Two of our contributors are asked to take opposing stances on an issue and present a case for their viewpoint. Comment and tell us who you agree with or what you believe or think! The topics are suppose to elicit a response and start a conversation in comments. Enjoy!
TOPIC: Parenting the neighborhood Kids.
He Said:
Two years ago when I was dismissed from my job, I noticed a phenomena when I became a SAHP. As you can guess from the title of the topic, I was suddenly everyone's parent while their parents worked or basically neglected them.
No, I wasn't the cool person...I was just emotionally available to anyone and everyone. I was okay with that and I was consistent with everyone on what is and is not acceptable in terms of behavior. Wipe your feet before you come in. Say "please" and "thank you". Ask your parents first before asking me if you can sleep over.
At first, some of the kids didn't like the expectations I placed on them...but they eventually understood that if they showed respect or behaved properly, I would be more receptive to them. However, there was this one thing that drove me nuts every day.
They kept coming over at lunchtime, which meant they expected me to feed them. I tried to get their parents to feed them. Uh-uh. I tried sending my girls over to be fed by them. Uh-uh. I tried getting the kids to brown-bag their lunch. Uh-uh. That's when I had enough and I told everyone since none of them were willing to feed my girls, I would not feed them anymore.
Oh, there was a bit of a fallout all over the neighborhood, but I refused to cave in. I stood my ground and every time a kid came over "hungry", I would gently remind the kid that there is food at her/his home and point the way. One house stopped talking to me (I didn't care since their sons were nothing but trouble and wouldn't stop cussing) and another stopped sending the kids over.
The kids still stop by, but they don't expect to be fed - they play with my girls. My sanity was restored. As for my relationship with the girls, things got much better. I no longer felt anxious about the possibility of them bringing their friends over.
Do you think my decision did some damage to their relationship with their friends?
DCHY
She Said:
Neighbors are why I live forty miles from the nearest city in a gated community with a ten foot fence around my property. I'm not exactly known for my ability to play well with others. One of my biggest anxieties about having children was that I'd have to deal with other parents. Seriously. I may seem like a bundle of sweetness and beauty, and I certainly am, but I like people to keep their distance. I don't let people in. Sometimes, maybe even a lot of the time, I have difficulty with even superficial relationships.
So I get this.
I found that I even have it in me not only to dislike other people, but to dislike their children. Who dislikes a child? I do, apparently. I've had these kinds of kids at my house. They're rude, they're messy, they're always hungry, they're disrespectful, and they are teaching my children things I don't want them to learn. They don't respond well to rules. And I just wanted them to go away.
I laid down the law. The kids who didn't follow my rules were no longer allowed to play in my home. I was gentle, but firm. I tolerated them, though they made me grind my teeth and their parents made me stabby. I fed them, I entertained them, and showed them the love and attention a lot of them were looking for and not finding at home. I might have even learned to like them a little better.
And because I didn't follow my instincts, which were to erect an electric fence around my house and laugh as people were delivered a nonlethal jolt when they tried to get in, I learned that I can be someone for these kids that their parents can't or won't be. I can feed them and entertain them and let them raid my fridge and admonish them for getting dirt on my floor even if their parents aren't willing to do the same for me.
I have the choice to let it piss me off, which it certainly did at first, but instead I decided that the kids are not responsible for their parents idiocy. They can't help it that their parents dumped them off on me, expected me to take care of them out of the goodness of my heart. They're just kids and they clearly need a positive adult role model in their lives since their parents can't be bothered to be decent human beings.
So I suck it up, I take them in knowing my kindness is not going to be reciprocated, and I hope that what I teach the little heathens about behaving themselves will stick at least as long as they're playing with my children, maybe even a little longer if I'm lucky. And of course, when their parents are extra horrible, I fall back on one of my favorite pastimes. Writing letters and issuing penalties as the fictitious president of the homeowner's association.
Gucci Mama
Showing posts with label feeling unappreciated. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feeling unappreciated. Show all posts
Monday, July 12, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
I've worn this fat suit like armor... Gucci Mama writes.
