Newsgroups: bit.listserv.deaf-l
Date:         Wed, 18 Nov 1992 08:44:19 EST
From:         "Esther A. Paris" <esther@DEMAND.ED.RAY.COM>
Subject:      my cynical attitude...

Hi there... I wasn't trying to say that poor people don't
care about their children's well being.  I don't even think
the majority of parent's fail to "care" about their children's
well being.  But I do think that as a human adult in this
extremely high pressure world it's easy to get caught up
worrying about the mundane things (like how to pay the bills,
how to survive the new boss, how to break the news to the
family that mandatory overtime will continue through Christmas
and New Years, how to fit in the last three courses of the
degree program so you can FINALLY have your bachelor's after
all these years and maybe FINALLY get that long overdue promotion
that the company is denying you because you don't have a degree
even though you know a thousand times more about the work that
needs to be done than those rich little snotty nosed brats that
are fresh out of college and making twice your salary).   It's
easy to think "I'll think about how hard to push the kids...
tomorrow... tonight I have to iron the clothes and pack the
lunches and..." And like I said, it's the easier softer (worse!)
road to take that says "I'll let the teachers tell me if I should
be pushing this child more or less".

This is probably why I'm not a parent... I'm probably not up to
the task of splitting my mental and physical energies into smaller
pieces.

          or even more pieces with some of them getting much smaller
          and some of them getting much bigger (like the "kid slice"
          which would have to be pretty darned large!)

I'm just saying that most people I know are already pulled in too
many directions by the pressures of this world.  Raising a kid,
especially a kid with a communications challenge (deaf, aphasic,
speech delayed, severe stuttering, whatever) has got to be about the
toughest thing in the world one could be asked to do.  And it's easy
to let some aspects of good parenting slide.  It's easy to look at
a child and think "Well, she still looks like she's growing and
happy and healthy, so now I'll concentrate on putting dinner on the
table".  The child could be dying inside and the parents might not
know it until the child is already dead outside too.  Why do you think
there's such a campaign to educate parents and kids about drug abuse
and drug abuse resistance?  It's at least partly because parents these
days HAVE TO WORRY about putting meals on tables, and surviving the
new boss, and mandatory overtime right through Christmas and New Years,
and getting the last three courses of the bachelor's degree at night
school done and .... Let the audiologist tell me exactly what steps
to take next... that's what I pay the audiologist to do.  Let the
speech therapist decide how much is too hard to push the child and
how much is not hard enough to push the child... that's what I pay
the speech therapist to do.  Let the teachers decide what school
program my child should be in... that's what I pay the teachers to do.

I suppose it's a good thing I'm not a parent, eh?

PS, to Richard... Welcome back!
PS, to Kimberly Laird, it wasn't you in particular. It's just impossible
    to know who's saying what if people don't sign their letters.  If
    this were US MAIL and I got this many unsigned letters saying all
    kinds of controversial things, I'd call the police!

Esther Paris, Raytheon EDL, Marlborough, MA   esther@demand.ed.ray.com
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