Yeah, it's really delightful having them at the point where they can get themselves from point A to point B solo, or run an errand.
Fuck yes. This kind of thing so awfully annoying, as is having to do drops at a bunch of schools. Ugh, the wasted time!
Mara's adoption is final now, so we're sitting around watching crummy cartoons with her. I'm pushing for a museum trip or something, anything. Or maybe a nap. What I should really do is go to the grocery, but at times like this when I have time to do it I don't want to. Whining, I know.
It's really incredible how much time extends. How long do you think it should take to put on underwear, tights, a tunic-dress thing, socks, shoes, and a jacket? If your guess is "45 minutes and NO THE PINK FLOWER HERE DOES NOT MMMMATCH THE PINK FLOWER ON THE PANTS" you are correct. And my kid is generally pretty easy going.
That was just this morning, by the way, so I am using the blog to advance the art of near real time reporting.
I'm sorry, not tights, leggings. That error by me, if spoken aloud, could have led to at least another 10 minutes of conversation about the difference between tights and leggings.
How long do you think it should take to put on underwear, tights, a tunic-dress thing, socks, shoes, and a jacket? If your guess is "45 minutes and NO THE PINK FLOWER HERE DOES NOT MMMMATCH THE PINK FLOWER ON THE PANTS" you are correct. And my kid is generally pretty easy going.
So how long does it take for her to get dressed?
How long do you think it should take to put on underwear, tights, a tunic-dress thing, socks, shoes, and a jacket?
If the community theater puts on Robin Hood, I might be able to find out.
We are thinking of having kids. I am a loose disorganized daydreamy person. I do like small cute things in the abstract. But when I think of it being not abstract I get a sense of dread. I am not sure WTF to do, invisible internet friends.
10 - I think I had that same sense of dread, that fundamentally I am not cut out for very small children. I decided to think of the small children stage as something finite that I could endure, in order to get to the slightly older children.
In practice, that dread is nowhere to be found, although I still don't love other people's small children at all, and I'm still looking forward to slightly older children.
10 -- Me too. But, once you have the kid, the organization is kind of forced upon you, and you are almost certain to lose the sense of dread. Also while it's certainly full of work and a time sink, it's not that hard and most complaints are minor bitching about something that's basically wonderful. I say go for it and pump out some kids!!!
Um... you actually stop doing whatever to discuss stuff like that with your kids? That's where all your spare time is going. Issue short and (usually) comprehensible diktats and follow disobedience with brutality. That gets them quickly oriented to reality.
That's great news, Thorn. Congrats to your now more official growing family!!
Issue short and (usually) comprehensible diktats and follow disobedience with brutality.
For better or for worse, not my style. Though if you want to install me as czar I'd be happy to try it out on the population as a whole.
10: there are no circumstances in which having kids is a bad idea. At worst, they'll make your life miserable, but that's information about yourself that's well worth knowing.
At worst, they'll make your life miserable, but that's information about yourself that's well worth knowing.
So . . . you should have kids because in order to learn that your kids have made your life miserable? Huh?
My prediction: 10.1 will either be left alone or lead to a long bewildering thread.
because in order
See, I even confused myself.
10: You should get a rescue cat. If you can keep its aquarium clean, do a home neutering surgery, and teach it to count to seven, then you're ready.
As a loose disorganized daydreamy person, it's not that bad. If you have kids, you won't be more miserable than a tightly wound super-organized type, you'll just spend more time looking like a clown and eating peculiar things for dinner.
18, 20 -- I believe that the Urple One was making fun of the idea that there's no bad time to have kids.
10: You could, of course, try to borrow small people from your friends, but it really is differrent when the kids are your own. I guess I'd say you should think about what make you feel dread and what Martha's complementary strengths might be, because parenting together requires a lot of teamwork.
I'm not going to agree with urple that there's no downside. Lee and I were in a horrible situation when she was unwilling to have anything to do with the two new kids, though we're working through it, but the relationship wouldn't have survived long-term if this were the status quo. However, with the more traditional way of having kids, you get plenty of time to get used to them as they grow and you'll probably get better with practice. Once you have a child who's old enough to daydream too, that's pretty awesome.
Oh, and thanks! We're thrilled. Mara is celebrating by dancing and watching Pee-Wee's Playhouse.
Well, congratulations to her and you and Lee.
Issue short and (usually) comprehensible diktats ukases and follow disobedience with brutality.
I'm not going to agree with urple that there's no downside.
Not at all what I said. There are lots of (huge)downsides, they're just outweighed by upsides.
To 24, I was actually serious, but it's not a position that is defensible in this forum.
Saiselgy weighs in on the precise issue, from his new perch.
As near as I can tell, there is no correlation between how much you think you will like having children and how much you actually like it. Some people are convinced their lives will be incomplete if they don't have kids, and it turns out that kids make them miserable. Some people never want to have kids, and it turns out to be the best thing for them. And so on, for every possible combination of desire and parenthood status.
The same is true not only for how much you like being a parent, but how good a parent you are.
In fact, no one knows anything about this issue. There is planning to be done about how many and when, but whether to have children is a decision with completely, absolutely, metaphysically unknowable outcomes.
Is there a new Saiselgy RSS feed? I'm having trouble finding one that isn't a bunch of slate bloggers.
follow disobedience with brutality.
If you need to pepper spray your kids they sell little cannisters with a built in clip for pocket carry. If a bunch of those little turds are throwing sand on the playground just hose them all down. Believe me, they'll stop.
I endorse 30. It's a total craps shoot, with the additional corollary that the grass is always greener on the other side.
Nevermind, found it (feed://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox.fulltext.all.10.rss).
32: I've found your (albeit sort of careful and decidedly muted) defense of the UC Davis police a bit hard to stomach, I'll admit, just as I did your defense of the cop who tried to murder Skip Gates while he slept soundly in his own bed, harming no one. But now I love you more than ever.
Also, 30 really is sage. There's no sense trying to make sense of nonsense, and the decision to have have kids is for the most part nonsense of the most nonsensical sort. It's a choice that truly resists rational inquiry. It might work for you and Martha, George! Or you might hate it!
I am so looking forward to reading less Yglesias. Perhaps this move (and posts like the one linked in 29) will finally break the habit!
Perhaps. Reading less Yggleischaeias is a decision with completely, absolutely, metaphysically unknowable outcomes.
I haven't read him for months and months, maybe years. I'm taller, trimmer, and have more of the right kind of hair. My voice is deeper, my lung capacity is greater, my cock is, believe it or not, well, it's still the same size. Maybe if I keep abstaining.
32: So now everyone needs to fill out this matrix:
YB = you bare-handed
YP= you w/pepper spray
5B = # of 5-yr-olds bare-handed
5P = # of 5-yr-olds w/pepper spray
YB | YP
5B | |
-----|-----|------
5P | |
32: My father-in-law gave us those years ago. We dumped them when we had a kid and I was going to secure them. While doing so, I noticed that they expired several years before.
I guess the moral of the story is if you don't use your capacity for chemical assault, you'll lose it. A secondary moral is dumpster diving at the Hick residence is both dangerous and rewarding.
I find an airhorn is almost as useful as pepper spray when disciplining five-year-olds, but with less clean-up.
Yeah, 30 and 32 are right, IMX. I didn't particularly want kids, it was just what one did back in the dark ages. It turned out quite well, according to the reviews.
Pepper spray is just a little harsh tho'. I mostly use that on religion pushers ringing the door bell or the kids when they bought me birthday presents I didn't like.
The variations in the MC% means that you can now select the level of intensity of OC for the environment required
Who knew you can buy a mediumweight, all day pepper spray, a light and elegant lady's blend, and a heavy, dark, intense after-dinner smoke of a pepper spray? I can just see gswift agonising in front of the mirror surrounded by daylight bulbs before she goes out, trying to decide what pepper spray to wear tonight. Cayenne? Chili? La Chinata? Straight black?
I'll argue against 30. There are people with better senses of themselves, and people with worse senses of themselves. Those with better senses of themselves are going to be able to make educated guesses about parenthood.
For example, I'm so awesome. The only thing that really surprised me was this advanced planning aspect in the OP. Overall, I wasn't really blindsided, and it's about what I thought it would be like.
