Say what? I wasn't listening

I love this Maya Angelou saying because it really does sum up every parent out there.  Kids never come with instructions so, each of us, as parents, struggle through life never knowing if we are doing the right thing or not.  Parenting can be overwhelming for all of us at times.  As parents, I think one of our biggest frustrations is trying to help our adult kids to keep from making the exact same mistakes we made.  Yes, yes, experience tells us it's a losing battle.

This feat is much, much easier said then done.  It also makes me laugh when my adult kids say to me: "But my kids just never listen to me."  My response is always: "Well you never listen to me, so why do you think your kids will be any different?"  Yet we somehow do think our next generation will be different, only to discover they are not.  

As adults we like to always think our parents didn't raise us right anyway.  We grow up and think we will raise our kids much, much better, then reality sets in once the kids come along.  You know reality?  It's that shit that gets in our way and kind of crushes our good intentions sometimes.  When we are teens we think: "I'll let my kid go to that all night party with people I don't know.  Geesh, parents are so not trusting of my judgement."   LOL  

We are survivors of the shit creek experiences we've lived through.  We probably didn't listen to our parents either.  Why?  Well we all think our parents grew up with dinosaurs.  So they are prudes, not with it, olden times junk, where they were prudes.  They never thought about sex, drugs or rock and roll.  They were born grownup and just are out of touch with what young people experience.

Some kids as adults, like to be martyrs.  For instance, if they go through a difficult divorce, they think they are the only ones who have ever experienced heartbreak.  The only ones who struggled as single parents.  After all, each generation thinks it invented sex and love.  What we, as parents, did in our spare time, I have no idea.  Like for example, me, myself. I never had a bad divorce.  I never had to leave my once home with only the things I could carry.  I never moved into my first apartment, with two little kids, having no furniture, not even one bed.  I guess if we parents were never in love, our kids must think we simply had some kind of bad business deal just to set up housekeeping until it failed.  

Somehow, adult kids have the notion that we, as parents, are bound to always try to ruin their lives, especially with advice.  They think we have anything but their best intentions at heart.  I guess we are cruel people, we just never knew it till the adult kids come along.  Yet, somehow, they do think a bad boyfriend, girlfriend, or bad spouse, always has their back and always have their best intentions at heart.  In high school they always think their peers, the ones no older than they are, with no more experience than they have,must have better information about life.  Information that usually turns out to be false, simply because friends have lived no longer. 

You know, we, as parents probably hate their choices for partners, just because they picked them.  LOL  Whenever we give advice, we just don't understand their situations, even though we have been in similar situations and know what the outcome will be.  I'm always shocked because do I have to step in front of a truck on the highway to know I can be hurt or killed?  I sincerely hope not, yet adult kids have to toss themselves under that bus in order to understand that fact.  Why do they do it?  Well, that is the age old question.  

Remember, as parents, you just didn't live.  You simply sat in a corner, you were model kids and never, never did anything wild in your lives.  Wow  I think our parents just might have a different opinion on how we acted as kids.  LOL

"AS kids we think our parents are always on our backs.  When, in fact, they were probably the only ones who ever truly had our backs."  Author Unknown

Stuff I could blame my parents for but don't

As adult children I suppose many people like to blame every bad thing in life on how they were raised.  When I think it over, I've met many adults who do just that.  "I had a bad marriage, I should have been raised better."  Or:  "I was spanked as a kid, that was just wrong."   Maybe all those things are true, but as adults, I just think we need to take responsibility for our own bad deeds in life, not blame our parents.  

I had a bad marriage and when I divorced, I realized that being the youngest kid, I was never really taught to take care of myself.  I was sheltered and being a girl, my parents felt the need to really shelter me.  Youngest kid, a girl, well a double whammy for me.  I grew up in a time when the thing to do, as a girl, was to find a husband.  My parents were thoroughly convinced that women needed a husband to get along in adult life.  So much so that it almost became a : "Any port in a storm" situation.  It wasn't just my parents it was a societal mentality.  I would love to tell you that in 2014 all that's changed, but from what I've observed, it isn't always so.  We are still bombarded in the media with what we should wear, how nice we should look, be pretty, be skinny and the list just goes on and on.  For what?  Well to catch a man, of course.  You can deny it all you like, but it's there, every TV ad, every magazine ad and on the Internet.  Sorry girls, but it's true.  It was so bad that not only me, but all my high school girl friends thought they too needed to be married, or else you were just nothing.  The big fear was maybe being single past age 30 and you'd be showing the world that nobody wanted you.  Why do you think romance stories are still so popular today?


