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As Christmas approaches, I have noticed a trend on the various parenting sites/blogs/etc. Everyone is complaining that kids are too materialistic, that christmas lists are out of control and that TELEVISION is the culprit.
TV has been cast as the demon in most plays about childhood. The AAP recommends no screen time whatsoever before a child is two and afterwards to limit it to a few hours a day. Parents blame commercials for making their children want toy X or food X. I’ve seen TV get blamed for making our kids more predisposed to ADHD. It’s to blame for childhood obesity. In short, if there were no tv, the world would be a better place-our kids would be smarter, have better attention spans and never crave another piece of useless plastic crap.
I call bullshit.
As the parents in the house, you have choices….
- You can get rid of the tv (and give up watching tv yourself to set the good example–but seriously how many of you are going to do it?)
- You can buy a tivo and teach kids to skip through commercials
- You can let them only watch shows on channels that don’t have commercials
- You can let them only watch shows on dvd
- With kids as young as 4 or 5 you can watch the commercials with them and educate them to be smart consumers as well as educate them to the purpose of a commercial–to dazzle you into buying something you didn’t know you wanted
- Or you can do none of the above and just whine about how long your kid’s xmas list is online….
But none of that is going to divest your child of desire for things
When I was an undergrad, I had a professor who always said that history was about three things; SEX, FOOD, and STUFF. Humans crave sex because we’re hardwired to do so. Humans crave food because we require it to continue functioning. Humans crave stuff because we are aquisitive. When you heap shame on your kids for doing what we as a species naturally do and what we as adults do, we’re becoming hypocrites.
Granted, if you ask an adult what they’d like for a holiday or their birthday they’re going to think about you, your realtionship to them, your financial situation and come up with several well calibrated choices. They’re not going to look you dead in the eye and ask for a pony because their brains are developed enough that they can understand that a pony or a horse costs a great deal of money to purchase, to stable, to feed, to provide medical care for, to equip and a great deal of time to keep exercised, including paying someone else to exercise the animal when you can’t.
Children aren’t there yet. Children are often 10 or 11 before they can “step into someone else’s shoes” and see an argument from a perspective or opinion that is not their own. Some reach it earlier, and some reach it far later. They are still very much creatures of impulse…they see it and they “need” it and then they never play with it again. I see it all the time with Elanor, who can not walk past a build a bear without wanting to go in and wanting a bear…and after too many animals have come home and never been looked at again (hint–a LOT) I have learned to ignore it.
Beyond that, with the Christmas list for the very young, they’re not asking their parents…they’re asking SANTA who can make any damn toy he wants. The condition is that you just have to want it badly enough, right? So yeah, kids Christmas lists are long and they’re full of unrealistic expectations. CHILDREN are full of unrealistic expectations–but do you actually sit down and explain to your five year old that no, she can’t be a stay at home mom, a brain surgeon and an astronaut concurrently? No, you say that’s wonderful…I bet you can do it if you want to!…knowing that as she matures she’ll figure out the right course her life will take. The same is true with Xmas lists…no one is going to kick down your door for not buying everything on the list. It’s a list, not a mandate. Buy them the three things you think they’ll actually play with or really love or whatever and fill in some gaps. Pay attention to the toys your kids gravitate to over and over that didn’t make the list…I often forgot to put something I seriously was interested in on the list, instead putting flashy crazy expensive stuff on mine instead.
I think though, the thing that bothers me most about the tv causes rampant consumerism argument is how hypocritical it is. None of us are free from things we want or aspire to. I aspire to a 3,000-4,000 square foot house with a three car garage and a pool. It will probably never happen and I won’t be any less fulfilled whatever home we do eventually buy, but I will have that desire. My next car is likely going to be a hybrid sedan that can fit two carseats (NO, NOT PREGNANT, NOT TRYING…just likely that before E is out of one that we will be trying or have #2) instead of the sexy convertible that is beyond impractical in the Northeast. Sure, I’d love a sweater, but not as much as I’d love a full time housekeeper. A weekend away from the baby in CA? Great, but not as awesome as a week in Hawaii. The difference between our wants and those of our kids is that we know we can’t put our big unrealistic dreams on a list and hand them to someone and say “I want this stuff.” In many cases, what we want also isn’t advertised on tv. I can’t recall the last commercial I saw for a new Anne Bishop novel; which is a realistic item on a gift list of mine, but not one that’s shown in commercials.
