Breaking news says Brown was just relieved of duty regarding the Katrina cleanup...to be replaced, says rumour, by Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen. Fascinating.
Melissa, it's common (in my experience) for a rose to change color as it blows out. I've got a rose next to my front steps right now that's a deep pink in the center today, where it was creamy with a pink halo on the outside edge yesterday.
I don't know any of the *names* of my roses, though. :)
Ditto with Xopher on the difference between the frazzled parent and the one who simply isn't paying any attention. Well explained. :)
Michelle and cellist, I think you're right to expect that wise parents shouldn't bring ill-mannered children to adult venues -- be that Chris Rock's latest standup routine, a showing of Nightmare on Elm Street XVIII, or Chez Chang, the hottest Asian-French fusion restaurant in town. On the other hand, some parents have reported getting the evil eye on bringing well-behaved and older kids to these places. Augh.
Also, the line between well-behaved and not can be tricky. When my daughter was a pretty new infant, we were comfortable with taking her to a number of adult-type locales because we knew she'd sleep through the whole thing. I once got the major evil eye at the Hayden Planetarium for bringing my girl in, and the party in question very pointedly migrated to another set of seats. She was around 7 months old, and, yep, didn't make a single peep during the whole show. So... part of it is knowing your children and their tolerances.
Then one day we couldn't do that any more, and only found out the hard way, when we took her someplace she'd been fine a dozen times before and just was not fine THIS time, thank you. Does this mean we were wrong for bringing her to that restaurant, in the face of all of our prior experiences?
I guess me point is that parenting is such a guessing game, sometimes. Wouldn't it be great if all children behaved well all the time? Sure! I bet that would get rid of a lot of the drive-by nonsense, too. Part of the problem, of course, is that children have minds of their own. Minds that have ideas in them. Like "I WANT THAT COOKIE RIGHT NOW."
Xopher: Speaking as a parent, here, I'm with you all the way. If my child were throwing a fit, and a *stranger* came and told her to cut it out, it'd give a lot more weight to my explanation that she is being very rude and bothering other people. (I imagine some of it is delivery -- "Please be quiet, I can't hear my friend," in a stern voice is one thing, and "Stupid brat, STFU" is something else again.)
Of course, we also belong to the school of thought where you remove the tantruming child from the restaurant/store/whatever, anyhow. This isn't a parenting question to me at all, so much as a "how to honor the social contract" one.
I've been sending all of my friends to CM since the day that first post went up. That whole series has been very eye-opening to me regarding how very judgemental *I* am. I never even knew it! There I was, thinking uncharitable thoughts about even my own friends, and over issues that are really so insignificant, if you use just a grain of perspective. I guess, though, that parenting is such a high-stakes game that even small decisions take on disproportionate huge meaning. Like --
Not putting a hat on my daughter means I don't care if she's cold and dies of exposure, right? Not making sure she eats some of her broccoli at dinner tonight means I don't care if she dies at a young age of cancer and obesity-driven heart failure all at once.... right?
After this whole thing, though, I'm becoming a lot more comfortable with my own parenting practices. Let's face it, I don't even live up to my own ideals. Maybe it's time for me to reasses exactly where they came from in the first place.
Oh. My. Lord. I am in tears reading this excerpt. I think I have to buy my own copy.
I have to wonder how much of your typical slush pile looks exactly like this, too.
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| 2005 | 7 |
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