Category — ControverSunday

Hey! It’s been a long while since I last half-assedly participated in ControverSunday (Tuesday). This week’s topic is interesting to me because it’s one of those things that I didn’t realize was an issue in mommy circles until I became a mother myself. It’s the type of thing that you will never see addressed in a parenting book.

First, some business to take care of:

So, licensed merchandise is all that stuff that has, like, Disney characters and stuff on it. If you’re hyper aware — or really, even marginally aware — you notice just how much crap is licensed these days.

I can debate that it’s one thing when a grown adult buys a Metallica T-shirt or a Florida Gators (CHOMP CHOMP!) cooler. We adults generally have the power of choice and the advantage of age and the social/cultural awareness that comes along with it.

But when you start talking about kids’ items, you run into some issues, right? How appropriate is it that an otherwise unremarkable plastic sippy cup is decorated with Tinkerbell or Lightning McQueen? Or that Pampers diapers are decorated with Sesame Street characters (and Huggies with Winnie the Pooh, and Luvs with Blue’s Clues)? That nutritionally helpful vitamins are in the shape of Wilma and Barney?

Several controversial issues at work here:

• Babies or little kids don’t have a choice, let alone the cultural insight and objectivity, to critically review their interests in popular culture and the contexts within which those artifacts were created and disseminated
• Licensing can be viewed as a part of a means to create early, perpetual and loyal consumers
• Parents are the ultimate peddlers of this merchandise, etc.

When I somewhat randomly got involved in a crunchy mom circle online, I started becoming aware of previously non-problematic (to me) issues such as licensed children’s merchandise. And then I was all “I will only buy plain wooden toys made in America!” and “I will only cloth diaper, except when I don’t and when I don’t, I will only buy off-brand, non-licensed disposable diapers!” and “There will be no TV in this house until the girls are old enough to read through my grad school books and make critically conscious choices about what they consume!”

But then I really wanted to get the girls one of those cute little foam fold-out couches for toddlers. And I realized that, unless I wanted to spend an exorbitant amount of money on an organic-cover, non-licensed, made in the U.S.A. toddler couch, I was stuck with a polyester-and-foam, completely flammable and probably laden with lead Backyardigans couch that I bought with a 20% off coupon from Babies R Us.

In my defense, I had no idea what the Backyardigans was (were? is it/are they a collective noun or a plural noun or whatever?)

Elise also recently went through a phase where her favorite thing in the world was Snow White. SUCK ON THAT, MOM.

My feelings now are less rigid. The girls are going to be exposed to all sorts of nonsense throughout their lives that will make me want to stab my eyes out or cry or fear for their lives. While I don’t work to accelerate that exposure, I’m not as fearful of it either. Yet.

Besides, we have tickets to see Yo Gabba Gabba! Live in October and nothing’s going to stop me and Chris the girls from seeing our their favorite show.

Don’t worry — the kids bought their own tickets with their college savings.

I’m really glad this topic came up on this week’s ControverSunday (check out some more chatter on it here) because discipline has been on my mind lately.

The girls are 18 months old now and I definitely see those terrible two’s setting in already. You don’t have to say it. I already know: We’ve only just begun.

Here’s what happens:

1. Children are happy.
2. Mom and/or Dad take something away. Whether that be the Coolest Toy of the Moment, or a beloved shoe (the girls are obsessed with shoes), or simply their essential happiness and livelihood (you would think), we take something from the child(ren).
3. Earth is engulfed by flames from Hell. Angels fall from the sky. Christmas ceases to exist and the Easter Bunny explodes into a million shards of jagged glass. Famine. Pestilence. Disease.

I took a cup away from Althea yesterday. In response, she threw a toy at me. I put her, crying and heaving, in a chair in the dark hall corner for a time out. It was her first real time out.

Elise throws food from her high chair and it annoys me to no end. I used to do time outs with that. Elise would sit in the corner like, “Thank GOD. I’ve been trying to get away from you all day.” So after 87 completely ineffective rounds of this, I started taking away the food completely.

Not that it works.

Then, there are tantrums. It seems that, within a matter of days, their mild, 40-second tantrums have evolved (or devolved?) into ever-more dramatic, three-plus minute meltdowns.

