Parenting outside the box: Celebrating family in all forms.
I am Mom to a one year old girl, and I’m still learning about the type of parent I want to be. Recently, I have been thinking a lot about gender, and how my actions directly affect the way my child will grow up seeing herself and seeing others. I saw a post going around…
It took a letter to a bishop and a mountain of paperwork to marry my husband. He’s Catholic; I’m Methodist. Both are Christian religions, so I’m hesitant to even call us an interfaith family, but you would be surprised how different we are. Years ago, I would have had to convert to be married “in…
My son’s voice recently dropped from alto/tenor to baritone/bass.
Now I occasionally get these calls from someone who sounds like James Earl Jones. “Would you please bring my lunch box to school? I left it at home this morning.”
I can imagine, and I have observed, the effect this new voice has on a boy’s sense of self.
Back in his preschool days, my son was diagnosed with a vision issue that got him a disability label, plus some behavioral issues adding to it. But there is a vast difference between qualifying for services, and receiving services. In Pennsylvania, where special needs care for the under-18 set is administered on a county-by-county basis, there is also a vast difference in care by ZIP code grouping.
A baby’s ability to see shades of color develops by five months old. However, I think that black and white tunnel vision merely changes to a moral world view of black and white.
We had a great day at the beach. My daughter loves playing, making castles in the sand. My husband and I both relaxing, barefooted, and walking along the water’s edge with our frolicking three-year-old. I put on my favorite bikini bottoms, super cool, edgy bikini bottoms I always feel proud wearing. They felt a bit different, but perhaps it was just because I hadn’t worn them since last summer. We enjoyed the day, snapped photos, and most importantly, made great memories. When we got home, I looked at the photos and did more than a double take when I came across ones of me standing in the water. That had to be a bad angle. But the images made a little piece of me cringe, thinking, “Oh, so this is what’s changed”.
I’m a bit sad my daughter won’t have the kind of carefree childhood I recall. There was a certain magic to being a kid in a world where everything wasn’t served with a side of warning, and one wasn’t tethered to some form of electronic device at all times. Moms felt comfortable yelling from the back porch out into the wilderness, knowing their kids would come home, worried less about organic foods, or the latest rise in Lyme’s Disease.
A summer day in my childhood went something like this:
Mom makes pancakes and scrambled eggs while my brother and I watch cartoons in the morning. After a while she tells us to go play, and we head out into the woods behind our backyard. It’s a forest to our young eyes. Our sunscreen-free skin lightly toasted in the light, exposed to ticks, poison ivy, and other dangers, but we don’t think about it at all.
We all know those parents.
Their perfect offspring never tantrums, learned to read before Kindergarten, kicks a soccer ball better than Beckham, and has artistic skills to rival Picasso.
You stand beside the swing set, nodding your head as they gush about their child’s seemingly inhuman accomplishments. If you’re nicer than me, you’re thrilled that such a talented individual will lead the next generation. If not, your internal monologue goes something like this: Your kid is eating boogers. Right now
Apart from what I’ve witnessed at playgrounds, birthday parties, and Thanksgiving dinners, the Mommy Wars rage in my mind. I returned to work only six weeks after my oldest daughter was born and the struggle, the crippling indecisiveness to stay in the workforce or stay at home has remained a constant for seven years.
There are some things you actually have control over when parallel parenting. Sorry, none of these things involve controlling your ex or children.