I looked at Slate earlier today for Saiselgy. I was wondering if maybe it's reputation for pointless contrarianism was overblown, until I came to this column about how pizza counts as a vegetable for school lunches. This apparently okay because no one can really say what a vegetable is.
44: The proposition that nobody can realistically predict their experience of children doesn't preclude having it match your expectations. I predict a coin flip correctly approximately 50% of the time.
Yeah, urple, I totally mischaracterized what you'd said, so sorry about that. Having a miserable life is a major downside, as Lee would readily and vocally attest.
I think heebie's awesome experience might be more or less unique to her. I was deeply worried I wouldn't be a good parent, though I figured I could be a decent one. Our foster certification trainers kept reminding us that not feeling worried was typically a huge red flag.
I bet I could accurately predict which people have an accurate vision, and which people have an inaccurate vision.
44: That's what they call "moral luck".
I think 30 is completely true. There's nothing quite like having kids, so there's no way to know. One thing that surprised me was how quickly I felt like my children were part of my family, the way my brother or my parents are. It felt in a way like they'd always been there. (This is shockingly nerdy, but it made me think of the season of Buffy where some occult powers suddenly gave Buffy a sister, but in such a way that she felt like she'd always had a sister.)
Another thing, which can be hard to take, is that The. Kids. Are. Always. There. It's an open-ended commitment that doesn't go away for a long, long time.
For the record, I'm not saying my experience is particularly awesome. I'm saying that EVERYONE TELLS YOU HOW HARD IT IS, and that tends to sink in, if you're listening at all.
The. Kids. Are. Always. There.
So true. And they're loud. And they won't accept that the sling in the dungeon isn't a toy. So annoying!
What exactly were you all blindsided by? I'm not interested in what your friends/acquaintances/siblings were blindsided by, when they became parents, because perhaps they're not introspective people.
I'm asserting that anyone who gets hammered with the message of how hard it will be has a decent idea of what to expect. I certainly got hammered with that message, and I'm wondering if perhaps you guys didn't.
I'm asserting that anyone who gets hammered with the message of how hard it will be has a decent idea of what to expect.
This seems totally wrong to me. I mean, sure, you can know ahead of time that you won't be sleeping much for many months. But how you project that out into the future, how you feel about the kids, how your day to day perspective changes (or, maybe, doesn't change) all has nothing at all to do with people telling you how hard it will be. Maybe there's a gender difference here.
I knew it would be hard. I didn't know how hard: how much of a claim on my mind the kids would make all the fucking time (even when I'm going to sleep or sleeping, I think about them). I also didn't know, couldn't know, that what Walt said is right: they're never not there.
I hoped it would be rewarding. I didn't know how rewarding: how much, and how painfully, I would love these creatures the very minute they entered my life. I also didn't know that they would become, along with my wife, my best friends.
I mean, there's so much more to it than that. And the thing is, I'm 100% certain that my experience is unique, that everyone has a different transition to parenthood, that everyone has a different relationship with their kids. But I'm also 100% certain that everyone, no matter how much self-knowledge they have, is blindsided by something or other when it comes to having kids.
Oh, I'm certainly trolling a little bit and overstating my case. Everyone will learn something new about themselves.
But I think 30 overstates it as well. I'm still not clear on how the actual ways anyone here was blindsided, on the order of the problems in 30.
I suppose I must be marvelously self-actualized. How merry!
I was blindsided by the depth of emotion initially (not present for everyone, but there for me). Also by how much having a child sharpens relationships between new parents and their own parents-- well enough for me, but certainly not true for everyone.
Heebie, read 30 again, because you seem to be arguing against something other than what it said. 30 didn't claim that people had no idea what parenthood might possibly be like, and were therefore blindsided by the unexpected. (Although even your particularly awesome self seems to have been blindsided by the level of planning involved, so.) 30 claimed that there's little to no correlation between how much you think you will like having children and how much you actually like it. Even if you know it involves diapers, and even if you've changed plenty of diapers in your life, you might have very little sense how much that will (or won't) ultimately bother you when it's your kid. (And vice-versa: even if you've held plenty of babies and think they're mostly mighty cute, you might have very little sense how powerfully you will (or won't) become smitten when it's your kid.
Are there bloggers who troll their own mommy blogs, heebie? Because I think you might have found a niche.
I mean, I think most people have a pretty decent sense of the basic job description.
If it's anything like caring for cats, I'm golden.http://www.google.com/
Yes. But. If you polled non-parents on Unfogged, none of the stuff in this thread will sound mindblowing. Like, are you surprised by how tired and smitten you are? Or are you just very, very tired, and very, very smitten?
30 is just a bit too meta for me, I suppose. I would make an analogy about running a marathon, but then I'd have to meta-ban myself.
Pshh, just leave some food and water out overnight, and they'll let you sleep in.
30 claimed that there's little to no correlation between how much you think you will like having children and how much you actually like it.
And I'd assert this is totally meaningless. Everyone finds the little stuff tiring and the big stuff rewarding. Most everyone knows this going in.
If you ask someone how they feel in hindsight, you're going to get some conglomeration about how the little stuff was tiring and the big stuff was rewarding.
48:I bet I could accurately predict which people have an accurate vision, and which people have an inaccurate vision.
Dudes who gave their eyes to ungrateful thieving bitches have inaccurate vision. Fact.
I have no idea what 65 could mean. You think everyone likes the experience of having children exactly the same amount? That makes so little sense that it can't be what you mean.
Observation #2: You are still at the very beginning of the parenting experience.
I do not think that everyone finds the big stuff rewarding, or expects to. Perhaps hg's relatively intact and loving family suggests how such expectations might arise. Keeping to the specific rather than the abstract, my own childhood was not great, and I'm happily surprised by how much nicer my kid's is.
HG, do you think that people you know whose own childhoods were not as nice as yours, as far as nuclear family goes, share your equanimity?
I'm saying no one can summarize whether they like it or not. There are good parts and bad parts and memorable parts and it all forms a complicated experience. Just like anyone's relationship with their parents, etc. It's deep and rich and huge, but the prediction angle just somehow snags annoyingly for me.
If you polled non-parents on Unfogged, none of the stuff in this thread will sound mindblowing.
What non-parents of parenting age hear all the time, constantly, every day, from our friends who are parents, is that it's fucking impossible and a miserable hell to be a parent, so we try to sympathize, and then we're told that we've got it all wrong; we can't possibly imagine it because we don't have children, but it's the most exciting emotional rollercoaster of love and sublimity that makes you realize that before you had kids your life was a hellscape of emptiness. I think it should be comprehensible that maybe it's not for everyone, and that people who want all of that should definitely pursue it. I think that maybe if you're on a trip that strong, talking to other parents is the only way to get the commiseration/satisfaction you crave to establish that it really is all real. So I tend not to butt into conversations about the emotional trip of parenting.
I guess it doesn't sound mindblowing any more than LSD sounds mindblowing when you haven't done it and don't like not knowing where sounds and colors are coming from. I'm sure it was amazing for you. No I don't want any. Yes, that sounds unbearable. Wait, no you're saying *which* is the good part? Um OK sure I'm ignorant.
Speaking as, I daresay, the person here most emphatically not interested in children and child-rearing, you really post about all kinds of things and those of us who aren't into the topic of wee ones can fuck off and find whichever thread has turned out to be about fucksaws and the like. You really needn't worry about it. I mean, many threads eventually turn into mommyblogging somewhere in their 1000 comments, but that's because a lot of people on here have kids. "It is what it is" and other banned platitudes.
Is anybody out there capable and willing to admit that they hate the little fuckers, regret the decision every minute of the day, and in a different social system would give their kids out for adoption in a NY minute?
Does this actually ever often happen, serious, do like the brain chemicals change irrevocably and irresponsibly the minute the puppykitten baby gurgles at you or whatever?
I mean, we are like so biologically and socially determined and know it to a degree and deny it to a degree.
The arranged marriages I encounter in my study seem to work out most of the time. They always say "Love will come in time" and if they let it, indeed it will and does.
The one you married, the one to the left that looks better, the one to the right you can't stand...with just a little effort ain't much difference.
The kids are a boundless joy. Keep telling yourself that.
I've also been around kids perhaps more than a lot of childless people, enough to get some sense of the intensity of both the good and bad, and, on balance, I would not choose it for myself, no. It's the intensity itself that I don't want. I like my barren hellscape, thanks.
