DRFseven

No, my statement was not "false." The incident had nothing to do with teaching discipline, but with skill and comprehension levels of young children, as well as awareness on the part of the caretaker. Any parent who ever tried to get a toddler to actually succeed in mopping a floor (not just brandishing a mop and splashing water) would never realize his/her goal of a correctly mopped floor. I know there are some who would proclaim that their child was stripping the old wax and expertly re-waxing the floor at fourteen months, but stuff like that's baloney; toddlers have neither the cognitive skills to understand what constitutes a parent's idea of a clean floor, nor the coordination and strength to do it.

And, for the record, I demonstrated, with my daughter, to my friend how a toddler "mops the floor" (I was mopping the floor at the time, which is why the subject came up). My friend ended up commenting after watching the antics for a while, "Kids are just miniature crazy people, aren't they?"

Why not just be honest; he was a friend, after all. That way, he actually learned something about children. Incidently, he never married or had children (he's sixty now and we met him in college), and continues to be a cherished family friend. I love him just the way he is and would never have dreamed of suggesting he live his life differently, or of even thinking so privately. He recently commented that our three-year-old granddaughter is just as crazy as her mother was at that age!

John Page

My wife was talking to my daughter this morning about her day at school yesterday.

My daughter, 4 years old, said that someone had visited school and they had curly hair.

My wife further inquired who this person might be.

After thinking a while, my daughter replied "Hmmmm... I don't know really but it definitely wasn't god."

Gotta love those miniature crazy people, dontcha.

MassAtheist

I couldn't have said it better myself!

Late_Cretaceous

I am a parent and make a concerted effort NOT to bore people with the details of my kids' behavior. Even though I am a parent, I find it annoying as hell to be forced to listen to endless drivel from certain co-workers about thier offsprings antics. We have lots of over 30 fiends who are single or childless and I wouldn't dream of questioning thier choices - even to myself. Why should I give a flying *&@# if somebody has kids or not, or is married or not. If I enjoy thier company that is good enough for me.

I know a couple who would nausiate you with stories about their two cats and how they would go nuts every day at 11 pm - well so would I if I had to live with them! It got much much worse when they had a kid. I really really hate people who think that every time their kid farts he is a genius, or if he recognized the title from his favorite movie well that must mean that he has a grade 3 reading level at the age fo 3. Those are the ones who really pick my ass. I feel like saying "guess what, I dont find your brat half as aborable as you do, and no he isnt all that smart or talented in fact he is quite average. Now piss off"

DRFseven

Because, in our youth, we were so UNinterested in lawns, yardwork, etc. On weekends, the LAST thing we wanted to do was work in the yard; we wanted to be off canoeing or partying or something. Shoveling dirt? Hauling bags of mulch? Trying to outwit aphids? Now someone interested in that (like our parents) must be dull, indeed, we had thought.

Now, we could have easily imagined that people could be interested in lawns, but, feeling worse than disinterest in it ourselves, just never thought about the fact that we might change in that regard. When it started to happen, it felt peculiar.

Do you see that the act of understanding that there will be new feelings, and the act of experiencing the feelings are two different things? Yes, most of us knew it would be different, but we couldn't know how it felt until we felt it.

DMB

I agree that it's irritating and bad manners to say "well, you wouldn't understand". But I sometimes think it.

If you are intelligent and a keen observer, you ought to be able to work out beforehand the big changes that parenthood will bring. I don't know how anyone can accurately predict all the thoughts and emotions that will occur.

When I was single I was bored by most aspects of babies and thought they would be greatly improved if they could be born at the three-year-old level. I was also pretty disgusted by over-indulgent parents, who IMO let their children get away with murder. My first marriage was childless by choice and I didn't want or expect to have children.

Then I fell in love with and married my second husband. This made me a stepmother (he had custody of the two children). As a teacher with considerable experience of adolescents, I thought I knew all that was necessary. How wrong I was! My poor stepchildren, who quite naturally didn't want a stepmother anyway, suffered from my inexperience.

I also discovered that now I had found the right man, I wanted to have a child by him. It wasn't until my daughter was born that I really learnt about parenthood. I remember holding her on day one and saying to myself, "Oh, dear. Now I can never commit suicide." Up till then the possibility of suicide had been a sort of security blanket to get me through difficult times.

As my daughter grew, I understood much better a lot of my friends who had children and I also understood my parents better.

The profound change that parenthood wrought in me is unlike anything else I have ever experienced. I would add that having a second child was still surprising. By the time he was born, my stepchildren were grown up, and my daughter was almost an only child. Having to cope with two youngish children at an age when some of my friends were having grandchildren was no picnic and I found it very stressful to do so while working full time.

I had a very dear unmarried friend of my age who seemed to me to reproduce all the attitudes towards children that I had had 15 years earlier. She too was a teacher and a keen disciplinarian. She always attacked my children if she felt that they were stepping out of line. In particular, her teaching experience was all of girls, and she did not seem to understand small boys at all. My son hated her! Unhappily, he still hates her, even though since he got to about 16 she stopped getting at him. She feels fondly towards him and fortunately doesn't realise his feelings towards her. I don't think I have ever said to her that she doesnt understand how to handle children because she hasn't had any, but I have silently thought it many times.

I must also explain two other things. When I had a baby of my own, I realised how fascinating babies are. This is not just because it is your own baby, but because you have the opportunity to see day-to-day development. When you really think about how much babies have to learn in their first two years, it is staggering. I no longer think they should be born walking and talking at the age of three!

The other thing is that while I do find a lot of parental boasting boring, I am nevertheless much more interested in other people's children than before I had my own. I find children as interesting and individual as adults. I am also deeply affected emotionally when I hear of abuse, death or disappearance of children. It's almost as though it were happening to my own. This hasn't left me even though my own children are now grown up.

Finally, this is a bit of a truism, but one doesn't seem to stop hurting for children. My stepdaughter is now 42, but I still care very much what happens to her and sometimes want to stop her from doing things I know will make her unhappy. I try not to be an interfering mother to any of them now they are adult, but I am tempted.

{edited to correct spelling}

[ March 06, 2002: Message edited by: DMB ]</p>

DRFseven

Well, see, the thing is that those people who engage in it don't see it as "mindless drivel" any more than the people who go on about their computers, their jobs, how drunk they got, etc. If you've told them how boring it is to you (and you must have, or you wouldn't have said they "forced" you to listen) and they persist, they must be getting that behavior reinforced somewhere else. Maybe they've been visiting me!

DRFseven

Yes, I do! Listening to children talk gives such insight into the way people think, I never get tired of it. Children are even more interesting to me than other little apes, though I can happily observe all of them.

tronvillain

DRFseven:
Ah, indulging in some selective quotation I see. I am not arguing that parent are not experiencing something new, but simply pointing out that people who bowl are also experiencing something new. Nothing I have heard parents say or seen parents do seems to indicate some unimaginable emotional experience. I do not expect to be surprised by the emotional experience of having children.

tronvillain

DRFseven:
Actually, I find lawns themselves quite interesting - I'm just not interested in the work involved.