Spanking...

C made an offhand comment about me telling DC 'Just wait til we get home' and then he added - well, you might be one of those moms who jsut hauls off in the store.

I calmly said - oh, I'll never spank our kids.

Yeah, they just won't need to be spanked.

No, not that - well, I think that every parenting choice you make is teaching your child something - and the only thing spanking teaches is that if I'm bigger and stronger than you, I can hurt you to make you do what I want you to do.

Not if you give them an explanation for why you're spanking...

Well, if you are explaining it - what's the spanking for? It's using pain to enforce - thus, teaching that as long as I'm bigger and stronger than you, I can hurt you to make you do what I want.

I made an example of how silly it was to punish a child for hitting a sibling/smaller child, when the parent hits the child, and he kinda brushed it off.

Then, I wrapped up with - you don't even train animals by hitting them, and I would hope our kids are smarter than animals!

He was quiet for a while afterwards, and didn't say anything more - but I know he's thinking about it, and mulling over it.

Ahh.... the education begins.

I've already got him down with cosleeping with a sidecar.

No vaxing will be interesting - but I don't think he'll have too many reservations.

8:51

I took my first test today - 9DPO, mid afternoon, not held (but dark) urine, and got a lovely pristine negative.

Oddly enough, I don't believe it. I'm quite calmly certain that I just tested too early - and I'm okay with that.

I'm kinda considering testing every day - but keeping the results of the tests to myself. I want this - if it's true - to be my own little secret before I would even have to consider telling anyone else. Maybe I will.

Hrm. Almost all of the symptoms have stopped - except for the nipples. They aren't so hard as to hurt, but even when my boobs (I wrote boos, at first. That would be a cute name for nursing - Do you want boo? Boo? - *LOL* People would get the entirely WRONG impression if that was yelled across a crowded room) are loose and stretched out, they are still a tiny bit erect. *shrugs*  Oddly enough (I'm still trying to come to an honest, uninfluenced balance on how I feel - and this is the only place I can be totally true), I'm - calm, either way. Maybe because I'm so CERTAIN that I'm pregnant. If I'm not - I don't think I'll be devastated, just - wrong. :lol

Oddly enough, when I first find out that I'm pregnant - I even want to keep it from C for a while - just a day or two - a time for me & my babe to connect - to make that first bond. Selfish? Maybe - but it's something valuable to me.

It's sad. I've realized that no matter how much I love C - I will always be this babes mother. Only death will stop that for me. For him - well, it's easier - much easier - to stop being the babes' father. And I know (and acknowledge) that that particular idea/meme is from the fathers I've had, and the fathers that I've seen, and that I really have no clue what a proper father is like. I wonder if C does. Once I'm pregnant, I'll ask him questions like that.

I don't feel ready to talk to him about being a parent - maybe it's not fair - but I only give him nine months to come to terms with being a parent - and I've given myself how long? a year? and I'm still struggling with different ideals of parenting. *sigh* I think that I trust that he will trust - and listen - to me. I've kinda sorta talked to him about CIO (in the scope of my potential client), and we had a circ conversation ages ago.

I'm really scared about broaching cosleeping with him. I don't know how to being it up - I would really like for the whole upstairs to be a sleeping area - and the downstairs to be our living quarters - but that would - not put a kink in our sex life - but change the focus of it from the bed to the rest of the house. 

Hrm. I don't kknooooowww!

I've been saying that a lot lately.

It's one definitely honest thing.

9:07

Kids are just little people.....

Okay - some thoughts bout children and parenting and XYZ have been floating through my head for a while, and I want to write about them.... just my version of thinking outloud that I can preserve for myself.

I've always thought that kids were little people - heck, I call them little people half the time. It's - it's really a rather interesting way to look at kids - to really understand and - respect - really, their feelings/attitudes/viewpoints. I remember a while ago - most likely when I was with C's family for one reason or another, feeling so sad at how the kids were just - dismissed. Their feelings about a matter didn't seem to matter - it was like - you're short, so shuddup.  And most of the time - it was about things that really, in the whole scope of things, didn't really matter. But - it's faster and easier and simpler to just ignore someone than it is to 'lower' yourself - physically and emotionally - to look at things from their point of view. And that applies to little people and big people - when you don't understand someone else, it's much easier to just dismiss them, and say that they must be wrong, and really, it doesn't matter, than it is to work with them and to learn and understand and respect them.