Wait, kids are like LSD? This changes everything.
Like, are you surprised by how tired and smitten you are? Or are you just very, very tired, and very, very smitten?
But one can expect these things in the abstract without actually knowing what they feel like.
My claim in 30 implies that roughly half of all people who go into parenting with really strong expectations will be blindsided. Half of people who thought that having a kid will save their marriage, and half of those people who thought getting pregnant in high school would ruin their lives turned out to be completely wrong.
People who go into parenting with uncertain or contradictory expections will find, half the time, that the experience is vague and contradictory. The other half will either find it to be an unambigious blessing or a clear-cut curse.
Until I was a parent, I had no idea how much I valued privacy and personal space. I knew it was going to be work, but I didn't know it would leave me longing for complete isolation.
What non-parents of parenting age hear all the time, constantly, every day, from our friends who are parents, is that it's fucking impossible and a miserable hell to be a parent, so we try to sympathize, and then we're told that we've got it all wrong; we can't possibly imagine it because we don't have children, but it's the most exciting emotional rollercoaster of love and sublimity that makes you realize that before you had kids your life was a hellscape of emptiness.
is just what I mean by "Everyone finds the little stuff tiring and the big stuff rewarding."
They are things a lot worse than baby blogging.
I wish more people would blog their wrenching bitter protracted breakups. So rarely do I get to read about the details of bad marriages or the bad moments of good marriages.
The lies you get there are terrific fun.
77: Sure. But I guarantee you that you, personally, are basically self-aware enough that you won't be blindsided by parenting, if you end up having children.
Everybody should really try acid at least once. Much smaller commitment than having children.
74: No one ever wants to admit that their whole life has been a mistake. There's an example used in psychological circles of a guy who spent his life in jail for a crime he didn't commit finally getting out and still saying the whole experience was worthwhile.
Also, parents are often forced to communicate in cliches and plattitudes because they are afraid that revealing any details of the parenting experience will lead to them being judged a BAD PARENT.
My claim in 30 implies that roughly half of all people who go into parenting with really strong expectations will be blindsided.
I would agree with this. However, I don't think it's a coin flip like others implied above. I think it's a matter of self-awareness and maturity.
Until I was a parent, I had no idea how much I valued privacy and personal space. I knew it was going to be work, but I didn't know it would leave me longing for complete isolation.
And I had no idea how much planning parenting would require, per the OP. But these aren't huge blind spots.
Half of people who thought that having a kid will save their marriage
I'm betting that more than half of those people are wrong.
Agree with your point, though, generally.
I think the experience for most people is that parenting is something like a phase change; you're just not the same as you were before, exactly, and so the mental calculus of "am I better or worse off" just doesn't apply at all. FREX, AWB's feelings described above are totally 100% accurate at describing where she is now, and that's great -- no reason to have kids if she or anyone else doesn't want to. But (my contention) is that this feeling wouldn't be a very good predictor of how the actual experience of having kids would feel after the fact, and that indeed it would be very hard to go back to the pre-kids mindset.
Sure you don't get much sleep, and the lows can be horrible, but you see the world in a completely new way.
I don't understand "little stuff" stuff?
Is watching them watch a sunbeam a "little" or a "big?"
87: It's the most wonderful, glorious, bland, platitude ever.
I'm not sure where this 'half' thing is coming from, rh-c. Why would accuracy of expectations necessarily fall out 50-50? Or do you not actually mean 50%, and are just using that as a proxy for 'some people will have gotten it right, some won't'?
72: Yeah, I'll confess whenever I read about how instantly one falls madly in love with the little fuckers, I think of Holly Hunter in Raising Arizona with her stolen baby violently sobbing "I LOVE HIM SO MUCH." It's like "wow, this seems to be really intense for you. I'll be in my barren hellscape if anyone needs me."
Man I've missed this kind of idle arguing. I feel like I've barely been around over the past month, even though that's probably ridiculous.
I think it's a matter of self-awareness and maturity.
This seems both wrong and, not to be too offensive about it, kinda a step over the line into actually unbearable smugness. Really, "self- aware" and "mature" people know intuitively what the experience of parenthood will be like? Not my experience at all, both lived and observed.
Sure. You just have to define it in hindsight.
I think it's a matter of self-awareness and maturity.
Oh, now there's a neutral formulation guaranteed to win friends and influence people. Disagree.
acid once
Not that great.
94 was offered in the spirit of idle argument, but I think it wasn't argumentative enough. I'll try and do better next time.
No I won't.
That's what you think.
Yeah.
Will not.
Of course, I am childless.
Not like LSD.
To me, it is like the teenager losing the cherry.
"InowknowsomethingyoudontlnowthebestthinginalltheworldchangedmylifeforeverineverydetailIamnowanadultwhileyouarestillchildren."
I got laid. Meh.
94: You'll understand why heebie feels like she hasn't when you finally have kids.
you, personally, are basically self-aware enough that you won't be blindsided by parenting, if you end up having children
I would guess this to be mostly true, but the kind of thing that VW is talking about in 54 strikes me as something you can imagine, but not really understand until you're in that position.
[B]efore you had kids your life was a hellscape of emptiness.
I'm going to try that one on the friend who recently realized that there will be at least one, and possibly two, years in the future during which he will be liable for the payment of four college tuitions.
are just using that as a proxy for 'some people will have gotten it right, some won't'?
It is a proxy for a complete lack of correlation. So if you divide people's expectations up into two classes basically hopefull and basically pessimistic, and you divided outcomes up into two classes, good and bad, you would find no difference between two ratios (1) the number of pessimistic people who had good outcomes to the number of pessimistic people who had bad outcomes and (2) the number of hopeful people who had good outcomes to the number of hopeful people who had bad outcomes.
Now that I have written that out carefully, I realize that this is not equivalent to saying that half of all people who go into parenting anticipating good outcomes will have bad outcomes. Suppose the proportion of people whose experience of parenting is basically negative is .25. Then you have a .25 chance of having a negative experience of parenting no matter what your expectations are.
What I mean to say is that no one knows dick about shit. This is a little overstated, but that's what the internet is for.
Not my experience at all, both lived and observed.
What exactly surprised you? Didn't you know people saying the type of thing that AWB quoted?
He could have less ambitious kids.
Yeah,yeah one of the science channels had the two seals who hiked the fucking amazon for 18 months. Really tough, beautiful, changed their lives, you cannot understand how it feels until you go through it.
Move on down here to Dallas. Tough, b, c, and you won't appreciate it until you have been here 20 years.
People find a way to rationalize their choices or destiny and even find a way to enjoy it. News at 11.
But you know what? There are only 10 million here in Dallas, but 2 billion babies and a billion parents. Or something.
Maybe it is great because everybody does it. Okay. Whatever.
I'm going to take a different route: possibly I'm an outlier in the sense that raising my kids has fewer dizzying heights and terrifying lows than other people here.
I'm not actually being smarmy - this is the case in math. Other people seem to have these peaks and valleys of despair, and I just plod along in the middle.
Until I was a parent, I had no idea how much I valued privacy and personal space. I knew it was going to be work, but I didn't know it would leave me longing for complete isolation.
And I had no idea how much planning parenting would require, per the OP. But these aren't huge blind spots.
They can be. I know someone who I am pretty sure has been rendered pretty much continually, possibly irrevocably wretched by parenthood by virtue of truly needing more quiet and solitude than she has been able to get for years on end, now.
Of course the other contributing factor there is that her partner hasn't stepped in to provide it. But mostly she just got a super-interactive and high-energy kid and had no idea what that would do to her mental equilibrium.
You think you understand the pains and pleasures of extended solitude?
You have no idea.
Other people seem to have these peaks and valleys of despair
The peaks and the valleys are characterized by despair? Man. Talk about a crappy hike.
In other words, everybody before kids predicts my experience, and you all are on some dazzling, terrifying acid trip of munchkins.
Just a simple application of the Intermediate Value Theorem.
Wait, kids are like LSD?
Mostly. Except they cost way more than $5 and don't fit in your mouth.
And that part where you're just waiting for it to wear off already goes on a lot longer?
One thing I wasn't prepared for is exactly how often the little fuckers manage to bash you in the nose with their hard melon heads.
