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Do you mean that you do not sit on the couch and drool all day?
July 10th, 2008
Pre-school for a one (almost two) year old is a place where you learn….um. Okay, it is where you achieve…riiiiight. It is a place for people who need to work to put their children. Now don’t get me wrong, there is NOTHING wrong with that, hell I was one of those people six months ago. However, I do not appreciate the implication that The Son is not learning anything at home with me. In fact I would challenge anybody to find a more verbal, more kind, more funny, more active, or smarter child than him. (Yeah, Yeah, I know I am biased, but I would welcome the people who know him to give their input)
I can pretty much guarantee that there is not a pre-school teacher in the entire county who has the level of education that I do. I also am confident that The Son gets a lot more interaction with his teacher than he could anywhere else. Can you tell I got my first hate mail because of my blog? Can you tell they insulted my parenting skills? Does this mean I have ARRIVED in the mommy blogosphere?
Not because I have to, or because I think this person deserves any kind of explanation from me, but I will give you a glimpse into what it is that The Son and I do all day, if for no other reason than to show you some cute pictures. I will also promise to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. The Son wakes up at about 7am. The Husband picks him up, takes him potty, and deposits him in our bed. Once there, The Son sleeps and nurses for about 45 min. Many times I will roll over and turn on Little House on the Prairie and all three of us will watch in bed. (What? That show is totally educational, well it could be.) We then get up and I watch exactly five minutes of The Today Show while fixing us breakfast. We all sit at the table and eat together, or if The Husband is working away from home, The Son and I eat together at his little table. We then go to his room where we read a book or two and then get dressed. Four days a week we either go to the library for stories and crafts, or to gym class, or in the summer we go to swim class.
After we get changed we sometimes nurse, sometimes not. Then it is off to the park or to run errands. We either have lunch with someone, pick up something and eat it at the park, or come home and watch a little Elmo and eat sandwiches here. Afterward we will do crafts, or work on one of our projects, like his container garden. He planted them, he waters them, he replanted them when they got blown over in a storm. The bonus science project is the cocoon that popped up on the side. We even saw the day that the moth broke free and was sunning itself on the side. Cool huh! (Take that, you pansy anonymous emailer :P)
We then read another book, are you counting? We are up to four already. Nurse, yes, again. He takes a nap for a couple of hours and then we will read another book as he has a snack. When he is chock full of goldfish, we play cars, or trains, or blocks, or put together puzzles. I do admit to turning on a Mighty Machines or Elmo for him to watch while we play, but never is he just sitting on the couch drooling and staring at the TV.
When The Husband comes home, we figure out dinner together, pray together, eat together. Then we play together, outside or in. We give The Son a bath together, we sit on the futon in his room and all read stories together. The Husband lays next to us as The Son and I nurse, we both give him kisses and put him to bed. Through the whole day we are talking, talking, talking, never using baby talk, or watered down vernacular.
There, for those of you who think I plop him in front of Nick Jr. (we do not even have cable!) and blog all day, you are wrong. I am a Mommy first and a blogger about tenth or eleventh.
“I will tickle you into submission you mean, anonymous emailer! ”
Filed under Parenting for Dummies, Soap box |15 Responses to “Do you mean that you do not sit on the couch and drool all day?”
This is the original email c&p. It came from an anonymous email address. Scaredy cat.
“ Hey You, did you know that you have a stupid Alias? Did you spend a whole three seconds coming up with that? I was brought to your blog from TheNest. I thought you needed a wakeup call. Your kid needs to be in preschool instead of sitting in front of SpongeBob with you all day. How many hours do you spend surfing the internet while he is awake? Your blog is kind of funny, but you are not God’s Gift to parenting like you think you are. Get that kid in school STAT before his brain turns to mush. I job would not kill you either.”
eh, whoever it is sounds jealous that you are a fab mom and get the wonderful opportunity to stay home with your son. I job would not kill you? What the heck is an I job? Anyway, Ha! as a person who has stayed home with a two year old, a job would seem like a vacation some days.
WOW!! My son is getting an education from someone with two Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree, and there is actually someone out there dumb enough to suggest that our son is in desperate need of getting in school before his “brain turns to mush”?
I think that whoever wrote that must have watched too much TV and had their brain turn to mush.
In summary, NEVER take advice from someone who tells you to get “I job”
At least Anonymous only wants you to get I job, instead of VIII or IX jobs.
