childrearing manifesto
Feb. 28th, 2006 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanpaku_backupMy exceedingly minor triumphs of the other day having dissolved in their usual way into days of minor setbacks... and discovering/reading the Invisible Adjunct not improving the sense of my future any (why is it that I always only seem to hear about things like this once their time is long passed?)... it is not good to think too hard on the fact that it was about five years ago that I defended my dissertation. Five years is a long time to have been doing, basically, nothing of consequence.
WELL, instead of going into all that again, I thought it might be better to think about what it is I have been doing and learning these past few years. Being inspired by/having stole the idea from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mabfan's rather esoteric discussion of writing science fiction, for some reason it occurred to me to write down what it is I have learned about raising a small child. As a list of things I wish I had known, it might be useful to me when time traveling, or useful to those of you contemplating small children of your own, or those of you who will never have small children but laugh at those of us who do. I thought I would emulate the insulting, know-it-all style of advice books "for idiots" and the like, because my mind is too corroded to do it any more creatively. In no particular order.
1. Prepare the Zone
Periodically during and after pregnancy, the helpful baby-marketing people will provide you with helpful bags and magazines full of helpful advice and coupons for their various helpful products. These will scare the hell out of you and will usually be for things you will never need, such as a baby monitor. But you know, the bag does come in handy. You will use it to spot other clueless parents who have recently left the hospital and are still carrying around the coupons and so forth.
But there is something to it, in that being a parent makes you very conscious of the environment around you. Because the screaming has to stop, now. That's what you learn, very quickly. So within a few weeks you will commit to memory the location of, and shortest route to, every diaper, blanket, binky, formula jar, etc. in your house and cubbyholes for same. The habits of years -- of putting belongings in random piles, to be recovered (or not) months later -- just melt away, replaced by a military-like obsession with being able to locate the correct objects for the task at hand.
The other part of the environment is that "out there," beyond your house, is where the dreaded other people live. These other people will Notice and Disapprove of your child's uncombed hair or tantrums or filth on their clothing.
So you learn to put in the car or the bag everything that you could possibly need should the child erupt in screaming or bodily substances or both. You can't prevent these things 100% of the time and you can never remember to bring 100% of the things you should. But you learn that unless your kid is sick, those eruptions have a finite series of causes, and thus, remedies. You just don't leave the house without bottle/food, toys, books, pacifier, and diapers and wipes. The good news is that if your bag has those things you will probably be more or less OK for most short-term crises that may occur.
The more difficult environmental engineering challenges are presented when inserting the child into a foreign space, such as when you have not found a babysitter and have foolishly decided to bring the child to the house of an adult without children. In this circumstance it's best to have your spouse go into the space and clear every object within two or three feet of the floor that weighs less than 20 lbs. Particularly if they are breakable and/or shiny and/or pet food. Prepare the zone.
2. Other People Are the Enemy
It's difficult enough that everyone you meet is constantly judging you on your parenting performance based on your child's appearance and behavior and if they have a stupid first name. Yes, of course they are. But on top of that, they actively want to undermine the precariously based routines that make good parenting possible.
For example, a major part of the warp and woof of the day is based on the eternal struggle to get your child to eat something other than cookies, candy, and goldfish crackers. It's much easier to do this when they haven't been plied with those things at playgroup, or by teachers, or by little old ladies who spring out to attack them in the hallways. News flash for you, people! Toddlers are too stupid to lick lollipops! They crack them with their teeth and eat them within five seconds, then ask for more. "Lunch" has now concluded.
Another major element of the day is getting your toddler to please god don't insist on playing with that bleeping phone toy or demand that same inane cartoon again or listen to that idiotic Raffi CD. It is much, much easier to prevent these tragedies from happening if your children don't know they exist. Similarly, it is much easier to resist demands to buy Licensed Cartoon Character-based toys if your children don't know what they are. And yet, who gives us the Dora books and the Clifford books and the talking Clifford game and the bleeping Barbie phone and the Motherdefucking Guitar-Playing Elmo and so on? Well-meaning other people. People who are able to leave and not hear these things ten thousand times and in their nightmares too. Alas, grandparents are the worst offenders.
Those of you without kids reading this are saying, well, just don't give it to your kids again, to which I say, someday you too will learn. Those of you with kids are marveling at the quixotic, not to say fascistic, attempts we make to control our child's cultural intake, to which I say, jawohl.
... to be continued: "3. Children's Music Is Made by Satan."