For instance: Bedtime. Never used to be an issue. Now? Ha. Ha.

The other night, Althea lost. her. shit. We plopped her in her crib as usual and good mother of all things holy, she went bananas. Stomping, throwing herself on the mattress, kicking, smacking herself in the head, holding her breath, writhing and flopping about like a fish on deck. Chris and I just watched, wide-eyed and speechless.

I am not a fan of this part of parenting.

Since discipline is now becoming a real thing to deal with, I pretty much have zero idea what I’m doing. On the one hand, I would think that doing some reading might be helpful.

But on the other hand, I think I’ve learned my lesson from reading parenting books: DON’T.

I’ve put some thought into it, and I believe my feelings are these:

• Misbehaving is a child’s job. The parent’s job, in return, is to love and direct the child through these explorations of boundaries.
• Tantrums and bad behavior can be attributed to a variety of things: exhaustion, hunger, need for attention, lack of ability to communicate. There’s also the very real concept that a child doesn’t know what or where the boundaries are; the only way to figure out the rules is to break them.
• Consistency is good. Just because the child doesn’t do what you say doesn’t mean they aren’t listening.
• I don’t agree with some parenting philosophies that allow a child to liberally direct decision making (e.g., unschooling). I think this approach entails, in part, the expectation that a child has the capacity to think like an adult.
• I do believe that we are raising adults, not children. But I don’t believe in inflexibility because childhood is made of beautiful, sparkly fairy dust.

All of this sounds great in a nice list of bullet points, but then there’s the part where a child is beet-faced and screaming and smacking themselves in the skull and then it’s like “Oh snap. People are looking at me. What do I do? Because I’m pretty much just staring and that’s probably not very parent-y.”

So yeah. Basically no direction. Lots of ideas and “feelings” and mushy stuff, but nothing to work with. Chris and I tend to approach things with humor and distraction (admittedly, easier for him than for me). I don’t know if a book would say that’s “good.”

Most likely, we’re causing irreversible psychological damage.

I’m not really looking for advice here. “Input” is more like it. Or a silly story. Yeah, tell me a silly story so I can just shut my eyes and go to my happy place until the girls are 26 so I don’t have to deal with this.

I’m participating in ControverSunday, the most divisive post meme on the Internet!

This week’s subject (it may have been last week’s, actually, but I’m really behind on things) is comfort objects — pacis, blankies, thumbs and any other object that your baby uses to comfort herself.

During the girls’ almost-17 months on this planet, I’ve actually tried to push different comfort objects — stuffed animals and receiving blankets, mostly. As I’ve discovered, they would much rather choose their own comfort objects, thankyouverymuch.

Pacis: Both girls gave up on pacifiers by four months. I’m glad for that because man, have you ever seen a four year old with a pacifier??? Kinda sad.

Blankies: Woobie, security blanket, lovey (lovey? seriously? we never said that when I was growing up), whatever. The girls both have a blankie. However, they’re not your run-of-the-mill, soft-and-fuzzy, intended-to-be-a-blankie blankies. Their blankies are former Halo Sleep Sacks, which we used with them until six or seven months ago. I didn’t want to have 18-month-olds in sleep sacks — it just looked bizarre — but the girls couldn’t fall asleep without them. So, brilliant parents that we are, we left the sleep sacks in their cribs like comfort blankets. And that’s how that came about.

Althea only wants her blanket during bed time. She stuffs as much fabric as possible into her mouth and chews/sucks on the material. I have no explanation for this behavior.

Elise, on the other hand, loves her some blankie all day long. In bed, she’ll carefully arrange and rearrange the fabric around her fingers and hands while sucking her thumb. During the day, she drags it around with her if it’s available. At this age, it’s still publicly acceptable for her to have the blanket. If it becomes socially weird, we’ll address it then.

Thumbs: Althea, no thumb. Elise, left thumb all the way. Elise likes to drag the blankie around while sucking her thumb. It’s pretty adorable right now — much more adorable than the habit I had when I was a kid of sucking my index finger. Yeah, a little embarrassing in retrospect.

