I can’t help but feel sad reading THIS article. I understand they were attempting to be funny-giving guidelines if a costume is too racy-except they didn’t say "racy", they said "slutty". which has a completely different connotation. It is also limited to women.
It should be noted that one of the contributors to this piece is the "parenting expert" that writes family centred articles for the paper. I guess I find it surprising that an editor didn’t reign them in. Isn’t that what editors do? Did they sack all the competent editors with their last remaining decent journalists? I’d say it reads like a High School newspaper, but honestly, that would be insulting to High School papers.
Well, now it is official-the country has gone utterly mad.
I can’t even summon a nanny-state joke, this is so terribly sad and pathetic.
Our local newspaper has a columnist that is known for dreadful, one sentence paragraphs. She’s a pretty awful writer, but at least she’s concise. No one could ever accuse Cindy Lange Kubick of overwriting a paragraph. We can’t say the same for Lynne Ireland.
Before you pen off angry posts calling me a pretentious ass, keep in mind that I am not collecting a salary to write the rubbish I publish here. What’s more, I could never, on my worst day write a paragraph that included both, "Bee’s beneficence", and "salubrious stickiness". I couldn’t. Really.
You should read the whole thing (OK you probably can’t get through the whole thing, but go have a look anyway-you don’t want to miss out on the "tawny translucence" and "ambrosial nectar."), if only to reinforce the sense that we are, as a society, completely doomed.
The joke around here is that I don’t need to spank because hearing me scold is a million times worse to endure. I can probably count on one hand the actual number of times I’ve raised my voice into anything approaching a scream, but I do think I manage to get my point across well. Still, a well-timed yell can emphasize a point in a way not soon forgotten.
Well everyone, here’s some bad news: the er…experts have decided that isn’t OK. No screaming, no spanking and we’re not supposed to lie to them either.
Believe me, I’m not some superior parent, but I also don’t need to scream at my child to get him to do what’s expected. He’s had exactly two tantrums in four years and still remembers having all of his toys taken away. I didn’t scream, I didn’t stand there negotiating-I grabbed a roll of garbage bags and started dumping toys into them. It was a good month before he saw many of them again. You know, the silent treatment and a very stern look work well if you’re consistent.
I’m not sure what these articles hope to accomplish other than make parents feel even more inadequate than they already do. How awful that parents are being made to feel guilty for disciplining their children. For heaven’s sake, that’s nothing to feel guilty about. Letting them run wild and do whatever the hell they want should elicit guilt. What an incredibly screwed-up world we live in. Look, I’ve seen some amazingly bad parenting over the years that is deserving of scorn. My mother used to tell my sister she was supposed to be an abortion. That’s bad parenting. I seem to remember a fair amount of door slamming, though that kind of slacked off after we moved to the new house with the less well constructed doors/walls/etc. Coming from solid plaster, who knew you could actually kick through drywall…? The best was when my parents got a second phone line put in so they could call us on the phone, in the next room, to scream at us. That was sort of the precursor to emailing the person sitting next to you. Screaming at your kid to pick up their shit kind of pales in comparison, no?
I don’t want to extrapolate based on my own experiences, so I won’t. I will say that I have to seriously wonder if something else is going on with people who spend so much time thinking about how they were yelled at/spanked/punished as children. Wouldn’t this sort of thing be cumulative? I mean, if you get treated fairly decently but mummy completely loses it because the linen closet isn’t colour coordinated the way she likes it-well, isn’t there room for that sort of thing over the course of twenty years? Honestly, all joking aside, sometimes we really did deserve to be punished. We were terrible children. Oh goodness, if Danny ever pulled half the crap I did at his age, I don’t know what I’d do. Seriously. These articles never acknowledge that children can be horrendous little beasts.
At some point we started expecting perfection of ourselves in respect to parenting. I wonder what that teaches the little ones?
Living waaaay out in the country, I’ve had to adjust the way I do things and learn to improvise. My favourite recent discovery? You can make your own brown sugar-and it tastes better.
Here’s what you do:
Place granulated sugar in a large bowl. Stir in either mild or full flavour molasses (I wouldn’t use blackstrap) and start stirring. Taste once in a while until you get the strength you like. Mush it up really well with your hands to break up any blobs of molasses. Place in a tightly sealed plastic bag. Store in fridge. There, you just saved a couple bucks.
