Thoughts on Parenting Here I am at work again. Now I know some things I can do. I hope to do them tonight. I left my keys at home this afternoon, but I borrowed some from a coworker. This will enable me to actually go into the lab and accomplish something. I weighed myself the other day, and I am about 5 pounds more than I thought I was. I don't think I look all that bad, but I really would like to be in the 120's. My pants aren't tight, then. On the other hand, I really enjoy eating whatever the hell I want. I just have to decide what I want more, and how much I can eat while still maintaining 122-125. Also, I think I got used to being larger due to pregnancy. It seems strange to me to be small, now. All day long, every day, I have so much on my mind. So much that I notice, about myself and the world. There is so much complexity, so many different ways of perceiving reality. Which way should I choose? I see two different ways of child rearing. One seems right to me, but is it right? I am always full of doubt. There are the people who choose to let their kids have some of everything. An hour or so of TV, some junk food with preservatives and food color or fast food on a fairly regular basis. These parents are considered the moderates. Anything else in any direction is too extreme. The other parenting style, (I'm choosing to ignore the TV watching, junk food eating, don't attempt to do right parents), the one that I subscribe to, doesn't include these things. We don't own a television. Our children have very little exposure to the computer and DVDs. We keep everything as natural as possible, as beautiful as possible. We don't have toys that are ugly, that make annoying sounds. We believe that we are teaching our children about the world, and what we want to teach them is that it is full of beauty. So no deformed plastic dolls. No characterization of reality from TV. We want real human interaction, we want beauty. But this is an extremist view. Most parents think, these toys aren't harmful in moderation. And I disagree. But then my children yearn for these annoying toys, these plastic phones and badly formed dolls with legs more than twice the height of the rest of their body, with these toys whose role is to kill or hurt. "These are the shooters, here," says my seven year old. Huh? I'm sorry, but I consider violence to be barbaric. Yet they are fascinated. By teletubbies, retarded ugly nonspeaking idiots. They always want the toys that make these really loud sounds that are distorted due to cheap electronics. And I wonder why. Why is this? My daughter is in a Waldorf school, and I know the curriculum, and what they are doing in class, and I think her teacher is very well learned. Yet my daughter insists that she isn't learning anything, because they don't sit down with inane repetitive worksheets and lessons that are separated from the world as a whole, just intellectual garbage that is meant to be taken in and spewed out again with no thought, no real assimilation. Why is this? Am I missing something? She always seems to want what is bad for her. If I were to let her have what she wants, she would watch TV most of the time, play on the computer, go to a intellectual-only school, and buy her plastic noisy toys that break quickly. It's interesting, because sometimes she does get these toys, and they do break, but she hasn't gotten it! She just wants a different one then. She says that dolls and play kitchens and trains and legos and lincoln logs are baby toys. No! They're not! She's 7 fucking years old, not 12! I played with all of these things until I was 9 or so. Why did my daughter reject all but the most shallow, meaningless, nonimaginative toys at age 5? I just wonder what I'm missing. It's funny, though, because she is so imaginative. To illustrate, a few months back she was fighting bad guys on the lawn of my dad's house. She had no props; she was just making up all of these moves. Very creative, very original. I should include one of the pictures I took. Just a minute...Okay, here it is. Here's another one for the heck of it. Well, I guess I just have to maintain faith that I have really thought through things, keep looking for more information, and keep on working on those aspects that I know for certain, such as not being grouchy and short with my children when it is not appropriate! |