Aside from the fact that this child is the most verbal 22 month old I’ve ever witnessed, the most physically strong toddler able to pull himself up (scale) any thing he can grasp with his hands, he is also the most polite. Yesterday he climbed on my leg to get on the bow of his new “boat” bed to jump into the “water” of his rug, and said, “I sorry, Mimi.”
He says excuse me when he walks in front of you; Amen at the appropriate time after being reverent during the prayer; please, thank you and you’re welcome all at the appropriate places. He runs, jumps, hops, and oh! how he laughs.
He is more fit, more verbal, more advanced than either of my both bright children who were in the best day care available when they were this age…I did not leave my job to stay home with them until after JHJ was 19 months old.
Oh my! As cat said, this person is insanely jealous of how fabulous The Son is and how much time you get to spend with him. Perhaps they are disillusioned with their own life, wishing that they didn’t have to work and could spend more time with their own children. Plus, they don’t type well.
Hey You, you are a WONDERFUL mother, and no preschool could give him as much as you are giving him right there in your own home, and you’re not spending a mortgage payment on daycare. It’s a win-win-win situation!!
Hey, I totally applaud your dedication to a routine. I just came back to work after my 12 week maternity leave, and I admit that getting into a productive routine at home is HARD!! In fact, I couldn’t do it! Yes, I was the mom who let her 4-year old watch Nick all day because I could barely prop my eyelids open after being up all night with the baby. So hats off to you, sister! As for me, I think I’d better work because having me at home is positively detrimental to my son’s development!
Heather, I have been there too! Well, with just one baby. When I worked for Heartless Cellular company I would say I had to pump just so I could go in my little closet and take a nap.
I think it’s a little weird that you call your son, “The Son.” What is he, the re-risen Christ? Weird.
mommy2k, I think it’s weird that you don’t understand that Hey You doesn’t want any personal information revealed within her blog. Hence, The Son, The Husband, and Hey You.
Well in fairness to mommy2k, if you’ve not read thehuckablog from the beginning and know the logic and the characters, I suppose it might seem weird. Not only is there TheSon, but TheHusband, TheNeighbor, and TheDog. A desire for anonymity is the reason. If you’d like click on the top right header and read the first entry mommy2k. Perhaps it’ll help.
My opinion may not count since I don’t have kids, but you do a much better job assisting in The Son’s growth than most parents and schools. Though I haven’t met The Son, I have heard so much about him from the blog and JHJ. I love getting crafts from him and his note is still on the fridge.
I could spend my last minutes at work ripping the emailer apart, but I think they are just trying to hide their own inadequacies and insecurities– but you already know that.
Don’t let anyone tell you how to raise your child; you and The Husband are doing an amazing job.
All I have to say is that the proof that you’re doing a wonderful job with TheSon is the difference in this child since he stopped enduring preschool. Yes, I said enduring! He was cranky, tired, sick, got hurt, and bit others often enough to worry his Pappaw and Gigi. Within the first week after his final day there, he transformed into the happy little boy you see now. Okay, he was happy and sweet before he left PreK, but not on a reliably daily basis as he is now.
He became much more verbal AND relaxed. I LOVE the job you’re doing, and I once owned/operated a PreK…and am now an educational specialist in the instruction of children. So, if the anonymous emailer wants to speak on an educated level, send her (maybe him, but I doubt it) my way!
Okay, I must add that I didn’t intend to sound arrogant and insinuate that anyone else posting here is speaking on an educated level (except, of course, anonymous emailer). I just meant that I wasn’t speaking only as an adoring grandmother and loving mother-in-law, but also as an educator. If I knew this family only casually, I would have noticed the difference that having a full-time mommy and zero-time daycare has wrought with this child.
The point of the “educated” comment was to challenge the bored, nothing-better-to-do-but-rip-others emailer to speak to me about educational theory and practices!!
One additional point: this is a perfect illustration of the 90-10 Syndrome. In education, we talk about how so often 90% of a teacher/administrtor’s student-management time is spent addressing misbehaviors, non-performance, negative parent meetings, etc. on 10% of the students while the other 90% and their “good” deeds go unnoticed. This is usually stated just before a plan is developed to try to reverse that pattern. So…from this point forward, what do you say to giving this 10-percenter the silent treatment?
I did it again, please correct the first statement in the just-prior post to read:
“insinuate that anyone else posting here is NOT speaking on an educated level”!!