I am *that* mom!

I am that mom
I’m the mom who is constantly meddling, and thinks my special snowflake needs to be dealt with with sensitivity vs. brute force.  It’s true.  Honestly, I’ve tried the brute force stuff with her and it just. doesn’t. work.  She doesn’t respond to it, just shuts right down.

So last December when her preschool teacher put her in time-out after she had a meltdown over sharing, her meltdown got exponentially bigger.  I wound up having to come get her from the class because she was quite literally hysterical.  Once I got her out, we talked about what happened and she calmed right down.  She was able to return to the class, apologize to her friends, and continue, and the behavior was not repeated.

Different things just work for different kids.

So.  I currently have The Rage because she has been hit by a little boy in her class twice.  Last time, the teacher brought L over to her after class and encouraged him to apologize.  This time, the teacher did not mention it to me (to be fair, she was busy when we left).  My daughter says the boy hit her back while they were all singing a song, and the teacher told him “no hitting.”  But did not put him in time out or initiate any further consequence for hitting.  Later, though, threatened the boy with a time out for using the word “poop.”

What.  The.  Hell?

So, physical violence is not a time-out level offense… but freaking out over sharing, or saying “poop”  are time-out offenses?

Please tell me I’m not the only one utterly perplexed by this bizarre-o concept of discipline.

I’m sure it doesn’t help that the mom of this little boy is one who told me recently that when kids knock each other down, it’s no big deal, because they are “just kids.”  Well, yes, they are just kids, and they don’t KNOW a thing is wrong unless we explain it to them.  I can’t help wondering if the kid hasn’t picked up on his mom’s blase’ attitude about physical contact with other kids, and now is picking on my LO.

Being hit and/or bullied by another child is NOT something I am willing to allow, and that is a dealbreaker for me.  I am sure some people would consider this overreacting, but I really am THAT MOM who is willing to make waves for her kid, and who will stand up for her now and forever.

I’m having to vent all this before I speak to the teacher about it.  I know she will work with me on this, but right now I’m too rage-full to talk calmly!  Someone HIT my BABY.  TWICE.  ANNNND… she said to me… “He will hit me again and again, Mommy.”  RAGE.

Edited: March 22nd, 2010

The Princess Thing, Again…

If you’ve read any of my other posts here, or even just by the description of this blog (feminist mama), you can imagine that I am not generally a big fan of the Disney Princess’s.  I’m most especially not a fan of the idea of the helpless but pretty heroine, reclining gracefully on a pink pillow until her Prince Charming can conquer the scary dragon and save the day with his oh-so-wonderful kiss.  (I’m looking at you, Sleeping Beauty!)

So it’s with some trepidation that I tell you that I’m currently in the throes of All Things Princess, with an adorable Princess-Obsessed dictator running around in sparkly high heels and Cinderella dresses.

Trepidation?  No, that’s not even really true.  The truth is that I am having a BLAST with it.  I feel pretty good about the fact that I’ve given my daughter a female-positive background to play out these fairy stories against.  I feel joy when she switches in a beat from being Cinderella to being “Super Bella, saving people from mud!”

I have come a long way in my thoughts on princesses, from hoping against hope I’d be able to avoid the issue entirely to looking at it more critically and talking to lots and lots of other moms about it. I realized that one of the primary things which bugs me about the Disney princesses specifically is the heavy-duty marketing aimed at toddlers, the pervasive presence of those damsels in distress, and the way the people in our society reinforce those images again and again and again.  The other thing I don’t like is the false body-images presented, but honestly that is less of an issue for me… right now.

It came crashing down on me that I would not be able to avoid the issue entirely when anytime Bella saw a princess, anywhere, she’d ask me the name of the princess.  At first I would try to distract her from it, or say I didn’t know, but finally I just gave up and gave her the information she wanted.  I thought a few times about telling her that I didn’t like those princesses and why, but that felt *wrong.*  She is not old enough to understand my reasons, but she is old enough to feel badly that mama doesn’t like what she likes.

I realized quite quickly that she was getting about 90% of her Princess exposure from her preschool teacher.  A woman whom I adore and think is, in most ways, lovely.  But she also happens to be an *excellent* Disney marketer, whether she knows it or not, providing her classroom with things like Disney princess tents, laptops, tea sets, the princess dolls themselves, and one night when Bella told me she’d mixed a potion to “take away her voice,” I knew she’d been telling them princess stories.  Even though they were not (are not) listed on the class syllabus.