My ex is a bad man, I realize most women say this, but it's probably true in their case too.  The way he acted, even in front of my parents, they should have advised me to dump him or at the very least, rethink marriage to this loser.  They never did, but instead, would cut him up verbally to me.  

I had wanted to go to college, but back then, being old school, they never knew about financial aid, so they simply told me they could never afford it.  I got no advice from my adviser in high school either other than: "Well you probably won't have a long career anyway since you girls always seem to get married and have a family and a husband to take care of you."   Sounds silly?  Well by the looks of women's pay out there, apparently society's attitude about that hasn't changed much even now.

Could I blame my parents that I finally got divorced, had to care for two young boys for a long time on my own and I finally did go to college, but not until I was 40 and it was a struggle?  Yes, I could blame them for not shoving me out the door more as I was growing up.  But they did what they knew just as we do now as parents, often times.

My parents never talked to any of us kids about sex or the opposite sex.  I was told: "Just stay away from boys who want certain things."  Seriously?  That is good sex advice?  Of course not.  My parents grew up in simpler times, more sheltered times and my mom found a good man, but I suppose they were hoping I'd 'luck out.'   A sad way to run one's life.  Toss the dice and hope you come out a winner.

I might have made better choices in a husband had I been given some kind of useful advice.  But, alas, I ended up divorced and figuring things out on my own.  It was a struggle, but maybe it made me a better person by figuring it out alone, I don't know.

I hope parents these days are enlightening their kids, especially daughters, about caring for themselves first and foremost.  The list is large, the things we could blame our parents for.

 By the way, I was spanked as a kid and I abhor violence and I turned out okay in spite of the spankings.

Putting a face on poverty series

It's always amazing for me to read the posts every year for stop domestic violence.  I say this because, short of the courts placing abusers in jail for being the criminals they are, I always wonder: just how do you think you will stop domestic violence?  I can say this from first hand knowledge.  I lived with an abuser, we had five children and I know there will be those of you who will judge, because it's what you do best.  But judgement aside, are you swooping in to households to rescue the abused person, or people?  I laugh at this the most because not only will you, nor anyone else swoop in like some super hero, most in our society, including Social Services workers, will and do turn a blind eye to it.  Why do they do this?  Because no one really wants to get involved.  Most will make judgement calls galore, shaking their head saying: Stupid person, they should have left.

Far too many cops, especially in small towns, will be reluctant to even arrest the abusers.  I suspect this is due, partially, to the fact they are most often, white males and I suspect some of those cops are going home to abuse their own partners.  Domestic violence knows no boundaries no social boundaries, money boundaries, nor professional boundaries.  It happens often in homes you'd least suspect it to happen.

Let's address the 'should have left' part of this judgement call.  They should leave and go where?  I lived in a small town that supposedly had 'safe houses' but those are in the boonies.  Most abused women have no car to get supplies in town.  No car to find a job, no car for child care if she does find a job.  Abusers leave them with no money and no vehicles, it's the pattern of abuse, it's the control all abusers seek.  There are no shelters in small towns, no one in small towns wants shelters in town because small towns like to think this shit does not happen in their town.

I have five kids.  I called many landlords only to hear: "How many of you?  Oh no, that's too many."  So I wondered: OK. too many.  Which of the five kids should I give away in order to not be 'too many?'

I went to Social Services only to be given lectures, to be scolded at times, to be made to feel shame that I was abused.  Judgement is not their job, but they simply make it their job anyway. I was told I should get a HUD apartment, only to be told by landlords that 'five kids is too many.'  

You as the general public are not about to 'stop domestic violence' because even the abuser's own family will not recognize they are abusers.  I got no help from the abuser's family nor from my own family.  Some of them are the very ones who like to post the 'stop domestic violence' on their Facebook pages too.  Indeed!  Americans love to judge and it's usually the victim of abuse they like to judge the most.

When I finally did get help from Social Services, I was given food stamps only to then be judged by people in the grocery stores.  They liked to look in my cart to see what I was buying.  I usually bought the same items they bought, but somehow, they usually felt I was not entitled to buy the same foods because I suppose they felt using food stamps to feed my kids made the same food tainted.  Hell I'd often be judged and lectured by grocery store clerks who felt superior for some odd reason.  I even ran across one clerk who made it her personal business to make using food stamps as difficult as she could.  The world becomes 'food stamp cops' when all you want to do is feed your kids, just like those judges do.  People like to become Judge Dredd when you use stamps.  

Now domestic violence is one face of poverty.  So stop turning your heads in your neighborhood, stop judging and stop waving the 'stop domestic violence' banners if you know darn well it's no more than a slogan to you.







 

Crap our parents said in the 60's we happily ignored

Growing up in the 60's was a bit of a challenge in itself.  We were a generation that threw off and challenged nearly everything our parents and society, stood for.  But we had to listen to a lot of crap, here is some of it.


"Your dress/skirt is too short.  What will people think?"  Of course they meant 'what will our friends, neighbors, all in the older generation think?  We will be told we're bad parents.  Oh my.

 
" Your hair is too long, and what do you mean you are dating a person of color?"  They meant, again, what will the neighbors say?  What will Uncle Fred and Aunt Sarah say or think?  On one hand our parents, in the North, would preach equality to us, until it hit up close and personal anyway.  How long does hair have to be before it's 'too long' anyway?

 

"What do you mean you're going to live together?  What in hell do you mean you're having a baby?"  This was the ultimate sin in the 1960's.  Unforgivable and just plain embarrassing to parents of all walks of life.  OMG!  

Women were told: "You'll be a used woman.  No decent man will ever want you.  What about the children?  Do you know how tough biracial children will have it in our society? The children will be illegitimate.  This was a biggie back then.  

Let's start with 'you'll be a used woman or marked woman.'

Did this mean women were 'marked' like some hit person was gunning for them?  What in hell did 'used' mean?  If guys slept all around, somehow being a *Ahem* 'virgin' was not expected of them, worse yet, it was forgiven.  'Boys will be boys' seemed to cover a multitude of sins for men. 

'No decent man will want you' was assuming the man you were living with was not a decent one.

How about 'illegitimate?'  What makes a child 'legitimate?'  Oh yes, having some man's name.  I guess your parents' name was no longer legitimate or any good anymore.  Yet you, as a woman, used that perfectly good, maiden name.  Imagine that.

We were told 'we would go to Hell.'  But if you questioned why All funerals you ever attended, even if you knew the person was horrible in life, they still never got preached into Hell, adults had no answers for that one.

"A woman's place is in the kitchen."  Yes, watching my Mom slave all day in the kitchen on a holiday, while the men drank beer, smoked and sat on their collective asses in another room.  Don't think so!

 "If your friends jump off a cliff, are you going to follow them?"  Actually, no, Mom.  You did a pretty good job of teaching me to think for myself.  That is why we aren't seeing eye to eye right now.  

"You're protesting what?"  You could get hurt you know.  Where would America be without war?"  Probably at peace, Mom.

Do you recall some crazy crap your parents used to say to you?  Do you find yourself repeating any of that crazy crap to your own kids, even if you vowed not to?

Chain daycare centers, few looks, parents don't care?

 

I wrote a blog concerning the chain daycare center, I actually worked for one and know first hand what happens behind those walls.  I have gotten few looks either because parents are stuck there, parents want 'any port in a storm' regardless of how shabby that port is, or they simply do not care.

I have a problem with complacency in America.  I tell you that your child is probably not safe and yet you don't seem to get it.  Why is this?  Whatever the reasons, I'm continuing with my look behind chain daycare walls.

Some problems I encountered with 'teachers', I use that term loosely, were: One day a 'teacher' showed up wearing sheer white pants, minus underwear.  Her excuse?  "I didn't have a chance to do laundry yet."  Um, OK.  Underpants are light, can't wash some out in a bathroom sink and dry them over night?  Wow, rocket science solved.  I sent her ass home, Not exactly the scenery her class of 4 and 5 year old kids need to be staring at all day.  Of course that 'teacher' had taken to flirting with a good looking dad each day.  I told her to snag dates on her own time, not on my time.  Of course, she called the overseer and complained I was being 'unfair.'

