Posted on 01/02/2002 6:49:27 AM PST by dead
Loving when they're cute is easy, it's true (even if at this age they write on walls, destroy furniture and seek danger with the surety of a guided missile). But you don't know the FULL meaning of love until they try your patience sorely, tell you they hate you, hate to be seen anywhere near you, do everything they can to alienate you... I think it's at that moment when they need love the most, although it is the hardest (Having been a 13-year-old girl, I can say this with some degree of certainty :-).
But what I really want to say here is that I have seen so many grandmothers (my age) who are either raising their grandchildren or partially tending them because of the failed marriages or failed lives of their own children. These grandmothers don't envy me, I am sure, as they love their grandchildren. But I see how financially and emotionally strapped they are at times, and probably this will be their way of life until they die. So sad.
Maybe I am a selfish person. I just know that I have no regrets for the way my life has turned out. I really don't think I would have been a good mom to another person.
I started reading this thread early on when it started, but there were no people on it who would agree with me, so I kept quiet.
g
Your thinking is a product of our times. I do not expect my teens to be obnoxious. Do you really think the teens of 1940 were as obnoxious as the teens of today? (Ya' know, when gum chewing and running down the hall were major problems in school....not guns and sex?)
I've raised two children through young adulthood (21 and almost 20), and they have been a joy since the day they were born. I expect the same with the rest of my kids. Should one cause me grief, it will be unexpected, but that is getting back to my point. Problem kids should come as an unexpected shock, not as one of life's inevitabilities.
A happy and haply providential correspondence with that other three-way relationship that "disrupts the 'you-me' construct by introducing a third element: one that opens onto the 'we' of authentic communion, in which each person can flourish. The 'I' is no longer affirmed over against the 'you'; it is affirmed, rather, through sharing whatever is unique in each one." (pp.203-5)
What a contrast to this Galway Kinnell poem:
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"After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" For I can snore like a bullhorn or play loud music or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman and Fergus will only sink deeper into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash, but let there be that heavy breathing or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house and he will wrench himself awake and make for it on the run -- as now, we lie together, after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies, familiar touch of the long-married, and he appears -- in his baseball pajamas, it happens, the neck opening so small he has to screw them on -- and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep, his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child. In the half darkness we look at each other and smile and touch arms across this little, startingly muscled body -- this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making, sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake, this blessing love gives again into our arms. |
Yep. It's kind of like how those wascawwy Wepubwicans "attacked" Clinton just because he broke dozens of laws.
Mission Completed. Next?
Ah, ah, ah -- you are not allowed to use the conclusion (that raising children is "one of the primary experiences of human life") as one of the steps in your argument.
If I knew that a man was coming over to my house with the fixed intention to do me good, I would run for my life.(Personally, I'd put up a defensive perimeter rather than run, but that's just me.)
--Henry David Thoreau
Er, you don't have to do any such thing. You can grow a spine and inform them (as subtly as you like or as firmly as you must) that the matter is none of their business.
This has got to be one of the silliest statements I've ever read on FR. It is the essential nature of sapient humanity to plan and partake of life on man's own terms -- that's why man lives in houses instead of caves.
On the contrary, taking steps to avoid possible consequences is another result of human intelligence. Prudent people choose to use cars -- and seat belts.
You, dear, don't know me from Adam, so don't preach to me. I sympathise with your problem. Really. But don't try to give me some snow job about how the legions of ill-behaved, undisciplined brats running amok in otherwise polite society are all the victims of some legitimate medical problem. They aren't, and you know it. In some cases, I'm talking about members of my own family; I know precisely what is, and what isn't going on.
As for my own (mis)behaviour? I certainly did not run around restaurants screaming as loud as possible. Nor did I exhibit such behaviour in department stores, groceries, etc. I did not openly defy my parents in their face and to their despite, and expect to get away with it. The few times I tried it, I quickly learnt the folly of such ways. Likewise whining, begging, crying, and throwing tantrums. The few children with legitimate medical problems, who literally can't control themselves, are neither excuse nor explanation for the legions of spoiled brats whose parents are too lazy, stupid, or self-centred to properly teach them.
AB
It seems to be a natural reaction to an endless parade of busy-bodies pestering her on the subject.
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