At the time I found myself trying to decide what to do.  Unfortunately my options for preschool here are pretty limited, and I love this school, love 95% of the things about it, and my daughter adores it. So I decided to try to take the negatives in stride.  Besides, she’d be exposed sooner or later, right?  The Disney Divas are *unavoidable.*

And so it goes.  It has grown from there.  Thus far I have stood by my original resolve to take it one step at a time and not, for now, let her see the movies.  For Christmas, Santa brought her a Cinderella dress, an Ariel bath doll, and “Ariel’s Beginning,” a princess movie without a prince that I thought might be mild enough to capture her imagination.  Mild?   Ummmm, no.  The mermaid mom gets crushed by a pirate ship in the opening scene, after which the poor mermaid dad is just angry forever and I’m not sure I can blame him.  Bella was terrified of the cackling, mean mermaid assistant and I wound up forwarding through most of the movie.  So when I tell her truthfully that the princess movies she asks about are too scary for her, she believes me.  Sleeping Beauty would give her nightmares for ages!  Ursula in The Little Mermaid would terrify her.   She is just a sensitive little soul.

One of the other things I got her for Christmas was a set of Snow White figurines.  She was having such a hard time sharing the princess figures at school that I figured if she had some at home, maybe it would be easier.  (No such luck.)  So we got a set with Snow White, the prince, the evil queen, the old lady with the apple, and the seven dwarves.  It’s really a lovely little set, I have to say, with beautiful details on the figures.  I didn’t give her the evil queen and old lady at first thinking they might be too scary, but as she has gotten more drawn to good/evil battles I got them out for her… and she has her fairy friends bewitch them so that they can be nice.

She has such a good heart.

I’m going on and on and on, and I really could talk about this for days, and probably will if I ever get a single quiet moment in the house again.  (B. is out with her Daddy right now… blessed quiet!)  But I had to post something because I posted a picture of her in her Cinderella dress on my facebook, and someone replied “I thought you weren’t going to let her do the princess thing!”  That is actually not what I said, ever.  I said I’d hold off on it for as long as I could, and I have.  I said that I don’t want to show her the movies, and I don’t.  I said that many aspects of the Disney empire bother me, and they do.  But ultimately I’m a mom who loves sparkles and dresses and happy endings myself, so it is no mystery that my daughter would be the same way.

Right now her favorite color is blue.  Cross your fingers that it stays that way!

Edited: February 21st, 2010

Doggy says hai!

My dog has adopted my daughters’ safari tent.

Whassup?

Click here for more Camera Critters!

Edited: July 25th, 2009

Thursday Challenge: Hot!

Hot and sweaty curls on a stormy day at the beach at Caledesi Island!

And because I cannot stop at just one, and Florida was HOT!!!!

Elephant says, "Too hot outside, must be submerged!" Note the trunk sticking up so she could breathe!!!

Just one more?!?

Taking a break from the hot hot hot sun at Lowry Park Zoo!

Edited: July 23rd, 2009

Wordless Wednesday…

Was yesterday, but this picture of a rescued tortoise at Clearwater Marine Aquarium is too good not to share.  I swear he was looking right at me!

Edited: July 23rd, 2009

Too old?

If a child is too old to breastfeed once they can ask for it…

What about when they say “Mommy, I’m a be sooo excited to see your BOOBIES!”

(Hypothetical, of course… anyone who thinks she is too old can … *ahem*)

Edited: July 5th, 2009

Project Yes

I just read this post, titled Project Yes over at Bad Mommy Moments. Love, love, love. The idea being that we should all make an effort to find ways to say yes to our children, amidst the hundreds of things we find ourselves saying NO about every day.

And I realized that even though “nos” are important and there will always be a need to use them, saying “yes” is more important. It’s harder. It’s often unappreciated. And sometimes it’s painful. Especially on rainy days when all you want to do is curl up on the floor and disappear.

But you never really know what’s inside of your kid until you say “yes” and give them the permission to show you.

I’m definitely going to make an effort to say yes to my daughter more often. Half the time when I say “No,” anyways, I’ve said it without really thinking; and a few minutes later change my mind. Better to say yes in the first place, and get out of the habit of No No NO-ing every little thing!

Edited: July 4th, 2009

CIO and the scientific method

Recently I discovered several scientific articles which claim to support the safety of letting babies cry it out. I’m not going to link to them; if you google, you’ll turn ‘em up. After all, CIO has been practiced for eons, there is tons of evidence about how wonderful it is and very little scientific research showing that it is negative for babies.

I use science a lot in making decisions for my child, most especially with medical issues. Regarding vaccines, I’m quite passionate about the science behind it and have found that research has come out firmly in favor of vaccination, even with the occasional bad reactions. This is a case where the diseases can do so much damage, that a small amount of risk is definitely worthwhile. So I certainly don’t discount science, and I believe that the results of these studies may be quite reliable.

