Not for Sale
Dear Person Who Wishes to Buy my Domain,
I’m afraid that I must turn down your offer as I have no plans to sell my domain. I have had this domain for quite a few years and have used it for several purposes. I may not be very active in its use right now, but I am aware of it and I do want to keep it. I consider it an asset much like a family vacation house or vintage car. It is not absolutely necessary to my daily life but very pleasant to have.
I wish you luck with your own domains, whether you are a business, band, writer, teen, or clown. We’re all very blyssful, it seems.
Thank you,
🙂
Faking It
One of the things I hate about becoming a parent is how you are required to revisit social situations you thought you’d never have to endure again. Horrible things you barely survived the first time. Things that would have driven you to do… experimental things in college just to permanently block out those memories.
I’m talking Parent Teacher anything. Those horrible Girl Scout meetings where NO ONE really wanted to make ANYTHING but was told to. Kids sport teams where the parents were FOAMING in the stands with displaced aggression. ARGH. It was awkward the first time and suddenly, I’m a parent, and I’m starting to understand I’m going to do it all AGAIN but on the other side.
Look. I’m not that social. I’m not a people person. I don’t believe that group meetings are done to serve the happiness of the group: the loudest or pushiest always wins. Bullies aren’t new and there’s a lot of them that just learned how to be a better bully as they got older. I believe that the best way to happiness is to go your own way and rely on your own abilities.
But teaching kids is to teach socialization. They have to learn to work within a group because that’s how the real world works. They have to learn how to exist in a social structure in order to benefit from it. It’s their responsibility to uphold society and better it for their own future.
And at the same time they have to learn how to be themselves.
It wasn’t really until college that I understood that I wasn’t an overachieving nerd. I was more like a misanthropic asocial repressed neurotic (try reading these wik entries: I learned a lot about myself right there). All of that’s sort of interesting but it’s not going to be a great advantage to my kids.
So, here we go. I’m going to have to put on my game face (haha) that I haven’t had to wear since I stopped working. The Yes-You-Have-A-Point face. The one that goes over the Are-You-Done-Talking-Yet-Because-You-Don’t-Understand-And-I’m-Going-To-Have-To-Say-It-Again-Using-Small-Words face. (Have I mentioned that becoming a Mom has unleashed my true capacity for evil? It almost makes me want to go back to work again so I can fully enjoy a supervisory position). I’m going to have to start caring about how people judge me, because that’s another thing you accept as an adult. People judge you all the time. (We tell our kids appearances don’t matter but what we’re really trying to instill is confidence so that they can overcome being misjudged and to remember empathy when they do the judging). I’m going to have to be the one standing up for the rights of my kids and trying to help them be happy fitting in or rebelling, as they want.
It was awkward the first time and here it is again, awkward in the new millenium.
True Capacity for Evil
I found a new parenting site recently and just starting randomly reading articles. I started with the one talking about how the writer spends 2.5 hours to put down one 3 1/2 year old. I cannot imagine what she’d do if she had twins. Maybe take 5 hours? Anyway, then I read Screaming is the New Spanking.
Well, I can’t say I disagree with her. The General Public dislikes anything that smacks of being negative. No spanking. No yelling. But absolutely No misbehaving children. How are you supposed to get from points A & B to C? That’s the secret really. Victoria in the comments section says if you train them correctly while they’re young (apparently before they’re 23 months) you just have to raise your eyebrows at them to get them to behave. Wow. I’m trying to picture what Victoria’s house is like right now. Take a moment.
I yell at my children. I try not to. I try the patient voice speaking reason. After the 5th repetition of their name I start to use Evil Mommy Voice #3: General Menace. If it’s really late and they’re egging each other on to greater heights of mayhem while I’m trying to get them to stop I might even use EM#2: Imminent Doom. I have even used… EM#1: Really Lost It a few times in the past. EM#1 even scares me. I can hardly believe that voice comes out of my mouth… it’s like listening to Linda Blair in Exorcist for the first time.
