I just had this great conversation with a friend of mine. We were talking about parenting. Before I had kids, it was easy for me to sit in judgement at a kid having a tantrum (or worse, a parent yelling at or spanking their kid). I even remember harboring a lot of resentment about the way my parents did things (I didn't get enough attention, they yelled too much, blah blah blah). This isn't new information, I know I've written about this before, and how now that I'm a parent I understand how hard it is to be patient, not spank, etc.
My new revelation on the topic is that this judgement and subsequent "oh, now I get it" is part of the amazing circle of life. If we live long enough to come around to the point in the circle of life where we can finally understand in one circumstance (parenting), then we can apply that same knowledge to any number of difficult situations where we feel anger towards a person for something they did to us. And to me, that's the point of life and why we were put on this earth, to understand and forgive each other, even when a person doesn't know they need forgiving.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Latest Funnies
Annie and Johnny have been working on certain behaviors. For Annie, it's solving her own problems (attempt to minimize the whining and demanding), for Johnny it's following directions (attempt to minimize the tazmanian devil with no ears). They've filled out their "reward boards" (thanks to my sis for the idea). At Target, I let them each pick out a toy from the $1.99 bin. The poor things don't know what a cheapskate their mom is, because they got so excited about it they could hardly choose. But after some very tough decisions, Johnny selected the parachute guy, whose main purpose is to be thrown from various heights. $1.99 doesn't get you a parachute with a very high threadcount. If you wanted to watch the parachute guy make his jumps, you'd have to look really fast, because the air whipped through that parachute so fast that poor parachute guy had to endure many very rough landings. Nevertheless, my $1.99 bought Johnny an hour of fun.
Before I get into what Annie selected, I have to begin by saying that whenever I have brought Annie to the store with me and given her a vote in what I get for her, I can always count on her to choose the most hideous thing out there. Two years ago at the fabric store we were buying a patch to mend her jeans. Among the pink hearts, the rainbows, the purple butterflies, Annie picked out the brown deer. When selecting t-shirts this summer, the colors of choice were navy blue and brown. And at Target, among the rhythmic gymnastics ribbons, the light-up spinny thing, and the squishy balls, Annie picked out the "fossilized dino egg." The kit included a magnifying glass, chisel, and brush to unearth the plastic dino from the "dirt" encased in this egg. So while Johnny was busy hurling parachute man from the stairs, from the couch, and then just finally throwing parachute man up in the air to see what would happen if he hit the fan ("no, Mommy, I'm not TRYING to hit the fan"), Annie chisled away at the dino egg. I made her put it away at bedtime last night, pulling her away from the green dust that she was so carefully brushing away from the plastic ankles of the stegosaurus. You might have thought that I was pulling away a nursing baby from her breast with the way she carried on. It was most definitely the first thing on her mind this morning. She came down the stairs, didn't even say good morning, and went straight over to her post and finished excavating the stegosaurus.
I am certain that this strange intense behavior only comes from her Dad's side, but I must say how glad I am that she marches to the beat of her own drum. I love that she hates the color pink, loves soccer and short hair, but also loves painted nails and makeup (she stole my red lipstick today from my purse during a wagon ride and I looked over to see a clown mouth pretending she didn't do a thing). She already has her own sense of what she likes and what she doesn't like. Pretty cool for a 6-year old.
Can't we all learn a lot from our kids?!
Before I get into what Annie selected, I have to begin by saying that whenever I have brought Annie to the store with me and given her a vote in what I get for her, I can always count on her to choose the most hideous thing out there. Two years ago at the fabric store we were buying a patch to mend her jeans. Among the pink hearts, the rainbows, the purple butterflies, Annie picked out the brown deer. When selecting t-shirts this summer, the colors of choice were navy blue and brown. And at Target, among the rhythmic gymnastics ribbons, the light-up spinny thing, and the squishy balls, Annie picked out the "fossilized dino egg." The kit included a magnifying glass, chisel, and brush to unearth the plastic dino from the "dirt" encased in this egg. So while Johnny was busy hurling parachute man from the stairs, from the couch, and then just finally throwing parachute man up in the air to see what would happen if he hit the fan ("no, Mommy, I'm not TRYING to hit the fan"), Annie chisled away at the dino egg. I made her put it away at bedtime last night, pulling her away from the green dust that she was so carefully brushing away from the plastic ankles of the stegosaurus. You might have thought that I was pulling away a nursing baby from her breast with the way she carried on. It was most definitely the first thing on her mind this morning. She came down the stairs, didn't even say good morning, and went straight over to her post and finished excavating the stegosaurus.
I am certain that this strange intense behavior only comes from her Dad's side, but I must say how glad I am that she marches to the beat of her own drum. I love that she hates the color pink, loves soccer and short hair, but also loves painted nails and makeup (she stole my red lipstick today from my purse during a wagon ride and I looked over to see a clown mouth pretending she didn't do a thing). She already has her own sense of what she likes and what she doesn't like. Pretty cool for a 6-year old.
