, how many barre workouts you are or are not doing, how good of a planner you are. All you can do is accept certain things. But then there's also parts where you have agency, agency that you may not always see sometimes.
Now that you've gone through the newborn-to-2 stage four times, what patterns do you notice in terms of what requires acceptance when you have a new baby, and where we may have more agency?
Meredith: You have to accept that you cannot get away from connection with your child or children. You can't escape it. You can try. But whatever happens, the connection’s just gonna be a different version of connection. And having that connection with someone that you're in charge of is really really tough. Because you feel so much responsibility for it. I think that's really hard for a lot of people. Many parents are quite shocked by what that actually is like in reality. There's no “easier” way to do it.
What are the parts that you can be more flowy about? Basically everything else.
Of course, sometimes that connection doesn't come naturally or easily, for a lot of us! Having four kids, it even now happens more naturally and easier for me with some of my kids than with others. But there's not a lot that you can do as a parent, if you start from connection, that you can mess up irrevocably.
Ryan: I can see how, if you hold this view, then relating to other new parents becomes easier, less competitive. You no longer have to feel so defensive about the specific choices you’re making. We’re all just trying to tend these sacred connections, with our own unique children, the best way we know how. That looks different for everyone, but the intention is often the same underneath.
Meredith: Yes. Right now, I’m enjoying a kind of second adolescence, figuring out who I am now that my youngest is in kindergarten—what I want to wear now, who I want to attract as a friend. But that’s built atop a foundation of understanding myself as a mother. I think when you have someone with a kid in that newborn to two phase, they're not there yet, right? That parent is not quite on solid footing in terms of this new identity. It can be almost like middle school, where we’re all trying to decide: Am I like them? Or am I like them? You don't understand yet that all of those groups are actually flexible and fluid at some point.
Ryan: No surprise, then, that as we cultivate our own community here at In Tending, it’s our goal to offer support for folks in all stages of caregiving, in that same space of radical acceptance and support. Because everyone, not just breastfeeding parents of newborns or Buddhist monks, deserves to have that kind of community.
THE PRESCHOOL YEARS
Ryan: I'd love to talk a little bit about the preschool years, ages 2-5 or so. In a way, they’re an extension of the newborn years, and in a way, they’re an introduction to the K-12 years.
When you have a preschooler you may still be breastfeeding them, or they may be well on their way to making their own PB&J sandwiches. Or both. You may still be in that space of like, “Holy cow, this is really intense and new,” and you may have some days where you think, “Hey, I’m really getting the hang of this!” Toddlers are not as fragile as babies, which can be a relief, but emotionally, they can be more demanding, which can be hard when you’re already sleep-deprived.
For a lot of parents, this age and stage also involves a transition to preschool. This means it’s the first time parents are getting substantive feedback on their child from someone outside of their families. Sometimes, that’s a positive experience. Oh, so and so is such a great artist! Sometimes, that involves getting a lot of feedback about how your child is not fitting the mold or measuring up in some way.
For me, as the parent of a neurodivergent child who did not fit the mold, those years were really intense.
It was during these years that we met, though, luckily, which made them better.
Meredith: Yes!
Ryan: To be fair, the school where we met was very open-minded and lovely in many ways. It had a diverse parent body, diverse staff, and a great nature playground. Everything a teacher-mom like me would want, on paper. However, on many days, the messaging still came down to, “Well, we still need him to put the tasteful wooden beads on the string, and he's not doing it. And we don't like that. Will you tell him he needs to do as he’s told?”
Fortunately, as an educator, I could say, “You know, I think this might be a can’t, not a won’t. He may have some fine motor issues getting in the way of him accessing your tasteful wooden beads activity. Why don't we have him evaluated to see if he needs occupational therapy?” It was, in many ways, like any other teacher-to-teacher conversation. And lo and behold, he had fine motor issues and qualified for free occupational therapy, provided by the school district.
For other parents, however, including my own partner, hearing that your kid is different, in a way that teachers consider negative, feels so shaming, and so isolating, especially if you don’t know of any other parents that are getting this kind of feedback.
I'm wondering how you’ve moved through this age and stage, having had four children go through their preschool years and being a leader at our kids’ school.
What did you need from preschool, in the beginning? What did you get? What did you not get? What are some areas of unmet need that you think remain for people with kids in this age bracket?
Meredith: I think there's this bridge from the birth-to-two stage to the preschool years where it gets real, right? You have a more developed identity as a parent. During that time, you’re asking yourself, “What kind of a system is my family going to operate under?” And then that system is tested when you put them in preschool.