This seems both wrong and, not to be too offensive about it, kinda a step over the line into actually unbearable smugness.
Also, this is idiotic. You don't think that there are more self-aware and less self-aware people, and that on average, the more self-aware people are going to have a better sense of what parenting will be like?
I'm not actually saying that if someone is shocked or surprised by parenting, then they must not have been self-aware going in, c/f RFTS's friend and tons of other people.
Still, there are sound expectations and unsound expectations. The end.
116: Plus, the running to hug you and head-butting you full-force in the nuts.
Heebie bears her smugness quite well, I'd say.
Though I doubt heebie is surprised by the amount of testicle abuse she has withstood.
What exactly surprised you? Didn't you know people saying the type of thing that AWB quoted?
That's like saying something like "look, love is great when you're working together, but fighting is difficult." Which, yeah, it's not innacurate but if you're saying it's somehow actually in any way descriptive of the lived experience, no.
For me, it was a pretty significant value change, as well as a door into reevaluating my own relationship with my parents. Not a roller coaster ride, just a big change. The same thing seems to be true of most people I speak with, but of course they are mostly immature, non-self-aware types.
but of course they are mostly immature, non-self-aware types
You know, LA.
And that part where you're just waiting for it to wear off already goes on a lot longer?
In both cases, Valium works wonders.
The same thing seems to be true of most people I speak with, but of course they are mostly immature, non-self-aware types.
Exactly! I look forward to finally getting the respect from you that I deserve.
For me, it was a pretty significant value change, as well as a door into reevaluating my own relationship with my parents.
I...I don't know how to respond to this without sounding totally insulting. These both sound very, very fundamental to being a ... [magic word*] person.
* some word like "mature" or "self-aware" that is not insulting if the person lacks it.
This thread has got me to wondering about my self-awareness level wrt the empty nest we'll be living in not 300 days hence.
82 to 126. Except, you know, append "more" to 82.1
Well, if you decide in advance that you're going to be irritatingly smug about everything, I guess you can be irritatingly smug about parenting too and keep an even keel and not be surprised by anything! Oh, sorry, substitute a word for "smug" that's less insulting.
Anyway, gotta run, but if your feelings are hurt it's because you're not as enlightened as me.
Personally I think it's completely insane that you drive an hour to go to a soccer game. That sounds like a horrible life.
if you decide in advance that you're going to be irritatingly smug about everything,
Wait, am I irritatingly smug in general? Or just on this one thing? (which, seriously, observe the trolling disclaimer in 55.)
130: It's more like 45 minutes. But what with the hauling the kids and stuff in and out, etc.
These both sound very, very fundamental to being a ... [magic word*] person.
This is just weird. If you re-evaluate your relationship with someone important to you, that means you were immature before? There are a lot of subtleties Halford could be getting at here that aren't just "I stopped just thinking about myself all the time, and I realized that my parents sacrificed a lot to raise me!!1!"
130: Which part, the driving an hour, or the soccer?
131 -- No, not really, though frankly I am a little pissed off and am inclined to keep you wondering.
observe the trolling disclaimer in 55
Ah. Noted!
Wait, am I irritatingly smug in general?
But you're self-aware, so you can't have hidden attributes. Contradictions like this make smoke come out of the heads of robots, so at least you know that you are not a robot....
Hadn't thought of that! Anyhow, death is like taking LSD in Glacier National Park. How do I know? There was that Robin Williams movie.
139: if Robin Williams weren't that I'd be all about that version of death.
"weren't that" is of course vernacular for "wasn't there".
It's better as a version of life. Especially with Robin Williams safely in LA.
116: We wouldn't have these problems if we would just have the maturity to dress like hockey goalies at all times.
with Robin Williams safely in LA.
He lives in San Francisco, entirely predictably.
144: Don't pretend like different parts of California are different. It's just one undifferentiated mass of sin.
Whatever.
Stayed in the Warren Oates wing of a hotel this weekend. Now there's a guy you could watch go to hell and back.
Bob, when have you last watched BMTHOAG?
|| No Supercommittee jokes? Surely one of you comics nerds can do something with this. |>
||
Follow these links if you dare!
Another Angle of the picture that changed the world, like the Vietnam head shot or napalm girl or Robert whats-his-name and the falling soldier in Spanish CV.
Jodi Dean deserves the hits. Or not. Actually those pictures are weird, maybe offensive. Everything is moving too fast.
|>
||
So it turns out my judgment of divorce was signed late last month and sent to the clerk last week.
|>
On topic, The. Kid. Is. Always. There. 50%. Of. The. Time. is working out pretty well as a life arrangement (though I would gladly have taken more custody had it been on offer).
The. Kid. Is. Always. There. 50%. Of. The. Time. is working out pretty well as a life arrangement (though I would gladly have taken more custody had it been on offer).
Yeah, I was going to say something like this above. Sometimes the kid is not always there!
BMTHOAG
Been a couple years, I think. Not that long.
5 years for Blacktop at most.
I am not channel surfing into the wee hours like I used to. Falling asleep pretty easy, waking in four hours, picking up a book.
Recording TMC a lot. Stolen Kisses last night. Leaud, Jade, Paris 1968.
Heebie's smoking crack, and Halford and Apostropher are dead right: you just can't know what parenting will be like for you until you do it. For one thing, it's not like you're reacting individually to an experience which is objectively similar across the board: the kids are different, your resources are different, your partners are different -- saying that a mature person can know what parenting is going to be like is like saying that a sensible person who does the research is going to know what it's like to live in a foreign country. Without specifying which one.
Other people's descriptions of how they feel about parenting rarely click for me; particularly, fierce protectiveness doesn't come up. I've had an easy life, and the world's been a pretty safe place for me -- I suppose I'd get protective if I needed to, but I don't spontaneously start thinking "I'd step in front of a bus to protect them," because it mostly doesn't seem likely to be necessary.
A lot of ways, it's like having really terrible roommates (becoming better roommates, but they start out pretty bad). That you're absurdly besotted with, so you don't mind doing all the work, except when you do mind. But a lot of whiplash transitions between "You're the most beautiful, wonderful thing I've ever seen, I could listen to you talk about your day forever," and "How many cups does one child need to drink out of during one afternoon?"
I'd bet you can predict which ones will do better in this random country.
Here's where I'm coming from: I get told a lot by my siblings that I won't understand until I've had magical experience X, and inevitably, magical experience X happens and they were full of it - my understanding was just fine ahead of time. X used to stand for being in a permanent relationship, having a home, and yes - all the time! - having children.
Most self-aware people continue to grow and develop regardless of whether they have children or not. If it wasn't children, it would be something else. If it's nothing, ever, then you're not a self-aware person.
A roommate who just said "Dad, don't rub my back because I'm pooping" while at the dinner table.
I get told a lot by my siblings that I won't understand until I've had magical experience X, and inevitably, magical experience X happens and they were full of it - my understanding was just fine ahead of time. X used to stand for being in a permanent relationship, having a home, and yes - all the time! - having children.
Most self-aware people continue to grow and develop
Is it possible . . . could it be true that . . . you are not self aware?
157: Or that you're overreacting against obnoxious older siblings?
157: You won't understand until you achieve satori.
don't rub my back because I'm pooping
You're renting to my college roommate? Dude! Tell Chip I said hey!
You won't understand until you achieve satori kill your siblings.
You won't understand when until you achieve satori. but you won't feel a need to.
89 I'm not sure where this 'half' thing is coming from, rh-c.
Rob must be the guy interviewed at 3:10 in this Daily Show clip. "Well, if you have something that can happen, and something that won't necessarily happen, it's gonna either happen or it's gonna not happen. And so it's, the best guess is it's 1 in 2." John Oliver: "I'm not sure that's how probability works, Walter."
I hadn't really appreciated before this thread how fully heebie has taken over ogged's old role on the blog.
My argument is one quarter irritation at my older brothers, one quarter trolling, one quarter solidarity with my childless brethren, and one quarter just plain making a good point.
This is a fantastic thread and has been helpful to me in deepening my understanding that I have no idea what to do. (To reveal a little more, our situation is not "planning parenthood" or "planned parenthood" but "sudden unplanned accident").
