Mamacita says: I think sometimes that if there had been online journals, blogs, when I was raising my children, I might not have made quite as many mistakes.
Often, during those years, I felt very isolated. I was sure that nobody else was feeling the same emotions, having the same problems, trying and failing at so many things, when it came to baby/child care. I felt like I was the only one, struggling with this and that, with the babies, and later with the children. I was embarassed to ask some questions, because I knew that nobody else in the universe could possibly have my same problems.
What to do…what to do….what to do….
I used to wish that there was SOME place where I could find a lot of advice and sure-fire plans to help me. I used to wish that there were people who had BEEN there, who could share their successes and failures; word of mouth is still the most believable way of selling anything, and advice has to be sold, you know. We SAY it’s ‘given,’ but if it’s not packaged and presented juuuust right, nobody will take it.
Yes, there were relatives who were laden with advice. Friends, who had a lot of advice. Much of it was good, too; and just as much of it was horrible. And, the ‘supply’ of relatives and friends was limited. So limited, there was no way their experiences could help me with very many of the problems and questions I had. Besides, they were, well, relatives. And friends, however beloved, don’t always agree with our own parenting methods or theories.
Now, though, this has changed, and changed drastically. For every question or problem a blogger posts, there are potentially millions of people who have BEEN THERE, and somehow survived, and who therefore have believable and practical advice for a young parent who is wondering, puzzled, or even at the end of his/her rope.
It takes a village to raise a child?
Bloggers, WE are the village!
Bloggers: WE are the village!
For someone like me, with grown children and a shipload of experience but no takers, blogging about the past is a cathartic thing, a trip down memory lane, with a lot of the bad memories miraculously erased. But to a young parent, some small thing I mention might make a world of difference! I hope so, anyway.
This applies to many areas, of course; but parenting is the most important job in the world, so it is the one I am thinking about right now.
I tried to care for my first baby by using charts in those free pamphlets the hospital gave me when I checked out. Imagine. With my second baby, I felt confident enough to laugh at myself, but even so I made tons of mistakes. We all do; they’re unavoidable. People who tell you that they don’t make mistakes are liars or amnesia victims.
Sara and Andy Goodwin, and Mommy
Now, when a parent has a problem or a concern, one little mention of it on a blog or a forum, and the whole world wants to help.
And hey. A piece of advice about, say, diaper rash, from a parent who has battled diaper rash and won, is worth a lot more than a pamphlet about a diaper rash product. Even if there’s a coupon, and Marsh is tripling coupons that week.
Parents want answers to their questions. They want the latest answers to their questions. Our Moms/Dads may have been perfect, but a perfect answer from 1953 isn’t necessarily the perfect answer to the same question in 2016. And then again, sometimes it is. When our peers chime in with solutions that have been proven to work, perhaps it’s the solution to try.
I am not downplaying the role of grandparents and friends, in regard to parenting advice. I am merely saying that no matter how old we are, our peers’ opinions mean a lot more than we think. Blogging is a big collection of peers, and friends, and parents, and grandparents, and aunts and uncles and cousins and their next-door-neighbor’s sister-in-law’s beautician’s second cousin once removed. It is the biggest pamphlet in the world. It’s the biggest forum in the world. It’s the biggest therapy couch in the world. It’s the biggest sounding board in the world. It’s the biggest reference book in the world.
Just as there are kooks at the family reunion, whose opinions you wouldn’t touch with a 2×4 and a pair of rubber gloves, there are also kooks online, whose opinions we wouldn’t touch with TWO 2×4’s and a long knife. At a family reunion, laughing, screaming, mocking, and facial grimaces are not allowed. Online, we don’t have to be that polite, because the person can’t see us anyway, and we can click away any time we want. Or, if the advice is good, we can comment and thank the blogger, and come again as often as we can because maybe they’ll say something equally good or helpful again some time.
On my blogroll are people I wish lived next door to me, or WITH me, because I’ve come to love them as dearly as though we met for lunch daily. I’ve also BE’d to some blogs that made me laugh out loud at the pompous stupidity of the blogger, or cringe in horror at the close-minded prejudice, or smile at the picture of a child in front of a birthday cake.
The Blogosphere
Blogging is conversation. Checking out our blogrolls is seeking conversation with people we like. Sometimes, there isn’t time to read as many as we’d like, and we feel as though we should apologize the next time we’re able to come by! Well, I do, anyway.
We’re all busy. Most of us work and raise children and try to nurture them and a marriage and our friendships at the same time. Many days, something’s gotta give. With blogging, the conversations can wait till we can get there. Bloggers are true friends who don’t put any kind of time limitation on us. We are here, and we’ll be here tomorrow if you can’t stop by tonight.
We post about our lives, and if some aspect of one life can touch and help another life, well, that’s what friends are for. Enough friends together, make a village.
It takes a village.
And that village, my friends, is us. We are a phenomenon. We are the village.
Mamacita says: I am no Goody Two-Shoes, but I am basically a kind person. I would lie down in the road if I thought that would help some people. I work overtime to help students. I still do my children’s laundry, and I feed them whenever they visit. I would do the same for you. If ever they (or their friends) (or you) need a helping hand, I’ve got one at the end of each arm. I have worked really hard all my life. The thing is, I think everyone should work hard. All their lives. I think everyone should look out for everyone else. I think everyone should use their own hands to support themselves and help others. I have little patience with lazy people, or people who choose not to work. If you need me, all you have to do is ask. I’ll bring you food. I’ll do your laundry. I’ll shingle your roof. (Yes, I can do that!) But if you’re just lying around waiting to be waited on, or feel in any way, shape, or form that the world owes you a living, I will tell you exactly what I think of you.
When I have students who can’t go fifteen minutes without dashing out to the parking lot for a smoke, and when I have coworkers who NEED a break every half hour or even sooner because they NEED a break. . . well, I can’t help but wonder where the “fair” factor is. Those who work through other people’s frequent breaks are the good students and good workers and the people I would trust with important things. Those who allow their desire for a ______(insert drug of choice here) to interfere with their responsibilities make me kind of, well, disgusted.
rise up out of the ashes of other people’s messes and make a success of their own lives; why can’t more people? So they might have to walk eight miles uphill to get an education – do it! So they’re madly in love and their hormones are nuts and that guy with the good job at Taco Bell is getting more and more insistent that “if you really love me. . . .” hey. To do it or not to do it is a choice, too.
If you are so weak that even knowing what might happen if you continue to choose the nutjob path, you still choose it, you are committing suicide and I think you know it.
shed. As long as there’s a quarter inch of liquid in each bottle, it would be wasteful to discard them. Besides, I NEED them.”
People make these awful inhuman choices all the time. Boyfriends over children. Alcohol over relationships. Nicotine over cleanliness. Big pile of bloody underpants in the kitchen sink over normalcy. Girlfriend over family. Meth over decency.
In the old days, such people were locked in a room and required to dry out, cold turkey. Perhaps, in the old days, the right things were done.
And if you belong to the school of thought that still thinks that “soporific” is a word that small children can’t handle and you want it removed from Beatrix Potter’s “The Tale of Peter Rabbit,” there are no words in any thesaurus to adequately describe your ignorance.
day, say, or maybe three, times seven days a week times 365 days a year equals a lot of new words. Do it. You can get a thesaurus at the Dollar Tree, a good enough edition for a bathroom. You’ll be replacing it every month or so anyway. I hope you do, anyway – nobody’s family is that clean.
Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly
