Nelson wrote:
> cut off from electronic media. There's a lot of life out there!
Lisa wrote:
> Anybody with kids & experience want to speak to these ideas?
Jay wrote:
> I am *SO* looking forward to this. I love my wife, and though I
> haven't met her yet, I love my daughter. But God! am I nervous.
OK, so a bit of out-of-context cut/paste between threads.
Apologies to those involved.
But really folks, real life does exist beyond the hype media.
It's called living, meeting people, falling in love, getting
married - or not, having kids, raising them, getting old, dying.
Even in the warped MTV media age we're in, most people still
seem to either do those things, or at least agree that they
are the things "real life" is made of.
If FoRK and Internet culture are your life, hmm., maybe, get
a life?
Personally, I find having & raising kids very fullfilling.
It puts all the media culture in perspective, puts your
career in perspective, puts your life in perspective.
All the stuff you're scared of Jay - it all works out. Changing
diapers is, imho, by far and away the easy part. For the
first 6 months, its just mustard-stain anyway, which looks
as though it would taste good on hotdogs, and doesn't smell
at all. By the time they're eating solids
(Keren just started on squash and spinach in the last few
weeks), you're already sufficiently used to to changing them
that it's a gradual thing, and you just roll right along.
The toilet training stage can be trying - our 2 year old will answer
the question "where do you make poo, Noam?" with a big smile and
"in the toilet!", and then immediately proceed to crap in
his underwear. You go through a *lot* of laundry cycles at
this stage.
No, that stuff is easy. Fun, even. Sitting up, rolling over,
first steps, first words, first day of school, watching them
write their names,.... that's all the gravy.
The harder parts are the discipline/control things Lisa
talks about. Wayne, you've got teenagers. I'm sure you could
tell us all about parent/child power struggles <grimace>. We've got the
'contest of wills' scenarios already, and my oldest is just
a first grader! Everything from bedtime, how much TV, ...
We're one of these "don't spank the kids" families, which I agree
with, but boy you have to be inventive sometimes to
find ways to assert
your authority in a way that has the immediacy of a good whack
on the rump. Yeah, we know all about timeouts, in-your-room,
etc.etc. Tell me about it when you need discipline *NOW*
not in 30 minutes, and you're in the supermarket or the car..
Ron