parenting

44 posts

The question all parents dread…

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We all asked it when we were children, or we really, really wanted to: How are babies made?

How does it work? He sticks what where?!?!

As a child I was fascinated by it all, and to my mother’s dismay, asked endless questions about peepee’s and weewee’s and whozits and whatzits galore (I also liked The Little Mermaid.)

My mother was conservative, but also a nurse and therefore believed it was better to answer the questions in a straightforward manner, lest I seek other more embarrassing sources for the questions that kept popping into my little head. Rather than describing things for my more visual-oriented mind, mom sat me down with a book instead.  “Where Did I Come From” By Peter Mayle along with it’s companion, “What’s Happening To Me” became frequent sources of information for me growing up- I would read the descriptions of sex, ( One page reading, “By this time, the man wants to get as close to the woman as he can, because he’s feeling very loving to her. And to get really close the best thing he can do is lie on top of her and put his penis inside her, into her vagina.” left little to the imagination.) and look at the diagrams showing the stages of puberty in awe, feeling very enlightened for a 7 year old. Being let in on the big secret of the adult world opened the floodgates of my inquisitive mind. Did the man always lay on top? Did it always feel like “scratching an itch, but a lot nicer”? What happened after? How often did it happen? Did my parents do that? I never had “THE TALK” because the topic of sex and puberty was always open for discussion (In privacy, of course) with my mother.

This behavior on her part came from growing up in the 60’s with a cold-as-stone mother. Think Betty Draper, but instead of being the pampered wife of a New York Ad Executive, being the poor wife of an alcoholic farmer in the middle of nowhere. When my mom asked my Baba (Grandmother in Ukrainian) how she would know if she had gotten her period, Baba replied curtly, “You just will.” And the discussion was never to be brought up again. My mother never wanted her children to grow up distressed with unanswered questions and feeling shameful for having them in the first place,  like she was made to feel.

Now I ask, how did you learn about the birds and the bees? And if you have children of your own, how have you dealt with their questions?

Barbie Q’s Advice Column

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This is a new feature in which I will take relationship questions and dispense advice based on concrete principles such as what my cat thinks or how my 2 year old daughter responds.
Dear Barbie Q:
I own a store that has a bunch of long-time, loyal shoppers. The thing is, they kind of get on my nerves. They are always making snarky remarks and inside jokes. They always show up and buy lots of stuff, but I’d like to attract new shoppers and I think the clique that hangs out at my store is driving away potential shoppers. What should I do?
Sincerely,
Mr. Nique

Dear Mr. Nique
Here’s my advice – get rid of the whiny, self-centered shoppers as soon as possible. I recommend a few strategies:
• Install a door a revolving door and pretend it’s broken when the clique-y shoppers try to come in
• Invite potential shoppers who may or may not be interested in buying your product. This will overcrowd the store and annoy the clique-y shoppers and force them to shop elsewhere
• If the clique-y shopper express special love for any product, stop carrying it immediately
• Make them go to the back of the line if they make smartassed comments

If this doesn’t work, I recommend sending in an attack hamster. Let me know if you need a reference. I know a good one.

Crasstalk Parenting: Mildred will make you stop drinking

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I was kidding around on a past post about how I will punish my children when (I know it’s not an if, they’ll try it) I catch them drinking. Someone pointed out in the comments that not much will stop a teenager from drinking. That’s almost universally true. But there is one glaring exception and that exception is my mother.

My mother has been a teacher for something like 45 years and when I was in high school, she taught at a Catholic high school (she still teaches there at the age of 80 and any of her current students will tell you that she’s still as scary as ever). The nuns have nothing on my mom in terms of intimidation. Mildred has it down to a science. I didn’t actually attend my mother’s high school. She mercifully allowed me to attend the public high school. My brother got into trouble and had to go to my mom’s school and actually had her as a teacher. But I was allowed off the hook.

Like every other teenager on the planet, I tried drinking. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very good at it and made a huge strategic error early on in my drinking career. I and two of my friends got drunk at a high school dance. When I say “drunk”, I mean “annihilated”. With typical teenage savvy, we decided that we would split two full bottles of vodka between the three of us. Clearly this proves that we were not experienced drinkers because no one who has ever had a red wine headache would consider drinking that much alcohol. We got busted almost immediately, probably because none of us could walk and at least 2 of us were in the bathroom puking up pure alcohol.