For the record, using tv as your whipping is boy is like abusing a friend. You take them in public and whip the skin from their back and then take them home and whisper sweet nothings in their ear. Too often we want it both ways. To our children it’s this dangerous drug, but for us it’s a benign pastime. You really can’t have it both ways. The whole argument about you could be doing something better? Applies to adults as well as kids. But if you’re going to sit on the couch and let your ass spread, then you’re not really the one to lecture your kids. Lead by example.
Which brings me to a final point. Television isn’t necessarily a BAD THING…
When Elanor was only a month old and had been home from the hospital (the second time) only a few days, she was taken to her granparent’s home specifically to watch television. To watch football with her daddy. Ravi was still very unnerved by our delicate daughter and was not ready to take independent charge of her. BUT the thing he’d been dreaming of since we talked about kids was sharing his love of football with our daughter or our son. She already had a Dolphins (yes, the local team is the Patriots, and it’s a LONG story) jersey and even though she slept through all but five minutes of the game, the act of having her next to him and pointing at the tv and explaining things to his sleeping daughter brought Ravi and Elanor closer together. I now let Elanor watch a little Sesame Street most days, and yes it has brought Elmo into our lives (roll eyes) but we he talked about hands she clapped them with him. I picked up spanish from Sesame Street long before Dora had even been thought up.
Yes, Ravi and I watched FAR more than our fair share of tv growing up, but we were both also voracious readers. Yes I wasted hours watching Jem and She-Ra…but the first fed my love of music and the second was the first ass kicking woman I’d see on tv. I was happy when there was a new episode of Punky Brewster, but far moreso when a new Babysitters Club book came out.
Taking away the tv may achieve some goals in the short run, but in the long run it can also be harmful. One of my best friends only got two hours a week or something like that and it had to be educational. When other people our age start connecting over tv from our youth, she feels out of place and excluded, although we never meant to. She doesn’t get a lot of cultural references. She lost out, to some extent on the cultural lexicography of the 80’s.
Look, it’s all about moderation. TV is not TEH EVIL. Having a long Xmas list is not TEH EVIL. Sure, kids are more susceptible to the allure of commercials…so you have to teach them how to be a smart consumer, and you’ll be surprised how quickly the commercials lose their appeal. Kids get angry because someone is trying to fool them, which is what a commercial does. You can set limits; on television, on Xmas lists. You can talk to kids about being realistic when they’re 5/6. Dudes…you’re the parents, you get to make the rules.
But don’t do nothing and blame tv for the list….that’s just lazy.
Two days ago I decided to do something radical. Something daring. Something that might drive me to an insane asylum…
I decided that it was time for Elanor to give up her bottles.
She is almost 13 months old, and all the books say that once a baby can drink from a sippy cup, the bottle is just a crutch. She’s been able to drink from a sippy for a while, although it took a lot of trial and error to find one that really worked for her. We had done that, and I had done a test run where she got the sippy all day, and she was fine.
The older a kid gets, the harder it is to ditch the pacifier/bottle, and that’s how you end up seeing 3 and 4 year olds running around with bottles and pacifiers, which along with 4 year olds in strollers is a HUGE pet peeve of mine.
I had also begun to notice that while she used to not care about going to bed with a bottle, it had become a necessity, which was not a good thing.
So on Monday I took away the bottle.
Night one went okay because she was exhausted.
Night two became a battle of wills sometime around fuck all o’clock in the middle of the night. She cried, I went in and gave her a sippy with some milk in it. She threw it. She cried. I gave her the sippy. She sucked a few times to moisten her vocal cords, then threw it so that she could recommence screaming. We cuddled in a chair and she finally drank from the sippy. I put her back to bed and listened to her cry for a good 10 minutes.
I didn’t get back to sleep for another half hour while I questioned my decision, my parenting skills (or lack thereof) and tried not to cry myself. I don’t do so well at fuck all o’clock in the morning….
When we woke up again at the far more civilized hour of 9:30 (still early for us, though) she was her bright shiny self. Obviously my parenting has damaged her and she’ll never recover…
It’s a lot like ferberizing…it’s a crappy short run tradeoff for a great long term result. But, also like ferberizing, it’s not right for every parent or every kid. If it really hadn’t worked for E, we would have given her the bottles back. But as it is working, and she’s just having some growing pains when we don’t give in and let her have her way, I’m going to settle in for the test of wills.
We are now coming up on night three…wish me luck. Or if not luck, a pair of earplugs and a fifth of vodka would be welcomed.
If I may, a tale of two libraries…
The two towns are similar in size and socio-economics. One town is close to a major city, the other about a half hour farther away. Both have libraries, and both libraries have children’s sections.
Library A has a weekly story time for ages 2 and up. There is a once a month story time geared for the 0-1 and 1-2 sets. There are some board books, but almost none. The librarian is an middle aged woman who sits at the desk and glares at the children. On several occasions when approached for help, it has seemed like she was doing me a huge favor. When asked what time the weekly story hour was, I was told that my child and I were not welcome as Elanor is not 2 yet. I wondered aloud if I would have to present her birth certificate or how they were going to determine who was 2 and who wasn’t.
Library B has a weekly story time. There are two cases with just board books. The librarian is a middle aged man who welcomes the children by name. When meeting a new child, he introduces himself and whips out his slide whistle to play them a little song. Everyone is welcome for story time.
Unfortunately Library A is my town library and Library B is where my friend lives.
I have been planning to talk to the head of my town’s library for some time. The culture of the children’s room, as it currently stands, is that babies and younger toddlers are NOT welcome. The age restricted story time insinuates that they don’t believe that children are capable of becoming interested in books at a young age, or that they are not interested in being part of the effort in making children interested in books. The dragon-lady librarian is not going to get anyone excited about reading–although she’s definitely a woman who’ll shush you in a heartbeat.
This is such a contrast with my childhood. Sure, it was 30 years ago, but I remember our weekly trip to the library as a HUGE deal. I knew the librarians by name (Mr/Ms whatever) and they knew me in turn. My mom found community and support from other moms at story time. All of these, combined with an innate love of stories is what helped me become an active reader.
I’m lucky in that I can afford Mommy & Me classes…to pay for community, as it were. But for many other new moms, especially as we head into the winter months, community is hard to find. A story hour is one of those places, and I feel like my town is doing the exact opposite thing it should. There should be a weekly story time that is all-ages (I mean, what happens if I have a three year old and a six month old–am I supposed to leave them in the car so that there isn’t a six month old in the same room as two year olds?). There should also be space for more community building (a new parent support group, perhaps…a volunteer could lead it) for new parents.
Early literacy is key to academic success. Not all parents are good readers themselves (I had a parent who named her child “Jeremiah” and misspelled it on the birth certificate…not to be all adorable…but because she genuinely could not spell it) or can read in English. Story time at the library creates a space where they can bring their children to encourage early reading.
There are many ways in which I am underwhelmed by my local library, but the active dismissal and disinterest in helping our youngest town citizens develop a love of reading is shameful.
I couldn’t be prouder of Will Phillips if I were his mom…
He is refusing to stand for the pledge of allegiance because gays and lesbians do not have access to liberty and justice for all. He got in trouble for it, and is taking abuse from his peers about it, but still he refuses to stand.
As an atheist and someone who stands for the LGBT and pro-choice communities we will be talking about the pledge with Elanor from a young age. We will allow her to choose what she wants to do during the pledge, but we will make sure that she knows her options.
Tuesday I found myself the only mom in the room again, but in a much different way.
Elanor and I went to the mall to pick up the portrait art I’d bought as part of her first birthday picture package. When we arrived, it was pretty dead, and Elanor wandered over to the room where the last two times we’d gone to the studio, she’d had her picture taken, expecting to get it taken again.
“No, sweetie, no pictures today,” I told her.
“Actually, X is new here and needs to practice. We’ll trade you a free 8×10 for a photo session with X, if you think Elanor wouldn’t mind,” the manager said.
“Um, sure…” I said.
Never have I been so happy about my anal retentive need to dress my kid in a cute outfit head to toe (well, her sneakers aren’t that cute, but they’re there for orthopedic reasons, so we live with them). She had on a black turtleneck, a red sweater with ladybug pockets (Flitter Flutter line from Gymboree, found at a consignment store for $4…retail price last winter was something like $30) and matching jeans with little ladybug buttons down by the hems (same consignment store, maybe $5, retailed last winter for $30…I WIN at shopping).
So they do the 30 minute or so photo shoot with her, and then go back to select which photos they want to use as part of the whole “practice customer” experience. This usually takes around 10 minutes and they are right next door to the play area, so we head over there.
There are 3 other women whom I’d judge to be in their mid to late 20’s, possibly early 30’s. Four other small kids are running around. I assume they’re the moms, until I overhear the following…
“You’re full time?”
