Mother For Life

I was reading through random blogs late last night, when I stumbled upon one that bothered me. I won’t name it, and I want to state right now that I am not judging said blogger, simply tossing in my two cents worth. It was a blog from a mother where she wrote about her child’s pictures being copied by some random guy, and posted on a site with words written over the pictures. She talked about how upset her daughter was, and how much work she had to go through to get the site host to take them down. This mother then went on a rant about how wrong the guy was, how much her daughter suffered, and how disturbed she was.

Yes, the man in question was wrong. But what’s worse, the random stranger who steals little kids pics and puts them up on disturbing sites, or the irresponsible parents who post the pictures in the first place? I’ve said it before, you will find one public picture of my children on the Internet, and that is a far away blurry shot of half their bodies. Otherwise, my children’s pictures are private, meant for friends and family only. I drop on blogs constantly now where parents are writing about their child’s everyday routines, along with pictures. They post bathing suit pictures, tub pictures, pictures of their children in bed.

In my mind, its one thing if you want to post a picture or two of your child. It may not be my cup of tea, but to each his own. But when you start posting pictures that are showing less than full clothing (bath tub shots, bathing suit shots, etc..), is where I start having major issues. Many of these same offenders have their towns and states they live in posted right on their blog pages. Thanks for letting every pedophile out there know exactly how to find your child, way to make it a bit easier on them.

As if we as parents didn’t already have enough issues raising children in this day and age of technology, now many parents are tossing their innocent pictures right out there for the sickos of the world. We all know there are bad people out there, we tell our children every day not to talk to strangers. We watch our children on the Internet to make sure they aren’t handing out their information. We give them rules to follow in case of attempted attacks. Yet parents seem to think its okay to post cutsie naked baby bath tub pictures. 

Sure, most normal people see those pictures and go “Awww, how cute”. Then again, how willing are you to forget about the non normal people? The perverts who stalk the Internet for those cute seemingly innocent naked baby shots, and turn them into something disgusting for their own use? Stop being naive about it already. It’s one thing to talk about your children, I do it all the time. Giving advice, or simply talk about their day. But I will keep our special pictures to ourselves. I like my children right where they are, with me safe and sound.

I don’t want you to walk away from this blog thinking “What a condescending witch”.  I do want you to think more carefully about what you decide to share with millions of people online. It’s not only the pictures you post in blogs. Did you ever notice that unless you make your photobucket private, someone who clicks on one of your picture links can turn around and look at all of your pictures in photobucket? Or your Myspace, Yearbook, or even Flickr? All of these sites have the same issue, unless you make your pictures private, or your page private, everyone can see your children splashing away in the tub. Of course, it doesn’t help if you have 5,000 friends, and let them all see anyways. Just a few things for you to think on the next time you want to post pictures of little Susie in her new bikini.

I had the cutest thing happen to me tonight, and I wanted to share it with you. My youngest son, came into my room tonight, and asked if the man was around. I told him no, and asked why. He told me he had a book he wanted to read to us, that was all. I looked at him, and I thought to myself “where does the time go“? So I told him I would love to hear his story and he climbed up on my bed, settled in, and we read books together. Listening to him read out loud, stopping every now and then to ask me if that was the correct word was an awesome experience. I had forgotten how much fun it was to have my children read to me. Looks like all those years of reading to them has paid off.

I am an avid reader, one who goes through phases. There are times that for weeks I will speed read on an average of ten to twelve books every four days. It was always a problem for me in school, when teachers wouldn’t believe me that I had finished reading books so fast. Looks like I have passed my love of books and my speed reading on to my children, and I couldn’t be happier. It about broke my heart when my daughter told me about two years ago at 9 that she couldn’t stand reading. I tried everything to get her back into it, and nothing worked. It became a fight to get her to read for her school work even. Then a few months ago, she started back into reading again. She loves it again, and with no push from me. I do ask her questions about her books, simply to refresh her mind on what she just read, helping her to keep the information better.

My middle son is my main speed reader, he’s getting almost as fast as me. His problem is that even though he is in the honors classes, they still don’t believe him when he tells them he is done reading. Good thing is, he has one teacher who knows me well, as she taught me in the 6th grade and dealt with my speed reading. He still has a problem comprehending some of what he reads when he goes too fast, so we are working on slowing him down some. I blame part of that on a testing they did in the schools awhile back. Every day for two months his class had to read a paragraph as fast as they could, and then answer five questions about it. It became a competition, with little understanding of what they had read.

Now it looks as if my youngest not only loves being read to, but is turning to reading himself as well. I couldn’t be happier about it. So much for his teachers latest comments about him not reading well. This boy was reading words like sedimentary, stalagmite, and stalactite tonight. The only problem I see him having is his excessive drool factor still. He literally has to stop talking, swallow, and then begin again. I’m going to have to ask the doctor about this next visit, as it really does bother my son, and makes it hard to understand him sometimes.

