I am not one of those crunchy granola mothers who ban all television, who start the foreign language flash cards at six months, who buy all-organic food for their children. I'm no La Leche devotee, breastfeeding until your kids go to college. I think I've managed to teach the twins all of two signs in baby sign language.
Now, yes, I know that many of the things I've disparaged in the preceding paragraph can be good, in moderation. Breastfeeding provides excellent nutrition and is ideal, if your situation allows it. The American Academy of Pediatrics says children under the age of two gain no benefit from watching television, even educational programming.
However, I think it's of more value to my children that I not be obsessed with living the ideal life, creating the ideal learning environment, and then expecting the highest levels of achievement from them at all times. Kids need to relax and be kids. How can they do that if Mommy's uptight all the time about whether they're going to get into Harvard or Yale? So here are the things I refuse to feel guilty about.
Allowing my children to watch television. And sometimes in fact encouraging them to watch it. "Mommy has a lot of work to do, girls. Here's a nice animated feature for you to focus on for the next hour or so." (The girls are partial to Pixar's Monsters, Inc.)
Feeding my children fast food. Now, this happens very, very rarely. Maybe twice in their entire lives to date. (As long as you don't count Chipotle, which I don't consider to be fast food.) But now and then, when you're on the road and the kids need to eat right now, a meal from one of those evil purveyors of the oh-so-convenient drive-thru dinner isn't going to hurt the girls any.
Not saving sufficient funds to pay for the girls' entire college education. We're off to a bad start on this one. I hope to save up lots of money to send the girls to college. But for now I'm more concerned with feeding and clothing them. And I don't think it will hurt them one bit to have to pay off student loans. I think my parents had it right. They helped me as much as they could and sent me extra money for food and rent whenever I needed it, but the bulk of my college tuition was covered by government student loans (that I'm still paying off today), and on top of that I worked three part-time jobs. I made it through. They will, too.
(My big fear here is that the girls won't have anything like the kind of access I had to student loans when I was in college. I sincerely hope our government figures out its priorities before 2023 and makes student loans widely available. In case they don't, we have a lot of saving to do.)
Here's my parenting philosophy: I have two main ideas that I want the girls to learn from me. 1) Have respect for yourself. 2) Have respect for others. Everything else should take care of itself.
5 comments:
My book would be called, "At least I don't beat the little brats." No...I'm just kidding. They are trying at times (like today, 6 days before school starts). I let the twins watch Teletubbies when they were 2 while I slept on the couch (I had a early morning job). The twins seem to have turned out ok. They are in accelerated (brainy) classes in school and are socially acceptable as well. It's the little one that I was much more obsessed with, because I had time, that worries me. He's very smart.. but a highly emotional individual.
PS. My kids eat way more drive-thru than they should. Sometimes us busy moms have just given all we can. Dinner seems like an insurmountable obstacle. I try to make up for it by giving them a variety of foods to try when I do cook.
I'm pretty proud of the fact that they eat things that their peers haven't heard of. I also like sending better than average food with my hubby so his boss can drool. Makes me feel a little Martha, without the checking account and the felony.
RB, you do a fantastic job of feeding your family, as your blog shows. I only hope to emulate you. I want the girls to have a variety of home-cooked meals as often as possible. And if I resort to the drive-thru now and then in order to save my own sanity, I think I've earned it.
I am going to work super-duper-extra hard to raise my firstborn as casually as I would my last-born. I don't want to be one of those super-type-A Nervous Nellie moms (and, Kel, when you see me doing this, try to figure out some way to tell me).
I know this is an older post, but I just read it. I think your attitude towards parenting is refreshing. I'm not there yet, but many of my friends are. Some of the things I hear make me realize I'll have to come up with my own way of parenting, and hopefully not feel like I have to do everything perfectly, or the way other people do it. I have a dear friend (and new mother) who feels berated sometimes for not doing things exactly the way other people do it (breastfeeding, start them out young on everything, eating scedules, etc.)
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