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Behavior
Analytic Autobiography: Jessica Irish
My Jewish Mother
Who is my Jewish mother?
I have been thinking about that question since the day we watched
the slide show on Dr. Malott’s Jewish
mother in class. At first I thought that maybe I don’t have
a Jewish mother. But then if that is the case, where did I get the
discipline, drive, and motivation to get this far and do so well
in school? So, after much consideration I have decided my father
is my Jewish mother.
My dad was somewhat discrete
with his molding me into an independent woman. There was never
a time when he told me that I had to do things on my own. Whenever
I asked for help in some area he would not jump up and help me
right away. He usually had some sort of suggestion on how I could
solve the problem another way, but still on my own. For example,
I am horrible at spelling and I’ve always been
horrible at it. When ever I had trouble spelling a word I would ask
my dad how to spell it. His response was always, “Go look it
up in the dictionary.” Now my thought on this was how are you
supposed to look a word up in the dictionary if you don’t know
how to spell it? There were times when I would spend half an hour
looking for a word like “entitled” because I thought
it started with an “I.” It was only after I had struggled
for awhile that he would give me a hint, but eventually I learned
to look in the dictionary before I went and asked him for help.
The other day in class
we talked about having stories read to you as a child. I started
thinking about that because I don’t remember
being read to as a kid. My memories are all of me reading to my parents.
I had gone though novels pretty quickly because I was to read at
least one chapter to my mom or dad every night before I went to bed.
To this day I still enjoy reading novels and if I have one around
the house, I read at least a chapter every night before I go to sleep.
I was talking with my
dad and a couple of my aunts this weekend about writing this essay.
We started talking about their lives growing up and what kind of
rules my grandparents had for them. My grandpa went into the military
when he was 18 and just recently retired. The military was a part
of his whole family’s life. There was
a strict order about everything. The house was always clean because
all of the kids had daily chores that were to be done, dinner was
on the table at 6 every night, homework was done as soon as you came
home from school, etc. When we started talking about the rules my
dad grew up with it all sounded very familiar to me because they
were the same rules that I grew up with.
School was always the
number one priority when it came to my siblings and me. The rule
was that as soon as you came home from school you started your
homework. You were not allowed to watch TV, go outside, and play
with your friends, etc. until your homework was completed. When
I was younger my dad checked my homework every night to make sure
it was completed, but as I got older he stopped checking it. Even
though he wasn’t checking it I made sure it was done because
I did not want to get in trouble because my teacher called to say
I wasn’t doing my homework.
If I were to break one
of the rules and get caught my dad never told me he was angry,
he was just disappointed. He being disappointed in me always made
me feel much guiltier then him being mad at me ever would have.
I always felt very guilty when I brought home a report card with
anything less than straight A’s on it. My
dad would look at the report card that had four A’s and one
A- and say “very nice, I’m proud of you, but what’s
with the A-.” He always said it in a loving/joking way, but
I always felt like I had let him down. My mom on the other hand,
would tell me not to be so hard on myself and to think about how
a C was “average” and even though I got an A- I was still
much better than the “average kid.” That usually did
not make me feel much better since none of my friends were getting
B’s or C’s either. So not only did I have to make sure
I didn’t disappoint my dad, but I had to make sure I wasn’t
doing any worse than my friends were.
My dad had a similar philosophy about sports as he did about school.
If you were going to do something, give it your all and do it right
the first time. I was a cheerleader for all four years of high school
and he never missed a football or basketball game I cheered at, and
he went to every one of my cheerleading competitions. He was always
there on the sidelines with his video recorder or at least his digital
camera.
My dad was never that dad that screamed and threw a fit from the
sidelines about their kid making a mistake or the coach not playing
them enough, and I thank him for that (if there were any of those
parents around he was usually the one who went over to them and told
them to shut-up and just let the kids play). However, he did make
sure that I worked hard at what I was doing. I had cheer practice
everyday after school. Then I would come home and do my homework.
Once that was done I worked on whatever I needed to for cheerleading.
He bought me a trampoline so I could work on my jumps. He paid for
tumbling lessons so that I could work on my back flips (a complete
waste on money, I never got any closer to being able to do them).
He also helped with every fundraiser we had so that we could pay
to go to the competitions and get new uniforms, etc.
I am grateful for my grandfather being so strict with my dad because
he ended up using the same techniques on me. I do not believe I would
have gotten as far or have accomplished as much as I have if my dad
had not been my Jewish mother. Because of him I work as hard as I
can and am not happy with anything less then my best work. Without
the fear of disappointing my dad, I probably would have slaked off
and became a bum. But instead, I am in graduate school working hard
towards my goal and working even harder not to disappoint the most
important man in my life, my Jewish mother, my dad.
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