Just a little (link) love: SHE-RA edition
September 20, 2018
Will kids make you happier? (I think the answer is pretty logical)
Someone would have to be living under a rock to genuinely ask: Why didn’t she say anything when it happened?
If I haven’t insisted on this before, you must read Cassandra Khaw’s Jaeger Aunties story.
Dogs missing their kids. Sera can’t stand that JB is gone at all day at school and just about jumps out of her skin when they come home. They don’t even hang out when we’re all home together but the dogs want us together anyway. They have a weird shepherding type of insistence about these things.
I appreciate bloggers who share their struggle hand in hand with their successes. I will always share my goofs, my ignorant mistakes, my silly mistakes, my resoundingly that was PREVENTABLE mistakes. That was 90% of years 2005-201…what was that, last year? Yeah, 2017. I should have a whole category of posts that are just labeled “mistakes”. This is incredibly important perspective. In that theme, Harmony shared their tough summer.
The research on materialism: “Children who recall that their parents just bought them stuff when they wanted it, or who paid them money or bought them things when they got good grades, there’s a very consistent association that when these things happen in childhood, when that person is an adult, they’re more likely to be materialistic.
And I’m looking now at what parents do when their kid’s unhappy, or upset, or they have a big disappointment—how do parents deal with that? And my preliminary evidence suggests that it’s something that’s learned in childhood. The parents might say, “Oh, you didn’t make it on to the team—let’s go out and have something to eat,” or, “Let’s go out and get you a new video game—that’ll take your mind off it.” Well, if the parents do that with their kids, we find that as adults, people are more likely to deal with distress in the same way, by giving themselves a little gift.”
I can’t even remember my parents caring about my emotions. Mom must have done but we didn’t talk much about personal stuff when I was younger, and I didn’t know how to communicate well, so – no memories. I feel like I’m starting from scratch a little bit with JB in that regard. I do remember my friends having emotions and being what I thought of as weird because they seemed irrational though. Years on, I realize that they were totally normal in having emotions and you know, being human.
Hmmm. I struggle with the materialism thing still. I don’t think my parents ever bought me things on first request. However, they did buy me a lot…sometimes even when I didn’t ask. My mom’s shift started at 4AM when I was little so I never saw her. Every morning, she would leave me a note and hide a little doodad in my room (sticker, bouncy ball, etc.). So I always go back and forth on what role I want *things* to play in HP’s life.
It’s hard not to feel like a large part of it is just nature, too!
I wonder if you would have felt just as good about the tradition if it’d been just a little note to add to a notebook or with a mini quest to do something ?
We struggle with materialism. When we started out, we wanted to keep things simple. But particularly once Baguette was diagnosed with autism, we could see that she didn’t play the way other kids di. We developed a tendency to buy her things that she was interested, in the hope of increasing her engagement with play and other people. The focus has shifted a bit; we don’t buy as many toys, but coloring and tracing are HUGE–and we have a whole process around source material for those pastimes.
That said, I do think that she’s got a better understanding of time, and of events, and that we can finally start saying “Maybe that will be a Christmas present” about some things.
That was the sensible response to the child you were raising, I don’t see how it would have made sense to do otherwise. <3
As a kid, I grew up when the video game industry was starting to rise and so I was one of those kids that really wanted that Nintendo game console then onto the 90s with the Sega Genesis. And now thinking about it, I didn’t seem to earn it like getting good grades at school or doing housework. I simply asked my parents for one and they gave it to me. Asking for these materialistic items was tough for me because I didn’t want to pressure my parents in going out and buying it for me. But being a kid I just wanted them and in the end I just asked.
With that experience in mind and having a kid of my own now, I want to limit the amount of materialistic items he wants but at the same time it’s hard to draw the line on if we should provide him with that toy car or a mini basketball. It’s going to be a constant struggle as he gets older.
I think it’s definitely a struggle. It’s much easier before you have kids, it’s all hypothetical! Now every choice seemingly has consequences.