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philosophical thought for the month
Oct. 30th, 2005 10:01 pmon friday when the boys were running rampage in the house (7 of them, aged from 4 to 1) us three mums were talking about how hard it is to keep it all together, to keep them under some semblance of control. we all three are lucky enough to have real parenting partners, 2 of us, me included probably have partners who do equal amounts of parenting.
it was a partuicularly difficult afternoon, my two were missing their dad, one of the others was having a hit first ask questions later kind of day.
i'd been thinking about how hard it is to parent on my own, which made me think more about my insistence on being able to deal with every situation on my own. and how I swore I would never say "wait til your father gets home" i've always seen that as deferring to the man, and therefore bad, but this week, with Bill away I've come to the realisation that "waiting til your father gets home" is actually ok, if it stops everything escalating into chaos, or me wanting to lash out at them (and hitting either of my kids is my biggest hang-up, I never want to do it), or they've reached a stage where they have completely tuned me out and don't even hear me anymore, just what *is* wrong with me saying, ok, this is not something I can deal with right now, and we're going to let your daddy deal with it when he gets home. that's not me deferring to his authority. that's me realising that I need help with the current situation, and that's what parenting is about, when there are two of you to do it, you help each other.
it's obvioulsy not something I can do on a wednesday when he's away for another 4 days, but on a wednesday when he's going to be home in 2 hours, I think it's ok.
let's see if allowing myself to do this is going to make my life easier. again, it's one of those things that has been wrapped up in "feminism" for me, but in fact is nothing to do with it, i don't want to see feminism as tantamount to self-sufficiency, i don't parent by myself, it doesn't make me any less aware of where and what i want to be as a woman and a mother.
it was a partuicularly difficult afternoon, my two were missing their dad, one of the others was having a hit first ask questions later kind of day.
i'd been thinking about how hard it is to parent on my own, which made me think more about my insistence on being able to deal with every situation on my own. and how I swore I would never say "wait til your father gets home" i've always seen that as deferring to the man, and therefore bad, but this week, with Bill away I've come to the realisation that "waiting til your father gets home" is actually ok, if it stops everything escalating into chaos, or me wanting to lash out at them (and hitting either of my kids is my biggest hang-up, I never want to do it), or they've reached a stage where they have completely tuned me out and don't even hear me anymore, just what *is* wrong with me saying, ok, this is not something I can deal with right now, and we're going to let your daddy deal with it when he gets home. that's not me deferring to his authority. that's me realising that I need help with the current situation, and that's what parenting is about, when there are two of you to do it, you help each other.
it's obvioulsy not something I can do on a wednesday when he's away for another 4 days, but on a wednesday when he's going to be home in 2 hours, I think it's ok.
let's see if allowing myself to do this is going to make my life easier. again, it's one of those things that has been wrapped up in "feminism" for me, but in fact is nothing to do with it, i don't want to see feminism as tantamount to self-sufficiency, i don't parent by myself, it doesn't make me any less aware of where and what i want to be as a woman and a mother.
