The Moron's Guide to Childrearing
This morning, I was watching a cartoon with my son. One of the girl characters was reading a book called The Moron's Guide to Babysitting. I thought that was a title I could put to use. And it made me think of work yesterday. I have been a social worker for almost ten years. I would like to think that usually I am a pretty empathetic, caring individual. But every once in a while, I think you really got to lighten up some situations...because if we don't we'll go nuts. Plus, I think I have put my time in, so please forgive me and if there is a hell, I figure I got my room reserved.
Anyway, yesterday I was meeting with a family, that is somewhat lower functioning, along with the counselor that works with them regularly, and a few other people. We were discussing some of the progress the family has made. The counselor says "The home is a lot less messy lately. I have really been working on portion control with Mom with what she gives the kids." He elaborated a bit more and said that previously, Mom, had been giving the kids who are 3 and 2 years old a family size bag of potato chips. They would run off with the chips, take them into the livingroom, and proceed to open the bag, pour its entire contents on the floor and stomp on them--on a regular basis. I thought, "yeah, no shit, I would probably do the same thing if I was a little kid, it sounds like fun". But the counselor and Mom, were proud of themselves because Mom has now learned that it WORKS MUCH BETTER TO GET OUT A BOWL AND POUR A SMALL AMOUNT IN FOR EACH CHILD!! Now, being the mother of a preschooler, the thought has never crossed my mind to just hand my kid a huge bag of chips and let them run off and eat it somewhere else in the house. Its moments like that that make me realize that we really have messed with the natural order of existence and have totally fucked with Darwin's theory of Survival of the Fittest.
posted by Cass @ 5:51 PM
3 Comments:
Jesus christ! That's unbelievable. I think you should have a "Moron's Guide to Childrearing" special recurring feature here where you give us more nuggets like this. Wow. I wonder what other new skills the counselor is working on with the mother. "Hey mom, guess what? It also works really well to pour the juice into a cup rather than handing them the entire jug and letting them dump it on the floor and then lick it up!" or "Bedtime works well when you put the kids in the bed with covers on them instead of throwing them a sleeping bag and letting them crash wherever they land!" or "It's always a good idea to measure out your kids' medication instead of just letting them swig it from the bottle until they don't want anymore!" Good god!
If you have a room in hell, well, it would have to be one of the posh, ritzy suites because you're definitely not bad enough to be in the fiery pits or anything. If you do, can I share it with you? I'll bring the earplugs...although if it's hell, maybe that's the catch. You'll have to listen to me snore for eternity.
Great story. Unbelievable!
Hmmms Wish I ahd been there....some of these meetings get really interesting.........haha. I hope you are having a great weekend.....Karmagirl.
That potato chip story is hilarious! Stomping on a big bag of chips sounds like a hell of a lot of fun to me!
When I was a nanny, we once lost the remote control and couldn't find it. I decided to pull out the TV, and lo and behold, the kids had been throwing their trash back behind the TV in the entertainment center! It was a horrific find - mummified banana peels, leathery slices of salami, half-eaten suckers. Those things did not happen on my watch, I can assure you!
I hope you'll share more stories like this in the future, it makes me feel a little better about myself. hahaha
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