Okay for today's Guest Contributor I don't know HOW I didn't know about her before. The girl is not only a great writer, but witty to boot... she's right up the alley of what kind of blogs I like to read! After reading this post you should go check her blog out. She's quite literally... awesome.
I was so, insanely hot when I was twenty. I was lean and curvy and perky. My hair was shiny; my glasses made my look like some kind of naughty fantasy librarian. While I have always prided myself on my intellect, I was also a big, fat idiot when I was twenty. Not only did I not realize what I had (I was very good at imagining my physical flaws) but I took the beauty I did recognize for granted. I thought the attention from men, especially my (soon to be) husband wouldn't fade.
Fast forward several years to miscarriages, pregnancies, bed rest, laundry, and about forty tons of pasta and I want to travel back in time and kick my twenty year old self square in the throat for a.) not having myself dipped in bronze and b.) not taking a little better care of myself so I didn't have to work so hard now to feel like a woman again instead of some kind of dowdy housekeeper/caretaker of children who just fades into invisibility in the eyes of men, especially my husband.
Oh, he loves us. I know he does. He tells us and he shows us. He's a good father, an excellent provider, and a really great...roommate. Somewhere along the road of being married for the better part of a decade we've lost our spark. Living with him right now is like living with my best friend. We laugh together, we talk about our day, we plan for our future, we raise our children, and sometimes we bicker. But gone are the days where he sweeps me into an impromptu dance in the kitchen or steps into the shower behind me. Infertility/pregnancy loss turned sex into a procreation mission instead of an expression of love and desire and commitment. After my second successful pregnancy sex became a distant memory, something other people do.
Because I'm so good at it anyway, of course I blamed myself. First of all, it was my baby rabies that could only be cured by a second child after the first one was so difficult to produce. Then it was my broken, failure of a body that put me on bed rest first at home by week 16 of my pregnancy and then in the hospital by week 28. It's on the bed rest that I blame the weight gain. Well, that and the twice a week ordering of pizza while I was in the hospital because the cafeteria food was so horrifying. I certainly can't blame the weight gain on my baby, since she weighed all of three pounds. It was me and my stress eating.
After my little, tiny daughter was born things were quite stressful. Life with a sick little preemie does not exactly lend itself to a stress free existence. I believe I mentioned I'm a stress eater. So I fell into this cycle of feeling like shit, eating my pain, feeling worse for having done so, and then eating my pain again. It's not something I'd recommend.
My daughter slowly gained strength, my life resumed a much more normal order, and I set out on a mission to find myself again. I'm still walking the road, and from my perspective I'm doing it largely unsupported. I don't want to be twenty again, and I don't want to make radical, sweeping changes in my life (though at times the idea does hover at the edge of my mind and seem to have some merit) but I do want to be valued for more than my ability to make meals and read bedtime stories. I know my husband would say that he does value me for more than that, but it doesn't feel that way.
I want to feel like a woman again.
It's not about the weight and it shouldn't be. There is so much more to me than my appearance, and that's what he fell in love with so many years ago. So I'm left wondering what happens now? I'm getting my body back, but that scares me. It scares me that I might have just been the hot rich girl twelve years ago when we met and now that she's gone (well, her hotness anyway) there's nothing left. Where did my confidence go? Did the stretch marks and shelf ass kick it to the curb? And if so, was it really confidence in the first place or just vanity?
I've worn this fat suit like armor to protect myself and by shedding it I feel like I'm throwing myself on a double edged sword. On the one side, I want to be beautiful and desirable again. On the other side, I want to be beautiful and desirable in the eyes of my husband even when I'm overweight and I haven't worn make up in three days and my hair is in a haphazard pony tail because my children aren't interested in waiting for me to do my hair before we go to the park.
It's very difficult, at least for me, this learning to be a mother and a wife. I'm not sure why it's all up to me, yet it seems to be. Clearly I should just have had myself dipped in bronze and called it a day.
