We Need To Talk

All of us. Yes, all of us – come from parents – some kind of parents, doesn’t matter, we’re here now aren’t we?

And I don’t think we’re doing too shabbily. I mean, we’re alive (big YAY), we’re reading stuff on the Internet – wow, got some education there didn’t we? Did our parents do that for us? Mine didn’t – they might have enabled me, yes they certainly did and they pushed for a whole lot extra by springing for a tertiary education but if I was 5 years old I could probably still make sense of these etchings  on a page. And look at you – managing so well by yourself – hell, I bet even my blind friends have these words piped into some kind of  device that makes them ‘talk’.

So, why oh why is there this constant criticism and judgment of how people are raising their children or how they they themselves were raised. I know money makes the world go round but essentially it’s people that want the money to make it go round so isn’t it really People that make the world go round?

All these rules:

love them when they cry, ignore them when they cry

feed them from the breast or feed them from the bottle

oh good grief, give birth to them with your own vagina or have an incision made in your own abdomen but whatever you do get them birthed and there they are – Birthed. New people, every .05 seconds or something like that – google it – I’m too lazy.

Show them flash cards, don’t play them anything but Mozart or put the tv on so that they get used to noise.

Strap them into the car or let them roam around on the dashboard.

Don’t let boys where pink, don’t let girls do karate or boys can get away with pink while they play rugby and girls need to learn self-defense.

No sugar, no salt, no nuts, no eggs, no food after midnight and don’t let them get wet – that might be mogwais – same difference.

Bath them once a day from day one or don’t bath them for the first 6 weeks of external womb existence and it’s cool to take a break on weekends.

Wear them or grow them in incubators.

Listen to The Men/Gods in White Coats or The Local Faith Healer and White Witch

Put oil (not petroleum) on their crusty little scalps or hang them from the ankles to increase blood circulation to the pip section.

Swaddle them like samoosas or cover them lightly in anything except down feathers.

Wooden toys only or recycled plastic toys to protect the environment (which one? my house or the global one which seems to be pretty good at taking care of itself?)

Pay a fortune for school and deck them out in designer duds. Organic (what is that?) Cotton only with or Polyester only because that’s what they’ll be wearing in space one day.

Cut their hair, grow their hair, paint them and parade them like dolls or let them run barefoot everywhere or squash their little feet and legs into the right shape with shoes and leg irons.

It’s enough to make anyone second guess themselves every second time they make a Parenting Decision.

Look around.

I had a fellow Mom ask me the other day if I had noticed how different my children where to each other.

um.

Yes.

They’re two different people.

I asked her if she felt that she and I were alike barring the fact that we’d both reproduced via the loin.

The conversations stopped there.

Come On People.

We are ALL People.

We all got here.

We all Live here.

Our parents raised us. Mine smacked me. Sometimes I didn’t eat anything except chocolate cake and coca cola. We never had to sleep in the car for more than a 5 hours at a time, we weren’t strapped in and we got lucky and we always had a roof over our heads. But I’m willing to guess that some of the folk out there that have had to live in their cars and munch on raw carrots for weeks on end are also Alive and using MXIT on their cellphones. After I was given the boot instead of a car for my 21st birthday I had to subside on olives and provitas for a month or two – didn’t do me any harm, in fact I slimmed down nicely enough to get some decent action.

Even if you’re not. It doesn’t give anyone the RIGHT to go up to anyone else and tell them not to chastise their children in public. Or criticise the fact that the baby that they’re wearing isn’t sleeping in the right position or that it’s drinking from a non BPA plastic free bottle. Or that it’s nappies won’t biodegrade over the next 200 hundred years (this is thumb suck figure – I’ve mentioned that I’m lazy to google). If people don’t wanna strap their kids in (and this is something that I’ve had to train myself to let go of) then so be it. The gene pool needs less idiots – and that might sound a little hard but raising children isn’t a picnic, not that picnics are catered events by on hand staff but you get what I mean. And if you don’t – can I refer you to my Suggestion Box? It’s the button on your top right hand corner and all you have to do is press CTRL ALT DEL.

Enough. Look around again –

Everyone is Going Through Something what matters are Two Things:

Area of Concern

and

Area of Influence

Let’s not be silly about it. Get your focus on and do the best you can with your bit.

People are People.

PS: These are not all my original thoughts but I’m selling them that way. Most of it is from a revered Elder in my immediate orbit so I’m claiming them as lessons learned. It’s still valid.