PSA #102 Parenthood Is A Choice, Childhood Is Not

Honestly, I have no idea where this is going so the title may have little to do with the direction this may end up going. I am feeling a little blue and a bit mad so buckle up and hang on tight.....

I am a mom that tries to always put the kids first. They get new shoes and I wear sandals when the snow is three inches deep. Doesn't bother me a bit. I can be beat down, bone tired but I am a wake at the sound of that boy's cries. When the sun rises again I start all over and try my darnedest to not let them see me cry. If food is tight, they eat first. Period. So what single mom, who weighs in at 700 pounds, tries to eat enough to gain another 300 pounds?

Donna Simpson has a FOUR year old daughter who helps her shop, cook, and generally all the things we mom's should be doing for our kids. Are people outraged by this? No, she has enough "fans" to earn $100,000 a year. Her career is eating, blogging about eating, taking pictures of her fat and her eating. Really? She is hoping to find a new man that is ten years younger to help lift some of the responsibilities from the shoulders of her young daughter. Are you kidding me? Her daughter should be playing, eating health food, and learning about the food pyramid, not worrying about what her mother is having for dinner. She should be having a childhood.... and her mother should be being a parent.

Two fathers in Michigan have made their children disappear. They claim they are safe. Safe? Three boys have been missing since Thanksgiving 2010. They are not with family, friends, or their parents. No one has seen them but they are safe.  A man that was due to go fight for our country in the fall is now sitting in jail. June 29th he took his 4 1/2 month old daughter and no one has seen her since. They found her clothes somewhere along the way. He told the mother of the little girl and his three year old daughter, that the baby is safe. No one has seen her. She is not with family, friends, or her parents but she is safe. Right. And a senator never lies. These children should have been outside playing, riding bikes, learning to crawl and being children. These men should have been parents.

We all know about Caylee Anthony's childhood. It was cut short. She died and then was thrown into the woods like garbage. Her mother was tried and acquitted of most of the charges. Little Caylee was dead while her mother partied for 31 days. Her grandmother reported her missing. Her grandfather tried to find her. No one is to blame or everyone is. There was full coverage of the trial on WFTV. Judge for yourself. Casey wanted to party and be young. Caylee needed a parent so she could be a child. Some one failed to see the gift in those big brown eyes.

Here's my point.... 

Parenthood is a choice. You don't have to be a parent in today's world. You can prevent it. You don't have to become a father. You don't have to become a mother. If you mess up and a baby is created and brought into the world, you still have options. 

Stand up and see that child into adulthood. Do the best you can to make sure that baby knows right from wrong, knows how to work and how to play. Put that child first. See that hunger and pain aren't an everyday part of their world but smiles and love are. Do the right thing.

OR

Give that baby up to someone with enough love in their hearts to do what you, for what ever reason, can't. You will be a better person for at least trying to give that baby a better life. There are no guarantees but at least you tried. And that makes you a good parent. 

Childhood is not something a child can choose. A couple of people who think they are grown enough to take responsibility for any out come of having sex get together to CHOOSE to bring that child here. That child then lives under what ever choices those adults make. Good, bad, pleasant, and painful are at the hands of the people the child counts on most.

Casey was called a good mom because her two year old daughter loved her. Um.... I would hope that a child loves their mother, it is a natural inborn thing. BUT it is much harder for a parent to love a child all the time. It isn't enough to love when the child is happy and being cute. You have to love them when they stink, are throwing up, being annoying, or when you can't find a sitter. You wanted to keep that baby so you are now a parent. The child did not have any choice.

I get tired and upset and crave just a few minutes of quiet. I get frustrated and wish I could just go out to eat and finish my food before the children start to throw french fries down the shirt of the people sitting behind us. I do not hit my children for wetting the bed. I don't get back at their dad by punishing them. I sure and heck don't ruin their lives with beatings, starvings, or other such stupid self centered crap.

Love your kids... you picked the path your life is on... you invited the kids to go with you... enjoy their company before it's too late.

Parenting Thoughts

Parenting For the Greatest Good

It often amazes me on how hard people work on things that are of little consequence but then put little effort into family, marriages, and simple raising of children. The article above is one I wrote using the positive approach to parenting. I have found that simple loving respect works wonders.

What's your approach?

The Lost Art of Parenthood

"They didn't choose to be our children,

so we must be the parents they would have chosen."

I am Mom. It's my main name. It's what I'm called more often then the name my parents chose for me. I wear it with the same pride as a soldier wears their rank insignia and with the same sense of duty. But I am afraid of what Mom and Dad are turning into for a lot of other families. 

There are several new "schools" on parenting like the extremely hard line of the Tiger Mother and abandonment style talked about in a friends blog, Zilla of the Resistance. There is a nasty increase in child abuse and murder. And we are all familiar with the fact that single parenting and two working parent homes are more the norm then we would like to see. 

But what about the basic everyday parenting? Children are born because we create them. We decide through our actions that they are to come into the world. They do not owe us for that. They had no choice. Why would we hold them accountable to us for their existence? Our first and most basic responsibility is to them because we forced them into being.

And that doesn't mean we rush them into adulthood to get them out of the way. Kids should be allowed to act like children. The simple pleasures of childhood are almost gone to most kids. They get buried below chores, school, and being perfect little angels or delinquents. Our society is forgetting to balance it all and we are creating monsters.

We want our kids to be well rounded, loving, hard working, fun loving adults when it's all said and done. We want them to have it better then we have it. But we are causing our children to be dysfunctional, rude, impatient, evil.... creeps. No, not all the kids are turning out that way but more then we would like to see.

Chores to teach responsibility, play time to encourage the love of life, the right level of discipline to teach right from wrong; they are part of a parents job description. While I feel that there is no true right/wrong parenting method, I do feel the extremes we are seeing these days are not doing justice for our children. 

It is not the child's job to please us with their every action but our job to find pleasure in our children. It is our job to show them how to become well rounded adults without damaging the core self that they are born with too badly. It is a parents job to show and teach love, right from wrong, and the basic principles we want to see in our society. It isn't something kids are born with but are taught, by us. 

It is the simple everyday things we do with and for our children that will one day play into the adults they will become. If our lives are so taken up by ourselves that we miss their day to day lives then we are doing something wrong. If they turn out rotten because we weren't there, then we are to blame. If they turn out great because they learned early to stand on their own, then we should not get the credit. 

If we are there for our children and guide them with simple love and morals, then we are doing our jobs. Our life doesn't have to be all about parenthood and the children but it is no longer just about ourselves when we bring them into our lives. Balance. In order for us to be healthy for our children, we need to be healthy for ourselves. We need to take some 'me time' and some 'us time' as well as the 'family time'. 

If we want to save the world we need to start looking in our own home and what we are growing. Plant a garden and a tree and you are helping the future. Raise a child and that child is the future. What are you growing?

*special thanks to my Friend MJ for all her help with my blog. Please feel free to read the blogs I will be including on the side bar. I write for Stone Soup with some other very talented writers.*