 I've always known that all children do for the first few years of their life is learn how to be human - how to be people, basically. And that a huge part of parenting is being sure that you are teaching your kids the right things - by example, and by action. Each reaction to your child teaches them something, and I've realized that you really have to THINK about the implications of what you do - think that you don't know anything, and examine what YOU would learn from what you are about to do with/to/for your child. Kids are notoriously observant, and they pick up on things that some adults would never even notice.

I've been hanging around on crunchy parenting boards - and there is a very strong no-spanking attitude there - and spanking has always been the one parenting option that I have always been half and half on. Half because I was spanked, and honestly, I took it as a joke most of the time - a 'symbol' of punishment, that in the long run, meant jackall to me, besides giving me encouragement to insure that I didn't get caught. Half because - well, the whole teaching thing. Spanking is teaching your kids that it's okay to hit someone who is smaller than you, and who isn't doing what you want them to do.....and thinking of them as the perfect learners, and as little people - well, I've shifted almost totally onto the not-spanking side of the track.
I mean - how would I react if each time I did something that C didn't like, he hauled off and slapped my hand, or took a belt/strap and gave me a few licks? I would fight back like hell, is what I would do - and it certainly wouldn't improve our marriage, and it certainly wouldn't make me WANT to do whatever it was he wanted me to do in the first place. 
I don't hit my cat when he does something wrong - what's the point of hitting him? He's not going to associate what he DID with getting hit - he's just going to cringe each time I try to rub him.
I don't want my kids to think that fighting is a wise option - I want them to consider physical violence against others as an option of not only LAST resort, but also of severe duress - how will including spanking as punishment show them that physical violence is the last resort - and is only done in severe duress?  How will I teach them that it is unacceptable to hit their siblings and friends - when I, the person who is supposed to love them most - hits them 'because I love them'??
And then, there's the fact that spankings eeriely remind me (and almost always have - esp. when called 'whoopings') of slaves being beat on the plantation.  I firmly believe that the slave experience has warped every generation of AfAms in America is ways we are (and most likely always WILL be) blind to, and beating my child because they did something that I don't approve of - well. It doesn't sound right - it sounds like an option to either beat the spirit out of them, and encourage fear and avoidance of authority - or an encouragement to lie, and conceal, and be sneaky, and be withdrawn.
It's - uncomfortable - thinking back on how white men and women did the same thing to my ancestors because they viewed them as little more than animals.
You don't beat horses or dogs or dolphins or whales or elephants or tigers or lions or bears to teach them discipline and how to follow instructions - and I'm starting to feel that using spanking as discipline is basically saying that a human child is less intelligent than those animals, and unable to learn what is and is not acceptable and expected without physical pain....

But at the same time - even with all that logic - I have no CLUE of how to actually disipline children without it! It's an on-going joke in black culture about how 'bad' most little white kids are because they don't get whoopings. The concept of a 'time-out' is considered a weak parenting resort - a way to turn your child into a little brat who throws tantrums and cusses at their parents and grows up to shoot up schools and start illegal wars.

Just a little tap on the behind will teach them - teach them what? That I can hurt them if they don't do what I want? Who wants to teach their kids that? Who wants to encourage their children to be little sadists in that pain will provide them control over other people? I would rather my child burn their hand on the stove, than me to spank them for trying to touch it - at least that way they will clearly understand the real danger -  that momma was trying to protect me from something that hurts - rather than momma hurting me because I was doing something she doesn't want me to do.

*sigh*

It's REALLY hard, even thinking about this, and that troubles me SO much. Because - logically, I mean - come on! It makes perfect sense to NOT hit your kids. I mean - I'm going to do all that I can to protect them from pain everywhere ELSE in the world - and then I'm going to inflict pain on them to protect them from pain? *sigh* It's - stupid. It's - really, really stupid, actually - thinking about it logically.