Another day, one of my 'teachers' didn't like her time slot for her lunch break.  They were supposed to take turns on lunch breaks each day so all classes were covered when one was out to lunch.  Her big, bad boyfriend decided to enter our lobby and at the top of his voice says: "Well why don't you tell that Bitch you want to leave now for lunch?  If you don't tell her, I will."  I went to the lobby and told him to leave, wait outside or I was calling the cops if he started something with me.  Nice guy, I'd sure want him as my baby daddy.  LOL  NOT!

Another incident was when I caught a 'teacher' yanking on a little kid's arm to drag him back to circle and story time.  I called her to my office and said I ever wanted to see that again and I sent her home and wrote her up.  What happened?  I got written up for being too harsh.  Well, Kindercare, get your ass sued and see how ya like it then!

When I took the job, our kitchen person was there early to do food prep and let the parents and kids in the door, with a helper each day, the 'teachers' took turns coming early and leaving early (heaven forbid Kindercare paid anyone over time) to help with the kids.  Well, the kitchen person decided to whine about helping let kids in early.  I got to work by 7:30 daily, so they both were there without me for possibly one hour each day max.  Well, kitchen loser quit, so now I had to put in over 12 hours daily to cook food and be there early with another person to let kids and parents in.  Mind you, that kitchen person had been always doing that morning routine for years. New director, and she freaked, apparently.

The former director, come to find out, was buddy, buddy with traveling overseer.  I mean they went to each other's houses, had cookouts, went vacationing together, etc.  Former director decided she wanted to take te free trip to Vegas her husband had earned selling cars.  She had used up all her vacation, sick days and personal time.  She decided to 'resign' to go to Vegas.  When she returned she took to visiting the daycare center. If you resigned, what in hell was she doing there twice a week?  So eventually, the overseer found reasons to let me go so former director could have her job back.  Planned all along?  Probably.

I would go to overseer with parent complaints only to be told: "Those people always complain.  You know how single, poor parents are."  I said, frankly, no I guess I didn't know how they are.  I used to be one, before and during college.

I had a weeks worth of training from former director before she split for Vegas.  I will never forget one particular incident during training.  She was showing me something on the computer (how to save Kindercare money of course) when a dad came in to get his kids.  Apparently he owed some money, one week I think, and former director went out and started to yell at him over money.  I mean she Yelled!  Next thing I know she said: "You drunken piece of shit, you better pay up or your damned kids are out of here."  Just the kind of language I would want my kids in daycare to hear.  

The daycare would stoop to serving 2% milk to growing babies, not good, they need whole milk.  But saying so got me in trouble.  I know of a friend of mine who noticed her small child was being served 2% instead of whole and she went to the director of her daycare too. I'm glad her daycare listened.  Not so of mine.

So drop in, unannounced, see how the classes are run and pay attention.

 

 

 

Kindercare Learning Center, I certainly learned a lot

 

As a once daycare director, I learned that chain, corporate run, daycare places are much like nursing homes, only the clients are younger.  So corporate run places go from one end of the age spectrum to the other, in their ways of thinking.  That way of thinking being: We see a way to make money, we can align ourselves with state and local government to pay us big monies, we need to please our board members, the hell with pleasing the paying customer and we can actually abuse families, kids and elderly people and pretty much get away with it.

Corporate daycare has the advantage over poor, working, single moms.  For that matter, they have the advantage over their underpaid workers they like to call 'Teachers."  I. for one, would never, ever work for another one on planet Earth.

Let's start with your kids.  Corporate daycare is always, always, always concerned first and foremost, with money.  As a director my big jobs were: Marketing to keep the daycare full and watching those moms every morning like a damned hawk as they swiped their cards into a machine designed to be sure the corporation got their payments in a timely fashion.  Because, lord knows, poor single moms are stupid (at least to corporate America anyway.)  My other big job would be to sit for hours on that damned computer, looking at finances, I was supposed to give tongue lashings to self-paying parents if they were behind in their bills.  Funny thing about the daycare, I could never let a child go from daycare if they were terrorizing other kids, but I was expected to let them go if mom or dad was behind in their payments.  Money is more important to them than your kid is.  

