Friday, July 13, 2007

Something else to face

Let's face this one head on too-

When you are working, especially from home, or in a job where you bring your kids, you start to see them differently. No longer do their little games and little faces bring joy every time you see them. You start to think they are getting in the way of your work sometimes. And that is a horrible thing to admit, but it is true.

I could never figure my friend Jennifer out. She ran this consignment shop on Hilton Head when we lived there, and she was always complaining that Gabriel, who is 3 months older than Elle, would never let her work! She brought him to work but couldn't get much done. He wanted to nurse a lot and when she didn't pay attention, he would bite her! I just didn't get why she always complained and didn't just sit down now and then and pay attention to him.

Needless to say, now I get it. A lot of my job is talking on the phone, and that is usually a signal for the kids to start running around the house chasing each other, or yelling, or Elle trying to get the Tylenol bottle or homeopathic tablets open so she can "take more medicine". And it's not just for work that I talk on the phone. The same goes for La Leche League moms and doula clients. Sometimes I need quiet to help a mom out who is having a hard time, and those calls don't always come at nap time.

So that usually leads to parking them in front of Sesame Street. It is the only thing I let them watch during the day, and I TIVO it to have it available. It's not like they watch anything besides PBS...

So a few weeks ago I was reading the paper (a rare occurrence these days- I also still have 3 episodes of Gray's Anatomy to watch and that ended in what, April?), and the AAP is talking about how bad it is for kids to watch TV at all if they are under 2. Well great, I think. That was a perfectly acceptable thing for my first child. She didn't watch anything until about 18 months, wasn't interested. But guess what, when I was 33 weeks pregnant with Justin, I was put on bedrest. And I can only farm my kid out so many times before we just have to sit and watch TV. After that she wanted to watch Sesame Street every day.

How bad could it be, I thought? Well, bad. Because Justin learned at a very early age to watch TV. As soon as he could sit in the Bumbo Seat he wanted to sit next to her and watch. He is much more distractible and cannot concentrate on one task like she could at this age. Is it the TV's fault? Who knows.

The point is that guess what, AAP, the TV is part of all of our lives. Our family has gone in cycles, of a lot of TV, and very little. But you know what? If my MIL or another family member lived next door, I could just send the kids over there for the hour I need to get work done instead of parking them. But I don't have that luxury and I don't know many mothers who do. So guess what, until our society circles back to the village concept, tired parents are going to use the TV to get a break.

That's the way it is, folks.

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