And it's enourmously sad that I - and I think a lot of parents - simply don't KNOW any other way. I mean - really. If spanking wasn't considered so - so - okay - then people would work and look for other avenues to teach and to disipline their kids and it might make a difference. *sigh*

People always talk about how much 'badder' kids have gotten since they stopped doing corporal punishment in schools - but I think about what else has changed since then. How about the disintergration of the community and the extended family? How about all the crap we are pumping into the air and the food and the water? How about the violence that is shown and glorified on every channel of the TV - sometimes in such subtle ways that you don't even RELIZE there is violence occuring? How about the lack of attention most kids get from people who love them? How about the fact that kids don't play outside nearly as much anymore? I mean - shit, so much has changed in how kids are raised from then to now - how can any honest person point to corporal punishment and say - that's what the problem is?

*sigh* I'm really glad that I started thinking of this NOW - because it really is a mental shift. It's a mindchange to think of spanking as abuse - and interestingly enough, I think of it more as emotional abuse than physical. It's a real shift - even for me, who always thought of kids as little people - to realize that ya know what? I really SHOULD treat them the same way I want to be treated - and that if it's inhumane to beat a lion to train them - it's even more inhumane to beat a child.

It kinda scares me, and saddens me just how hard this is to process...and how I have to keep telling myself - I wouldn't hit a friend who was doing something I didn't like, I wouldn't hit my husband for doing something I didn't like, I wouldn't hit my boss for doing something that I didn't like, I wouldn't hit my cat for doing something I didn't like - why on the birght green Earth would I hit my child - who, besides the cat, understands the LEAST about what is expected of a little person?

It's really amazing - out of everything that I want to do around childrearing - this is the most radical.

ETA: And can I tell you how intensely uncomfy and scared and wondering it makes me that every time I talk/think/ponder spanking, my ass starts to tingle? And no, it's not even vaguely sexual or in a good way.... it's just - odd. It feels like a physical memory, and that bothers me deeply - esp. considering how nonchalant I feel about having been spanked.  

Mothering

So. I've just got off the phone with my mother. We've been having these kind of conversations a lot lately - where she tries to tell me what I should do with my life, and I gently try to tell her that there is no way in HELL I will ever willingly turn myself into a wage slave again simply for the pleasure of 'having' stuff.
L. tells me that because we grew up around money (which maybe he did - but I certainly didn't) we had the freedom to be able to see what else would make us happy besides money. I don't know - maybe that is it. But, I do know that as I've gotten older, more in touch with myself, and wiser - I've begun to realize that the 'money first' attitude isn't mine. It's no longer the #1 thing on my list of need to have. Maybe I can fix my mouth to say that because I've never TRULY been short of money. I've never had to decide whether to pay the phone bill or the electric bill because covering both wasn't possible. I've never had to make excuses to my children as to why we are having the same thing to eat for dinner AGAIN. But - at the same time, I don't want to have to chose between going to a meeting or going to the ballet recital I've worked so hard to afford. I don't want to work so long and doing something that I hate - simply for the money. I don't want to HAVE to work to the bone to have the 'things' I've been told that I need/deserve - but not being happy.
She told me tonight - sometimes if one has a goal, one has to sacrifice to reach it. I agree. And I've sacrificed - but it should be okay to draw a line in the sand and say "Here. I can give up no more - I WILL not give up anymore in order to have more THINGS around me." It should be acceptable to say - No more. The money isn't worth MY LIFE.
I don't plan on being poor - heavens no. I've got too much of a champange taste for that. But - I do plan on being HAPPY. And if being happy means that I don't make as much as a dentist does - hey. I can live with that. If being happy means that I won't be able to afford to drive a new car every other year - hey. I can LIVE with that. But - she doesn't see the huge realm of possibilities between working 80 hours a week at a job I hate but lets me bring home 150,000 a year - and working at a 7-11 struggling from paycheck to paycheck with no money to take my children to art classes or museums.

