No One Is Obligated To Have A Second Baby
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STFU Parents: On Crushing Children’s Spirits — And Their Parents’ Spirits, Too
This just in from the WTF Are We Teaching Our Children files. Blame the media, blame the parents, blame cultural messages but please blame somebody or something. Because there is no reason why children as young as four should be eschewing friends based on their weight.
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I’m often irritated when I hear parents talk about having a second child like its an obligation. What irritates me more is when parents rationalize having a second child before their financially or emotionally ready because “Little Johnny wants a sibling.” It’s a cop out. It’s an excuse to do something you don’t have the discipline to wait/prepare for, while putting the onus on a child that wouldn’t know a baby brother or sister if it jumped up and bit them in the diapered behind. More
If you’ve ever heard the expression “crushing children’s spirits” and rolled your eyes, then today’s column is for you! (Conversely, if your response to that expression is, “Hear hear!”, then today’s column will probably piss you off.) It’s no secret that watching a child experience disappointment can be harder on the parents than on the child, because children represent all that is pure and innocent. Kids don’t know the cold realities that lay ahead; they’re just taking in the world through a neon green swizzle straw! But the fact is, kids will experience disappointment in the real world, and their parents can’t protect them forever.
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When I was a child, I loved school. I loved high school. I loved university. I loved writing essays and taking tests. I even loved studying. My daughter however does not like anything about school. She doesn’t like homework. She doesn’t even seem to like learning in a classroom setting. She would rather read books on her own. Ask her any fact about any animal and she will be able to tell you. In short, she does not like school! More
Bullying in schools can leave a lot of parents feeling utterly helpless. It’s probably the first time in the child’s life in which mothers and fathers can’t necessarily get up in the bully’s face and be like, “you said what now?” Unless your mom is Jill Trahan-Hardy. And then that’s definitely what’s happening. More
Number two is on the way – soon. I’m due in less than a week. Lately I’ve been wondering – will I automatically be a pro this time around because I have done it all before? Yeah – I don’t think so. I’ve often wondered why I have such an inferiority complex about motherhood, and I think I’ve finally figured it out. Everyone else is just doing waaaaay too well. Stop showing off ladies – give the rest of us a break. More
My fiancé has told me numerous times that if his children do something I don’t like when they are with us, then I can, and should, say something to them. Which is good in theory, but in practice, I just can’t do it. More
The twin playgroup I joined when my twins were about 10 months old turned out to be a lifesaver for me, and six years later I’m still in contact with all the original mothers. Our group consisted of seven mothers and 14 babies, so there was never a dull or quiet moment. There were actually so many unfinished conversations that we’d often have a follow-up group email afterwards, giving everyone a chance to finish the thoughts that had been interrupted by a fall, a bite or a diaper change. More
Since suffering through that impossibly difficult first year with a challenging baby, I have never really allowed myself to get into a groove as a mother. This isn’t a sob story about how kids constantly change and ruin your perfectly laid plans. I gave up those expectations years ago. I have learned to really go with the flow in practice. Yet in my mind, I find myself always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Four years and two kids later – despite many more good days than bad – I constantly wonder “when is it going to be like that again?” More
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We grew our vegetables in the garden, and she canned them, standing over steaming pots in late August, so we had super-local produce all winter. She taught me how to tie my shoe, how to knit and sew, how to play cribbage. She did the latter well enough that my husband refuses to play against me now. We took the odd day off of school to take the T into Boston and visit the Museum of Fine Arts and have tea. My mom helped my dad gut and renovate a 75-year-old house themselves, with little kids in tow, and we were cloth diapered and she used the clothesline and yes, I realize that this all seems made up, because who really does this? More
My mom hated the concept, and still does, of ANY extracurricular activity—if and when I joined anything—and my track record (never actually ran track) was pretty modest. Anything I wanted to do: build sets for drama, enter the science fair, try out for tennis, or simply peddle cookies; well… I had to work hard on the PR angle and make Mom see that it was worth our time.
“Kids need to just be,” she’d insist and still does, especially now that her grandchildren are heavy into piano lessons. More
Right now my daughter is obsessed with Finding Nemo. At 27 months, she doesn’t get why my husband and I cry during most of the movie. Experiencing the devastating story of losing a spouse, having your child taken, and having to let that child go back into the wide world as soon as you recover him, probably makes us pretty average parents. But it’s the movie’s final lesson I find especially wrenching: that our children are supposed to leave us, that leaving is normal, healthy, and necessary. I don’t ask my own mom to help me prepare for my daughter’s departure because my mom has never come to terms with my leaving her. More
There was one winter we lived for months with no gas, meaning we didn’t have central heat, because we didn’t have the money to get it reconnected. Meanwhile, my mom was working through the emotions of a failed marriage and had no one to talk to.
She and I have always been close, and so she turned to me to vent her worries and frustrations about money or my dad. I didn’t have the words at the time to tell her that she was giving me a burden my small shoulders weren’t strong enough to bear. More
People were shocked when Chicago passed a bill approving a sex ed program that starts in kindergarten. Apparently a lot of us think kids would be better off if we waited to have “the talk” when they’re ready — presumably just before they hit puberty, and long after they’ve already learned everything they should (or shouldn’t) know on the school bus. But to me, the only shocking thing about the Chicago program is the fact that it waits until kindergarten. Kindergarten is not too early to start talking about sex. If anything, it’s too late. More
