A Brief Respite

My wifey has taken the littles to the park.

I am totally and completely alone.

What to do first?! Blare music? Run? Have ridiculously long shower without having to play curtain peek-a-boo and hop out once or twice to deal with nefarious giggles or screams from the kitchen vicinity?

Yes. Yes. and Yes. Don't mind if I do...


It is rather amazing how much you come to appreciate an hour to yourself...

Sounding off on "sorry"

Timmy hurts Mickey.  Timmy's mom, witnesses the 'offense' and forces Timmy to tell Mickey he is sorry.   We've all heard the the parental battle cry of "_________!  You say you're sorry RIGHT NOW!"   Hell, most of us have probably uttered the battle cry on more than one occasion.  It's a default reaction to righting any number of playground/schoolyard/sibling wrongs.  

But does "sorry" make the wrong righted?  Is this even the right thing to do?  I am a bit torn about this. 

IS Timmy sorry?  Or is it Timmy's mom who is sorry?  Does it matter?  And does making kids say they are sorry for their actions give them any greater understanding of the situation as a whole, or the feelings incurred?  Does it make the situation any less likely to occur in the future?  And most importantly, does it actually help instill any greater empathy for others?  Does it help kids have any better understanding of the damage they caused?  

I guess my problem with the business of making kids immediately apologize for their wrong is that their apologies often aren't actually coming from a place of sincerity.  We've all heard and seen kids who mutter "sorrry" under their breath, or who sing-song it left, right and centre while continuing to bash some other tot every two minutes.  Not useful, in my estimation, to changing the behaviour behind the incident or to helping the wronged party feel better.  Not useful, because the kids aren't actually sorry. 

While these incidences do help us, as parents, to feel less guilty about the actions of our children, I wonder if the forced "sorry" is really the way to teach kids about appropriate and innappropriate behaviour.  And if this kind of "sorry" isn't the way to go, what else should we be doing?

I've been experimenting lately, trying to veer away from the automatic "say you're sorry" route, and here's what I've been trying to add into my repertoire. 

1.  Address the incident as immediately as possible, saying something like: "So and so really doesn't like to be hit (pinched, have their toy grabbed, whatever).  It hurts their body and their feelings!"  and then turning to address that other child and asking:  "Are you alright?" and tending to their needs to model nurturing, caring and empathy.

2.  Then leading my child away for further conversation about the behaviour.  Asking if they understand and/or want to try to do something to make so and so feel better.  If yes, brainstorming what that could be.  If no, letting them have some distance from the situation, but making sure they know that they can always come back and talk to their friend about what happened when they are ready.

3.  Using the incident as an example when things happen in reverse.  (Ie. if someone hits kiddo and s/he doesn't like it, taking time to validate their feelings, but also trying to remind them of how _______ must have felt the other day when you clobbered them).

4.  Making sure model the use of sincere apologies to them when warranted.  Ie.  "Hey kiddo - I'm really sorry I lost my shit on you yesterday, I was really tired and feeling pretty frustrated when you wouldn't listen, but I know it doesn't feel good to be yelled at, and I should have taken some deep breathes and figured out a different way to talk to you about what was going on."  Okay - maybe without the "lost my shit" part, but you get the picture.    Hopefully, both the sincerity in apology, as well as talking about different ways I could have done things will eventually filter in.

I know that my opinion probably won't be the most popular among the parenting set, but I have really come to feel that the words "I'm sorry" are only really helpful when we actually, you know, are sorry for what we've done.  I feel like teaching kids to parrot "sorrrrrrry" every time they do something wrong, we give them a 'get out of jail free card,' without really instilling a real sense of what it means to actually be sorry. 

I'm hoping that using a more long-run approach will do just that.  But I guess only time will tell.

Fattie Kiss-In

Looks like I won't have to seek out fat-phobic Marie Claire writer Maura Kelly and make-out with my wifey in front of her anymore.  Why, you might ask?  Because a whole bunch of hot, bothered and pissed-off folks are gonna take care of it for me.   If you live in the NYC area, you might want to check out the deets below:

http://stacybias.net/2010/10/big-fat-kiss-in-tomorrow-in-nyc-in-response-to-marie-claire-article/


Organizers say:

Please spread the word!! BIG FAT KISS-IN, NYC! Tomorrow (Friday, October 29th) at 6pm in front of Hearst Tower – 300 W. 57th St. near 8th Ave., Manhattan, NY. Bring signs, your friends, lovers and family. Chaste kisses, cheek kisses, french kisses, any kisses! Come and show Marie Claire that it’s not OK to shame anyone out of their sexuality.



I say: now there's some fun activism :)

If the early bird gets the worm...

then my kids get a lot, a lot, a lot of worms. 

I wish they'd leave some for all the other little birds.

Why Marie Claire Should Kiss My Fat Heiny

I'll mostly let the ignorance speak for itself, except to say that if I should ever have occasion to run into this woman, I will be sorely tempted to strip off all my clothes and totally mack out on my wife, so that she can be fully grossed out by my fat ass getting some action.

http://bitchmagazine.org/post/fatphobia-alert-fatties-should-not-be-allowed-to-kiss-apparently

That this "article" made it past an editor (even in one that sports anorexic models on every second page) is beyond my comprehension.

one of those days

Ever have one of those days where everything seems so difficult and so trying, that you want to repeatedly stab yourself in the eye with a fork? 

