Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
It's fall and many kids are headed back to school and they're on the hunt for the perfect book to read. Don't forget to check out our But Why book series. We have two books perfect for young readers about age 8 to 10. Look for Our Llamas Ticklish and Do Fish Breathe Underwater wherever you buy your books. And if you prefer to listen to books, check out the audiobook versions as well. You can find out more at butwhykids.org books.
But why is supported by Progressive? Progressive helps you compare direct auto rates from a variety of companies so you can find a great one, even if it's not with them. Quote today at Progressive.com to find a rate that works with your budget. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Comparison rates not available in all states or situations. More love is a good thing for everybody. And there cannot be too much. Music
This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids from Vermont Public Radio. I'm Jane Lindholm, and today we're going to talk about how families grow and change and what that feels like, the good and the confusing. ♪
Families. They can be complicated, especially when the family situation you're used to suddenly changes. Four years ago, I got a new big brother. That's Juna. She's eight years old, and she told us about her family at an event we had recently in Vermont called a listening party. We played episodes of the podcast, and we talked to lots of kids and families.
Here's more of what Juna told us about what it was like when her new big brother was adopted. He came from the same place that I was, but I barely knew him. So that was a new experience for me, to have a new big brother. First...
I didn't hang out with him and then he wanted to find new friends. He felt like he couldn't fit in so I tried to help him and so we became good brother and sister. And now I feel comfortable with him around now.
Families change in a lot of different ways. Some people, like Juna, get a new sibling who's actually older than they are. In other families, a new baby is born. That's what happened to Lila, who's six. Her mom is Melody Beaudet, who produces this show. And Lila has a three-year-old brother. And Lila has a three-year-old brother.
It was really exciting to have a new baby brother. Why? Because I would have someone else to play with. When did you realize that you loved your brother? When he was born because he was really cute and I loved him right away.
Penelope was pretty young when her little sister was born, so her memories are a little foggy. The only thing I remember from that day is that I ate cornflakes for breakfast. Sometimes she's annoying, but mostly she's a good sister. Deba is seven, and he has a little brother. He was adopted, though, and I'm adopted, too, and that's who I, that's the new sibling in my family.
Deba says he had mixed feelings when his little brother joined the family. Well, a little jealous because he got all the attention and kind of happy too. Those kinds of feelings of jealousy are totally normal and okay to have. And they show up in all kinds of family dynamics. Sometimes it's not a sibling at all who changes your family. Sometimes it's a new parent. I, for example, have four parents. My mom, my dad, my stepmom, and my stepdad.
And at the beginning, it was tough, not only because I had to get used to living in two different houses, but because it also meant that I had to get to know two new parents and figure out if I could love them all without making any one of them feel bad. Could I love my stepdad without making my father think I loved him any less? The lucky answer, for me anyway, was yes, I could. But one of the people who really helped me figure out my confusing feelings was a writer named Amy Bloom.
Sometimes reading other people's stories can give you some ideas about your own situation. Amy Bloom wrote a short story many years ago called Love is Not a Pie. It's a story for adults, not kids, but its message is one that I think will resonate with all of us. What she means when she says love is not a pie is that love doesn't have to be divided up like slices of apple pie. It can grow with each new individual person you decide to love.
I asked Amy Bloom to come on the show to talk about how she thought up the concept of love is not a pie. If there's any stage in our life in which it is true that love is not a pie, it's when we are kids. The way your life is and the way you are in the world and your role in the world, love does not have to be a pie. It may be difficult sometimes because what is required is when you're a kid to
to think about how you really feel and what you really want. And there may be times when what that is is I don't want to divide myself in any way. And other times where you feel like you got plenty to go around. So if you're a kid right now and somebody new is coming into your family, whether it's a new step parent or half siblings, or maybe your parents are having a new baby or adopting a new baby,
And you're worried about this idea that you might not get as much love from the people who've been loving you. How should you think about that? Well, I think there's a real difference between a new, very little person coming into the world and
And having to find your way in a relationship with a big person, with another adult. Because in my experience, what's hard for kids with a new grown-up, with a new step-parent or an older half-sibling, is finding your way in the relationship with a grown-up that you don't really know.
And you don't know how they feel about you. I mean, we certainly hope that they love you and like you, but you're both strangers. And part of the thing I think you worry about when you're a kid is how will dad feel about me liking, never mind loving,
This new guy, the stepdad, how will mom feel about it? How will I feel about it? How will my sister and brother feel about it that we have this new half-sibling who's 20 years older than we are? What kind of relationship is that? Sort of like an uncle, not really like a brother. And all of that's hard to figure out. I think that's why this idea that love is not a pie sometimes can help. The idea that you don't have to divide yourself up
And I think whether it's a grown-up coming into your life or a baby coming into your life, you don't have to divide yourself up. You can feel what you feel. And sometimes it's going to feel great. And if it's a baby, it can be awesome when you're holding the baby or looking at the baby or the baby smiles at you or says some kind of word to you.
And those are really wonderful moments, and you wouldn't want to miss out on those because you were in your room being mad. On the other hand, sometimes you have to be in your room and be mad and think to yourself, how come nobody's getting me breakfast? How come we ran out of cereal? How come everybody forgot that today was my little league game or my soccer game? Why were they so busy with the baby that they forgot? But the fact is, once in a while, they're going to be so busy with the baby that they forget. They don't forget they love you.
But the yelling baby with the dirty diaper is sometimes going to go to the front of the line, even though it would be nice if no one was ever in the front of the line in front of us. But that's not possible. Do you think it's okay to tell your parents if you're feeling worried about this stuff? I think it's really important to tell your parents. And I think one of the things, one of the ways that we show that we love people is we tell them.
