From: kapa@cbnewsc.cb.att.com (k.a.perkins)
Subject: Re: Common Sense and Participation
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 04:49:28 GMT
Summary: 90% of everything is showing up

In article <1993Jan12.234455.1160@nb.rockwell.com>, guthrie@nb.rockwell.com (Karen Guthrie) writes:
> > > 
> > > 	Research and my OWN research/observations have shown a definitive split
> > > in this discussion.  Professional parents CAN have healthy
> > > (mentally/physcially) children.  Stay-at-home parents the same.

Absolutely.

> How a child feels about him/herself depends
> to a large degree on the parents and other adults paying attention to them and
> talking, listening, answering, teaching and putting up with constant testing of
> the rules and laws of physics.  A case in point is my daughters two grandmothers.
> Both love her dearly and both have spent the same number (roughly) of days caring
> for her.  However my daughter will pout if told she is going to one and jump up 
> and down with excitement for the other.  WHY?  Because one treats her as an adult
> that can play by herself and the other devotes herself to playing with her.  You
> earn that love with dozens of cookies baked, stories read, songs sung, nights of
> interupted sleep from bad dreams or the flu, by not screaming SHUT UP when the
> 42nd why in a row comes out of that little mouth, by playing when you would rather
> sleep or lay on the couch.
> I think that more than the kids the parents
> suffer for both parents working.  At least if they are trying to do it right.
I have to agree with this.  I have a professional job, and shortly after
Maddie went to daycare full time (after maternal and paternal leaves
expired), I cut my hours at work to 32/week and 4 days/week.  I think
Maddie was okay, but I missed her and I wasn't having the experience
that I wanted.  I didn't have enough time with her to suit me, and the
time with her seemed too full of chores and house stuff.  I really 
enjoyed the extra day a week with her by ourselves for those 2 years.
Now, we have child #2, and I am home for 6 months with them, and I
still miss all that time alone Maddie and I used to have.  But I
really enjoy Rachel too ; I'm still working on organizing my days
around 2 kids.

90% of everything is showing up.  There's few better ways to show a
kid that she counts than by spending time with her, paying attention
to her, and doing stuff that she wants to do with her.  Imagine
if you told your boss that you wanted to be paid for 40 hours a week,
and you were going to work 20 hours, but they would be *quality*
hours.  (Although that might work out - after a year of parttime,
my boss told me he didn't think I was getting my money's worth out
of part time, because I had full time responsibilities but part time
pay.)

I think that after you're a parent, you look at your friends differently
because you evaluate the job they're doing with their kids.  We've
deliberately limited our professional ambitions and changed our
recreational pursuits so that we can do more with our kids.  We have
other friends that just don't want to change their lives, and so
their kids have more adjusting to do.  I knew we were different when
one of them complained about spending so much time rocking a newborn
to sleep, and I thought about how much I liked rocking a baby to
sleep.  Our kids are young ( 0,0,3,5 ) that it's too soon to tell
how our parenting styles are going to work out.
Newsgroups: misc.kids