Let's face it: parenting is hard work. The kids mysteriously show up whether or not the parents are equipped for duty. Many many parents manage to get equipped as they go along. A lot of the ones who struggle in this area need Sensible Auntie.
Sensible Auntie is the sort of vigilant and occasionally forceful presence who can grit her teeth, swallow her tongue as parents repeatedly blunder impervious to alternative worldviews. Sensible Auntie is there for children. She is also there for the rest of civilization.
Sensible Auntie showed up in several forms in RantWoman's childhood. RantWoman had pretty uptight controlling Presbyterian parents and Sensible Auntie would many times in various ways say to RantWoman's parents, "Relax, they're just children. It will be okay." Sensible Auntie used to show up at the Baptist church of RantWoman's youth. Sensible Auntie understood with perfect clarity why a young RantWoman might see her age group peers as dreadful little snots or other unQuakerly terms. More to the point, even if the dreadful little snots had had any redeeming qualities detectable at the time to RantWoman, Sensible Auntie would still have been more interesting to talk to.
Sensible Auntie showed up at a RantFamily event a few years ago. RantNephew was having a really spectuclar fit because his grandma had moved to town and started telling him "No." RantWoman exaggerates about the dysfunction, but RantNephew was throwing a fit, throwing chairs. He picked up his kid rocker and his mother caught it before it got airborne. Then the tyke tried for one of the dining room chairs. RantWomans arm came down, boom. on the back of the chair: "all four legs of the chair have to stay on the floor." "Mommy," the tyke wailed, "make her give it to me." Um, NO!
Yesterday Sensible Auntie showed up in Business Meeting in connection with some "spirited children." RantWoman has no idea what if anything will get written in the minutes. Sensible Auntie was thinking but did not say, "look, I am legally blind and built like a linebacker. Your "spirited children" and I could do each other serious damage without even meaning to and we both need help from our community to cut the odds of that happening way down! We will either interact on that basis from the outset or I WILL act as necessary in specific moments. RantWoman is, however, humbled to be Sensible Auntie in such different terms than she needed as a child.
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Sensible Auntie tartly notes that ultimately no children, spirited or otherwise were mentioned in the minutes in question even though it was a context where children are sometimes mentioned in a process parallel to their parents.
ReplyDeleteSensible Auntie has now had multiple tirades in person and in email and will be going all Testimony on Equality about certain matters in the future. The point of Testimony on Equality in this case is the same rules for everyone. RantWoman will nevertheless be attempting particularly to uphold some specific parents.