However, I also think it is quite telling; not scientific, mind you, but telling; that most of the moms I’ve encountered who have done CIO with their children, describe it as “The lesser of two evils.” Yes. If you are in a position where you feel like you are a danger to your child or yourself by virtue of those sleepless nights, CIO may be something that would work for you, and ultimately be the “lesser of two evils,” for both you and your child.

For myself, I’ve certainly done a lot of thinking on this subject. My child has been a horrendous sleeper since day one, and I think the only reason I’ve been able to survive it sanity intact is because I have the type of husband I can wake up in the middle of the night and hand my child to, so that I can get a break. I have also had to walk away and take a breather for a few minutes on several occasions. So I’m not saying my baby has never ever ever cried alone for a second, she has.

And in those moments where I was taking my breathers, and calming my self down, I was able to use the first tool in the scientific method; observation. I was able to observe my child and how she behaved when I did not respond to her in the night, and it wasn’t pretty. My child is and always has been the type to just completely panic and freak out if Mama ignored her. Not every child is this way; Ask Moxie has a great article about CIO and the different types of children and how it may affect them. But for my child, I was able to use my skills of observation to see quite quickly that CIO would never work for her, and would in fact damage her. Damage her faith in the world, faith in me, damage our relationship, potentially affect her self-esteem, and her ability to trust. I’m not ok with that.

I am not saying this to demonize moms who CIO; if you have to do that, you have to. If you choose to, well, I disagree with your choice. I’m trying to say (probably not very well), that there are other reasons than “what science has shown,” to make choices for our children. That we as parents have the ultimate power of observation and ability to see if something is harmful to our child, regardless what anyone else says. Attachment parenting is about figuring out what is the best thing for your child, not strict adherence to a list of “rules.” Some babies simply do better if left to fuss for a few minutes; but only the parents, not science, can make that determination.

Generally speaking, I am very very anti-CIO. I find that most parents who use it, tend to be the “never give in” type of parent which winds up in little babies left to cry for hours; I also have seen that many parents who do CIO wind up needing to do it over and over again, and that disturbs me as well. I do think that teaching yourself as a parent to ignore your child when they are in need of you, can have a negative effect on your relationship. Further, the reality is that the sleep of children will change throughout their childhood based on so many things; their growth, teething, developmental leaps. Trying to force those sleep patterns to fit what we would like them to be, usually doesn’t seem to work very well.

Obviously I cannot remember my experiences as a baby; but I do have memories from about three years on, and older, of my mother telling me to “go to sleep,” and ignoring me no matter how I cried. I remember a lot of this as a very painful time for me; I went through phases where my life was quite disrupted (divorce, lots of changes), and would be unable to sleep, and left to cry. I remember how it felt, and on more than one occasion I have found myself saying the same thing to my daughter… and then realizing that I do not ever ever want her to feel what I felt.

But I also recognize that I cannot make decisions for another parent, and my opinion on this topic is just that.

Edited: July 3rd, 2009

Snack, baby, snack!

For ages now, I’ve been working on getting Bella to reduce the amount of milk she drinks; specifically, milk in bottles. This has been a huge struggle for me, because her comfort items are breasts and bottles, in that order, but both very very important to her. She really doesn’t have a blanket or anything like that, any kind of comfort object. But I really want her to eat more actual food, and less milk. I’m thrilled to report that I’ve finally gotten her 100% off of formula (who would’ve thought a child could LIKE that taste?), but she is still taking bottles (1% milk with a tiny bit of sugar).

Due to this situation, I find myself struggling all the time for exciting ways to tempt her to eat food. It doesn’t help that she is in the midst of the Worst Ever Picky Toddler phase right now. My lil’ one who at 9 months old would slurp curry sauce off of my spoon now refuses… well, pretty much everything. So I put spinach in anything that she will eat: egg drop soup, spaghettio’s, scrambled eggs. I offer a LOT of peas, because she does love peas. And the other day I tried again a tactic I had used when she was a new eater, but not in a long time… the muffin tin snack tray.

There it is. It looks so pretty, doesn’t it? I’ll let you figure out what’s in it; the only thing I think might be a little unrecognizable are the mother’s graham bumpers, which is an organic cereal that is super sweet and delicious, right up her ally.

She didn’t eat much of this. I think she ate the cheerio’s, and that was all. *sigh* I’ll keep trying!

Edited: June 11th, 2009

W.I.P. Wednesday

My first time jumping in to WIP Wednesday, so be gentle… I’m all new and vulnerable and stuff. This is the Lion brand baby hoodie towel, supposedly anyways. I’m not sure I’ll ever have the patience to finish it, since it is pretty borrrrring to knit. I do a row here or there where my daughter will let me.

Can one of you knitting gurus out there tell me how I’m supposed to knit past the limits of my needle size? Do I need to switch to circulars? Because circulars make my head go BOOM!

Edited: June 10th, 2009