Can't we all learn a lot from our kids?!
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Feminine Mystique, Part 2
I'm really enjoying Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique. It's an opinion/history book, meaning that it is an opinion book that uses (sometimes manipulates) historical facts to support the opinion. At times it is abrasive and angry (actually it is mostly abrasive and angry), but I think probably it is necessarily so. It might not have attracted so much attention if the text didn't shout as much. Betty F. said some pretty insightful and powerful things in it that for sure helped out her own and subsequent generations of women recognize the unfairness of the society they lived in.
Just a little history on the book so far. By the way, she published this in 1963, so cultural references are made according to this time period...
---------------------------------MY SYNOPSIS SO FAR------------------------------------
"The feminine mystique says that the highest value and the only commitment for women is the fulfillment of their own femininity." (p. 43) And according to Betty, society tells us that femininity IS passivity, caretaking, gentleness, children, husband, and suburban home. "...the root of women's troubles in the past is that women envied men, women tried to be like men, instead of accepting their own nature, which can find fulfillment only in sexual passivity, male domination, and nurturing maternal love." (p. 43)
So another generation of women grew up, got married, had children and tended to them at home and somehow felt a longing for something more. Friedan writes about the typical housewife. "As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night--she was afraid to ask even of herself this silent question--"Is this all?" (p. 15) Friedan calls this silent dissatisfaction, this yearning among suburban housewives, "the problem that has no name."
God forbid the woman does anything about this silent dissatisfaction, for "They were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents. They learned that truly feminine women do not want careers, higher education, political rights..." (p. 16). So what to do about this "problem that has no name"?
"In a sense that goes beyond any one woman's life, I think this is the crisis of women growing up--a turning point from an immaturity that has been called femininity to full human identity. I think women had to suffer this crisis of identity, which began a hundred years ago, and have to suffer it still today, simply to become fully human." (p. 79)
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And now y'all don't even need to read the book, cuz there it all is. And the reason I think that this book is brilliant is because it holds water even today. True, we've gone through women's liberation, there are as many working moms as stay-at-homes. But everybody comes into adulthood with certain cultural biases of what they should do. True movement into adulthood is examining these biases and breaking them if necessary. We all need an identity crisis to become "truly human."
And indeed, Betty had one of her own I think when she wrote this book. She, too, married, had 3 kids, and then at age 42 was inspired to write this book. A few years later she divorced. Her ex-husband was quoted as saying, "She changed the course of history almost single-handedly. It took a driven, superaggressive, egocentric, almost lunatic dynamo to rock the world the way she did. Unfortunately, she was that same person at home, where that kind of conduct doesn't work. She simply never understood this." (From Wikipedia).
God bless strong women. And God bless every person who needs to go through an identity crisis to become fully human.
Just a little history on the book so far. By the way, she published this in 1963, so cultural references are made according to this time period...
---------------------------------MY SYNOPSIS SO FAR------------------------------------
"The feminine mystique says that the highest value and the only commitment for women is the fulfillment of their own femininity." (p. 43) And according to Betty, society tells us that femininity IS passivity, caretaking, gentleness, children, husband, and suburban home. "...the root of women's troubles in the past is that women envied men, women tried to be like men, instead of accepting their own nature, which can find fulfillment only in sexual passivity, male domination, and nurturing maternal love." (p. 43)
So another generation of women grew up, got married, had children and tended to them at home and somehow felt a longing for something more. Friedan writes about the typical housewife. "As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night--she was afraid to ask even of herself this silent question--"Is this all?" (p. 15) Friedan calls this silent dissatisfaction, this yearning among suburban housewives, "the problem that has no name."
God forbid the woman does anything about this silent dissatisfaction, for "They were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents. They learned that truly feminine women do not want careers, higher education, political rights..." (p. 16). So what to do about this "problem that has no name"?
"In a sense that goes beyond any one woman's life, I think this is the crisis of women growing up--a turning point from an immaturity that has been called femininity to full human identity. I think women had to suffer this crisis of identity, which began a hundred years ago, and have to suffer it still today, simply to become fully human." (p. 79)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And now y'all don't even need to read the book, cuz there it all is. And the reason I think that this book is brilliant is because it holds water even today. True, we've gone through women's liberation, there are as many working moms as stay-at-homes. But everybody comes into adulthood with certain cultural biases of what they should do. True movement into adulthood is examining these biases and breaking them if necessary. We all need an identity crisis to become "truly human."
And indeed, Betty had one of her own I think when she wrote this book. She, too, married, had 3 kids, and then at age 42 was inspired to write this book. A few years later she divorced. Her ex-husband was quoted as saying, "She changed the course of history almost single-handedly. It took a driven, superaggressive, egocentric, almost lunatic dynamo to rock the world the way she did. Unfortunately, she was that same person at home, where that kind of conduct doesn't work. She simply never understood this." (From Wikipedia).
God bless strong women. And God bless every person who needs to go through an identity crisis to become fully human.
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