I know a whole lot of preschools, and I know zero perfect preschools. In my experience there's no way of escaping the tension that comes when you hand your child over to a different institution. There will be boundaries there that you bump up against.
I have this very distinct memory of being told when my oldest was in preschool, that first week or two, “That's not how you're supposed to do it.” That was a very core memory. I remember where I was standing, even. And I remember being like, “Okay, that's not how we do it here. Big difference.”
Then I remember asking myself: “Do I want to be here? Do I want my kid here? If so, is this difference something I can accept? Is that something that I can talk to my kid about and say, ‘Hey, In different places, we do things differently’?” I had the kind of three year old who I could absolutely have that conversation with, and it felt like a good conversation to have. I was also able, as a parent, to hear what that other person was saying, and not take it as, “You're terrible if you're not doing this right.”
I think that there will always be those moments. We can't escape them. So the important part there is how we receive them, based on how kind of solid we are inside.
I think that where that work, the work of becoming solid inside, is really necessary in birth to two. We need for families and parents to understand where to look for information, to know the wide menu available, and to be making solid decisions, all before they go into an educational setting where they're going to have to receive all of this feedback. That way, you can think, “I agree with that. I don't agree with that.” We also need to know when it’s time to say, “Thanks for your time, this isn’t the right place.”
Of course, sometimes this choice isn't available for a lot of people, even though it should be. I ended up at that particular school because I had to pick up my own class as a teacher at 8am, and literally could find no other place to put my kid. I had to make it work, which is how I came to the understanding of, “Well, then, you're going to get all of me, and all of my kid. And we're gonna have a lot of conversations, educator to educator as well as parent to educator. And our kid will change in the way that we want them to change, and in the way that they want to change–and, you're gonna change in the way that you receive that, in a lot of ways.”
So I do think that the idea that you raise your kid, and you hold on to that agency even when they go into other settings, is incredibly important. Not just for you, your family, your kid, but literally for all of us. Like, I want your kid to stay your kid, because he brings something to the table that no one else can. Same with my kids, same with everybody's kids.
Thank goodness, at that time that was really welcomed and understood. I've been in other settings later, in that same kid’s educational journey, where that was not the case, and I was fighting against a brick wall. But for all involved, I think that discourse has to be expected.
We need for families and parents to understand where to look for information, to know the wide menu available, and to be making solid decisions, all before they go into an educational setting where they're going to have to receive all of this feedback. That way, you can think, “I agree with that. I don't agree with that.” We also need to know when it’s time to say, “Thanks for your time, this isn’t the right place.”
– Meredith Rodriguez
Ryan: I think that respectful, open discourse is what makes a school community ultimately workable. Heck, it’s what makes all kinds of relationships workable. By which I mean, you have to be able to ask yourself: can there be dialogue here? And then out of that dialogue can there be movement?
Meredith: Right.
Ryan: So in this case, a preschool parent needs to first be able to ask themselves, “Is this teacher, or this school, even receptive to feedback from me as a parent?” Because some teachers want all of the feedback, and some schools are incredibly accountable to their parent body. And at some schools, the principal doesn't ever pick up the phone, and in some classrooms, the teacher is really sort of a benevolent dictator, and parents are seen as foot soldiers who are there to carry out their commands. In these communities, any other kind of power relationship, any exchange between seeming equals, is really not welcome.
Obviously the latter situation is very tricky. If “our way or the highway” is the entire school’s approach, it can be difficult to have your child there. That said, I think it's inevitable that if you are not homeschooling your child, you will encounter many styles of holding power, even in very progressive institutions, that are unlike your own. Because most of us are products of a culture in which hierarchical power relationships is taught and encouraged and reinforced, and in which respectful discourse between equals is unfortunately less so.
So, in addition to asking themselves whether school can provide a place for respectful discourse and a sense of meeting parents halfway, parents, I imagine, may still need a third space where they get to process some of the challenges or questions that are coming up with their child’s school experience. Ideally, they’d have access to a community of fellow caregivers who can help them to think all of this through without really telling them what to do.
For example, in recovery communities, which we were talking about before, people will never explicitly tell you, “Yes, get divorced,” or “No, don’t quit your job.” They’ll simply remind you that your intention is to stay sober, and it’s your job to decide how to support that intention in your life.
In this case, that community of caregivers would remind you that your intention is to care for and connect to your child, and it’s your job to decide how to support that, and where school fits in.