I haven't had the heart to tell her that I'm pretty sure of what I want to do with my life - simply because I'm almost sure that she wouldn't approve. It doesn't make enough money for her - besides not being the least bit impressive. Sometimes, I really wonder how she managed to raise a child with so much of her sense of money, but with such an unattraction to it.

I imagine it must be hard for her though. To see me, her pride & joy, talking madness about being happy - no matter the money. It must be worrying for her - to see me so willing to apparently toss everything she's taught me away for some 'emotional' feeling.

I don't know. Maybe I am a little too idealistic. Maybe I have painted a rosy picture in my mind of what a simpler life would be like. Even still, I yearn for it.

Expectations

Sometimes I think that I have exceedingly high expectations of the kind of mother I'm going to be, and I worry that I will look DOWN on myself if I am not the parent I plan on being. Yet, at the same time, I am not willing to mentally 'settle' for being any less. I think that every parent plans on being the BEST parent they can possibly be - or at least in my mind I would hope so. I would also hope that those same parents would have taken some time to THINK about how they want to raise their kids and how to guide them along. Corey and I have constant discussions about our kids. What we're going to name them, how we are going to raise them, discipline, school, friends, TV, bedtimes, eating habits, privacy - just EVERYTHING that we can think of (or some brat reminds us of) we talk about.

But there are so many parents who aren't - bad - per se, it just seems like either 1) they haven't thought about the consequences of THEIR actions 2) they don't care or 3) they don't realize how smart kids are. My latest bit of confusion on this topic - I have a coworker who has a gorgeous strapping 16-month-old son. We were sitting at lunch one day, and talking with another coworker whose wife recently had their second child. She begins to ask him about strollers as she plans on taking a long trip with him in a few months, and she doesn't want to have to carry a big stroller. Then she says He is SOOO strong - if he doesn't want to do something, I can't make him do it. In that case, she was talking about him staying in his high chair, but I had to wonder if she thought at ALL about how that is going to play out as he gets older. She is TEACHING him that if he struggles, complains, or whines enough, she will give in to his demands and give him what he wants. Obviously, right now the kid staying in his high chair or not isn't such a big deal - but what about when it comes to bigger things? Homework? Bedtimes? Meals? Bathing? General attitude? She is going to bitch and moan and whine about how she has to fight with him to get him to do ANYTHING that she wants - or that he throws temper tantrums - but she won't realize at ALL that she TAUGHT him that form of getting what he wants.

Looking back, I don't think my mother was mean or overly harsh to me. I honestly can't ever remember her having to physically discipline me - and I can honestly say that I KNEW better. Even as a very young child - I KNEW better. And I knew that there were certain things I could get away with, and certain things that I couldn't, and nothing more than the respect and LOVE I had for my mother kept me in line. I wasn't one of those children you see now-a-days in stores cringing as their parent reaches in to scoop them up - I was one of those children who never HAD to be scooped up for acting out. I also wonder if that is more the fact of the KIND of child I was, or if it was because of how I was raised. I believe that it was because of how I was raised.
There are several things that my mother did that I have SWORN to do for my children - simply because it makes sense.
1) Let them pick out their own clothes. My mother would select several mix & match options, but I would pick out what I actually wore that day. I did this from - 2? 3? years old.
2) Feed them what they need to eat. The concept of a child not eating anything but apples & hotdogs sounds like nothing BUT lazy parenting to me. I was usually consulted about what I would LIKE to have for dinner. Sometimes I go it, sometimes I didn't. If I didn't like what was served, I didn't have to eat, and I could go to bed hungry. It wasn't a punishment - it was me fully feeling the result of my actions. She never tried to feed me food that I hated, and she never had to fret about making everyone at the table happy.
3) Allow privacy. I firmly believe that every member of the family DESERVES privacy. Always. I had a friend who wasn't allowed to close her bedroom door - and that always creeped me out. Forbidding your child privacy insinuates that you do NOT trust them, no matter how much you may say that you do. I think the one and ONLY time my mother 'searched' my room, I was sitting there on the bed, bawling about something, and I fully deserved to have my room searched. I was 15 then, and I still believe that she never snooped in my room without my permission.
4) Mutual Respect. Some parents feel that they can treat their children as they would rather NOT be treated - and wonder why the kids treat them the same way. I won't snoop through my kids’ stuff. I will ask permission before I use anything of theirs. I will knock on their door before walking in. I will apologize/admit when I'm wrong. I won't act like I know everything & that I'm always right.