I feel amply warned of the incredibly difficult, taxing, side of parenthood. That's what freaks me out. In the middle of our still unsettled careers/lives, will we be taking 3-4 years off to be underpaid, sleep-deprived day care workers on 24 hour call, with an occasional couple of hours to perform our day jobs? Which we are still in the establishing-ourselves part of? Or would we instead enter a personal growth process where being a sleep-deprived day care worker is a routine annoyance that's not so hard to deal with? Just how hard is this fucking thing *really*?
It still sucks less than work. The sleep deprivation thing passes and you won't remember the first three months anyway.
Also, congratulations and all. But, assuming you're a man, you got the easier part.
Do all y'all "no one can know"ers really think no one can know? It seems like there are some experiences (being the oldest of a large family, working as a nanny, etc) that would provide one with a pretty good idea of the day-in day-out parenting life. Obviously not everyone has those experiences, but I don't think it's crazy for Heebie to think that some people have a better-adjusted expectation of what parenting is like and how they will adjust to it than other people.
157: I get told a lot by my siblings that I won't understand until I've had magical experience X, and inevitably, magical experience X happens and they were full of it - my understanding was just fine ahead of time.
I don't know, I can think of lots of things I assume I couldn't possibly understand unless they happened to me. The things that come most readily to mind are negative: developing a terminal illness (alternatively, a chronic condition that's very high maintenance), becoming homeless, being the victim of terrible violence. I doubt that maturity and self-awareness has anything to do with one's ability to understand these things before they might occur.
It seems the formulation heebie's favoring really only makes sense under a large number of assumptions, which LB touched on in 154: that having children (in this case) is accompanied by good health on your part, comfortable finances, a supportive partner, and on and on. Given all that, sure, a person can probably make out what things will be like.
172: Oh, you can know kind of what it's like. But still, it's like knowing what it's like to be married. There's no such thing as being married, there's only being married to Buck, or Jammies, or whoever you happen to be married to. The person is different, the life you have with them is different -- the childcare tasks may be the same, but I think the differences swamp the similarities.
In the middle of our still unsettled careers/lives, will we be taking 3-4 years off to be underpaid, sleep-deprived day care workers on 24 hour call, with an occasional couple of hours to perform our day jobs? Which we are still in the establishing-ourselves part of? Or would we instead enter a personal growth process where being a sleep-deprived day care worker is a routine annoyance that's not so hard to deal with? Just how hard is this fucking thing *really*?
You'll be fine. It's not that hard. For the career stuff, it'll be a change but you'll get used to it relatively quickly, and by 3 or 4 it will seem like a totally normal part of life. As with all other things, with childcare you can trade money for time and convenience.
I feel compelled to defend Heebie a little teeny bit.
What apo and rob and everybody is saying is IME totally correct -- it's really, really hard to predict how people will react to parenting. It's hard for them to predict; it's hard for outsiders to predict. And I don't think there's such thing as a defined set of "parenting" emotions or responsibilities or even practices.
I have seen people who had planned since they were five or six years old (!) to have children, slammed over the head with reality and taking several years to adjust. I have seen people who were flat out, dead-certain they didn't want kids (to the point of wanting to get sterilized in their 20s) do a U-turn 10 years later and decide that that having a child -- this particular partner's child was the most important thing in the world to them. And so on.
But the part I will defend heebie about is that there is a subset of emotions, skills and behaviors that you could loosely call maturity, that some people simply do not access or develop until they have kids.
I have seen some utterly remarkable transformations, from people who were very, very far from being other-oriented into people who could reliably be counted upon to notice and respond to their child. And I don't think it was just because they got chronologically older, and I don't think it was because they were consciously working on those traits.
I suspect this phenomenon is the root of the old idea that having a baby "makes you grow up" or that "a baby makes a family."
The gigantic problem with this observation is that it's a partial truth:
- Some people develop these skills long before (or in the total absence of) having children
- Many people who have children nevertheless never really develop these skills
So you get these tremendously irritating conversations, in which a person who -- having observed that "baby makes you grow up" in one situation -- automatically assumes that it applies in all situations. This makes their friends who don't have kids (rightfully) indignant at the implication that they are incapable of accessing certain emotions or developing certain skills, and can lead to stupendously bad advice (having a baby worked out fine for that 17-year-old! I will just ignore everything I know about your horrific home life and tell you that having a baby at 17 will work out great for you too!).
In sum: Nobody really knows. But some of us like to pretend we know. Even though we don't.
(Disclaimer: IANAP.)
I don't think anyone actually realizes before they have children precisely how much of a time-energy-money sink they are. And even after surviving their young childhood, what a time-energy-money sink their adolescence will be. Not to mention their college years.
what with the hauling the kids and stuff in and out, etc.
My parents perfected the instantaneous departure for every trip not involving canoes. To this day, they'll give me a five-minute warning and then go sit in the car.
Until I was a parent, I had no idea how much I valued privacy and personal space.
This was my sister's experience. She is a fierce, devoted, utterly hands-on parent, but the lack of privacy and solitude overwhelms her at times. That would probably be very hard for me, too--and more so, the older and more set in my ways that I get.
174: As with all other things, with childcare you can trade money for time and convenience.
But of course.
There are many situations where people claim you can't possibly know until you've experienced it (poverty, travelling, violins to tiny children, etc,) and I generally find it annoying. There are some experiences I can't fathom, some I can, and that's that. Parenting, which is endless dissected, was a lot easier for me to fathom than, say, returning from war with PTSD and massive injuries.
It's because you're an emotionless automaton.
the lack of privacy and solitude overwhelms her at times
This is actually a big part of why I am so often awake until the wee hours of the morning.
A self-actualized emotionless automaton with a cold, cold heart.
173:Incommensurable and incommunicable experiences are really uninteresting to those who haven't experienced them, in their particularity, and probably should not be discussed in polite company.
Are we back to LSD? What do you see when you turn out the lights?
But, honestly, with no offense intended, I don't believe this is true. I believe that you could tell me something about what being married to Buck is like, in the ways it is different from being married to Johnny Depp or Zelda Fitzgerald or...people have been doing it, however badly, forever. We have literature about babies.
The social character of individual experience is social because of its universal elements, commensurability, and communicability.
Not to mention their college years.
Not every student gets maced.
IMO, people who say "my life has conformed to my expectations!" are either:
(1) deeply delusional
or
(2) incredibly lucky in their own life and incredibly unaware of the world around them. Eventually, the luck usually runs out.
This doesn't have that much to do with parenting, of course, or the ability to communicate about it. Or probably with what Heebie is trying to say, although tbh I can't figure it out in any way that doesn't seem insane (Witt's 175 is totally right, but I don't think that's what Heebie is saying).
179: And what you can and can't fathom doesn't have a lot to do with maturity and self-awareness, it seems to me.
A self-actualized emotionless automaton with a cold, cold heart.
Condi Rice, right? Oh, I thought we were playing the name game.
185: Yes, very little has worked out as I planned. Even the good shit hasn't been planned most of the time.
Ok, how about this?
It is a value judgement, a relation, a stance, as to whether you consider what is most important in your life to be particular, private, and incommunicable or whether what is really valuable are those things that are universal, shared, and communicable.
You can obviously also approach life and expectations either way.
Anna vs the Levins. Tolstoy stacked the deck more than I would, but I think he was tricking us.
I mean that's the point of half of AK, that Levin is deliriously pleasantly surprised at every stage of his life, and we, the readers, are totally unsurprised even at his surprise.
I took a break to watch an Oates/Fonda movie. The Hired Man. Directly relevant to the thread: Fonda shows so little interest in his child, it's like he's from a different planet. And I don't mean the 1970s.
179: And what you can and can't fathom doesn't have a lot to do with maturity and self-awareness, it seems to me.
True, it has more to do with what I've been exposed to. I was exposed to a ton of people telling me how hard parenting would be; I haven't had much exposure to what coming home from war is like.
IMO, people who say "my life has conformed to my expectations!" are either: (1) deeply delusional
or (2) incredibly lucky in their own life and incredibly unaware of the world around them. Eventually, the luck usually runs out.
I wouldn't say it conformed to my expectations, but it hasn't been so wildly different that I've gazed backwards in astonishment, either.