These communities do exist, but in my experience, they’re rare treasures, rather than being something everyone can easily find and access.
Meredith: I don't know that I realized how important it would be for me as a parent to have multiple groups, multiple communities to rely on, during this age and stage.
I think especially here in this time and place, the sort of expectation is to find a school community that is your primary community. I have not found that. That was one of the reasons why I became the parent association leader. I knew that people would be looking for that. And, I concluded that is not a realistic expectation, to be honest with you. I'm super glad it brought us together. And I have met a couple of my other really good friends through my kids’ school. But they weren’t through the parents’ association. They were mostly made during those bristly parts, when I was feeling that sense of, “Yes, I'm having that same situation, too. How are you dealing with that? What's going on there?” If they were in different classrooms, we became friends by asking ourselves, “Is this a school culture thing? What's going on? What do we wish it was? And how do we deal with that?”
School is not my comfy place, and I’ve come to accept that. It's not that for my kids, either. And that's okay. We don't always have to be in our comfy place. The question is now: what community do we need outside of this school community to be able to be fortified, going into that situation? And what are we hoping to get out of it?
Ryan: I feel such relief to hear you say that. Even now, I’m realizing I still really long for my son's school community to help me to connect with other likeminded adults. But I agree that it feels as though that's more of a nice-to-have that arises spontaneously, rather than a realistic and set expectation to bring to all schools.
What you’re describing feels bit more like the set of expectations you’d bring to a workplace. You know you’re going to find some people you enjoy and connect with. But it won’t be all the time, and it won’t be with everyone. You also know that personal joy and connection may not be the main reason why you’re there.
In a way, the relationship between parent organizations and schools is very business-like. Often parents are understood to be primarily supporting the structure of power, either financially or in other ways, to sort of extend the logistical and financial capacity of the school, and to provide more resources for children.
Of course, sometimes parent associations can also support or convene a dialogue. For example, you supported me and a group of parents who wanted to push for more outdoor time at our school, and found a way to bring it up tactfully to the director. But even those conversations are primarily focused on making the community experience for children great. Not adults.
I wonder, if we knew our kids’ school wasn't going to fill our social vacuum as adults, if there might be a little bit more motivation with parents of children in this age group to create and sustain that elsewhere.
Meredith: Absolutely. And it is possible to find groups that want to do that outside of school. Library storytime, for example, can be a place where that happens, I think, or the playground you go to on a weekend morning. Back in the day, when my oldest two were toddlers, we created our own through meetup.com, and it was a really, really supportive group.
It’s not accidental, though, that when our kids went to kindergarten, we disbanded.
Ryan: Yes. It’s sad when that happens! Though I think with these containers, it's okay for them to be ephemeral. When we think about scaffolds in learning or building, we don't need the scaffolds forever. The scaffolds can come off when we've reached a certain level of sturdiness. But we can’t deny that when our kids are in preschool, we really need them.
I also want to point out that moms are not the only ones who need this. Male partners may even need it more! And they too can be the ones to create these inroads where they don’t exist. It’s not just up to moms to cook community up from scratch during the preschool years.
For example, my husband really needed a community when we became parents, and sought it out even before I did. He joined and became a facilitator of a dad's group. And fortunately for me, the kinds of dads that want to get together and talk about their feelings, unsurprisingly, have the most awesome partners. Those partners created their own literal sister group. And those became the people that got me through my preschool years, and that are still really walking beside me.
Now that my son is in kindergarten and we’ve moved, those scaffolds have come down – in part because our facilitator herself has gone back to teaching – but the stability they’ve provided remains a part of me and I think it always will.
WHAT STANDS BETWEEN AMERICAN PARENTS AND COMMUNITY?
Ryan: What gets in the way of everyone creating this kind of community, one that can hold new parents? You and I have talked about the fact that one common enemy of this kind of connection, in America at least, is busyness.
Meredith: Yes.
Ryan: Sometimes our lives are busy due to unavoidable factors – someone is sick, we’re moving, there’s a new member of the family. But sometimes our lives are busy because we’re still invested in a checklist approach to parenting that puts individual activities, often related to achievement, ahead of connection. The house is a mess, we're redoing our kitchen. So and so is doing travel sports, so we're gone all weekend.
In all fairness, I think many people put so many items on their checklists because they are seeking a deep sense of groundedness and belonging, and they want that for their children. But it feels like many individual pursuits and activities don’t actually scratch that itch. I think people don’t even always realize that simply building authentic connections would scratch it, for free.