“Yeah. The dad’s a federal judge and the mom’s a trial lawyer, so they’re really busy.”
I continue to eavesdrop on the nannies, and hear about the dad who sees his kid maybe twice a week because he comes home after one am regularly. I hear about the mom who’s so into her job that the nanny is the one to get the kid up and put them to bed EVERY DAY. I hear about 60 hour weeks. I hear about parents who aren’t “that into” their kids.
Now, I read The Nanny Diaries, and I taught in at least one school where the per capita was high enough that I had one parent teacher conference where the nanny was brought in so that she “could be on the same page as us,” so I’m not naive enough to think that these parents didn’t exist. But looking at the brunette cherub of a little kid, I can’t imagine wanting to have so little involvement in my child’s life as the parents the nannies are describing.
I trade smiles with the nannies, none of whom have spoken with me as I pick up Elanor and take her back to the portrait studio to pick up my free 8×10…and the other pictures I couldn’t possibly walk out of there without (it’s not my fault…they put a SANTA HAT on my child….A SANTA HAT…and let her play with ORNAMENTS…) and gave her an extra tight hug to let her know how much I love her.
*************
Before anyone accuses me of slamming working moms…SO NOT what I’m talking about here. MY mom was a working mom. She worked full time almost my whole life (with a short exception when I was a baby, and obviously which I don’t remember) but she always made a point of making some time for me. Sometimes it was a weird time of day because she had a strange schedule (she’s always had “blue collar” jobs like cashier at a grocery store or cook at a fast food restaurant, and sometimes she took classes at a community college) but she was THERE.
I fully believe you can be a full time mom, even with a full time nanny, and be a super involved and caring mom. BUT when your nanny works from the time the kid wakes up until the time the kid goes to bed SIX days a week, ask yourself how involved you really are.
Two things have made me feel old and crotchedy this week, even though I have only just turned 31.
The first thing to set of my radar is all this sudden talk of candy buy back programs. In the past several days I have gotten three separate emails from stores offering us 25% off a toy or a special treat if we take our candy into them during the week following Halloween. Many mom bloggers have also mentioned the whole candy buy-back thing.
I’m sorry, but WHAT?!!!???
In my day we trick or treated, brought home our candy, and spread it out to admire and gloat over. The next school day we took in the stuff we didn’t like and traded furiously to acquire stuff we DID like. We then went on a sugar binge that lasted until the tryptophan in the Thanksgiving Turkey finally put us to sleep, and all the adults around us (with the possible exception of our dentists) seem to agree with us that this was the normal progression. Although I have been far too old to trick or treat for years (SAD), I still believe that this is the God Given Right of every child in the US (and anywhere else that celebrates Halloween with trick or treating).
Now, I realize that the 80’s were this CRAZY decade where parents let, nay ENCOURAGED children to eat junk food like McNuggets (invented in the 80’s, baby!) and sugary breakfast cereals handed out toys in the box and fruit roll ups and other sugary snacks advertised right there on the television. Oh, and Cookie Monster? NEVER would have touched fruit with a 10 foot pole…even a 10 foot pole made of cookies.
Today we’re all worried about childhood obesity blah blah blah…but seriously people? It’s Hallo-fucking-ween!!! Let them eat their candy. Save the hummus and the pita bread and the soy nut butter for November 2nd, kay?
Item number two on my Halloween grinch list…my apartment building. I live in a “luxury” apartment building. This means no one has a mat outside their door, the hallways all look like a Stepford hotel, and there’s zero personality in the building. It also happens to mean living on a busy street where we can walk to public transit and tons of restaurants, and we have underground assigned parking and don’t have to shovel out our cars through a hellish New England winter-YAY. I wasn’t shocked, although I was irritated to hear that we wouldn’t be allowing the ruffians who don’t live here into the building to trick or treat because that’s precisely the sort of NIMBY-ism I see all the time here (NIMBY-not in my back yard). But then I was also told that children who live in the building also were not allowed to trick or treat. There is also no building sponsored party or any sort of consolation prize. Guess we’ll have to go out and trick or treat with the plebians, where we belong.
I made a point of telling the building manager that this is the sort of subtle snub that our property has engaged in time and time again that has made it clear that children are tolerated, not welcomed. Which is a shame as there are plenty of lovely people in the building who have been nothing but sweet to my daughter, including in the office. But they just can’t be bothered to make kids welcome, even as their parents pay a monthly rent double my friend in Florida’s mortgage.