193: Have you thought that maybe being deeply surprised by things isn't a reaction you tend to have? I mean, on one level, not much is surprising other than alien invasion. If I were drafted and sent to Afghanistan, there's a sense in which I wouldn't find any of the experiences, up to and including getting shot, surprising: I've seen them all described multiple times. In that sense, there's nothing surprising at all about parenting: diapers, soft food, reading storybooks, going to the park, day care, nursery school, school and so on. The only thing that could be surprising is the subjective experience: what it all feels like. And if that's not the sort of thing that surprises you, you're not going to have a lot of surprises in your life.
191: If you mean Peter Fonda, that's because he couldn't emote pain if you put his nuts in the PTO and started the tractor.
saying that a mature person can know what parenting is going to be like is like saying that a sensible person who does the research is going to know what it's like to live in a foreign country. Without specifying which one.
Yes! This is the sense in which I mean it! Here's what I know about going to live in China, without ever having lived somewhere where they don't speak English: Everything, daily, will be a little extra tiring and a little extra work, because it's unfamiliar. Some days there will be gigantic, complicated language barriers when I'm trying to do something incredibly lame and trivial. Other days I'll connect with someone else, despite the language barrier. I'll work really hard at learning Chinese and be ongoingly depressed at how slow and painful it is. I'll set aside a schedule of nightly study and more or less stick to it 80% of the time. I'll have some structure to my day, and the commute will involve seeing swarms of people, and at random moments throughout the day I'll feel unbearably lonely and far from home. The connections I make with people will be based in such small interactions that it will seem really weird, contrasting with the high bar I used to place on what it took to connect with someone back home. But when you're hungry for connections, you make do with less.
Should I go on? I feel like I could write pages and pages about Heebie in China.
Have you thought that maybe being deeply surprised by things isn't a reaction you tend to have?
This is what I was saying in 107 and 111.
People who think they'll grow up when they have kids and then fucking don't are so frustrating. I'm history's greatest monster for disagreeing that if Val and Alex's bags have been in the hallway for 24 hours they've been there for two days (yesterday and today, obvs, and I'm also expecting too much if I thnk Lee could guess that their stuff belonged in their room if its presence is driving her to the meltdown point) and that she should make her own coffee in the fucking preprogrammed machine.
See, I hoped I'd be a good parent and I am but it doesn't matter because every time things get better they just get worse again. So don't take my advice. The people who say they're set In their ways probably are and maybe don't want kids as much as they keep claiming. (Sorry that I liveblog this stupid shit. More sorry that it's happening again.)
In a way, this thread is reassuring. My stereotype that mathematicians are quasi-human weirdos without normal emotions had been under threat for a while, but it's nice to see it reaffirmed.
166 to 196.
199: You've mentioned that the two of you have a plan to go to counseling, and I think that's an excellent idea. I've been biting my tongue trying not to badmouth Lee, given that it wouldn't be helpful, but the pair of you have to work this sort of thing out -- it sounds intolerable.
196: Also, you might run into someone who knew either M/tch or Frowner.
201: it sounds intolerable.
Yeah, the long distance if nothing else.
Thorn, I'm so sorry you guys are having such a hard time.
Thorn, I'm totally glad that you say this stuff here, but really sorry you're going through it.
My parents perfected the instantaneous departure for every trip not involving canoes. To this day, they'll give me a five-minute warning and then go sit in the car.
And if you're not in the car in five minutes... what happens? You get left at home?
Regardless of the consequences, I'm not sure this tactic works well with a 2-year old.
I'm sorry too. It really sounds like you're doing a great job under an incredible amount of stress.
201: Yeah, apparently she's not interested anymore, so I'm trying to both find a counselor and figure out which ultimatum I can pull. I recognize that she's just totally melting down, but she sees it too and then just gets more shrill about being unable to change and not wanting any outsiders involved. Her friend we stayed with this weekend lit into her about how she treats Val and Alex, and she blames me for that, even when she was the one telling her friend details.
Obviously we're in a bad situation. It was better for a few weeks and I thought the adoption would help, but maybe it hasn't. She says she'll go to counseling before any new placement (obviously far in the potential future because I'd never risk this for another kid) but apparently she doesn't think t's worthwhile while Val and Alex are here and we'll have to get a babysitter. I'm just going to ignore that excuse.
Adding my voice to the chorus, Thorn, to say that I'm very, very sorry to hear that you're still struggling. I wish that I was close by so that I could bring you some dinner, take the kids for a few hours so you could sleep, whatever. That said, I think LB is really onto something: don't discount the fact that having a kid is VERY hard on many relationships and that therapy can really help sometimes.
It basically is intolerable, but I'm doing a somewhat decent job of tolerating it and a very good job of shielding the kids, which I think is really true and not me deluding myself. Alex had a huge meltdown tonight because he claims to feel like he doesn't have parents and he's jealous that Mara gets to have me as her "real mom" (his words) forever. I'm so glad he's doing more family visits, because that's never going to happen.
209 written before seeing that Lee doesn't want to go to counseling. Again, sorry. I'm going to keep my mouth shut now.
Thorn, that sounds awful and you have my sympathy.
One thought, that may be helpful or may be just really annoying advice-from-a-jerky-internet-stranger. If Lee is having such a serious problem with the foster kids, she should really, if it's remotely possible, pay for a babysitter or housecleaner or whatever. Sometimes having the day to day household situation calmed down is necessary before going into counseling, sometimes it's hard to really fathom how much just getting some outside help can ease your burden. If that's not helpful or useful feel free to ignore.
206 To this day, they'll give me a five-minute warning and then go sit in the car.
With Thanksgiving coming up in a few days, I'm reminded of how I can sometimes get mildly annoyed with my parents' attitude when I visit them. "We're about to go to your aunt's house in a few minutes, come put your coat and shoes on!" Um, we are? No, like, asking me if I would like to go with you? Oh, you already told them I would be with you. Excellent. No, it's fine, I don't make my own decisions.
Maybe I should have a chat with them about this instead of posting passive-aggressive commentary on a blog they don't read.
I guess that was really quoting 177 and not 206.
211: Therapy could indeed help and I don't see why I should give a shit that she doesn't want to do it when she doesn't want to do anything else either. Oh, except she quit smoking today, and I'm supposed to be supportive of her mood swings and sensitivities since I'm the one who hates cigarettes anyway.
212: We have a house cleaner twice a month and Lee now claims she can't notce any diffetence, which is willfully insane. Even when she had to admit things were clean, she got mad nstead because she '"knew" they'd be trashed later, though we have no messy kids by normal standards. I don't know if. Babysitting would help since I don't think she wants to go out with me and she goes out alone most nights and leaves me with the kids. Maybe.
I've already survived all of this for two months and while quite sick, so I'm probably halfway through and can manage more. I had a long hot bath today and that's about to get reincorporated into my life, even if it means staying up too late.
It sounds like maybe HG means "similar to me emotionally" when she writes "mature." People respond all different ways to parenting (which is varied, not many instantiations of a single ideal) and travel.
It sounds like maybe HG means "similar to me emotionally" when she writes "mature."
I think I mean "I know myself, I assume other people know themselves"?
194: Good writers have been describing realities they've not experienced well enough to be convincing to those who have just about forever.
215: My advice, which again feel free to discount completely, is to heavily invest in the babysitting, and go out when you can. But what do I know. So sorry you're going through that, thanks for being so honest about it, and sounds like you're doing about as well as you can.
If Halford were more mature and self-aware, he'd give you the real advice.
If Heebie really knew what it was like to be a parent, she wouldn't spend all her time commenting on blogs.
215: From here it sounds like she wants out but that you should be the one forced to make the break. I don't know how anyone can fight that. I sincerely hope I'm wrong. Best wishes.
Looks like we need an "everyone impersonate a former commenter day." Heebie is Ogged, and Messily is read. Who's going to be B?
And on the more serious topic, Thorn that sounds awful. I hope things work out for you and the kids.
224 -- I had a dream once in which it turned out that I was the Troll of Sorrow. Like, I had been blacking out and writing insane racist messages without realizing it.
I had a dream that I started mimicking ToS because I thought it was funny, but then LB looked up my IP address and yelled at me and I was really ashamed of myself.