 This is what they Want you to believe!

Each time the district manager (I called her a traveling 

overseer because she was a taskmaster) came to my daycare, the conversation was most always money.  Be it changes in their computer program, teaching me how to improve getting money from agencies, or making sure I tallied up all profits correctly each day.

Let's discuss the 'teachers' of corporate daycare.  Do they have training in early childhood or early education?  Mostly, no, I had just one 'teacher' with that training.  The rest only had a GED and with the whopping $7.00 per hour pay and no benefits, we didn't exactly attract those with bigger educations or training.  But, I was told by a corporate tool: "Well these women knew what this job paid when they decided to work here."  That was no real excuse to me for not paying better.  

At that whopping $7.00 an hour, I was also expected to send teachers home early so as not to have to pay them too much, and I was supposed to bust teachers down to part time at the corporation's will.  Needless to say, teachers groused at me for that stuff.  Not my decision, but it didn't matter.  As a director, I was also supposed to save money by picking up slack in classrooms so I could send the hourly workers home early each day.  I was salaried so I could put in 12 to 16 hour days and cost the corporation no more money.

 Working for a corporation, I was director in name only.  I had no authority to fire anyone, even if they swung from the chandeliers, unless, of course, a parent accused them of inappropriate behavior (touching a kid inappropriately.)  I learned just how an angry parent can all but ruin a teachers career by false accusations too.  One parent didn't like 'fat' people so she targeted one of my teachers because she felt the teacher was too fat to care for her kid.  I told you it could be a nightmare job.

When I first started as the director, I was expected to attend a damned seminar in Indianapolis for an entire four days.  I mistakenly thought it was designed to teach us newbies how to better run a daycare.  Oh, not so!  It was designed to show us how to market so we could bring in more money for corporation CEO and the like.  We had to do stupid crap like chant and cheer, much like the bullshit WalMart pulls to pump up our enthusiasm. Doesn't work, at least not for me anyway.  One of the worst seminars I ever went to.  

Now while I was gone I was told my associates could run the daycare just fine.  Funny thing about that, if corporate said so, it was gospel.  One day I took an hour and a half lunch to get away from the daycare and all the piddly interruptions from workers, so I could concentrate on a new computer program and how to run it to make money, attending that lunch with a corporate person.  Well the overseer decided it was 'just too much' as my workers had called her and said I wasn't back in the usual hour, even though my cell was on if they needed me.  Geesh!!!!!!

I had teachers refusing to clean their rooms at the end of their shifts because they were not paid enough.  I had many problems with how they cared for the kids in their charge too, from bad pay to lack of good training, the problems persisted.  I got to hear the complaints from parents and all complaints fell on corporate deaf ears.  If I had meetings with staff to address issues, they called the district manager to complain about me, they didn't like having a new director who expected them to do their jobs.  Many teachers would call in, at the last freakin minute, to say they could not make it to work that day.  I had a bus driver, scheduled to work a few hours each morning to drive school kids to their schools, never show up and had her phone turned off when you tried to call.  I was not allowed to write her up nor let her go for not doing her job either.

 That same bus driver bitched to me that she: "Was part time, retired, could not put in too many hours because it cut into her Social Security payments."  I eventually hired a full time driver, to then be bitched at by the part time, retired one, accusing me of trying to cut her hours.  Gawd, make up my damned mind!!

I got bitched at for not lying to parents for corporate screw ups, for teacher screw ups and what have you.  I refused to treat single moms like crap simply because they were poor.

I have to say, I could not leave that job fast enough.  So if you choose daycare, think long and hard about chain, corporate run ones.  I know they offer the best advantage because they can take vouchers and such, but you do not get what you pay for.  The corporate ones take Full advantage of their alliances with local and state government to pull in money.  I do know it makes single moms stand between a rock and a hard place.

 

Have you ever?

 

Have you ever just wanted to tune out the world?

Have you ever just felt like this day is too full of chaos?

Have you ever just wanted to fast forward to the next?

