Transcript
Apple Representative (0:00)
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Kathryn Burns (1:49)
From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Kathryn Burns and I'll be your host this time. The Moth is all about true stories told live. And this week we're going to talk about mothers. Every year Hallmark makes her queen for the day, but we hear stories about mothers and the act of mothering all year long at the Moth. And in this hour we're going to play you some of our favorites. Our first story is from the actress and writer Molly Ringwald. She told it at a show we did at the Carolina Theatre in Durham, North Carolina. Here's Molly Rewald.
Molly Ringwald (2:28)
Hi. So a couple years ago my family, my husband ponio and my 7 year old daughter Matilda and our 1 year old twins move into a new house in Los Angeles which is in the best school district in Los Angeles. My daughter Matilda up until that point was going to school in a very progressive, Montessori ish kind of school that was very far away. She quite liked it, but everybody kept Saying, why don't you have your daughter go to this school? It's an amazing school. Everybody moves into this area just to go to this school. So we thought about it, and about after a year, we said to Matilda, you know, Matilda, what do you think about going to the neighborhood school? It's supposed to be really good. And she said, no. And so we thought about it, and about a week later, we asked her again. She said, no. We kept asking her. She kept saying, no, no, no, no. But her father and I decided, we're parents, and we're going to make an executive decision. And we said yes. Matilda kept saying no all the way up until she actually entered the second grade. But we figured, you know what? She's young, she's seven years old. She's going to get over it. She'll adjust. We all did right the first week. We knew that something was wrong when her teacher said to us at the first week conference, you know, in all my years of teaching, which was 16 years, I've never had a child like Matilda. You know, sometimes somebody can say this about your kid, and you think, wow, that's amazing. But in our case, we knew it wasn't very good. She said, you know, she amended it and said, you know, maybe boys, but not girls. And we said, oh, all right. Okay, what's up? Gender bias. But we had to listen to what she had to say. She presented us with an index card that was clearly in Matilda's handwriting that said, you're pretty short and little for a second grader, which I thought was sort of alarming, until I realized that it was actually written to a little boy. And I thought, she's flirting. I did that until I was well into my 30s. But then there were other things that we really couldn't ignore. She told one girl that she. She had a pretty awful name, but that she could change it when she turned 18. And then there were other incidences. When she would get mad if she thought somebody was laughing at her, she would throw a sharp pencil at them. Or sometimes she would go up to their desk and just tear up their work. So it was clearly a problem. And then they would give. In schools, in public schools, at least in Los Angeles, they do this thing called a reflection chart. And what it is, is they tell the child to explain what they did and why they did it and how they felt. And then the next part is how the other child might have felt. And that's to instill some kind of empathy. And what Matilda would write in the space was, blah Blah, blah. And translated, that's the eight year old version of fuck you. So Ponny and I, my husband started to talk to her and it verged on pleading, where we said, matilda, this is your first year at this school. If you keep doing this, you won't have any friends. And Matilda looked at us straight in the eye and she said, I don't need any friends. I don't want any friends. And this was very alarming to both of us. About, I would say maybe a week went by. It was probably about a week before Matilda and Ponyo and I both got hauled into the principal's office. And I can tell you that I never in my life had been inside of a principal's office, only in a movie. In fact, there was a scene in Pretty in Pink where I got called into the principal's office and that was my only experience, and the same with my husband. And we were both such goody two shoes as kids, you know, And Matilda's there with her feet up on the desk and the principal excuses her from the office and she talks with my husband and me and she says, you know, Matilda's a very bright child. She's very observant in my opinion. She's highly gifted, she's very funny. But if she continues this mode of behavior, I'm afraid that people are going to see her as a bully. And I can't tell you what that word meant to me because, you know, I basically made a career out of being the girl who stood up to bullies in movies. You know, all those movies, I think they really spoke to people because everybody has been bullied in one way in their life, but I was the girl who stood up to them. And it really meant a lot to me. And not only that, but I was actually bullied in my own life. In seventh grade, I had this bully, this eighth grader named Shirley