I think that sometimes when people say things like "you have no idea what it will be like" they mean not "you are not mature enough to understand how tired and overworked you might feel" or "lots of mundane things about planning will surprise you" but "you know that soccer game (or $foo) that you've been going to for nearly a decade, the one you love so much you drive an hour each way so you can go and play, where you met? you'll drop that once you have kids, and it won't even register to you as something that you gave up."
I think that sometimes when people say things like "you have no idea what it will be like" they mean not "you are not mature enough to understand how tired and overworked you might feel" or "lots of mundane things about planning will surprise you" but "you know that soccer game (or $foo) that you've been going to for nearly a decade, the one you love so much you drive an hour each way so you can go and play, where you met? you'll drop that once you have kids, and it won't even register to you as something that you gave up."
I think this is astute. ("What? I'm no stute!")
And rfts bring the pwnage. I'm slow because my kids kept me up last night. No, seriously.
Best of luck Thorn.
Not even that, Moby. He directed himself in a role where he abandoned wife and child for 6 years, and then comes back. And shows no interest in the child. I mean, it's cold fish to the nth.
He does go rescue his friend Oates, though, when the latter is kidnapped, and the kidnappers are sending one finger a week until Fonda comes to get him.
Just watched Rancho Deluxe. Scenery was great. Young Jimmy Buffett tolerable. Slim Pickens as usual. Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston well nigh unwatchable.
And if you're not in the car in five minutes... what happens? You get left at home?
No, mostly I wander around the house looking for them, totally ready to leave (because I grew up with these crazy people, after all), and then find them calmly reading a book in the car.
I vaguely remember that when I was a child, I was to pack everything the night before a trip and leave it by the door so that in the morning, there could be no additions. (However, since my parents really weren't monsters, I'm sure that there were exceptions and whining aplenty.)
The real struggle was when we came home. After three-four hours of car travel, nobody was allowed to relax without the car totally unloaded, bags brought in and unpacked, coolers emptied for airing, and gear put away. This rule always made me crazy.
||
Thorn, what you're describing is starting to sound really genuinely bad. I urge you to continue counseling.
232: You should see him in Thomas and the Magic Railroad. Alec Baldwin was gumming scenery, the woman who played the receptionist on Moonlighting was having fun, and then Fonda appears on camera seemed less real than the talking steam engines.
I don't think I have any useful advice to add, but I can still say best wishes, Thorn. I'm sorry things are still so difficult.
After three-four hours of car travel, nobody was allowed to relax without the car totally unloaded, bags brought in and unpacked, coolers emptied for airing, and gear put away. This rule always made me crazy.
Jammies and I are totally opposites on this. I cannot stand unloading the car the moment I get home. I just want to chill out for a bit.
166 gets it exactly right. This is what Unfogged-as-mommy-blog looks like.
"you know that soccer game (or $foo) that you've been going to for nearly a decade, the one you love so much you drive an hour each way so you can go and play, where you met? you'll drop that once you have kids, and it won't even register to you as something that you gave up."
No. Just no.
This is exactly the sort of thing I discussed in therapy with Chaunda years before having kids. The shift in identity, the loss of freedom, how that would show up in my activities like soccer. Specifically, we discussed the impact that pregnancy would have, and the logistics later around kids, and my feelings around this.
Maybe it's just that you work on this stuff ahead of time in therapy.
Currently I am doing a lot of reading thinking about death and loss of immediate family members. When someone dies, the grief and mourning will be the same, but I'm guessing that I'll have taken the edge off some of the surprise of the experience. (Not the surprise of the death, if it's unexpected. But the surprise of how the grief goes.)
Obviously I don't know for sure.
Also, I'm not saying parenting isn't totally overwhelming at times. Plenty of times it's overwhelming. It's just not surprising.
Thorn, I'm late returning to this thread, but I just wanted add my voice to those who already expressed their support and care. Mara and Val and Alex are lucky to have someone who is so dedicated to their well-being. I hope you continue to find ways to nurture/restore yourself throughout this process.
Obviously I don't know Lee and can't really guess what might be going on, but from this distance, and not having read your own personal blog recently enough to be totally up-to-date, it sounds like she is have a major attack of "bounded thinking." Generating an automatic negative response to your problem-solving is pretty classic for that.
Whether she's doing this because she is depressed, overwhelmed, reliving old childhood patterns, or some other reason, it's still an energy drain for *you* to have to deal with. Hope you can get a third party into the mix -- whether as babysitter, mother's helper, therapist, whatever -- to give you both some respite and break that negative frame a little.
The problem with the analysis of 228 is that the last bit is simply not enough to justify the degree of "OMFG you have nooooo idea!" that often goes along with the assertion that parenthood is an experience simply unimaginable until it's actually happening. Fortunately if you pick your friends right you don't get much of that, as they tend to know what they are getting into and are only mildly surprised at the degree to which things change when a sprog shows up.
227 is the best. I had a dream last night where, instead of acting out anti-social fantasies as usual, I went around giving small impassioned lectures about how important self-restraint is.
No. Just no.
For me, yes, just yes. Cala in 228 captured my experience.
Whoops, 241 was me.
And 242 is right. I still remember a friend telling me incredulously about some advice he'd gotten from a co-worker who found out he was a newlywed. The co-worker urged him to talk with his new wife about having kids before they did, saying that he dearly wished he and his wife had done so. (!!)
(Also, both of us still play soccer. We were on multiple teams, and we're cutting back. It's not a sea change.)
Thank you, Witt. That was very helpful, as was the rest of the support when I was tired and mopey last night. Lee apologized in a very genuine way and was shocked with herself for some of the things she said. I'm capitalizing on that to push for help now rather than later and we'll have some time alone together where we can work on things. I do think she's melting down for reasons I can't always pinpoint, but yeah, it's exhausting for me and I don't have the time to parent her too and so I don't.
She really isn't a bad person, though I know lots of my internet friends think I only present her that way. I'm so sad for her that she's having such a hard time. I don't know.
I totally enjoyed Lee when we met you guys, and I'm sorry she's having such a rough go of it, and I'm sorry that you're enduring such bullshit as a result. I've got my fingers crossed that she agrees to go to a counselor, but if not, you go anyway.
123: this is very true. they make liquid valium for small people.
125: this is echt-trollery, truly worthy of ogged. what sent me into this giant psychological tailspin? I looked at my older daughter's barely developing body, and I thought about how little I was at 11, and then about how big my stepfather was, and then I just completely fucking tripped out. I'm perfectly well grown-up and a mature adult, I just had a really shitty life for a long time and having my children grow to a certain age fucked my up something proper, in a way I didn't expect at all, just blindsided me. there's not really any way I could have predicted that, although apparently it's a common experience. but fuck it, whatever.
198: thorn has real problems happening now, and I'm really sorry. like LB I have been not wanting to criticize lee but she is really being mean to you in a way that you don't deserve, while you're trying to keep a very difficult situation together. she agreed to the fostering?!! I'm glad to hear you're going to counseling and thinking of you often. you're a brave, good person and you're doing something good for those children every single day.
and now I'm glad to hear she apologized. you don't present only the bad side of her; I'm rooting for your relationship to survive and become stronger, as I'm sure most of the readers of this blog are too. it's just, it seems like you have an impossible amount on your plate...I would be tearing my hair out.
having my children grow to a certain age fucked my up something proper... apparently it's a common experience.
Yeah, I don't have any trauma from that age that's getting triggered, but it's really really weird to have a twelve-year-old who's my size and looks enough like me that people get us wrong from half-a-block away. I have to keep a firm lid on over-identifying with her in an unproductive kind of way.
This is not an experience I've seen described in a way that made it clear to me, but it's peculiar as anything.
My oldest has started to shave, is probably going to be taller than me within a year, and now has a voice as low as mine. I don't have any latent trauma being stirred up by any of that, but jiminy christmas is it ever weird. He still looked like a kid just a year ago. If I can brag on him for a moment, though (you can't stop me!), he got an iPhone for his birthday and has been taking photographs with it like a madman, and he has a hell of an eye for a completely self-trained 14-year-old.
Kid likes perspective. And does have an interesting eye.
252.last
Those are excellent.
Those photos are great. I also love "brag on" which I think is a southernism, but one that I've tried to adopt.
Those are really nice, apo, though it's hard to see how they relate tonhis future as an i-banker.