Have you ever wanted to rewind life to a happier time?

 

Have you sat by the water, just been silent and listened?

Have you counted the ducks, listened to waves lapping?

See how peacefully ducks float on the water, few cares

 

Have you ever wondered why your family doesn't see your talent?

Ever wondered: "What's wrong with Them?"

Family should be love, not at all like this, like stormy seas, chaos

Family should accept you for who you are, not who They think you are

Ever wondered why family members poison each other, in the mind, in the spirit?

 

Parents are ill equipped to know how to parent

Their ineptness is quite apperent

Nothing lonelier than being in a group we call 'family'

Nothing lonelier than sharing a house and feeling alone

Some have beautiful memories of families in their place

Some have memories they would like to erase

Have you wished Mom and Dad were a mighty oak?

Instead, in the rainstorm of life we tend to get soaked 

Sometimes in our eyes, we get poked

Parents are human, how dare they?

But we know WE are grownups when we can say:

"It's OK, Mom, it's OK Dad, sometimes, just like me, you were good you were bad."

Life's too short to dwell on a past, the die already cast

Let's make up for it Now until we draw our last

 

Finding a nanny?

This is certainly the life!

I was just reading a 'mommy' type blog that was all about how to narrow the nanny search to make it more manageable.  LOL  

Well this one must have been written for the 'Not So Real Housewives' because never in my life have I been able to afford a nanny.  In fact none of my friends could ever afford nannies either.  Wow!  Taking care of our own kids and households, what a concept that is.  We poor Mommies have it all over those rich broads anyway.  We never have to worry about our husbands running off with those nannies.  We all know, from the Internet and celebrity sites, that nannies and husbands are sex crazed and usually run off with the nanny.  We all know they are consummately insane, those nannies and they drive any otherwise respectable husband insane too.  I'm sure they all are Sirens in disguise.


So all in all, fixing our own meals, changing our own kid's diapers makes us happier, healthier and good wives and mothers.  Well I'm absolutely sure all those chores make us or made us, a lot more tired.  Oh to have to make choices like: Which nanny is good enough for my darlings?  But lack of a nanny does not make our kids any less smart or any less stunning.  Every one of us parents thinks that.

Maybe all poorer, mommies should create their own nanny service and kind of share each others expertise and nanny skills.  That would work out great as the poorer moms could hire out as nannies and solve the lack of jobs in 2013.  An idea to consider. 

Families and holidays

Holidays for most of us either mean getting together with family members or they mean being lonely and not seeing family.

Families are a strange animal, having a life of their own pretty much.  We never quite know what direction they (family members) will take.

Like, well, family members who 'friend' you on Facebook, never really talk to you and kind of just sit in the background.  Why?  I assure you I haven't a clue.  Why friend people if you have no intention of really communicating?

How about real life?  After all real life can be stranger than fiction.  You can live around the corner from your kids and never see them.  Why do kids sometimes only adopt their in-laws and pretend their biological families don't exist?  This, I find, happens very often.

My present husband finds his children (one child anyway) blames him for leaving the state she lives in and blames him for not hanging around to take abuse from his ex.  For the most art, children see through cloudy lenses, believing the parent they live with and like to hold grudges until it hurts and is unhealthy against a parent they perceive as bad.  They have to blame someone.  Adult kids often aren't interested in what really happened and would rather fabricate the scenario on their own.

We cannot crawl into their minds and switch off the misinformation.  I am amazed at how many adult kids think they never make mistakes and when they do find out they made plenty, especially when their own kids grow up, they find out the hard way what their own parents experienced.

Some parents think indulging their own kids with material items will make their kids love them.  Not so.  For is a child has not been given the gift of self-esteem from a mother or a father, they usually will grab the first person who shows them attention because they had felt worthless.  That first person is not always good for them. But how can they be expected to know this when they have not dated enough people to compare them to?  So just because an adult kid looks good on the outside, it may be a different story on the inside.

We all make mistakes as parents.  Sometimes we will pay for them for a long, long time.  But being a young, scared parent does not make one an ogre, only in their kids' minds maybe.  


If you are an adult child, remember your parents will not live forever.  When they are gone, it's too late to make amends.