in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandjill come
running from soccer practice and boy scout meetings and orchestra concerts
and band practice and musicdanceskating recitals and baseball tryouts and
hockey games and girl scout meetings and it's
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
and mommy is working three part-time jobs
The Bath School disaster is the historical name of the violent attacks perpetrated by Andrew Kehoe on May 18, 1927 in Bath Township, Michigan that killed 38 elementary school children and 6 adults, and injured at least 58 other people.Kehoe first killed his wife, fire-bombed his farm and set off a major explosion in the Bath Consolidated School, before committing suicide by detonating a final explosion in his truck. It is the deadliest mass murder in a school in United States history.
In the moment and for days, weeks - even years - it's always shocking. But in a twisted way, it's encouraging to know that in spite of all our violent entertainment and media images, we are still shockable. Of course, shockable things happen around the world, daily. I don't know if we can or should maintain or hold on to all the fear and pain of every tragedy if it doesn't directly affect us. Even while we do need to hold on to our outrage.
Despair and living in worry are impractical at best. Debilitating at worst.
I wonder if people in the past were able to move on and forward because even though there were horrors - and so many additional horrors of disease and accidents that we now more confidently prevent - they weren't vicariously saturated in - marinating in -every Tweet and blog post of seemingly every person on the planet..
London Blitz, WWII
It's good that we are empathetic.
But I think it's also important to step away at times so that we can stay mentally and spiritually intact enough to play the role of caretakers and game changers when needed.
Let's play a game. This game is called Parents These Days.
As in, "Frank Bruni, journalist with The New York Times, thinks that Parents These Days have cornered the market on being anxiety-addled know-nothings, and that parenting experts are something that Al Gore invented along with the Internet, and let's see whether or not Frank Bruni is right."
Read the quotes below. As you're reading, see if you can spot which quote is about or directed to a Helicopter Parent, Permissive Parent, Anxious Parent, Authoritarian Parent, Authoritative Parent, Natural Parent, Tiger Parent, and every other kind of Parents These Days that any parenting author, expert, or guru has ever slapped with a moniker.
Fun part? All of these quotes are from before the year 1930.
Everything old is new again. And everybody under the sun since time immemorial has had advice for parents. Aren't you glad you didn't live next door to Aristotle? What a busybody. (Below are direct quotes from other blog posts, books, and articles as linked in the subheadings.) Parenting advice from Ancient Greece
Well, then if we employ all our ingenuity to keep our growing child all through these three years from the experience of distress, alarms and, so far as possible, pain itself, the growing soul is all this time being rendered more cheerful and gracious. ~ Plato
After the children have been born, the manner of rearing them may be supposed to have a great effect on their bodily strength. It would appear from the example of animals...that food which has most milk in it is best suited to human beings; but the less wine the better. ~ Aristotle
Those who are wrong who in their Laws attempt to check the loud crying and screaming of children, for these contribute toward their growth, and, in a manner, exercise their bodies. . ~Aristotle
Mummy-style swaddling bands were...intended to ensure that the limbs grew straight, a purpose based on medieval ideas of physiology, which held that a baby's body was so pliant that pulling or pushing on a body part determined how it grew.
While it was learning to walk, the child wore a padded bonnet to help protect its head against injury.
An English law of 1181 required militia service from boys beginning at age 15.
From the 1700s until the mid-20th century...mothers were repeatedly criticized for being "anxious, well-meaning, but ignorant," as one 1916 book put it.
A 1916 book warned parents not to bounce babies on their knees, as it would spoil babies and lead to "wrecked nerves."
Scottish physician William Buchan's 1804 book Advice to Mothers informed them that "in all cases of dwarfishness or deformity, ninety-nine out of a hundred are owing to the folly, misconduct or neglect of mothers."
In his 1877 book, Advice to a Wife, Chavasse informed mothers not to nurse for too long. Once the baby was past 9 months of age, nursing could cause "brain disease" in babies and blindness in mothers.
That there are many instances when the mother's health will not permit her to suckle her child I will allow; but I must believe those cases would less frequently occur if the attempt were persevered in.