These are small things in the grand scheme of things…it’s not like we were going to do real trick or treating with E this year anyways. We figured 3-4 doors and that was it. Just enough to take some pictures, have some fun, and then come home to hand out candy…the latter which we apparently won’t be doing now. More than likely we were also planning on a different apartment for next year…underground parking is all well and good but I loathe the wall to wall carpeting and we could easily save up to 500+ a month in rent by moving someplace cheaper.
What really bothers me is how parents seem to be intent in robbing children of the fun of childhood. They worry about the food the children are eating and some schools have eliminated band candy and bake sales…some going so far as to ban the beloved cupcake. Parents worry about safety to the point of hovering over their children well into the college plus years creating young adults who have no independence or problem solving skills. Parents worry about bumps and bruises and keep their kids in the stroller until age 4 or older in the mall (while my not quite 1 year old has walked on the last two trips…we have the stroller, but she’s not in it). Parents structure time until kids have no time alone to just play or be bored…for that matter if kids are bored parents feel pressured to find something for them to do (my response will always be if you’re bored I can find something for you to do…housework!…I’m pretty sure they’ll find something else to do on their own).
Some of the best things about being a kid were things most kids today will never be allowed to do… I remember the joy of being allowed to go see a movie by myself at age 11 (Buffy the Vampire Slayer the movie because my mom refused to see it and I badgered her until she just dropped me at the theater and let me see it alone). I remember wandering through woods on my own. I remember walking to the store by myself for the first time (a walk of a good 1/2 mile). Walking and Biking to school alone or with friends starting around age 8. Being a latch-key kid for a few hours. Sitting in the car and reading instead of going into the grocery store with my mom when I was around 7/8/9 (for the record, Free Range Kids recounts Child Protective Services has been called over this recently). Bingeing on candy Halloween night and the weeks that followed. Watching more than X number of hours of tv per day.
Candy buy-back programs and buildings that refuse to let residents trick or treat???? That’s a trick
Relaxing and just letting your kids eat the damn candy? What a treat!
This is one of many example of the way my daughter’s childhood is being sanitized before my very eyes. Other examples include changing the lyrics to various songs in our Mommy and Me class because other moms have objected to “violent lyrics” (Little Bunny Foo Foo–the Bunny “bops” the field mice on the head) to the doctor telling the monkeys “no more jumping on the bed” instead of the “that’s what you get for jumping on the bed” that I heard as a child. This doesn’t even begin to touch upon the Disneyfied versions of fairy tales where the Little Mermaid marries the prince instead of committing suicide and becoming sea foam or where Cinderella’s stepsisters aren’t punished for their behavoir instead of having their eyes plucked out.
Fairy tales and nursery rhymes are meant to be cautionary tales. They are meant to warn us of the dangers in the world; that not every one is kind, that bad people are punished, good people are rewarded and that sometimes shit happens.
There is no benefit in santizing them. Children are fairly bloodthirsty creatures…they like watching bad people get what’s coming to them. My third graders LOVED Coraline by Neil Gaiman, which I found terrifying and creepy. Making Ms Muffet make friends with the spider takes all the color and interest out of a nursery rhyme. Who cares? Making stories boring doesn’t make children want to read them.
I for one won’t be handing Elanor sanitized stories…she’ll be getting the fairy books (Red Fairy, Blue Fairy, etc) with the original bloody fairy tales. I devoured them, as did most people I know who have read them. Sure, she’ll get the Disney versions, because they have their place in society (and are too pervasive to ignore) but that’s what the good old Venn Diagram was invented for. Personally, I can’t wait until she’s old enough to have the same reaction I did the first time I saw The Lion King…”wait, that’s HAMLET!!!” (a really crappy Hamlet, if not a bad cartoon with catchy songs).
Let’s give kids credit for being able to handle far more than we’re giving them credit for…and let Humpty Dumpty have the natural end of an egg that has met pavement….
This is a topic with more than a little controversy attached to it.
On one side you have the parents who, like I, post pictures and videos of their children, often identifying them by name and not doing anything to lock down the info. We do not perceive this as risky, inappropriate or dangerous.