WELL, instead of going into all that again, I thought it might be better to think about what it is I have been doing and learning these past few years. Being inspired by/having stole the idea from
mabfan's rather esoteric discussion of writing science fiction, for some reason it occurred to me to write down what it is I have learned about raising a small child. As a list of things I wish I had known, it might be useful to me when time traveling, or useful to those of you contemplating small children of your own, or those of you who will never have small children but laugh at those of us who do. I thought I would emulate the insulting, know-it-all style of advice books "for idiots" and the like, because my mind is too corroded to do it any more creatively. In no particular order. 1. Prepare the Zone
Periodically during and after pregnancy, the helpful baby-marketing people will provide you with helpful bags and magazines full of helpful advice and coupons for their various helpful products. These will scare the hell out of you and will usually be for things you will never need, such as a baby monitor. But you know, the bag does come in handy. You will use it to spot other clueless parents who have recently left the hospital and are still carrying around the coupons and so forth.
But there is something to it, in that being a parent makes you very conscious of the environment around you. Because the screaming has to stop, now. That's what you learn, very quickly. So within a few weeks you will commit to memory the location of, and shortest route to, every diaper, blanket, binky, formula jar, etc. in your house and cubbyholes for same. The habits of years -- of putting belongings in random piles, to be recovered (or not) months later -- just melt away, replaced by a military-like obsession with being able to locate the correct objects for the task at hand.
The other part of the environment is that "out there," beyond your house, is where the dreaded other people live. These other people will Notice and Disapprove of your child's uncombed hair or tantrums or filth on their clothing.
So you learn to put in the car or the bag everything that you could possibly need should the child erupt in screaming or bodily substances or both. You can't prevent these things 100% of the time and you can never remember to bring 100% of the things you should. But you learn that unless your kid is sick, those eruptions have a finite series of causes, and thus, remedies. You just don't leave the house without bottle/food, toys, books, pacifier, and diapers and wipes. The good news is that if your bag has those things you will probably be more or less OK for most short-term crises that may occur.
The more difficult environmental engineering challenges are presented when inserting the child into a foreign space, such as when you have not found a babysitter and have foolishly decided to bring the child to the house of an adult without children. In this circumstance it's best to have your spouse go into the space and clear every object within two or three feet of the floor that weighs less than 20 lbs. Particularly if they are breakable and/or shiny and/or pet food. Prepare the zone.
2. Other People Are the Enemy
It's difficult enough that everyone you meet is constantly judging you on your parenting performance based on your child's appearance and behavior and if they have a stupid first name. Yes, of course they are. But on top of that, they actively want to undermine the precariously based routines that make good parenting possible.
For example, a major part of the warp and woof of the day is based on the eternal struggle to get your child to eat something other than cookies, candy, and goldfish crackers. It's much easier to do this when they haven't been plied with those things at playgroup, or by teachers, or by little old ladies who spring out to attack them in the hallways. News flash for you, people! Toddlers are too stupid to lick lollipops! They crack them with their teeth and eat them within five seconds, then ask for more. "Lunch" has now concluded.
Another major element of the day is getting your toddler to please god don't insist on playing with that bleeping phone toy or demand that same inane cartoon again or listen to that idiotic Raffi CD. It is much, much easier to prevent these tragedies from happening if your children don't know they exist. Similarly, it is much easier to resist demands to buy Licensed Cartoon Character-based toys if your children don't know what they are. And yet, who gives us the Dora books and the Clifford books and the talking Clifford game and the bleeping Barbie phone and the Motherdefucking Guitar-Playing Elmo and so on? Well-meaning other people. People who are able to leave and not hear these things ten thousand times and in their nightmares too. Alas, grandparents are the worst offenders.
Those of you without kids reading this are saying, well, just don't give it to your kids again, to which I say, someday you too will learn. Those of you with kids are marveling at the quixotic, not to say fascistic, attempts we make to control our child's cultural intake, to which I say, jawohl.
... to be continued: "3. Children's Music Is Made by Satan."
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 08:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 07:44 pm (UTC)man...
Date: 2006-03-01 08:43 am (UTC)[Raffi CDs and talking Elmos sail into trash]
Re: man...
Date: 2006-03-01 07:14 pm (UTC)What is really aggravating is being in airports or similar and seeing exhausted parents give their kids bleeping toys that everyone else can hear. Now I know why they do it, but still. There used to be such a thing as a goddam social compact.
Re: man...
Date: 2006-03-01 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 11:48 am (UTC)Do you mean the Robert's Rules posts? They're not about writing science fiction as much as they are about writing fiction in general; but since SF is what I mostly write myself, it's where I often find my best examples.
Anyway, glad to be an inspiration!
no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 04:44 pm (UTC)Kids are like pets in one regard: they are experts at conning you out of the food they shouldn't be eating. I don't know why more adults don't understand that, kids or not. I would never give candy to someone else's kid; for all I know I'm one of a dozen people doing so that day. If the kid will take fruit or carrot sticks or something like that I knew he's hungry; if only a chcolate bar will do, he'll have to get it elsewhere.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 07:17 pm (UTC)You understand perfectly. Maybe too few people have pets?