My first child had the thrush when about a fortnight old. I had previously suffered great pain from an exuberant flow of milk, and was greatly weakened by it. Now I took the humour from his mouth, and for two months he seldom sucked without throwing up fresh blood afterwards, which he had swallowed with his milk. The torture I endured can better be conceived than described. Many of my friends with tears entreated me to wean my child, and dry away my milk, which, owing to loss of appetite and fever, occasioned by excess of suffering, might then have been done with ease ; but my own mother...exhorted me to persevere with fortitude, nor let anything I endured tempt me to tear my babe from the breast, and by improper food occasion ill health, if not endanger his life ; for amidst all my distress I had the inexpressible delight of seeing him thrive surprisingly.
And from the same text, the 1811 Mommy Olympics argument over how to best cleanse a child: with cold water or with spirits.
I have now a fine boy, scarce four months old, who was born in the winter, when the weather was most inclement; yet this did not deter me from insisting upon his being thoroughly washed with cold water before he was dressed; and the practice has never been omitted a single day since ; and now he will spring to the basin, evidently wishing to put his hands in the water, and laugh while it trickles down his neck.
Many good women have called me cruel, and protested it was unnatural thus to deluge a poor little innocent with cold water ; asserting that a little spirit of any kind was much better. Now I would ask which is the most cruel or unnatural; to lave its little limbs with the pure element, designed by a beneficent Creator for our purification, and consequent health, and beauty ; or with ardent spirits, which, when applied to the skin of a new born babe, already perhaps in many places excoriated, must occasion intolerable smarting and pain.
And When Oh When will the mothers of 1811 finally do away with the unnecessary baby gadgetry that grandmothers of the 1700s used?
For this, and other reasons above enumerated, it may be best to suffer [toddlers] to tumble about a carpet, or lead them whenever they show a great desire to walk, until they voluntarily venture alone...
Happily, those pernicious inventions the go-cart, standing stool, and walking stool, are rapidly growing obsolete, and nature begins to assert her sway in that as in many other particulars of infant management; and I sincerely hope they will ere long be consigned to complete oblivion, together with the scull caps, forehead cloths, swaddling bands, and stays, in which our great grandmammas used to imprison their hapless offspring.
I have heard my grandmother relate, that one of her sons walked down cellar in a walking stool and almost killed himself.
Parenting advice from psychologist John B. Watson who wrote child rearing advice articles for "popular press" in the 1920s. Excerpts from his parenting book Psychological Care of Infant and Child, 1928.
Let your behavior always be objective and kindly firm. Never hug and kiss [children], never let them sit in your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when you say good night. Shake hands with them in the morning.
The fact that our children are always whining and always crying shows the unhappy, unwholesome state they are in. Their digesting is interfered with and probably their whole glandular system is deranged.
And finally, a 1928 Bookman article "Bringing Up Mother" by Rachael O. Kallen, in which Ms. Kallen reminds us that criticizing Parents These Days was a hobby long before the Internet was around.
Why is Mother a menace? Because she is closest to her child, most intimately in contact with him during his most plastic period of life. And her contact with him is not ruled by understanding, but…by emotion (mother love is the name this usually goes by), ignorance, and a combination of laziness and selfishness….
I figure the retort which arises in the mind of the typical American mother who reads what I have just written. It has been made to me times without number by mothers who suddenly find their children difficult. “Of course I am emotional about my child. I can’t help that. And perhaps I am ignorant compared with psychologists, but I think a Mother’s instinct is truer than all the reasoning in the world. Nobody knows my child as well as I do. But I resent your saying I am selfish and lazy. Why I would give my life for my child, or work my finger to the bone!”
And then Mother proceeds to spoon-feed two year old Mary because Mary gets so dirty when she is allowed to feed herself. Mary is quite capable of using a spoon and would learn to hold a fork if given half a chance! And Mother dresses five year old Willie from head to toe because it is so much easier than teaching Willie to dress himself.
Ah well.
At least I know now that when I'm being criticized for whatever it is Parents These Days are being criticized for, I'm in good company.
I wonder if the mom living next door to Rachael O. Kallen pulled down her blinds and poured herself a cold adult beverage every night after the kids were asleep. And went to bed dreaming about the invention of blogging about her cranky neighbor.
Last fall, Justin Bieber was the main event at a Victoria's Secret fashion show - that is, the main event other than super-skinny women with perfectly curved and coiffed everything.
Because, you know, Justin Bieber's target audience is college-aged and twenty-something women, so it makes sense that he'd be helping to promote sexy lingerie for adults.