On the other side are the parents who are very concerned about strangers being able to identify their child by name and pictures. There are certainly enough people telling them they should be scared-Facebook has an application that tells you how many sex offenders live in your zip code, and the media makes a huge deal out of the “risks” associated with publicly posting images of your children online. Now, that app doesn’t tell you how many of the “sex offenders” are actual pedophiles as opposed to say an 18 year old senior in high school who sent a picture of penis to a 15 year old friend, or someone who had to register because they were busted soliciting sex from an adult prostitute. Hell–until a year ago in MA, I could have been arrested and forced to register as a level 1 sex offender for publicly breastfeeding as it was not exempted from indecent exposure laws here.
A third side is that it’s the child’s image and they didn’t have a say in putting it online. Do you want their future employers capable of finding a picture of them at the aquarium when they were 3?
I think it’s the second argument that bothers me most because it’s part of that larger culture of fear surrounding parenting that I just find exhausting. I do think that there are a lot of things worth being afraid of, but assuming that every stranger (and let’s face it, the argument is really that it’s every strange MALE) has disturbing or sexual intentions towards her would rob Elanor of meeting a lot of cool people. Everyone is a stranger initially, and most people have good intentions. Teaching kids to be afraid of everyone (or every male) only creates timid children. The best skills I ever learned were how to talk to strangers wisely, and how to evaluate a person. You can’t develop instincts about people unless you actually meet them.
Here’s one thing I’ve learned about people…they’re lazy. You really think there’s someone who has that kind of time an energy to find your facebook profile (assuming you haven’t friends locked it) or youtube channel just to watch your 8 month old drool out applesauce. While I find my child that interesting, I doubt anyone else does.
So when I encounter someone who has those beliefs (hide teh pictures…teh interwebs are full of pedophiles just seekin out ma baybeeeeez), I’ll respect them (as in I won’t post pictures of Elanor with their kid), but privately I roll my eyes.
While Tails Are Not For Pulling isn’t the most lyrical book in the world, it is a must-have for those of us raising children in a household with a pet.
My cat is going on 17 (I got her in high school) and I was probably more worried about her adjustment to the baby than I was about the inverse. After all, everything is new to a baby, so we bring her home and there’s a cat…voila…for her, there has always been a cat in the house. But the closest thing to a baby that my cat had ever experienced was a roommate’s overly rambunctious kitten…and they had not gotten along well. I am an only child, and for the 3.5 years previous to Elanor’s birth, she was the only small creature in our home. Neither my husband nor I have siblings, and we are among the first couples in our circle to have babies, so there haven’t been any babies over to visit our home ever. Lady has gotten fairly cantankerous in her old age, and I wasn’t sure how she would react to a squalling infant who, once mobile, would chase her and yank her fur.
We were pleasantly surprised that when Elanor came home (the second time, after her hospital stay) Lady seemed to have instantly accepted E as one of her “peoples.” When Elanor would cry, Lady would look anxiously at us as if asking “aren’t you going to do something about that?”. She would curl up near Elanor. Once the crib was sidecarred on my side of the bed, Lady took to sleeping in the opposite end from Elanor at night to be near all of us without the downfall of being kicked (my husband and I both being restless sleepers).
As Elanor has gotten older, she has noticed and taken a deep interest in the cat. To the point where, whenever the cat was nearby, Elanor tried with all her might to get nearer to Lady. So we began “teaching” Elanor how to pet Lady gently. This has gone about as well as you would expect anything you “teach” an infant to do would.
The first time I saw Elanor reach out, get a fistfull of Lady’s fur, and yank Lady a good three inches closer to her (Elanor) I braced for the cat to turn around and scratch the baby. Which, honestly, I wouldn’t have blamed her for doing. Lady, to my shock, just shot me a long suffering look that said “little help here?!”
It was a few days later that I was at my yuppie mommy store, purusing their books that I happened upon a rather santimonious series of books called the “Best Behavoirs Series”. It’s just chock full of titles like “hands are not for hitting”, “diapers are not forever”, “words are not for hurting”, etc. Santicmonious and slightly preachy? HELL yes they are.
BUT….
With any luck, my cat will be around for at least a few more years. And I want those last years of her life to be as good as the previous 16, pre-Elanor. It’s bad enough that I forget to give her soft food every day (she always has hard food out).
So I bought it.
And we incorporated it into our bedtime routine. It is one of the books we read each night, along with “The Going to Bed Book”, but we read it to Elanor ONLY if Lady is in the room. We use the cat as a demo as we read “fur is for petting” and other lines.
Has it helped? Well, she’s seven and a half months old, so go ahead and guess how much has sunk in. BUT, she does generally try to move her hand down lady’s back as she yanks the fur, so maybe we can call that progress?
