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Thread: What Would My Mom Do?

  1. #1
    Frozen Chosen A.J.'s Avatar
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    What Would My Mom Do?

    What Would My Mom Do? (Drink Tab and Lock Us Outside)
    Jen Hatmaker

    I’m about to tell you the truth: parenting has become very precious in our generation.

    This very morning, a mom posted how on her son’s birthday, she assembles a comprehensive “time capsule” including items, photos, and products related to that particular year, stores it in a set of antique trunks, and plans to present them all to him on his 18th birthday as a tribute to his entire life.

    Holy. Crap.

    Cannot. Deal.

    When I think about upping the joy in parenting and diminishing the stress, I propose that much of our anxiety stems from this notion that our kids’ childhood must be Utterly Magical; a beautifully documented fairytale in which they reside as center of the universe, their success is manufactured (or guaranteed), and we over-attend to every detail of their lives until we send them off to college after writing their entrance essays.

    It becomes this fake pressure, which results in its trusty sidekick: guilt. And nothing steals joy away from parenting more than believing you are doing a terrible job at it. And nothing confirms you are doing a terrible job at it then thinking you should run out and backfill eight antique trunks as a memorial to your third-grader’s life.

    So here is my trick for keeping the joy and losing the stress:

    What would my mom do?



    Could it be that we are simply too precious about parenting? Have we forgotten the benefit of letting our kids fail? Figure it out? Work hard for it? Entertain themselves? We put so much undue pressure on ourselves to curate Magical Childhoods, when in fact, kids are quite capable of being happy kids without constant adult administration. I would argue that making them the center of the universe is actually terribly detrimental. A good parent prepares the child for the path, not the path for the child. We can still demonstrate gentle and attached parenting without raising children who melt on a warm day.

    Guess what the side effect is for us parents? RELIEF. Get your joy back! Try it. Pull back as Cruise Director and adopt the “what would my mom do” approach, and see what happens. What do you know? The kids are all right! They aren’t poor, neglected Oliver Twists. They won’t come completely unraveled. They aren’t helpless, hapless ninnies who can’t figure a bloomin’ thing out. Their futures aren’t doomed. We don’t want to produce young adults that despair at the first obstacle they face. Don’t we want them to learn that they are one part of a healthy family, not the centrifugal force of their entire environment?

    And mamas and daddies? We get to jettison that manufactured guilt that tells us we aren’t doing enough, when in fact, no generation of parents has ever done more. (My friends in higher education are actually begging us to DO LESS PLEASE BECAUSE THESE CHILDREN DON’T KNOW HOW TO FILL OUT AN ONLINE FORM WITHOUT HELP.)

    Let’s get our joy back and resist all this made-up stress! Let’s recapture the joy of watching kids play in sprinklers, build forts out of couch cushions, create dramatic “programs” (my parents have PTSD from ours), and run around the neighborhood with their friends. Let’s give them back the gift of imagination, self-sufficiency, creativity.

    What did our moms do?

    They let us be kids, and we wobbled and skinned our knees and made up our own fun and enjoyed the simple pleasures of childhood without any flash and dazzle. But you know what? We knew we were loved and we knew we were safe. We never doubted the most important parts of the story. We weren’t fragile hothouse plants but dirty, rowdy, resilient kids who ate Twinkies and candy cigarettes and lived to tell.

    Mama, don’t fall for the yearly time capsules. You have everything your little ones need: kisses, Shel Silverstein books, silly songs, kitchen dance parties, a backyard, family dinner around the table, and a cozy lap. They’ll fill in the rest of the gaps and be better for it. Your kids don’t need to be entertained and they don’t need to be bubble-wrapped; they just need to be loved.

    It’s all any kid has ever really needed.

    http://community.today.com/post/what...?cid=sm_fbn_pt
    Last edited by Lista; 02-01-2016 at 01:58 PM. Reason: You had doubled up the intro.

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  3. #2
    Administrator fuego's Avatar
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    Holy. Crap.

    Cannot. Deal


    I've never had kids, but I fully agree.

  4. #3
    Frozen Chosen A.J.'s Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by fuego View Post
    Holy. Crap.

    Cannot. Deal


    I've never had kids, but I fully agree.


    I've had kids. 3 -They're all in their 30s now. Still applies.


  5. #4
    So true!!



  6. #5
    Frozen Chosen A.J.'s Avatar
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    My daughter told me that her ladies' group is going through one of the Jen Hatmaker's books starting soon.

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by A.J. View Post
    What Would My Mom Do? (Drink Tab and Lock Us Outside)

    ...Let's get our joy back and resist all this made-up stress! Let's recapture the joy of watching kids play in sprinklers, build forts out of couch cushions, create dramatic "programs" (my parents have PTSD from ours), and run around the neighborhood with their friends. Let's give them back the gift of imagination, self-sufficiency, creativity.

    What did our moms do?

    They let us be kids, and we wobbled and skinned our knees and made up our own fun and enjoyed the simple pleasures of childhood without any flash and dazzle. But you know what? We knew we were loved and we knew we were safe. We never doubted the most important parts of the story. We weren't fragile hothouse plants but dirty, rowdy, resilient kids who ate Twinkies and candy cigarettes and lived to tell.
    That was good, let kids be kids.



    A Message For EVERYONE Who Survived The 1940s, 50s, 60s, and 70s!

    -
    How on earth did you manage to survive??
    This is an open letter to all of the kids who managed to survive the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s!

    Somehow, by some miracle, we survived being born to mothers who didn't dodge clouds of second hand smoke...simply because no one said that was required.

    While expecting, they took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can and didn't get tested for diabetes.... Scroll down to learn more about how it's a miracle that we even survived...

    http://www.littlethings.com/nostalgia-we-survived/



    I especially like this one...some of those clothes were uncomfortable!

    On Sunday our moms forced us to wear uncomfortable clothes to go to church and we had absolutely NO SAY in the matter.

    What Would My Mom Do?-7130b0e2d64162b4ab0e04916a94bc71-1-jpg

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  9. #7
    Senior Member Romans828's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by A.J. View Post
    ... I propose that much of our anxiety stems from this notion that our kids’ childhood must be Utterly Magical; a beautifully documented fairy tale in which they reside as center of the universe, their success is manufactured (or guaranteed), and we over-attend to every detail of their lives until we send them off to college after writing their entrance essays.

    I totally agree!

  10. #8
    Resident Chocolate Monster Lista's Avatar
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    At my son's middle school I was VP of the PTA, but I stepped down when they submitted a letter to the new administration expressing their outrage over the dress code. The dress code is collared shirt (a few set colors) black or khaki pants/shorts. Where the problem came in was the former administration saying, "We're going to start letting the kids wear t-shirts/sweatshirts with the school logo on it." What's the problem you say? Well little Timmy's Mom didn't want to have to fight with little Timmy to make him wear the collared shirts that she had already purchased. She didn't want little Timmy to be ostracized by all the other kids who got to wear t-shirts and sweatshirts. I told them that if they looked little Timmy in the eye and said, "you're wearing what I bought....suck it up and deal with it" then there wouldn't be a problem. My opinion was NOT well received. I'm now a pariah....think I care?

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  12. #9
    Don't even get me started! It is getting all too common these days for the children to rule the roost!

    I well remember uncomfortable clothes! I won't wear them today.

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    Lista (02-01-2016)

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