Panini. That's not her real name, but it's really close. And I didn't even know who she was. She just showed up. I would walk down the hall and there she would be in her little Dutch boy haircut. And she would say, ringwald, I'm gonna kick your ass. After school, after school, I'm gonna kick your fucking ass. And I had no idea who this girl was. I just knew that she didn't like me for some reason. And she really scared me. And she scared me to the point where I told my parents that I wasn't going to go back to that school. They could drop me off at school and I would wait until they left and then I would leave. And I think my parents knew that I was serious because I left that school. So when I heard that word bully connected to my daughter, I thought, this is impossible. I know my daughter and I know what a huge and sensitive and compassionate heart she has. I mean, this is a girl that. When I put my father's teddy bear. I don't have very many things that belong to my father. So this was very precious to me. I put my father's teddy bear in the washing machine and. And all the stuffing came out, but I didn't realize it. I opened the machine and all I saw was stuffing. And I thought that I'd killed my father's bear. And I was devastated and I burst into tears. And Matilda saw me, came running out and offered to empty her piggy bank to get me another teddy bear because she could see how much it meant to me. I knew that. I knew Matilda and I knew that the school could not see into the heart of Matilda, but I could. And I needed to figure out what was wrong. So I went into this frenzy of self help books. I stayed up all night on Amazon getting books like your Defiant Child, your Edison Trait Child, your Trauma of the Gifted Child, and what to do when your child doesn't have all the Answers. I did everything I could. I went down this rabbit hole of child therapists and child psychiatrists and educational therapists. I even considered biofeedback. Anything to bring my lovely child back to us. One of the things that I decided to try was a social skills class because it was recommended to me, this class at a college, and it seemed like a good idea. And I presented it to Matilda and she said, no. And I said, too bad you're going. So we were in traffic for a long time, took us a long time to get there. And Matilda and I have this deal where she gets to listen to one K.E. song and I get to listen to one Ella Fitzgerald song. And then we have to listen to something that we both like. And in this case, it was a show called Radiolab. I don't know if many of you know Radiolab, but it's a fantastic show. I like to call it this American Life for Science. And it's a show that really speaks to both of us. And this particular episode was about zoos. And Matilda is a big animal lover. She really feels very comfortable in the company of animals and really cares about them. So I thought it would be a really good thing to listen to. And this particular part of the show had to do with gorillas. And before the 70s, gorillas didn't have. They were just in these concrete boxes in zoos and they were slowly going out of their minds. And this one man took it upon himself to change all that and to really give gorillas the habitats that they needed in zoos. And so Matilda and I are listening to this and they're describing this gorilla, the first time he sees sky in his life. And everybody, you know, the zookeepers and the specialists and the architects, everybody is standing on the other side of the glass watching this gorilla. The gorilla is just going to absolutely lose his mind. But he looks up at the sky and then he touches his hands to the grass, which he's never felt in his life. And he's closing his eyes and he's feeling the wind on his fur for the first time. And while I'm listening to this, I'm looking at my daughter in the backseat and she's mirroring everything that this gorilla is doing. She's looking up, she's closing her eyes, she's feeling her face, she's touching the seed as though it's grass. And I realize that my daughter is not in her habitat. And as her mother, I vowed that day that no matter what, I would find her habitat, I would find a way for her to thrive. And I can't tell you all the ways that I did it, but I pretty much made it my full time job this year. And a few weeks ago, I was on the playground watching Matilda hang upside down on the apparatus. They used to call it the jungle gym, but now they call it the apparatus. And she's hanging upside down with her legs locked with a girl. And this mother comes running up to me and she says, molly, Molly, you don't know me, but I need to talk to you about Matilda. And I thought, oh my God, you have to ruin this moment. I'm watching her. Really, you have to talk to me about Matilda. I said, what? What about Matilda? And she said, I just want to tell you that my daughter, Hannah loves your daughter. And I said, oh, really? Why? I love her, but why does she love her? And she said, hannah loves her because she said that she stood up for her on the playground and she wants to know if Matilda can come over for a play date. And so I told her that we would be happy to and we would be there with bells on. Thank you.