Ever have one of those days where you think stabbing yourself in the eye with a fork sounded like an improvement over your current activities? 

Ever have one of those days where if one person tells you how much they love being a parent or how perfect their kid is or how the world just needs more positivity or something of the like, that you will want to repeatedly stab them in the eye with a fork? 

Um, I haven't of course.  (Being the total paragon of positivity that I am...)

I was just wondering if you did.

gender busting and kiddos

Some very lovely peeps of mine (thanks Rachel and Trish) pointed me in the direction of a couple of really amazing resources for kiddos around gender non-conformity, and then I found a couple on my own.  If you've been sticking with the blog for a bit, you know that working against the grain of gender stereotyping and gendered social rules is an important issue to our family.   Boy-o, though in many ways stereotypical "boy", has also been known to wear a princess dress and rock the ponytails now and again.  And it's my hope that Girlio will follow her own path and find her own ways to circumnavigate all the heteronormative, gender normative messaging that's so pervasive in our culture.   (Because the strict rules we carry around gender limits, and sometimes hurts,both boys and girls.)   The reason I was so excited to find these resources,  is that there is a veritable dearth of information around rewriting and reworking the concept of  gender, and gender roles, particularly for the small set. 

Anyhoo -without further blabbing on my part - on to the resources!

The first is a series of three colouring books (and though as a general rule, I am anti-colouring book because they are more likely to stifle creativity than encourage it, for these I'll be making a big ole exception) created by Jacinta Bunnell, and illustrated by a host of artists.

The first book is called Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away With Another Spoon. This colouring book's description explains: "We have the power to change fairy tales and nursery rhymes so that these stories are more realistic. . . . Sometimes the Spoon...aids the work of dismantling the Princess Industrial Complex by moving us forward with more honest representations of our children and ourselves. Color to your heart's content. Laugh along with the characters. Write your own fairy tales. Share your own truths."

Um, can we say "you had me at hello?!"

#2  in the series of colouring books is Girls are Not Chicks, which is described as "twenty-seven pages of feminist fun! . . . Color the Rapunzel for a new society. She now has power tools, a roll of duct tape, a Tina Turner album, and a bus pass!  Paint outside the lines with Miss Muffet as she tells that spider off and considers a career as an arachnologist!  Girls are not chicks. Girls are thinkers, creators, fighters, healers and superheroes."

Yup - Still loving it.

And then the latest in the series is Girls will Be Boys Will be Girls  which is touted as "a fun consciousness-raising tool for adults & children who want to unlearn a lifetime of sexist and heterosexist education."

Information about the author and illustrators, as well as ordering information at:  http://www.girlsnotchicks.com/ or  http://www.etsy.com/shop/parthenialoyal

I can tell ya that Santa might be getting his queer on and dropping a few of these goodies off at our house this year.

Then, while perusing one of the sites that the aforementioned colouring books are available at, I stumbled across a really cool sounding children's book. 10,000 Dresses, written by Marcus Ewert and illustrated by Rex Ray, explores the journey of a young boy who yearns to create and wear beautiful dresses. 

The publishers description says: "Every night, Bailey dreams about magical dresses: dresses made of crystals and rainbows, dresses made of flowers, dresses made of windows. . . . Unfortunately, when Bailey's awake, no one wants to hear about these beautiful dreams. Quite the contrary. "You're a BOY!" Mother and Father tell Bailey. "You shouldn't be thinking about dresses at all." Then Bailey meets Laurel, an older girl who is touched and inspired by Bailey's imagination and courage. In friendship, the two of them begin making dresses together. And Bailey's dreams come true!"

The book is available here: https://www.reachandteach.com/store/index.php?l=product_list&c=37

My Princess Boy is a book written by the mom of Cheryl Kilodavis about her own, and her family's experience with son Dyson's gender nonconformity.  Please watch the clip below about their family, Dyson's amazing school, and their experiences.  It is really so so lovely to see such openness to letting this little dudes negotiate his self-expression in a world that writes boys pretty darned narrowly (though I think I would've left my four year old at home, but that's just me).

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/10/17/princess-boy-addressing-childrens-gender-non-conformity/

And check out the book and the website:  http://myprincessboy.com/



Pretty Slam

Katie Makkai - Pretty
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6wJl37N9C0

Other than the fact that pretty has six letters, not five - this piece encapsulates quite nicely why I cringe every time someone calls my girl "pretty."

A blog repost, in honour of SOPWAM: "Just a Housewife"

(This is a repost of my third blog post ever.  I thought the repost fitting, given my last post regarding SOPWAM.)

I am a feminist. I believe firmly that a woman's "place" is wherever she wants and needs to be. (I wish very much that we lived in a world where that were possible for all women). I also believe that happy (reasonably) well-adjusted parents make happy, (reasonably) well adjusted children, regardless of whether those parents work outside or inside of the home. So why is it that I find it so difficult to answer the question: "What do you do for a living?" I find it equally distressing to respond to the ever present: "So, when are you going back to work?"