We say, this doesn't feel so good, or I'm worried that when the baby comes there won't be enough time for me, or the baby is here and I'm really missing doing this thing that we used to do. And we love our parents and we don't want to make them unhappy, but it is important to tell them how we feel because otherwise they can't help. And it's also true that sometimes our parents are themselves unhappy
a little overwhelmed. Sometimes it's a little much for them, and they're going to ask for our help. And sometimes it feels great to be able to help. Sometimes it feels kind of like a lot of work to have to help. But either way, it's part of being in a family. Coming up, more with author Amy Bloom. This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids. I'm Jane Lindholm. Today, we're talking about what it's like when your family changes with Amy Bloom, author of Love Is Not a Pie.
I asked Amy how she came up with that idea. Well, I think what we all see, especially if you have a couple of brothers and sisters and somebody puts the pie on the table, once somebody takes a slice, there's less for everybody else. And my feeling is that love is not like that, that more love is a good thing for everybody. And there cannot be too much. If you have two grandparents who love you,
Four is also great. And you know what? Six isn't so bad, and even eight isn't so bad. Are you going to be able to see everybody the same amount of time? Probably not, because if you have eight grandparents and, let's say, four parents, your time is going to be divided up, even if the love is not. It's also okay to have preferences. To prefer one thing to another is not to turn your back on
On one thing, it's like you can like Disneyland, you can like the Epcot Center, and you can prefer Harry Potter. Doesn't mean Epcot is terrible. It just means if you only had four hours, you might prefer to spend them at Harry Potter.
And we don't usually say that to people directly. We don't say, hey, Grandma, you're really terrific. But if I've only got three days of vacation, I'd really like to be with Grandpa Saul in the big city. Because that would hurt people's feelings. But you can tell your parents. And if it's a question of having to divide your time with your parents, it's still okay to have a preference.
And it's okay to be clear that that's a preference. When you're a kid, one of the things that's really hard is you don't run the show. But one of the things that's also true when you're a kid is to recognize that grown-ups don't run the show as much as you think they do. Did you ever have an experience where you felt like you got to run the show a little bit, even when you were young? I wouldn't say that I was in a family in which children running the show was strongly encouraged. But I do remember, for example...
This was not so much about love, but about different ways that families approach things. I really wanted to ride a horse when I was growing up, and my mother found horseback riding very scary, and my father found horseback riding completely not to the point of anything. And I said to my mother for months, I'd really like to ride. I'd really like to ride. And she was like, okay.
And then finally I said, I really want to ride. And she said, you find a stable and you figure out how to get there and you can ride. And so I looked up a bunch of phone numbers. I found a stable. I looked up the bus route. I found how to get there. My mother did buy me a pair of boots and I went off and rode. And sometimes one of the things that we forget as kids is we also have access to information. We can look things up.
We don't have to just wait for our parents to make everything happen the way we want it to happen. Look things up. Get a little more information and help the grown-ups do what you want them to do. In terms of being divided up when I was a kid, I had a lot of aunts and uncles. And I can tell you, I certainly preferred going to the chicken farm than sitting around the one-bedroom apartment in the middle of Queens on a summer day.
But on the other hand, I preferred the grandfather who was in the apartment in Queens to the people who were at the chicken farm. And so for all of us, it's, well, I prefer this, but there's also that. And making decisions is part of how we grow up. Even when they're hard, even if we make what's not such a great choice, we learn from it. And it seems to me that
It's just like riding a bike. It's just like learning to ice skate. You make decisions. Some of them are good ones. Some of them are bad ones. And you learn. And if you're smart, you don't make the same one twice.
Amy Bloom says the most important thing she thinks kids should remember is that you should feel entitled to your own feelings and emotions. It's okay to feel things, and it's okay to have preferences. You can't always get your own way in a family, she says, especially when adults are in charge. But it's still important to know how you feel about things. So if you have a new sibling coming into your world, you may find that your parents and other adults have to divide their time up a little bit more.
But they don't have to divide up their love. They don't love you any less just because they love someone else. And you don't have to feel like you only have a certain amount of love to go around either. You can love lots of people, all different kinds of people. New siblings, new cousins, new parents. And you can care about lots of friends, too, without having to choose.
It's also okay, of course, to be an only child. Gretchen is seven, and she has no siblings. Well, at least no human siblings. I have a canine brother, which I call Grendel. Sometimes it feels lonely, but I have no one to bug me. Yes, it feels very nice. The book that includes the story Love is Not a Pie is called Come to Me. And again, it's not a book for kids. It's a book for adults.
But I've always thought about how Amy Bloom characterized love as a valuable idea to keep in mind when I've been in situations that have brought new people into my life. Speaking of new siblings, I'm going to have a new baby any day now. This new tiny person will join our family and have a two-and-a-half-year-old big brother. I'm sure my son, Dullen, will love the new baby, but also feel confused and sometimes sad and maybe sometimes angry that his parents' attention is divided.
But I hope he'll always know how much we love him. And I hope you are able to feel that in your family, too. And don't worry, but why? We'll keep going with new episodes every two weeks. In our next episode, we're answering a question from Sawyer, who wants to know... How does an engine work? So be sure to check back in in two weeks for an answer. ♪
But Why is produced by me, Jane Lindholm, along with Melody Beaudet for Vermont Public Radio. Our theme music is by Luke Reynolds. Thanks to Aaron Wirtlieb for helping us record comments at our recent listening party. Stay curious, and we'll see you soon.
