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October 09, 2005
Oh my God! My child is going to go all delinquent and stuff!
I can’t help feeling that all these studies on childhood behaviour are just designed to make parents, or let’s face it usually mothers, feel guilty whatever we do. First there was the work/ stay at home debate; we are either emotionally starving our children by not being able to spend 24 hours a day in their presence, or we are ruining their future by choosing to do just that. Damned if we do and damned if we don’t. That’s why I tend to steer well clear of any studies or debates that so much as mention the words ’Mother’ or ‘work’ or the abbreviation ’SAHM’ in the same sentence.
Just in case you weren’t feeling guilty enough for your own lifestyle choice then ladies and gentlemen I bring you the latest statistics guaranteed to set us all against one another once more. Shock horror, watching too much TV is bad for our kids! Yep bet you didn’t know that already. Which means that a whole morning’s worth of cheap Sunday TV has to be set aside for the debate (spot the irony everyone.)
Now you know me I’m the first to write endless blog posts about how much I loathe children’s TV, in fact there has been many an occasion where I’ve considered throwing the whole thing out of the window and only this week I have been considering banning the advert channels while my daughter is in the room, yet I do happen to believe that the right programmes used correctly and in moderation could in fact be beneficial to our children. That is not to say that I carefully select my daughter’s viewing so that she only ever watches the most educational programmes, if I’m perfectly honest most of the time I do use the box as a cheap babysitter. Thank God Mona the Vampire is on, I can squeeze in some reading, studying, writing or something less interesting like mopping the kitchen floor. So shoot me!
We all know that we should be breastfeeding our kids until they are six months and then going back to work (or staying at home depending on who you talk to) feeding them only nourishing home cooked organic dinners with no sugar, salt, preservatives, E-numbers etc etc, banning all TV and sitting on the floor all day making endless rainbow necklaces with different shaped pasta and to top it all off we are supposed to do it all with a smile on our face, under no circumstances are we ever supposed to mutter ‘For Fuck’s sake’ under our breath. The truth is more often we fall short of our own standards and we don’t need a load of statistics or some smug perfect parent beaming off our screens reminding us to feel more guilty than we already do.
Most of us can only do our best and some of the time we don’t even do that.
Posted by purple elephant at October 9, 2005 08:51 PM