Of course, there are people who do get it, who are “group people” like you and me. For example, I have so many teachers in the perinatal grief groups I facilitate. And it's not because only teachers are losing pregnancies! It's because teachers understand that when you get hurt, you need to heal in community, and when you heal in community, it’s really helpful to have a set of norms and someone to hold the space. They’re reaching out for the right medicine, and it’s so gratifying to see it working.
But for other modern parents, sometimes it feels like you have to put “community” on a spoon and make airplane sounds to get people to feel excited about taking the medicine. They’re suspicious, they’re resistant, they’re avoidant. I have all these other things to do.
Like you, I don’t like to be prescriptive when it comes to parenting, but I will say that I think we all deserve to have the necessary support to do the job. People have had a lot of community for millennia, up until very recently, and it is a vital support. Community really does deliver in that it will often make you feel better about all the stuff that you currently feel bad about. You can’t always say that about a kitchen remodel.
Meredith: In other countries, they do a lot of things right, in terms of conveying this message to new parents. They send the nurse to your house. They hook you up with a support group right away, whether you connect with it or not. The expectation is there.
In America, we have bounce-back culture. There’s a sense that you'll get back to what you were doing, and you'll just do this, too. That is false. You do not just do this too.
If you're expecting to be the same as you were, and be this new person, then you don’t go searching for community. You think, if I can just find the right planner, or if I can just find the right childcare situation, I can do it. You almost have this idea that you can—or you have to—remove yourself from the whole parenting gig and like, put it on autopilot, so you can go back to what you were doing before. But that's not life.
Ryan: Yes. It's a whole new way of living. It’s not possible to go back. So really where your agency lies is in deciding to support the person that you’re becoming, or to not support her. Community is one shape that support can take.
Meredith: Exactly.
Ryan: Related to what you were saying, too, about bounce-back culture – I think that the shock of new parenthood is still going on in the preschool years. People may even think in their minds, before they have a new baby, “Okay, well, this will be a big change, for one or two years, and then I'll go back to work when my kid goes to school, and then I'll bounce back to my prior body, and, and…” But it doesn’t always work out like that. And so the preschool years bring an unexpected wave of pressure we place on ourselves that isn’t necessarily even present when our kids are first born.
Speaking for myself, when I put my son in school, I had very unrealistic expectations of how much exercising and writing I would do in the few hours that he was away from me. Spoiler alert: I did not do those things to the degree that I thought that I would. I had to surrender to the fact that he still needed me, and that I was still undergoing a big change to my prior movement and creative routines that would not ratchet backwards.
Now that I’ve been a mother for five years, I’m more comfortable with centering the work I do as a mother, and letting other things I do unfold around that. I don’t mean this in a sort of subservient trad-wife way. I mean that it doesn’t make pragmatic sense not to center a role that is so non-negotiable anyway. Someone else can do my paid work if I’m sick. I can skip a workout or a Substack post. But as a parent, the buck stops at me. If I choose to arrange my life in a way that doesn't acknowledge that, then things fall apart anyway. So I might as well embrace that this is my life now, and then build my community supports in accordingly.
To be clear: it’s a good life. It’s the one I longed for, before I became a mother, and when I was struggling so intensely to become one. It helps, during the tough toddler years, to remember that too.
Interested in continuing the conversation? We are too!
As summer approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, we’re feeling called to shift our gathering time from the evening hours (as longer days often mean later bedtimes) to the mornings (when those of us in the U.S. are more likely to have at least half-day childcare).
Subscribers who care for kids five and under are invited to join us on June 10 at 10:30am EST on Zoom to discuss the insights in this interview, and other ways in which we can build communities (here at In Tending, and IRL) that better support young children and the grownups who love them.
In the coming months, we’re hoping to host a similar July gathering for people who care for kids in grades K-12, an August gathering focused on supporting neurodivergent kids and/or adults, and a September gathering focused on those of us who care for elders. Stay tuned for more info on that!
If you’re interested in joining us for any of our upcoming summer gatherings and connecting with like-minded caregivers — people who value introspection, honesty, laughter, connection, creativity, and social justice — please fill out this form so that we can send you the Zoom link, if you haven’t already.
Hope to see you this summer for one or all of the gatherings above!
I’m so glad that we have this conversation documented. Eager to include other voices as well!
I’m not a parent and this was a great convo! Thank you for the work you both do to care for the next gen!