Gucci Mama also blogs at her personal blog Mama Still Wears Gucci
And she has a cause... go help her out!
I was so, insanely hot when I was twenty. I was lean and curvy and perky. My hair was shiny; my glasses made my look like some kind of naughty fantasy librarian. While I have always prided myself on my intellect, I was also a big, fat idiot when I was twenty. Not only did I not realize what I had (I was very good at imagining my physical flaws) but I took the beauty I did recognize for granted. I thought the attention from men, especially my (soon to be) husband wouldn't fade.
Fast forward several years to miscarriages, pregnancies, bed rest, laundry, and about forty tons of pasta and I want to travel back in time and kick my twenty year old self square in the throat for a.) not having myself dipped in bronze and b.) not taking a little better care of myself so I didn't have to work so hard now to feel like a woman again instead of some kind of dowdy housekeeper/caretaker of children who just fades into invisibility in the eyes of men, especially my husband.
Oh, he loves us. I know he does. He tells us and he shows us. He's a good father, an excellent provider, and a really great...roommate. Somewhere along the road of being married for the better part of a decade we've lost our spark. Living with him right now is like living with my best friend. We laugh together, we talk about our day, we plan for our future, we raise our children, and sometimes we bicker. But gone are the days where he sweeps me into an impromptu dance in the kitchen or steps into the shower behind me. Infertility/pregnancy loss turned sex into a procreation mission instead of an expression of love and desire and commitment. After my second successful pregnancy sex became a distant memory, something other people do.
Because I'm so good at it anyway, of course I blamed myself. First of all, it was my baby rabies that could only be cured by a second child after the first one was so difficult to produce. Then it was my broken, failure of a body that put me on bed rest first at home by week 16 of my pregnancy and then in the hospital by week 28. It's on the bed rest that I blame the weight gain. Well, that and the twice a week ordering of pizza while I was in the hospital because the cafeteria food was so horrifying. I certainly can't blame the weight gain on my baby, since she weighed all of three pounds. It was me and my stress eating.
After my little, tiny daughter was born things were quite stressful. Life with a sick little preemie does not exactly lend itself to a stress free existence. I believe I mentioned I'm a stress eater. So I fell into this cycle of feeling like shit, eating my pain, feeling worse for having done so, and then eating my pain again. It's not something I'd recommend.
My daughter slowly gained strength, my life resumed a much more normal order, and I set out on a mission to find myself again. I'm still walking the road, and from my perspective I'm doing it largely unsupported. I don't want to be twenty again, and I don't want to make radical, sweeping changes in my life (though at times the idea does hover at the edge of my mind and seem to have some merit) but I do want to be valued for more than my ability to make meals and read bedtime stories. I know my husband would say that he does value me for more than that, but it doesn't feel that way.
I want to feel like a woman again.
It's not about the weight and it shouldn't be. There is so much more to me than my appearance, and that's what he fell in love with so many years ago. So I'm left wondering what happens now? I'm getting my body back, but that scares me. It scares me that I might have just been the hot rich girl twelve years ago when we met and now that she's gone (well, her hotness anyway) there's nothing left. Where did my confidence go? Did the stretch marks and shelf ass kick it to the curb? And if so, was it really confidence in the first place or just vanity?
I've worn this fat suit like armor to protect myself and by shedding it I feel like I'm throwing myself on a double edged sword. On the one side, I want to be beautiful and desirable again. On the other side, I want to be beautiful and desirable in the eyes of my husband even when I'm overweight and I haven't worn make up in three days and my hair is in a haphazard pony tail because my children aren't interested in waiting for me to do my hair before we go to the park.
It's very difficult, at least for me, this learning to be a mother and a wife. I'm not sure why it's all up to me, yet it seems to be. Clearly I should just have had myself dipped in bronze and called it a day.
Gucci Mama also blogs at her personal blog Mama Still Wears Gucci
And she has a cause... go help her out!
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