Lately, I have been thinking a lot about parenting. What makes a good parent? What in my case makes a good mother. I love snuggling with my daughter but man do I hate watching Octonauts for 15th time. I find that at these times I am searching the web, reading blog pages or checking my Facebook status. We are still snuggling but we are both in our own worlds doing our own things. Does this make me a bad mother, while my daughter enjoys her half hour of cartoon time I am off enjoying my digital time?
I look at some of my friends and family on Facebook and see contrasts in their parenting styles one distant (and I emphasize distant) family member recently posted a picture of her 3 year old daughter holding a AR-15 riffle. I don't even know where to being in thinking about that, how right can we be if we are introducing our children to guns and weapons at such a young age. Is that demonstrating that you are good parent? Can you be a good parent and still have your child in an environment that has these weapons? As teacher I am constantly thinking about where do my students come from and how are their parents acting as parents. Until this picture I never really thought that this could be my students, but it could. I guess it could very easily be my children, we do have guns in our house (not those kind of guns but we do have guns) but we also have set up boundaries around weapons like this.
On the other hand I have Facebook friends (and I refer to them as such because since high school or some party a millions of years ago, have I actually hung out with them and their families, are they really my friends? Some are, but most would probably not even recognize me if we met on the street or at the supermarket - however I digress.) I have Facebook friends who post images of the amazing cakes they have created or the valentines breakfast and gifts they cooked up for their children. I think its amazing that these women have the time to create amazing birthday photo areas for the upcoming birthday parties and the red carpet extravaganzas that they entertain their children with, but are their children any better off than mine? I really don't want to be that mother but should I be? Are their children receiving something my children aren't and are mine going to suffer because of that? Or is just being with my children, enjoying the time we have, jumping on the couch, running in the kitchen, learning somersaults and cartwheels, reading books and making messes are these all that my children need. What is it that makes a good parent?
I know can easily search the web, the ERIC journals and sources to answer my questions with articles written by doctors and psychologists but really I just want to ponder the thought for a little bit, that data will always be there for when I really need to search the information. Maybe just maybe we, as parents need think about what are we exposing our children to and how is this affecting them and does that matter to us. Because the doctors and the psychologists can say what they want but if we don't agree or value it does it really even matter.