It was a joy to listen to him read, to make the voices, and to share with me the pictures as well. We have decided that as long as it’s not a night I work later, we will do this every night. I have enough books to be able to do this, and theres also a library less than ten minutes away. It was cute, at one point I peeked up into my doorway and saw both my older two standing there listening as well, both with smiles on their faces. I wonder if they were remembering the first time each of them read out loud to me.

7:30 am and already the crying and whining has started. I’m down and out right now with a nasty chest and sinus cold, so the volume of boys fighting really got to me. What could be so darn important to argue about this early you say? Ah yes it was that nasty little box, the one that calls to them: the game cube. As soon as I stumbled back into the living room, I grabbed it up, pulled the plugs and started giving “the look”.  I asked if lunches were packed; check. Were teeth brushed; check.  Fine, so far rules have been followed. I then asked what all the crying and yelling was for. I get the following:

“He won’t…*sob sob*”

“But I told him…*sob sob*”

“All..*sob sob incoherent speech*”

There is a very important rule in my household, when the games stop being fun, when the crying begins, it’s time to shut it off. If a child is stuck on a hard part of the game,  and it becomes something they have to do instead of something they want to do, it’s time to save and turn it off. I don’t allow temper tantrums when it comes to games at all, there is a zero tolerance in this household. If there is any fighting over whose turn it is, games get shut off. Yes, I’m that cruel.

It stems back to my ex-husband and his extreme need to win. Whenever he would play against my middle son on a video game, if my son was winning, my ex would get angry and do his damnedest to make my son lose concentration. When that wouldn’t work, he would get up and just turn it off in the middle. Or many a night of drunken video game playing where my ex would throw the controller if he lost a round or a character died. On those nights, it was best if none of the children were in the living room during game time, I of course had no choice. So, now that we are away from that I cannot and will not stand for seriousness when it comes to games. Games were made for us to enjoy, to make us laugh. Not for children to sit and cry, or brothers to hit another when they won’t share.

One more rule of game playing I don’t allow is the whole “sore winner, sore loser” mentality. My daughter used to have a bad habit of quitting a board game right in the middle if she wasn’t ahead in the game. The same went for card games. If she couldn’t win, she didn’t want to finish playing. Or when she did win, she’d rub it in her brothers faces, badly. Again, another reminder of my ex we don’t need in this household anymore. To break her of that habit, I stopped letting her play for months. I wouldn’t include her in any of the family games. Then when I did let her start playing again, if she showed any attitude at all, she was kicked out of the game. She has improved extremely well lately I am proud to report. She also stopped dancing and laughing in her brothers faces when she won after mom pulled the same on her, just louder!

As I remind my children constantly, video games are a privilege and if you cannot use them right, you lose that privilege. I’m just waiting for spring and warm weather so I can kick them outside to play. I might even do a crafts night tonight to keep the games off.

For those of you who are parents like myself, you have to sometimes ask yourself “where would I be in life if I hadn’t had children?” Well I think I met my other self today.  She was quite pretty, no wrinkles yet, no visible stretch marks or baby pouch. She was wearing designer clothes, and chatting on her cell phone a mile a minute. She came into my store today with her nurse sister, and I got to hear about an hours worth of conversation.

She talked about her recent vacation, her job as a defense attorney, her latest boyfriend, and how her maid was late this morning. Her complaints were about the lack of a good hair dresser away from New York City, and her brand new car needed an oil change already. She was loud, obnoxious, and yet seemed perfectly happy that way. I am ashamed to say I had a moment where I thought “that woman stole my life!”

Until she had to hold her sisters 3 month old baby that is. This other me looked at that sweet child with such longing in her eyes. She started cooing at the baby, and laying kisses on her tiny cheeks. As I helped the younger sister try on nursing scrubs for her new job, we both glanced over at the picture those two made, then glanced back at each other and grinned. We know what it’s like to hold those tiny bodies in our arms daily.  The other me joined us, and we all carried on conversations about our children, and her lack of.

Turns out she cannot have children, from an accident as a teen. So instead she decided to embrace the single life as she has, and spoil the kids her sisters have. No matter where she is in the world, she never misses a birthday, or holiday. She sends outrageous gifts, and silly cards. She also loves her nieces and nephews with all of her heart.

I felt like a heel almost as she held that baby. I have been a mother for so long, I think I’ve come to take it for granted. I don’t remember what life is like without children. But listening to my other self today, I’m glad I don’t. Now I know where I would be without children. I’d be a semi rich, young looking, successful attorney, just as I had planned. I would also be a very lonely woman.

Everything we go through in life helps shape us, and even through the good and the bad, I’m glad I had it all. Now excuse me while I go hug and kiss my children, and thank them for being mine.