So. I know that no parent ever wants to FEEL like they are raising their children 'wrong'. Hell, I don't know if there really is a WRONG way to raise your child if you provide love and boundaries. But in my heart, I know that I have an image of a right way to raise our children - and I can only hope that we are strong enough to do it.

Educational

We more or less stumbled into homeschooling as I don't think that my mother ever PLANNED on homeschooling me. However, with the lack of 'acceptable' schools for me to go to and our perpetual moving, it simply made the most sense for me to be homeschooled.
We had very few 'classes', and the only one that was consistant were math classes (the one subject we both hated). I learned about fractions from cooking. I learned about all kinds of science stuff from the Children's Museum in Boston that we went to on a regular basis while we lived there. I learned about human sexuality from a wonderful little comic book written from a brother & sister whose parents are about to have a younger sibling. I learned about percentages calculating discounts at sales. Even with all the 'outside' learning, I did most of my learning from reading - I would get a textbook, read it, work with my mom on the exercises, do the test that came with the book, and move on. It was WONDERFUL. If it took me three months to 'get' long division - it took me three months. I wasn't rushed, pushed, failed, or in any other way made to feel that I wasn't living up to some sort of 'expectations'. If it took me two days to get through a science concept - I wasn't forced to keep 'learning' it because I was moving too fast for the curriculum. We just ordered the next level of books and moved on. I worked at about three different levels by the time I was 10 - college level for reading and writing, 8th or 9th grade for math, and 10th or 11th grade for science.
Being homeschooled encouraged a THIRST for knowledge in me. There were some things that I HAD to learn - but I wasn't limited in feeling like that was the ONLY thing I had to learn. If I was interested in something, we would go to the library, get a book on it and we would BOTH learn from it. I've realized over the past few months that I am a fount of bits of knowledge about all KINDS of things - and I think the freedom and flexibility of homeschooling had a lot to do with that. I don't think that kids in regular school have the time to have that kind of freedom because SOOOO much of what you learn in school you are forced to learn by memorization. I think the only thing I really memorized was the time tables, and even still I rarely used them. I learned to understand a concept, and from that understanding get the answer. So, nope - I don't know my time tables (except for the 2's and the 5's) but I can do simple multiplication and division in my head faster than most people can do with pen & paper - and sometimes even calucators. And math was my WEAK subject.
My transition from homeschooling to high school was a more or less seamless one. I was in a base level math class (Algebra I) but other than that I was in all high level classes. Educationally - even though I was in an accelerated college prep school - I didn't study all through high school and still ended up graduating as valedictorian. I can't even remember really WORKING hard on school work until I hit my senior year - and even then it was only math I was working on. I've never been too good at english grammar either, but my writing and comprehension skills were excellent enough that a little incorrect comma/semi-colon use was treated rather lightly. College was an entirely different story - but I think that going to school for the full 12 years wouldn't have made any difference as far as that went.
I also came to school with a very stable and settled self-image. I never really worried about peer-pressure, most of the time I didn't even really notice it. Up until 9th grade I was always my OWN person and judged that way. There were no cliques, no poplularity contests, no Jones to keep up with, so when I went to high school I KNEW I was different, but I never felt a lot of pressure to conform. I was never 'socialized' in the concept of group-think, and I think that almost balances the lack of social interaction before highschool.

I know that I definitely want to homeschool my children - or send them to a school that follows some of homeschoolings tenets (like a Montesorri school). The lack of social interaction can easily be balanced by allowing the children to participate in other activities, and I honestly can't think of any other regrets I have about being homeschooled. In fact, I'm QUITE thankful that I was homeschooled. I firmly believe that I would NOT be the 'acceptably quirky' person that I am today if I went to school for the full 12 years and I shudder to think of what I MIGHT have been...