Mommy Madness

[atommom]

A rather long but interesting read from Newsweek...

Was I crazy? No—I was a committed mother, eager to do right by my child and well-versed in the child care teachings of the day. I was proud of the fact that I could get in three full hours of high-intensity parenting before I left for work; prouder still that, when I came home in the evening, I could count on at least three more similarly intense hours to follow. It didn't matter that, in my day job as a stringer for this magazine, I was often falling asleep at my desk. Nor that I'd lost the ability to write a coherent sentence. My brain might have been fried, but my baby's was thriving. I'd seen the proof of that everywhere—in the newsweeklies and the New York Times, on TV, even in the official statements that issued forth from the White House, where First Lady Hillary Clinton herself had endorsed "singing, playing games, reading, storytelling, just talking and listening" as the best ways to enhance a child's development.

All around me, the expert advice on baby care, whether it came from the What to Expect books or the legions of "specialists" hawking videos, computer software, smart baby toys or audiotapes to advance brain development, was unanimous: Read! Talk! Sing! And so I talked and I read and I sang and made up stories and did funny voices and narrated car rides ... until one day, when my daughter was about four, I realized that I had turned into a human television set, so filled with 24-hour children's programming that I had no thoughts left of my own.

And when I started listening to the sounds of the Mommy chatter all around me in the playgrounds and playgroups of Washington, D.C.—the shouts of "Good job!," the interventions and facilitations ("What that lady is saying is, she would really prefer you not empty your bucket of sand over her little boy's head. Is that okay with you, honey?")—I realized that I was hardly alone.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6959880/site/newsweek/

[Spinzonner]

1. Put 'em in the closet and open it again when they're 18

[lukasahero]

2. Saw this the other day

I was all ready for a "so women should just go back to barefoot and pregnant" article only to be ridiculously surprised to see actual suggestions as to how to improve the "choices". This was an important article for all men and women to read. Follow up it with Quindlen's article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6960127/site/newsweek/

[SarahB]

3. In the last couple of years, I've had to learn how to slow down....

and forgive myself for taking care of my needs. Less junk ("pick one activity outside of school that you like") and pace things better.

Guess what? They're still smart and well adjusted. Then again, their mom is smarter and more well-adjusted herself again.

As for babies, talk a lot (just normally), read some, and hold them a lot. It's not so hard. Certainly not technical at all. A lot of these "baby activities" are really just socialization for the yuppie mom types. If one doesn't fit with that crowd, you feel a bit lost there anyway. Besides, my kids are still smarter than theirs. :P

[RazzleCat]

4. Yeah, we need common sense

I know I was (and still not) the "super mom". I told my son early on when all his friends got involved in multiple activities that he could pick one, and only one because I could not spend all my time taking him here their and everywhere. I also never talked "baby talk" to him, and his vocabulary shows that. I have a friend who I just look at and think shes nuts, I even told her so. Single mom, (like me) three boys, each is involved in over 5 activities, her life is spent in the car and scheduling all their activities. I will stop by her house to get my kid and find her half dead with exhaustion on the floor of her family room working on some "kid project", and tell her she just needs to quit and get some sleep, her response is that for now her life is for her kids. I wonder whats going to happen to her when they all move on (as your child should). She has no time for any stuff for her, dating, reading, going out with friends, its all kids all the time. I think its sad.

[LisaLynne]

5. I agree!

You know, there really is something to picking something you're really, truly interested in and putting your energy into that, so you do it the best you can, instead of having 15,000 different things. That's what the saying "Jack of all trades, master of none" refers to! So many parents are pressured into thinking they have to have their children in a million different things and end up running the kids and themselves ragged. It's because we're so much about "doing" things all the time we forget to live life itself.

So, kudos to those of you who have figured it out and refuse to kill yourself. After all, what good does an exhausted, stressed parent do anyone?