I never knew I had the ability to be so freaking angry and so scary before. I think I could use these feelings and this voice to make grown men afraid. When I used EM#1 on the kids… well.. they ducked down and ran for it. Ran upstairs or hid in bed or whatever I had been trying to get them to do before with a little self preservation thrown in. It’s the same as what they do when they’re caught doing something really bad. Like when they used the towel rack as monkey bars and ripped them out of the wall in a huge shower of plaster. They were just saying something like “big hole” and “uh oh” in little pixie voices to each other when I walked in. Argh! Went my temper. Poof! Went the children. They scuttled out so fast with their heads down it was like watching cockroaches run when the light goes on. At the time I was more horrified than angry. Big jagged holes in the wall. Wow.
What do I yell at my children? Probably what most parents yell at their kids. “Stop that!” “Go to bed!” “Get dressed right now!” “Stop fighting with your sister!” “I TOLD YOU NOT TO TOUCH THAT!” Sometimes I add a lecture that elevates my crazed level to Shrew. This may be coupled with loss of volume control in a semi-public place (mall, sidewalk, parking lot, usually be car). The normal rant includes “Get in the car! Get IN the car! GET in the CAR!” “NO, not in the STREET” or stuff to that effect. Then usually something about them being run over and how much it would hurt.
I am aware that I am embarrassing myself.
Before I had kids I was pretty controlled. I knew I had a temper, but I never got in a situation where I couldn’t get away from what was making me angry. If you asked my coworkers I bet most of them would think I had no temper at all. But I knew I had it in me. It’s all that repression boiling up. I don’t think this is an excuse for losing my temper with the kids. It’s just a statement of fact. I have no practice keeping down the freak out. It’s sort of like… and someone’s going to hate this analogy… having an addiction. It’s negative behavior that’s causing a problem and I have to learn to control the feelings that arise before I act on them. If I make a mistake I can only try to do better each day. In my case, not freak out and not yell and not scare the living daylights out of the little rugrats. What else am I going to do? Get counseling? Who’s going to watch the kids while I do that?
The kids have stood up to all this with the resilience of kids everywhere. Who knows if something I did damaged them? I bet if you asked my parents they wouldn’t expect that anything they did damaged me. I do know that my kids handle the yelling differently. Rugrat “A” has decided to yell back. Yelling is now one of her key responses to frustration. This is purely my fault (well, 98% mine, at least,) and a clear sign that I have messed up in a very bad example. Rugrat “B” does not care if I yell. She usually ignores me. Once in a while she will yell back “OK!” so that the reasoning rant will end. Once in a while they demonstrate that they actually did listen to my rants. In a heartwarming Halloween moment Rugrat “B” told me earnestly, “Hold hands and stay with Mommy or Daddy”, while taking my hand to cross the street. Truthfully, they’d probably listen to me more if I wore a Dora costume all the time.
So, I’m trying to keep the evil out of being a parent. On the other hand, I’m finding new expression for feelings I’ve hidden all the time. I’m actually learning something about myself! Nothing really positive, of course, but who has more fun in life: the hero or the villain? And who’s the best loved but the villain who’s actually on the hero’s side? I’m dreaming here, I know. Nevermind. As I said, I can only try to do better. I think I’ll keep the EM voices though. I can’t wait to use them on some adult a*hole one day.
PS. Hey, guess what? My comments are closed so you can’t tell me what a crappy horrible parent I am! Don’t worry, I already know!
Mommy, are you up yet?
I found an article over at ScaryMommy that had me … laughing villianously. Or like the criminally insane. (I almost wrote “rolling” but I’m not that fat, yet.) Here it is: 10 Ways School Sucks For Adults Just As Much As Kids.
Why did I love this short list so much? Because I identify with every single line! The only thing I would add (so far) is the reason I continue to take them to school: Because homeschooling them would make everything my fault. Every trauma, deficiency, sad socialization, everything = my fault. At least this way, someone else might be a good role model. Because it’s certainly not going to be me.