At any rate, if you’ve got a pet and a small child, I definitely recommend Tails Are Not For Pulling.
I wrote this as a comment on someone elses blog…but I wanted to share my thoughts here as well…
I tried to breastfeed, but there were issues.
1-My daughter was born with low blood sugar and was in the NICU for 36 hours. We had to give her some formula to spring her from the NICU
2-My daughter came down with a life threatening infection at a week of age. She spent a week on a ventilator, then a week on a g-tube. After that, she REQUIRED extra calories (formula added to my breastmilk to raise caloric content) because she was barely at her birth weight when she was released from the hospital at a month of age. She needed this for several months
3-Once she was off supplemental calories, she had trouble with latching. We were working on it, but….
4-She started losing weight, and needed the extra calories again.
5-She was diagnosed with food allergies at 5 months. I was capable of cutting out dairy, but I couldn’t do the full elimination diet.
So I pumped exclusively for 5 months. When I went dairy free I felt like crap, and I reached my wall. I weaned myself off pumping, and donated the 40 oz that my daughter couldn’t drink (because while I had been dairy free I hadn’t been doing the full elmination diet when I had pumped it) to a mom who was adopting a boy from African and was trying to relactate but had low supply issues.
I felt like a failure. Because we couldn’t get the latching thing. Because I hadn’t picked up on the first signs of the infection (she had some mottling which we were told was normal in newborns, her temp was low-but we’d only been warned about fevers) and she almost died. Because I struggled with supply issues. Because no matter what I did I couldn’t boost my supply past 16 oz a day, and there were always women who told me I just wasn’t trying hard enough (I took fenugreek, I took domperidone, I took reglan, I pumped every two hours, I pumped for long periods of time, I drank enough water to sink a battleship, etc). My most vivid memories of my daughter’s first month of life are sitting in her room in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, crying and pumping.
I felt angry. I felt like if I hadn’t been diabetic, we wouldn’t have needed to give her formula and maybe the breastfeeding would have worked out. I felt angry because she got sick, and that interfered with our creating a breastfeeding relationship.
I felt guilty. Maybe I could have prevented my body from becoming diabetic? Was I selfish for wanting to breastfeed when she did okay with the bottle?
Now that I’ve got some distance from the whole breastfeeding/pumping/formula supplement/don’t supplement etc arguments, I’ve made my peace.
I don’t think I could have done anything differently to make it “better.”
I’m proud of myself for pumping even under horrible circumstances…as in I was sitting in the PICU, next to my child on a ventilator, talking to a neurologist about her stroke while pumping away. When she was a month old (3 days before she was released from the hospital) I had gastroenteritis…I was in the emergency room with diarhhea and vomiting…and I was hooked up to a pump that I would pause so I could go to the bathroom, or I’d lean over and puke as I pumped and was rehydrated via IV.
I wish it weren’t an all or nothing argument. None of the formula I gave my daughter to supplement the caloric intake so she could gain weight. That formula helped her gain crucial weight. The prescense of the formula didn’t negate the benefits of the milk I gave her.
I wish I hadn’t bought into the idea that I couldn’t bond as well if I didn’t breastfeed. There were literally 7 days where I was able to hold her for a grand total of 15 minutes while they changed her bed to one that would be easier to transport her to and from MRI/CT/etc scans with the oxygen tank because she was on a ventilator. When all I could do was stroke the one hand that didn’t have tubes coming into it. Even though that was her second week of life…we bonded. My love for my daughter is fierce beyond words, and she reserves her biggest smiles for me…her face lights up when I come into the room. We are strongly bonded, and our “failure” at breastfeeding did not affect that bond.
I wasted so many hours of her early life in guilt, in anger, in beating myself up…and it was a waste.
For a time I vasilated between hating women who didn’t try because they never even tried something I was trying SO DAMN HARD to succeed at and failing at…and being really sensitive and strident about how formula was SO NOT TEH DEVIL.
In the end, I wasn’t fighting with the pro-breastfeeding movement…I was fighting my own demons.
I wish that breastfeeding wasn’t presented as an all or nothing choice. I wish that pumping were more acknowledged as the difficult journey it is…you have all the struggle of bottle feeding PLUS the joys of being a cow milked every two hours. I wish that people had some perspective on formula.
And I wish that no one, even myself, ever made me feel guilty for doing what was right for Elanor and for me.
