How do you do it?

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-07-2003
How do you do it?
1345
Fri, 12-12-2003 - 8:31pm
I hope I don't start a big controversy, but this is a debate board right?

I just have to ask those working moms....How do you do it?????

I am a Step-mom to two boys ages 6 and 9. I have a three year old that has been in minimal nursery school since he was one. He only goes three days a week for a couple of hours.

My step-sons BM (birth mother) just had a baby with her BF and this is her schedule:

She drops my step-sons at school to the morning-care program at 7:15AM (school starts at 8:45AM). She then drives her three month old baby to an in-home sitter that has five or six other kids at 7:45AM and then goes to work. She picks the baby up at 6:00PM and then she picks my SS up from after-care at 6:15PM (their school is over at 3:10PM). So my ss's are at school each day for 11 hours and the three month old baby is at a sitters for 10 hours each day!

Doesn't that seem like a lot! I just don't understand this. I offered to watch my SS's and she let me for two weeks and then got mad at my DH and put them back in the scholl child care program.

Why would you bother having children if someone else is going to raise them for you?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 12-08-2003
Tue, 12-23-2003 - 12:12am
Reis Mom:

There is a guy in our local paper that a radio and our city puts out Redmond is his name and people are writing in to say can him. He writes the advice to parents regarding their children. He hits topics such as should your child share your bed, or step parenting have your child adore the step mom and spank your child and weep and it gets outrageous people what I have read have gotten so bent out over his articles.

I figure he writes them for that very purpose so he can say he has mail. Just like our kids.

That was my initial point with the boots but it got lost in all those posters wagging.

By the way hope you weren't near the quake.

Take care. b

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2003
Tue, 12-23-2003 - 12:20am

May I ask a question?

Virgo
 
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-08-2003
Tue, 12-23-2003 - 1:19am
Cause apparently my computer wasn't allowing me to put the replys with the posts. And puttng them at the end of the thread. Also someone told me to do that. I was trying it different ways then I got side tracked with other things.

When I am sick I get distracted with trying to work, trying to keep up with the new message board which this is to me. It's like figuring out a game without the directions.


Okay.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-16-2003
Tue, 12-23-2003 - 2:31am
No we are a bit further east of where the quake this morning hit, however friends of mine said they felt it. "Just another day in paradise" LOL. I think you are probably right about this radio guy. He's just tossing out topics to p ss people off and that's why the producers and heads of the studios won't can him because he keeps the ratings up...just like Howard Stern a long time ago. If people would simply either turn off their radios or switch the dials their ratings would go down and he would get canned.
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2002
Tue, 12-23-2003 - 3:19am
That reminds me of the Christmas we spent in California last year. I LOVE visiting family there in winter because it feels like we suddenly get a bit of summer in the middle of all the darkness and drear. Temps were mostly in the upper 60s and our kids were running outside in t-shirts and summer pants and we ended up going swimming a few times. It was a heated pool, but outdoors and it felt like the perfect temperature. The kids are true northerners: we have a harder time getting them outside when it is over 80 than we do when it is even in the 40s :-).

Laura

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2002
Tue, 12-23-2003 - 3:39am
Ok, let me try this one more time: you have a choice of gym shoes or boots because you live in a relatively warm state with very little cold weather and it is the local culture and norm that you can pick between gym shoes and boots. Those choices are allowed for you because children are specifically kept indoors during snow or cold...NOT because there is some universal rule that parents can put whatever they want on children (speaking of which, don't many U.S. schools have dress codes that do actually limit the choices of children and their parents?).

*I*, however, do not have a choice of gym shoes or boots because I live in a different culture with an entirely different weather situation and if I were to send my child to school in the middle of winter in gym shoes, I'd be getting a call from the school to deliver proper shoes pronto because otherwise, my child would get frostbite. Failure to provide proper winter boots IS considered neglect where I live and rightfully so. There is no school anywhere in this country that provides indoor facilities for the free periods because the cultural norm here is that everyone goes out in all kinds of weather....that is what children grow up with.

"It's the mere fact that you are trying to boss someone around and tell them what they should and shouldn't wear. "

It is not "someone", it is a basic fact of weather conditions that dictate what someone wears. You could choose to send your child outside when it is 100 F in warm pants, long sleeves, sweater and jacket, but I bet you don't. Why? because it is highly inappropriate gear for that kind of weather and your child would likely get hit by heat stroke. I'm betting that dressing your child that warmly on a very hot day would raise eyebrows and cause plenty of mutterings about neglect, poor parenting and possibly child-endangerment even where you live. I don't know if the OP lives in an area like mine with weather that dictates that a child must own at least one pair of winter boots. But there really are areas in the world where the failure on the part of parents to provide winter boots could rightfully be seen as child endangerment.


Laura

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 12-23-2003 - 3:46am
With apologies to Dr. Seuss:

I wear my slides out in the snow,

Put me on ice and watch me go!

Won't bother me if I might fall,

I have no sense, you see, at all.

I wear a coat in May and June,

My feet dance to a different tune.

'Cause chilly days just make me wheeze,

I'll stay indoors at 60, please.

My feet? They're fine all cold and wet

Like they, in tennies, often get.

I would not wear boots in D.C.,

They make my feet stink, can't you see.

I would not wear boots in New York,

I think I'd look just like a dork.

I would not wear boots in the snow,

Don't think I need them, don't you know.

Because I don't, then why should you?

Why worry if your toes are blue?

I think you should be foolish too.


Edited 12/23/2003 9:01:19 AM ET by cocoapop

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2002
Tue, 12-23-2003 - 3:48am
Spoken like a woman who doesn't know what the truly important thing in life are :-). Boots are serious business where I live and we have endless discussions about the best way to get kids dressed for the great outdoors....


Laura

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 12-23-2003 - 3:53am
That reminds me of college, our first cool snap you could tell where everyone grew up by what they wore outdoors. At 55 degrees, I was wearing a sweater, no coat. The Canadian down the hall was still in shorts. And the Georgian, no kidding, was in a ski parka. Zipped up. LOL!
Avatar for outside_the_box_mom
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 12-23-2003 - 5:32am
Don't you have a job or kids to take care of? In the time it would take me to read this thread about boots, I could go out and a buy a pair.

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