I hate the word housewife. I hate the word homemaker. These words are so loaded with patriarchal bullshit that I can barely utter them in any seriousness, much less use them to describe myself or what I do. Yet that's the check-box that applies to me. And because of it, I get dismissed by the folks at the bank, the car dealership, and occassionally, other parents. It feels like a pretty limiting check box. But what else do I call myself? How can I encapsulate what I do, day in and day out, without sounding either overly-simplistic or self-denigrating?

I have a master's degree in Gender Studies. I'm a complete and total nerd and I love researching and writing. In fact, it's one of the only things I've ever been really good at. I always thought I'd be an academic, and was planning for a return to school for my PhD immediately following the birth of my son. But things didn't quite turn out that way.

Being at home with my son was a real learning experience! Some days were amazing and I felt thrilled and gratified at being able to witness and guide the growth of this little being. Some days were horrendously frustrating and tiring and what I couldn't wait to get "back out in the world." All of the days (and often nights) were long and challenging. But when that first birthday rolled around, and it came time to look at putting Boy-o in daycare, I simply couldn't do it. The very thought of it made me want to cry and throw up at the same time. I just wasn't ready to let go of my role as stay-at-home mama. When Boy-o was just shy of two, I started to feel a bit suffocated, and decided to look around for some part-time work outside of the home. And then, I got pregnant with Girlio. So - I've been out of the paid workforce for almost four years now. But not out of the workforce.

To say I keep my household running would be an understatement. I make it possible for my partner to focus on her paid work because of all of the behind the scenes work I do. Cooking, cleaning, child care and sock washing. (It is invisible and undervalued work, but work nonetheless).

I don't deal in the economies of paychecks (at least not mine) - I deal in the economies of scraped knees, band-aids, juice boxes and swing pushes. I struggle each day to instill creativity, love of life, respect for the earth and for humanity in my children. I am working my ass off to raise children who will not be sexist or racist or homophobic, who will value difference and do their part to make this world a better place. I do this while struggling not to let my identity become subsumed in the world of my home and children. Some days are better than others. There are many days when my cats rubbing against me for attention at the end of the day makes my skin crawl, because if one more thing "needs me", I will die/cry/spontaneously combust. And seldom a day goes by when I don't find myself wishing I had more contact with a world outside of child raising, more money, more time on my own, more positive feedback to nurture my sense of self and importance in the world.

But this I know for sure. Child raising is labour. A labour of love, most certainly, but labour nonetheless. Hard labour. The hours are crap, the pay is worse, the vacations non-existent, and the acnowledgement from the world around us pretty non-existent.

What do I do for a living?

I'm a teacher and a doctor and a therapist and a laundrymat. I'm a playgroup leader and a chef and a nutritionist. I'm a personal shopper and a cleaning lady and a librarian. I'm a taxi driver and a soccer coach and the occasional jailer. I'm the CEO of this operation, and I'm pretty good at it. I'm up to my eyeballs in laughter and tears and dirty diapers and snotty kleenex. I'm on call 24/7. Fit that in a check-box.

When I am going back to work?



Fuck off.

listening to the radio

So after dropping off Boy-o at school yesterday, I was driving around listening to CBC waiting out Girlio's carnap so that we could meet up with a friend.  And I was tremendously enjoying the conversation between a feminist ethicist and some other person who annoyed me about the continued trend towards older motherhood in our generation.  The 'some other person who annoyed me', we'll call her SOPWAM for short, was raising some really quite alarmist perspectives about the mean age of new mothers being 30.7 years of age, such as the next generation of children will be increasingly orphaned, and saddled with their old ailling parents far too soon, etc. etc.  She was pretty negative about 'older mothering' and basically insinuating that older mothers shouldn't have access to reproductive technologies just because they missed the boat, so to speak.  And the other speaker, an ethicist, kept raising these perfectly wonderful points like the fact that women of our generation are having kids later and later because they feel like they have to choose between raising children and having a career, because women/mothers are discriminated against in the workforce, because there isn't meaningful support for parenting in a way that lets women pursure parenting and a career (easily accesible,affordable daycare, etc. etc.)  At any rate - this bit is besides the point...

It was such a great listen - I was feeling really engaged and into the discussion, talking back to the woman who was clearly wrong (erm, I mean, with whom I was disagreeing), and nodding in agreement when her sparring partner hit a particularly salient point. It felt great to be envigorated and engaged (albeit by myself!) in this great intellectual argument. 

And then, SOPWAM said something along the lines of:  "I wasn't a stay at home mom, I'm one of those career women who had dreams and goals for myself...." the sentence went on, but it was totally lost on me.

I could literally feel my self-esteem sinking. 

(It likely fell somewhere between the break and gas pedals, on the floor of the car in which I was driving my napping daughter, en route from dropping off my son, in the throes of my little, little, little, dreamless, goal-less life).

It might have even made a little plinking sound as it went.

I felt myself completely tune out.

I felt myself totally dismissed.

Newsflash lady:  everyone has dreams and goals for themselves... even l'il ole 'houeswives.'