Speaking of sugar:
Buy the 10 lb bags which are cheaper and then using a funnel, pour into washed and dried plastic juice bottles or 2 litre soda bottles. This is also an excellent way to store large bags of rice. I find it easier to pour sugar or rice into a measuring cup when baking than to scoop it out with the cup. You can keep one bottle on the counter and store the others in the pantry until needed.
Still speaking of sugar:
Giving granulated sugar a quick whirr in the blender will make caster/superfine sugar. Don’t go too long or you will have confectioner’s sugar (unless you intended to make
Don’t have a stud shoved into your tongue, it can cause a deadly brain abcess-not to mention what it will do to your tooth enamel.
The White House has stripped that lunatic in Arizona of the power to carry out immigration arrets. Funny, I didn’t hear a peep about this in the US press. Kind of a shame I need to read the Guardian to find out what’s happening here.
Even if the school overturns THIS six year old child’s suspension, his name is now plastered about the internet. When he’s forty, and applying for a job, or a loan, he’ll be met with snickers of "Oh, you’re the kid with the spork."
The kid is lucky he has parents that are vocal, and able to pull off a Today show appearence. If this happened to a poor kid whose parents couldn’t take the time off from work to rally the media-he’d be living with a suspension on his record for bringing a weapon (spork) to school. I’m pretty sure if the kid had been a minority, they’d have called the police, and had him arrested.
I sure am glad I’m no longer young-my better half calls this the "march to lobotomy", but I think that’s generous. Anyhoo, here’s a collection of links that pretty much make me want to crawl back into bed, and wait to die.
Why save the alcohol breath tests for school dances and sporting events? I mean, the district paid for them-might as well use them. From the article:
“A Breathalyzer just becomes a clean way of following through. And if we’re wrong? We will apologize,’’ Theodoss said. “I have four kids, and as a parent I would be more comfortable knowing this option is available.’’
-Well, as long as they apologise…
Wow-being a poor housekeeper is really obsessive-compulsive disorder? I just love these newspaper things where people write in with complaints about their partener, and get a diagnosis on the person. Note the wording-not she "may" have obsessive-complusive disorder. The feature is almost always the same, with different diagnosis. Everyone is in need of therapy, or drugs, or an intervention. Amazing, isn’t it-the ease with which we feel comfortable slapping labels on others?
THIS is just completely depressing. Who sneaks vegetable puree into children’s food? More disturbing? The name of the preschool- "Primrose School of Legacy." Yeah, I know-too easy. Feel free to take your best shot in the comments. If you’re really determined to do this, you can buy a jar of baby food for a whole lot less money. The Gerber creamed spinach used to be really good-too good actually. Just ask my older sister who used to eat all the spinach she was charged with feeding me. My mum couldn’t understand why I was anemic. If you ask me (Which you sort of are doing by coming here to read) most kids will eat vegetables if you stick them between a couple slices of bread and call it a "panini." Really, no shit, they will. Some red bell pepper and diced carrots go great in a sandwich with some olives and onions. We’re talking under five minutes of chopping and sauteeing. Tastes better than pureed cauliflower too (ewwwww). The only thing you are teaching children is that it is OK to be deceptive. My mum used to use half tuna in her salmon patties to stretch the expensive salmon-except my dad hated tuna. That just seems wrong to me. She was always so pleased with herself too. There’s a world of vegetables out there, I’m sure you can find one or two a child will eat.
The "Googly Eyed Slide" That Broke My Arm in 1972
The one that broke my arm was at Peterson Park in Chicago-it was long ago removed (presumably mine wasn’t the only broken arm?). I never thought I’d see a picture of it-ain’t the internet great? Looking at it now, from an adult’s prespective, the end of the slide is rather high off the ground. Still, do you know what modern playgrounds look like? They look like plastic tubes that a child couldn’t fall off of if they spent their childhood trying. No wonder kids don’t want to go outside and play-the playgrounds are boring. We had the rocket-ship jungle gym in the last page too. Oh, and those gerbil-wheel fun house things? We had one of those near where I went to high school. I just want to say, that hash and gerbil-like wheel things don’t go well together. Not that I’d (ahem) know from personal experience or anything because I spent all my time at the library studying.