Heh. I'm just kidding. Justin Bieber's target audience is little girls who have only recently outgrown their My Little Pony lunch boxes, most of whom don't even have the hips to hold up pantaloons other than Hello Kitty briefs.
Victoria's Secret representatives say that, sure, girls in the 15 and 16-year-old range want to be "like the big girls" and gussy up their curvy bits in sexy, fun, self-esteem enhancing undergarments. That's my interpretation of what they said, more or less.
Victoria's Secret knows the demographics when it comes to who is shopping in their stores. No shying away from the truth there. But hey, don't even younger girls want to be like the 15 and 16-year-olds? Tweens are a huge market.
"Since you are in middle school, you might not fit in their lingerie. But, you can dress in a few of their things. On a daily basis, the models wear dark wash skinny or boot-cut jeans and short shorts, blouses with 3 buttons undone, lacy camisoles, off-the-shoulder shirts, mini skirts, short dresses, maxi dresses, etc....Get Victoria's Secret underwear as soon as you can."
I hear complaints from parents who have trouble finding clothes that aren't poorly made or don't have hems and cutaways rarely seen this side of a Vegas review. It's no surprise some moms and dads are on edge about the prospect of Victoria's Secret marketing to even younger consumers.
There's a big "so what" there. As in "So what. Just don't buy it if you don't agree with the marketing."
Well, sure...voting with our dollars sometimes feels like the most meaningful vote we have.
And right, parenting isn't easy. No one said parenting would be easy. And in a world of advertising and entertainment media that present mixed messages about what kind of girl is the right kind of girl, our job as parents is to teach, question, guide, listen, and sometimes pull back the reins on just how much of that mixed message our daughters come in contact with on a daily basis...whether that's turning off the television or sitting with our kids and talking about what they are watching or monitoring Internet use.
But, excuse me also if I fight back the Mad Men's big guns by being very clear as to the message behind my held-back dollars. Pardon my attempts to level the battlefield.
Here's one battlefield created by non-stop marketing of specific types of teenage sexuality: I've heard tell on the Internets that some middle school gym class locker rooms could be absolute hell for the 7th grade girl who wears plain white Hanes underpants. Parents are gently reprimanded for making their Plain Jane kid a target for teasing. Parents are told that this is reason enough for buying your 11-year-old something, er, a little more grown-up. Or "fun." Or "cute." Because, you see, "all the other kids are doing it." Ehem.
I'm sure you see the problem with insinuating that the kid who is comfortable in Plain Jane clothes is, essentially, the one who has to change what she's wearing to conform to the sensibilities of other 11-year-olds who want to dress like the big girls. That Plain Jane shouldn't expect her sense of well-being and self-esteem to come from, oh, how about not being teased. On the contrary...feeling good about oneself comes after giving-in to the stink-eye of classmates and dressing Just The Right Way.
Other battlefields?
I'm sure you see the problem with subjecting young girls to manufactured and ridiculous - almost science fiction kooky - stereotypes of female beauty and sexuality, e.g., "healthy sexuality all comes down to tiny underwear with come-hither slogans plastered across your butt."
I don't need to describe the body image gauntlet most young girls start running in elementary school and hopefully finish without an eating disorder or lifelong helping of self-loathing every time they look in the mirror or try on a pair of pants.
I won't go into why it's preferable to allow our daughters to take growing-up at a slower clip instead of allowing pre-teens to run headlong into a definition of feel-good adult sexuality that ignores all the physical, social, and emotional challenges and responsibilities of - as the underwear says -"Feeling Lucky."
Too much? It's all just underwear?
Anyway....
As a sort of temperature check, I had a conversation with my 11-year-old daughter recently about undergarments for young women. Just to see if I had a kid who might be sneaking to the mall behind my back to buy itchy thongs with racy slogans printed on them.
Mother: If Victoria's Secret made underwear for middle-school girls, would you want me to buy you some?
11-year-old: What? Why?
Mother: Well, you know. Because in the gym class locker room when you are getting changed, you feel bad about your plain cotton underwear.
11-year-old: I get dressed quickly. Who's even looking at each other's underwear. That's weird.
Mother: Some girls say they feel bad not having fancy underwear. They want to have cute underwear because it's fun. It makes them feel happy or grown-up.
11-year-old: I never, ever, ever, ever think about my underwear. I couldn't even tell you which ones I'm wearing right now.
Mother: So you don't feel bad about your underwear?
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