Parenting Yin Yang

Years ago, I had the opportunity to take the Rorschach inkblot test as part of my company’s management- assessment program. The famed exam is administered by showing a series of cards with randomized inkblots to the test taker and the subject is asked to interpret them. There is no right or wrong answer, but it can be very revealing about personality characteristics and emotional state.

I recall looking over each card with the company proctor and taking my time in providing very vanilla answers. However, I had an immediate visceral reaction to one card in particular and I remember it to this day. In my mind the blot clearly illustrated “two girls with pony tails on a seesaw.” The administrator and I both laughed knowingly after my response.

The word seesaw is derived from the French ci-ca, meaning literally, this-that. I certainly did not need a trained psychologist to tell me why I had interpreted a random drawing so surely and distinctly. At that point in my life, I was a young mother already struggling with how to maneuver through the world of child-care, quality family time, work effort and guilt.

This, that. Push, pull.

I was at the front end of a social phenomenon that remains unabated: work-life balance. 

For more on Yin Yang and parenting read the rest of the blog post at http://permissionslips.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/yin-yang-and-yoga/. My friend and colleague and I take turns updating our Permission Slips blog each week.