10, 30, etc.:
Longtime almost-only-lurker here (since '06/'07), thought I'd chime in with some futile negativity/a reminder from one who feels like a 24 year-old McManus sometimes: if you or your potential parent-partner suffer from a mental illness, especially depression or anxiety, or if those illnesses run in your families, please, please, please consider adoption. Uselessly, I suppose, I'd like potential parents to think about the possible case against procreation from the pov of their potential child. (Doesn't apply to adoption. Kids aren't for me, but I'm a huge cheerleader for adoption!)
It's possible to have loving parents and a more or less fantastic childhood, and still end up with, uh, insurmountable life problems. (I ended up with matrilineal severe social anxiety and patrilineal despair (what I call my dysthymia + depression).) Not that these things can always be avoided, but they can be predicted with confidence greater than chance, given what we know about genes and (some) mental illnesses.
If you go through with it and create new babies, George Washington, love them to death! But don't forget, at the age of majority they may leave and cut off contact (even if you loved them and weren't terrible). My shitty life: it could very well be the life of your next child. This is rather self-serving, or at least self-oriented, of course: many (most?) people born with genetic disabilities will go on to achieve, to be fulfilled, and to think: it's a good thing I'm around. But not all will.
If you don't suffer from mental illness: squeeze 'em out, why not?
74: Right. What would be nice is if we were biologically or socially determined to not be extremely unhappy, and I suppose most of "us" are. But we are not all of us, if that makes sense.
252: Holy smokes, apo, your young guy has great instincts! How neat for him that he's got the tools to apply them.
249: A dear friend of mine sometimes talks about the "spiral staircase," in which you re-confront old wounds at a new level as you move upwards through life. I can imagine that the tremendous natural emotional protectiveness you have for your daughters and the visceral memory of being that age yourself is a pretty potent combination. Your children are immensely lucky to have a mother who cares so deeply about them, even though part of the cost of caring is that it can trigger exceptionally difficult reactions in yourself.
On 259, given our society's biases I tend to err on the side of never urging anyone to have children, and rather creating space for people to feel comfortable not wanting/having them.
That said, some of the most exquisitely joyous moments of my entire life have been celebrating with people who welcomed new children and grandchildren into their lives in the face of very difficult medical histories. Most recently a dear family friend, a DES daughter whose adult son is a cancer survivor, welcomed her first granddaughter.
Probably a "rational" response to DES risks would have been not to try for a biological child, and certainly I feel strongly that people should have the freedom to avoid doing that if they want, and/or to choose adoption. But life isn't only about rationality, and a genetic predisposition isn't a determinative life sentence. Heck, even being diagnosed with a serious illness doesn't have to determine the whole shape of your life.
260 is great. Preach it, Witt.
260 is great. Preach it, Witt.
Definitely.
if you or your potential parent-partner suffer from a mental illness, especially depression or anxiety, or if those illnesses run in your families, please, please, please consider adoption
So basically nobody who comments here should ever have kids?
he has a hell of an eye
Damn, does he ever.
259, 264: I don't think it makes much sense to assume that you'll come up with "better" genes via adoption, especially if you factor in the prenatal environment and its impact (at best, nothing worse than maternal stress) on the eventual baby. It's sort of reassuring to me that Mara has the same known genetic risks (depression, addiction, heart disease, diabetes, gall bladder problems, migraines) in her family history that Lee and I have in ours, because it makes us more likely to know how to handle what might arise for her.
266: I don't think it's so much that an adopted baby is going to be, um, higher-quality? than the one you'd give birth to with your own fucked-up genes, but that the adopted baby is here anyway, and someone's got to take care of it. So a genetic kid would be avoidably fucked up and should not be brought into being, while an adopted kid is a fact on the ground and should be cared for.
I don't know that this is good reasoning -- for most mental issues I'm aware of, biology isn't necessarily destiny -- but I can follow it.
267: I see what you're saying, but I also think it gets tied up in the market for healthy (white) infants. There are far more families who want to adopt babies than babies available at any given time, and this leads to what I believe to be a lot of coercion of women who could successfully have parented into placing their babies for adoption because they're the kind of people that the adoptive parents want their children to take after, if that makes any sense.
Most of the babies who truly need homes are from families like Mara's, where the siblings on either side of her were removed at birth and she was left as sort of a test case to see how her mom could manage. Most healthy-but-depressed/anxious people well-off enough enough to adopt infants aren't thrilled about babies with the kind of risk factors an infant Mara would have had and there are many adoption agencies that would have turned her mother away anyhow had she wanted to place Mara because they insist can't place fully black kids.
I do think it's totally fair to say that you'd rather raise a child who already exists than to create one. That's exactly what we did, obviously, and it's worked out amazingly well. Part of my rationale was even that I didn't think it would be a good idea to pass on my genes, though specifically I'm not in a condition where I could carry a pregnancy to term and so it probably didn't matter. I'm just really uncomfortable with infant adoption as currently practiced in the US and it's not as easy or unproblematic as people (though maybe not Yrruk) often seem to think.
this leads to what I believe to be a lot of coercion of women who could successfully have parented into placing their babies for adoption because they're the kind of people that the adoptive parents want their children to take after, if that makes any sense.
Gotcha. Yes, that's unpleasant and should be discouraged.
Specifically, we discussed the impact that pregnancy would have, and the logistics later around kids, and my feelings around this.
I take it that there's a fairly well-trod distinction between knowing some propositional content and knowing what it's like to experience it. (I know that it's painful to be shot; I don't know what it's like to have been shot, etc., and that can be true even if I know that it's painful and know that I have a plan to deal with the pain and I am confident that it's within my capabilities.) I don't find the China example at all compelling.
I'm sympathetic to a version of your point; I have to squelch
a snippy response to "you can't understand, you're not a mother" with that runs along the lines of "if only we'd invented a common language so that human beings could share experiences!" or "oh, I managed higher math, try me." But I don't think it would be a sign of immaturity to know that a) babies usually walk sometime in their first year b) parents feel proud when their babies do something perfectly ordinary like walk and c) still feel wonder when your child walks and you realize that you are now that person who is excited and proud over perfectly ordinary milestones.
The more I see my friends with their small children, the more I learn, and the more I'm convinced that I really don't know what it would be like from the inside to have my priorities that radically shifted, even though I know of course that they would be were I to have kids.
Now that I think about it, I wasn't trying to say "You can't know what it is like." I was trying to argue "You can't know whether it will be the right choice for you." It was more narrowly a response to G. Washington, above.
The problem isn't the inability to imagine the basics of the experience. The problem is that so many things change that there is no longer any measure to use to say whether you made the right decision. People without children can imagine what it is like to see their baby walk. People with children can imagine what it would be like to decide to go out to a concert on a whim. But you can't compare the overall value of the two ways of living.
The other thing this means is that after the fact, you also won't know whether having children was the right thing to do.
I'll concede that I seem to be an outlier - my time-management was radically shifted, but my experience matches what you and anyone else on this thread would anticipate.
I'll take it one step further: I am an exceedingly shallow person in the sense that what you see is what you get. There is no hidden Heebie that people here would not recognize. There is no alter Heebie that comes out around different groups of people. There really aren't hidden depths. What's apparent in conversation is pretty much the extent of me.
What I'm trying to say is that perhaps other parents are shifting at depths that I don't contain. Or something.
I used to have layers (like an onion or an ogre), but I got rid of them, and I am much happier now.
I have alter me that is always saying "nice job, fork-grabber." fuck, soooooo tedious. sometimes I'm literally saying out loud "shut up brain! everyone is tried of your fucking bullshit. I'm not going to kill myself because I am too fat to deserve to be alive, so just drop it."
One time I was told that readers left Unfogged (in droves, I assume) because it became a Mommy-blog
Nah, I think it was because Ogged left.
I found 125 baffling. It may be self-aware but it reveals such a level of unawareness of other people that it makes me question whether self-awareness has any value at all.
OT, I just saw this in my RSS feed and laughed.
It may be self-aware but it reveals such a level of unawareness of other people that it makes me question whether self-awareness has any value at all.
No, the implication was that most people aren't mature/self-aware/what-ev. I just meant that in, say, talk therapy, two of the biggest things to straighten out are choosing your own value code to live by, and your issues around your family of origin. These are really fundamental to personal growth.
(I was being a snide jerk about it, though.)