Even really good parents often fail to resist the urge to engage in negative programming and turn their own psychological issues into the burden their children will carry for them:
There will be adults in your world who are very concerned about what you wear and how you carry your body and what you do with it. There will be adults in your life who care more about whether you sway your hips just so than about how good you are at science or how much you love gymnastics or the love you hold in your heart for your brother and others in your life. I wish I could change this for you, but I can’t.
Sure, there will be. It is so crucial to Mommy that her daughter encounter all this nastiness that the daughter will just have to accommodate.
What is really sad is that the little girl in question is only four and she already has to be exposed to her mother’s irresponsible drama queenishness. Children are not equipped to understand that Mommy is simply posing to get attention and feel important. They take this kind of crapola completely seriously and grow up seeing the world as a terrifying place.
See this part, for instance:
You are growing up in a world, Sally, that cares more about your body than your brain—or your heart.
I haven’t read anything more cruel since that horrible post by a mother who was fantasizing about her toddler growing up to become a rapist.
People, stop dumping your emotional garbage on tiny little kids. Just fucking stop already. For you this is a chance to feel important for 3 minutes and get some blog hits. For them this is a beginning of a lifetime of low self-esteem and crushing anxiety.
Clarissa's Blog 
The idea of “the world” caring about some individual girl’s body/brain/heart/breakfast is weird as hell. One would have to be a celebrity to get even an almost-insignificant part of the world to even pretend to care.
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It would make many people’s lives easier if they realized this.
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I think the intended meaning is not “the world cares” but “some of acquaintances, classmates f.e., or in this blogger’s case – her relatives! – will care.”
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Why haven’t you linked the response there, if you think her daughter will suffer, if mother’s assumptions won’t change? She tries hard to be a good parent, and is a thinking person.
// It is so crucial to Mommy that her daughter encounter all this nastiness that the daughter will just have to accommodate.
Have you never seen sexist men? Or, you mean, she’ll unconsciously search and notice those types more than otherwise?
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I’m now limiting my entire online presence to this blog. Only very rarely do I comment on other blogs and only if they are by people I really like. There is really no point in wasting my brilliance on somebody else’s resources. 🙂 🙂
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Sometimes linking to your response can bring new readers. Almost sure I found you this way.
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The mom sounds like a feminist railing about “The Patriarchy”, lmao. 😉
The big bad world is out to get ya.
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I had this friend in Gender Studies whose favorite refrain on every subject was, “Fucking sexist pigs!” The culmination of this habit came when I said, “I really hate this weather!” and she responded with “Fucking sexist pigs!” When I dissolved in laughter, she said completely seriously, “Who do you think caused global warming?”
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had a dream last night of a lot of pig heads floating in a trough and drowning. The best anyone could do was to slightly prolong their existence by elevating them. Perhaps this dream was inspired by the forthcoming Australian election.
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Partly it seems like an updated message on behaving like a lady in public and a woman’s lot to suffer that dragon aunts gave young women and partly an excuse for the writer to wallow in her own trauma (and relive it and maybe do it better through her daughter). A very queasy mixture.
We need a term for parenting that does this : Kind of like ‘stage mother’ for women who try to live out their desire for fame through their kids (or tennis fathers to balance the dysfunction among the genders a little better).
Trauma mother doesn’t seem quite right.
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Trauma mamma. I like that!
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Exactly! How creepy would it be if I started writing “letters to Eric”, telling him how one day he will experience his country split into pieces and transform completely because this is what I experienced? Or how he will have a bad first marriage because I did?
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Or N writing a letter to Eric: “One day, I don’t know when exactly, your mother and I will forget to pick you up from pre-school, or school, or we’ll leave you somewhere else for a day or two because we’ll forget all about you. And then we’ll deny there was anything at all unusal and casually joke about it.”
(no, i don’t think anyone’s forgotten that little horror story)
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// how one day he will experience his country split into pieces and transform completely
My mother does say that money can disappear in a moment in inflation or for some other reason, so one should, if possible, live well now too, not only planning to do so in the future. Some lessons are worth learning.