They called our parents who had the privilege of picking up their shitfaced daughters at a high school on Friday night. My two friends were told that the raging hangovers were their punishments. However, things went a bit differently for me.

Here are some of the procedures Mildred put in place to dissuade me from doing any more underage drinking:

  • A 3 hour lecture at 6 am the following morning while I had what is still the worst hangover of my life (and that includes college)
  • Grounding for a full month and in Mildred’s house, that meant no tv, no phone, no leaving the house other than for school and church
  • Many, many Catholic masses
  • An AA meeting
  • A detailed report on alcoholism (researched at the library)
  • I was suspended and had to spend the time working for my grandfather. Sweatshop owners have nothing on my grandfather when it came to making people work.
  • During the week of Christmas break, I had to report to the janitor at the high school and help clean graffiti off the walls. I also got to clean toilets in the gym.
  • I had to attend counseling meetings with two dimwitted teachers at the high school. They’d each taken a psychology class in college and felt qualified to diagnose my family as dysfunctional based on the fact that I, a teenager, had drank alcohol.
  • Sniff tests every time I walked through the door for the next year.

Now, I’m not going to lie and say that I never again did any underage drinking, but I cut waaaaaaaay back after that incident. Especially in high school. College is another story entirely.

Crass Parenting: Modern Birth Terminology

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The birth process has changed a lot since I was born. My mom just went to the hospital and had me. It was pretty cut and dried. Today, she’d be known as a terrible mother. Birth has evolved. It’s become a defining act. It tells the world what kind of mother you are and many believe it sets the tone for the relationship you will have with your child.

If you are newly pregnant or someone close to you is having their first child, you will probably hear a lot of new concepts thrown around. Mothers-to-be have to decide where to have their baby, how to have it, whether drugs or interventions should be involved and how to deal with the baby immediately after the birth. There are lots of decisions to be made. However, to start off with, it’s important to understand the terminology. Here are some terms you might not be familiar with if you are new to the modern birth era:

Birth plan: Birth plans are a fictional document a mother writes before the birth which outlines how she would like the birth to proceed. The plan often contains her wishes to use or avoid medication, induction or c-sections. The mother gives this plan to the doctors and nurses who laugh themselves sick because we all know how cooperative babies are. Yes, babies come on time, on schedule, in exactly the way you want them to be born. That happens all the time.

Doula: Doulas like to say that while the father or doctor catches the baby, the doula catches the mother. The Doula is there to mediate between the mother and the doctor and make sure the mother doesn’t make any rash decisions such as deciding at the last moment that she will take any and all drugs and she doesn’t care what she said yesterday about medication, dammit, she wants an epidural now.

Midwife: Midwives are superior to doctors in that they are considered more natural and holistic and will make you feel like a wimp if you whine about drugs or beg for pain medicine. Midwives are often earthy, granola type women who gave birth after two pushes and buried their placenta under a tree. They are the kinds of women who glowed during pregnancy and have magical birth experiences. Clearly, they are either aliens or part of a secret superhuman race. They speak in coded language that only other superhuman women understand. They use code words like “surges” and “orgasmic birth” that will attract other superhuman women and allow them to give birth to their superhuman babies in the midwife environment.

Homebirth: Instead of going to the hospital and bringing the baby home, you have your baby at home. Then, you get to deal with the mess and bodily fluids yourself or assign your husband and/or any onlookers to clean up the biohazards. This is a great way to involve them in the birth process. Nothing makes a new father happier than cleaning up uterine fluid and blood. Also, if you live in an apartment complex, you will be able to alert your neighbors immediately to the fact that a baby is on the way so they can go shopping for baby gifts asap.

Unassisted childbirth: This is for the balls to the wall crowd. Midwives and doctors be damned – in this case, you are going it alone. There are lots and lots of helpful videos and stories on the internet about people who birth without out any medical intervention whatsoever. Sometimes the mother even catches the baby by herself. This requires the kind of woman who is very vigilant during labor as the baby definitely needs to be caught if the mother is standing or squatting. A fresh baby covered in bodily fluid can go flying pretty far. It’s probably a good idea to have a catcher’s mitt on hand.

Orgasmic birth: A contradiction in terms. Attempt to keep a straight when you hear this term. Some first time mothers think this is possible during childbirth. You never hear experienced mothers talk about it.