Stuffed animals: I’ve tried to get the girls “into” stuffed animals but, so far, they’ve only had fleeting affairs with them. We tried sock monkeys, fuzzy teddy bears, Ugly Dolls (those things are awesome) and baby dolls. No dice. The only constant has been the stuffed animals we leave in the cribs for them: Jeanine Giraffalo (a giraffe, duh) and Sherry Lewis (a lamb, duh). Most of the time, the girls either steal them from each other or throw them out of the cribs altogether.

I actually still have a comfort object. I refer to it as my Stinky Pillow and I’ve had one since as long as I can remember. The Stinky Pillow isn’t a specific pillow, but rather a general type of pillow and a certain way of caring for it (or not, as you’ll learn) that creates the beloved stinkiness.

The SP has to be a real, down-stuffed pillow (I know, I’m going to hell) of a regular size that cannot, under any circumstances, be washed, deodorized, or cleaned in any fashion. Ever. The pillow case can occasionally be laundered, but preferably stays on for a couple of months at a time. The pillow then takes on the comforting smell of — I don’t know. Hair? Scalp mites? BO? Special magical fairy comfort dust? No matter. One whiff and I’m four years old again and all is right with the world. Ahhhhh.

So yeah. I totally just admitted that I’m 32 years old and I have a woobie. Time to start blurring my face out of every photo so you can never, ever identify me in public.

Okay, I’ll bite.

Ms. Perpetua has been doing this for the past few weeks and I’m ready to jump in. It’s called ControverSunday, where we write about stuff that polarizes the best of friends and angers the most loyal of readers. I love it.

This week’s topic is extended breastfeeding, a subject near to my heart. (Literally, because I’ll be talking about my boobs, and they are located near my heart.)

I’d never heard of “extended” breastfeeding until a few months into my own breastfeeding experience. Back then, as now, I didn’t really think about how long I would breastfeed my twins. I breastfeed today, and probably will tomorrow, and likely the day after that.

Or maybe not. I’m not sure anymore.

In any case, here we are, 16+ months in, and I’m still nursing my babies. Er, kids, I guess. Because Elise and Althea aren’t babies anymore. I snuggle them close to my sides when they’re nursing and, in my mind, they are still tiny, needy little newborns. But then I glance over my shoulder and see round toddler bellies and long toddler legs and I realize that I have two thinking, learning humans drinking milk from my breasts.

It rattles me for a fleeting second because I know there are people who think it’s strange that I’m still breastfeeding my 16 month olds. Thing is, I don’t think it’s strange. Most of the mom friends I hang out with don’t think it’s strange, either. Many of them are still nursing their kids — toddlers who are the same age as Elise and Althea.

Perpetua elucidates an underlying but major aspect surrounding the controversy with extended breastfeeding:

This discussion seems to have less to do with nutrition than it does with how we feel about breasts in public, and how we feel about the way a two-year-old relates to those breasts. Regarding the first issue, there’s nothing inherently wrong with breastfeeding in public.  Kids exist, kids have to eat, some kids eat breastmilk, la dee da. Adults relate to the public display of breasts differently. . . .

This leaves us with how toddlers (as opposed to “un-thinking” infants) relate to breasts. I’ve heard the “If he’s old enough to ask for it, he’s old enough to stop!” rule before, which also seems rather a bit too arbitrary. . . . More to the point, though, is that toddlers most likely don’t relate to breasts as sexual objects.  WE relate to toddlers relating to breasts with sexuality in mind.

And that’s where I think some folks have a problem. I understand that people get uncomfortable with the idea and/or act of breastfeeding an older infant or toddler, particularly in public and especially in the U.S. The sexualization of the lactating mother and her nursling is indicative of the larger social perceptions and fears of sexuality in general. And that’s stating it mildly. As they say, we’re more comfortable with the sight of people being blown up on film than we are with the flash of a nipple during the Super Bowl halftime show.

But every day, there are small revolutions that challenge this attitude — from the public protests against breastfeeding discrimination to a Facebook fan page on the historical images of women breastfeeding.

So where was I going with this . . . Oh yeah, boobs. The bottom line:

• Breastfeeding is great and I’m a very strong advocate for breastfeeding your child(ren) as long as possible and is comfortable for mother and baby.
• Extended breastfeeding is great too.
• Except, in my opinion, when the nursing child is old enough to warrant a film crew coming out to document it. I saw that lady on that BBC documentary and yeah, that was extreme.