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Cliff, I once dropped one of my kids off at her kindergarten ON A DAY WHEN THERE WAS NO SCHOOL. Luckily the teachers were there for some kind of inservice, so they called me…when I got there, she was happily running up and down the halls and in and out of classrooms. She hadn’t had a moment of angst, maybe because she’d already developed a fair share of self-assurance at that age (you should see her now!).
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Eh, mom’s got a point, but she won’t help her daughter by making her paranoid and afraid of the world. A self-assured girl will be more able to identify and react to sexist attitudes.
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Some people just can’t accept that they are nothing more than a dot in other people’s lives. Overwhelming majority of people will-at most- give you a funny look when you make a total fool of yourself or just try to ignore you since they have more important issues to deal with.
At most, you can be a funny anecdote told to family members during dinner, forgotten two days later.
Seriously, who cares about strangers that much ? I mean, beyond basic level of respect and good manners there is very little interaction.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3eHgiTxW_I
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http://getoffmyinternets.net/kim-would-like-you-ladies-to-put-on-a-bra-and-stop-letting-your-boobs-stare-at-her-sons/#comments
This kind of reads like a response to the letter that another wackadoodle mother wrote somewhere else. (I find the GOMI site extremely entertaining and they are always on top of internet stupidity.)
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Oh, never mind, it is addressed to that women. I’ve just noticed the link on top of her post. Makes you want to scream “people, parent your children in real life, not on the internet”. I’m so sick of the “for-show” parenting.
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In high school, our French teacher was young, smart, fashionable, nice, and good looking, and many the boys had crushes on her. Nothing unhealthy, you know, just … So, one very Catholic mother tried to start a movement to require this teacher to wear frumpier clothes. As if that would keep her sons from thinking about sex in general…
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Jodie: “Cliff, I once dropped one of my kids off at her kindergarten ON A DAY WHEN THERE WAS NO SCHOOL”
Yeah, that’s actually pretty normal and things like that happen all the time (including to me as a kid). The story I was referring to is far, far, worse and features massive paretal (and general adult) fail all the way around.
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When I dropped my kid off and it turned out not to be a school day, I cannot tell you the guilt that I felt when they called me. What happened to N was a crime and the fact that his parents did not appear remorseful makes it that much worse.
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This is a good argument for school buses. They typically do not run when there is no school!
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They don’t, but there are times when buses aren’t provided. In a city near me, students get public transportation passes. Where I went to school, there was a “walk radius,” and only primary school students living within 1.5 miles of the school were allowed to take the bus home. In elementary school, we often had extracurricular activities before school, to which buses were not provided. And then there’s the fact that for most pre-primary school students, no outside transportation is provided. In the US, preschool isn’t mandatory like primary and parts of secondary education are, so transportation is generally provided by the parent.
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I tried to drop my grandson this morning, first day preschool, and couldn’t finish my job. When we got there he started complaining he felt sick, he cried and we decided to come back home and wait for mommy who is on a trip. Mah!
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OMG – no new post today!? Did you have the baby, Clarissa? If that’s the case, I hope everything went smoothly and everyone is happy and healthy!
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I was thinking the same thing as anon. I have never know you not to post. I am thinking you went in to labor. My thoughts are with you, N. and little Eric! 🙂
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I hope everything is ok
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I think it will be born today (Monday) or Tuesday. Or was it early???
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Do you really have to wait for labour to start, to have a Caeserian? That would seem to complicate things.
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No, my understanding was a Caesarean was scheduled but stuff can happen like labor ahead of time, leading to C section off schedule, etc.
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Due date is Sept. 11 if I am not mistaken, but who knows!!! Good luck, Clarissa!!!
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If you want to raise a terrified child then send them to this “no excuses” charter school.
http://www.blackstarnews.com/ny-watch/news/the-mis-education-of-my-son.html
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Hope all is well.
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