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Your Own Are Different

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Clarissa

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“I’m not good with children, I don’t like children, so maybe I shouldn’t have any” is not a smart thing to say. You aren’t good with other people’s children. This is a category of being that exists on an entirely different plane from your own children.

I’m great with babies and very young toddlers. As soon as they start to walk, I begin to find them tiresome and boring. But they are other people’s children. This has nothing to do with how I feel about my own.

My father was the best father in the world after N. And he was notorious for his deep dislike of children. People in general weren’t his thing but other people’s children specifically he found very disappointing. He supported people having as many kids as they wanted, of course, but he would not willingly seek the company of a child. But with his own children he wanted to spend all the time possible.

It’s very, very different with your own, I promise.

11 responses to “Your Own Are Different”

  1. Avatar
    Anonymous

    So, your mother loved children?

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      She loved her students. With her own children it was much more complicated. But my mother’s pathologies are very unique and rare.

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        I think this is a lot more common with teachers than most people imagine. My mom was a special ed. teacher. Her students loved her. I remember students from years prior coming back by her elementary school classroom just to say hi and give her an update on how they were doing. A lot of them had come from *horrific* home situations, and now and then she’d get updates from the grandmas who’d raised them. She’s always delighted and proud when she finds out one of them found his or her way to a normal, functional adulthood instead of jail (a lot of them ended up there as well).

        That was… like a whole different person from the mom we grew up with. After spending all day in the classroom with other people’s problem kids, she didn’t have a lot left to deal with her own, at home. And I have heard similar from at least a couple other people whose moms were teachers.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          My mother also worked with kids from bad families, alcoholics, convicts, families where Dad was in jail for murdering Mom. And she had so much tact and talent to work with them, saving them from fates similar to their parents’.

          Interesting how we have this very similar experience.

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          1. methylethyl Avatar
            methylethyl

            Some days, I think it is an argument for the old rules, where women could only be teachers until they got married.

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  2. Avatar
    Anonymous

    before I started my family I was afraid because I did not like other people’s children. I especially did not like babies and toddlers much. Thankfully I took the leap, realizing I would regret being childless, and with hope that I’d feel different after having grown the child inside my body.

    Amanda

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      That’s exactly why I wrote this. People sincerely don’t know that their feelings about children in general can’t be extrapolated on their own children.

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  3. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    Weirdly, I was one of those good-with-children people before I had kids. But now, I’m extremely partial to my own kids, and not very patient with others’ children.

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  4. bluebird of bitterness Avatar
    bluebird of bitterness

    I have also known women who love children as long as they’re someone else’s.

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  5. xykademiqz Avatar
    xykademiqz

    I was indifferent to kids before I had my own. I’m still indifferent to mildly repulsed by other people’s little kids; they look snotty and sticky while mine obviously looked adorable and squishable (to me). I was never a big fan of the little-kids phase, because the deathly combo of boredom and lack of sleep outweighed the cuteness. I vastly prefer big kids, especially teens. As a professor, I really like working with undergrads; they remind me of my kids and I feel very warm and motherly toward them.

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    1. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      “indifferent to kids before I had my own. I’m still indifferent to mildly repulsed by other people’s little kids”

      That sounds a lot like my mother. Never any doubt that she loved me and my brother to pieces but other kids were an entirely different matter. She could deal with them in small doses but her heart wasn’t in it and it was kind of clear. On the other hand she liked being around late-teens to early-twenties and liked mentoring them.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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