Dealing With Jerky Parents

My husband takes Becks to preschool twice a week. He loves it. We love it. The school is amazing, the teachers, the parents, we've been nothing but impressed. Or that's what I would have said yesterday. Going forward, I will add "for the most part," after the parents bit of the sentence.
Today B got pushed down by another little boy in class. Big deal, right? Happens all the time. Yes. Kids are emotional and do inexplicable things sometimes. This is no exception.

My husband happened to be watching as a little boy ran up and pushed B, causing him to fall out of shoes, hit the ground and basically become a sobbing mess. He wasn't expecting it and didn't see it coming. Poor dude.

As my husband consoled him and helped him put his shoes back on, his cries attracted the attention of the teachers, who are always loving, and the mom of the pusher, who quickly made excuses for her child, with no apology. And that's fine. As I said before, things like this happen. I wouldn't even expect a 3 year old to apologize.

I have a sensitive son. He has a lot of feelings and we encourage him to express them, for as long and in whatever (productive) way he needs to. So as Hillary comforted him, the mom made a comment about how Becks was overreacting. And this is where I clench my jaw and my eyes get super wide and I nod at your wordless sympathizing that she would have the nerve to be all judgey about a two year old that her son pushed down.

I am proud of Hillary. He stayed level headed in front of the kids and the teachers, ignored the woman, made sure B was good to go and left, even though he was furious and commented to me later, that he'd never felt that type of anger before. That protective type of anger. He did exactly what he should have though and was the bigger person. I am so proud of him, because I am not sure I would have had the restraint to not give that mom at the very least a look and a snarky comment.

I am very supportive of other parents. I think we all need to help each other out and accept different ways of parenting. If you'd like to silently, or not so silently, judge me or my parenting style, go for it. I am an adult and I'm secure in my choices. But do not judge my child for how he deals with bruised knees or hurt feelings. And if you do, hope it's in front of my husband, because he will handle it better than I.

Race & Toddlers

In the middle of unloading my paper towels, plastic Easter eggs, diapers and dental floss onto the conveyor belt at Target, Beckett pointed to our cashier and said, "Her is black." We've been working on our colors at home. Skin color has not come into the lesson, but he made the jump on his own. My face immediately flushed.

Now let's freeze here for a minute - why was I embarrassed? Well, first, the cashier was NOT amused. So that didn't help. But I wasn't embarrassed when he said loud enough for the mother to hear, "That baby has a helmet on. Maybe he was skateboarding," about an infant with a head shaping helmet on. And I'm never embarrassed when he talks about a child at school who is in a wheelchair or has leg braces. He's curious, learning and only two and a half. Did I think that our cashier thought he was racist? I mean, look at the kid, he is never less cute than  the photo above, clearly he has no hate or malice. Perhaps I was afraid she thought I was racist. I'm not, but I felt like saying anything about it would be completely awkward. "OH! He's just learning his colors. We love everyone. No racism in our house! Ha. Haa..." Yep. Glad I didn't go that route.

She just stared at me with steely eyes, as she bagged our items. Something needed to be said. "Say hello, B," was all I could think of. To which she got a sing songy "Hiii," and a wave from him. Still nothing on her end. I gave an overly friendly goodbye. And on the way out I talked about all the skin shades, eye and hair color people come in and told him that it's just a little part of what makes the world such an interesting and beautiful place.

But I'm still thinking about it. Should I have done something different? Or maybe our cashier was just having a bad day.

Judgey Feminism

There's been quite the hubbub lately about feminism in the media. The Feminine Mystique turned 50,  Sheryl Sandberg wrote a book called Lean In about the lack of women in leadership roles and her opinion on how to better attain them, and the CEO of Yahoo came back from maternity leave after 2 weeks, although she does have a nursery in her office. The media and blogosphere opened it's gaping mouth, on cue, and spewed forth opinion after opinion about what feminism is and isn't and who is doing it right and who is wrong.

As a Women's Studies minor (my school didn't even offer it as a major, it was so long ago), a feminist, mother, full time worker and female I feel I needed to add one more opinion to the mix.
Here's what I think - Women in the work place? For god's sake, yes! (Are we seriously still talking about this?) Women in leadership roles, yes, please! Ladies, by all means "Lean In," if that style works for you. Your opinions are valid, you have things to say, make yourselves heard and get paid for it. Successful women at work who raise children at the same time? Of course. Stay at home moms? Yes! We would be nowhere without you. This is not a competition. Let's support each other in our wants, needs and goals. There is no right way to be a feminist, all it requires is a sense of fairness, equality and a sense of sisterhood. Stop the bickering.

Let's just help each other get to where we want to be as women and mothers and humans. High level exec, mid-level manager, small business owner, home-schooling-cloth-diapering-garden-growing-nuturer, it doesn't matter. Our goal should be making sure that all roles are accessible and respected. Because guess what? None of them is easy and we're all going to need help.

Boys vs. Girls

I read a really nicely written blog post today by Kim Simon about the Steubenville rape and how we need to take responsibility for raising kind, caring and tuned in sons, not just as people, but specifically with their future sexual partners. You should read it, here's the link.

She hit on something that really resonated with me. My son, Beckett, is two and a half, and at the end of June we are expecting his little sister. I have always wanted one of each. I wanted to experience the differences and similarities of raising someone my own gender and one of the opposite, plus boys against girls on family game night and, yes, I'll admit, I want to buy cute girl clothes. However when I found out I was pregnant this time around I wondered if maybe a boy would just be easier.

I've got the hang of this boy raising thing now, I thought. We keep the visual media to a minimum, curb the violent play (which seems to crop up out of nowhere) with plenty of creative, independent play. We use gentle discipline and help him work through feelings that he doesn't understand, just as Simon suggests in her article. He is kind and we hope to keep him on that track. With another boy, I could put him on that same track and I'd be dodging the pink and purple onslaught from well meaning gift givers. Then there's the princess culture, body image issues, revealing clothing at too young an age, the worries about having a girl stacked up in my mind very quickly.

But Simon goes on to point out that raising a kind boy, something that isn't really that common a goal for rearing males in our society, is only the first part. As he ages there needs to be lots of frank and open discussion about sex and that really scares me. I'm not sure I know how to do it.

My parents are my best friends, but for whatever reason, that is not a subject I have ever been comfortable speaking about with them. When I was a sophomore in college, my dad, who knew that my boyfriend was coming to visit me down at school, asked me frankly and in a friendly tone if we were having sex. Of course we were.

I freaked.

"Ah! Dad, I'm not talking to you about this. Mom! Tell him to stop!" I escaped as quickly as possible to my bedroom.

What could my dad have done differently? Perhaps, have been my mom, other than that I have no clue. But I have time to learn and as Simon points out the conversation will change as he grows.
I think the take away here is that we worry about our girls, and with good reason, a lot of thoughtful parenting is required in this day and age to raise confident and self aware young ladies. But we should be giving as much thought to raising our boys and it doesn't stop with instilling them with empathy, it starts there.