Menage à Trois Bingo

mousefeathers gave me this last month, as we are soon to be the parents of a teenager. She stipulated that she had bought it years ago and wasn’t even sure she ever read it. I read it a week or so ago. I started this post the next day but have not had time to work on it until now.

I am not impressed. Dr. Rosemond calls himself a psychologist heretic, and has little good to say about his fellow professionals. Nor does he have anything good to say about parents who disagree with his premises or conclusions. He repeatedly insults parents whose values for their children differ from his, calling them foolish or deluded or simply “bad parents”.

The book, while not presented as “Christian parenting,” is nonetheless full of Bible references and Christian assumptions and expects that readers will subscribe to them. He spends a lot of time going off on divorce: “Today the once-sacred sacrament of marriage is nothing more than a flimsy contract that any partner can walk away from at the slightest whim.” He insists that unhappy couples should just suck it up and stay married. “...agree between you that you’re going to hang in there no matter what...Staying married is the toughest thing you will ever do, which is precisely why it is the most rewarding thing you will ever do.” His opinion of feminism is even worse: the only mention of the word comes in the phrase “the feminist sport of having children out of wedlock”!!!. Even political correctness comes in for a casual slam: “...nothing the child in question can do but say ‘Uncle!’ (or to be politically correct about it, “Sibling of a parent!’)” What was that for?

He sums up his overall method of parenting with the old saw “Give them enough rope to hang themselves,” meaning allow teenagers a great deal of freedom and independence (which I tend to agree with in general) but he then seems to take a great deal of pleasure in coming up with the “hangings” when the teens overstep the freedoms allowed. The punishments or consequences need not have anything to do with the error, nor even be associated in time; indeed he makes a point of how he thinks it’s better if they are not, claiming that “eight out of ten times a child misbehaves, effective consequences are not immediately available.” Where this 80% number comes from is never stated, so I can only assume it comes out of his ass. In narrating a conversation about this idea with a parent (client) he analogizes to a workplace situation where someone “misbehaves on the job” (his words) and four months later finds out during the annual performance review that the “misbehavior” has caused the loss of a raise. Personally I would think that is bad management as well—why would you let someone go on for months thinking they were doing fine if they’re not?

An example: he tells a story about asking his daughter to wash dishes and clean house while he and his wife were out, in preparation for a dinner party that night. She refused, so he said, “If it’s not done when we get home we’ll do it.” It wasn’t, and they did. No consequences for the daughter, who continued in her original plans for the evening...until the following Friday when she wanted to go out with her friends and he announced (in front of her friend for maximum humiliation), “Oh, I forgot. Since you didn’t wash dishes last week you can’t go out now.”

He only once mentions gay teens, tossing out this remark on the very last page, in reference to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which he disparaged for a page and a half: “Here’s another absolutely astonishing finding:[...] Teens who have repeated a grade in school or are attracted to members of the same gender are more likely to have problems than heterosexual teens who have done reasonably well in school. As today’s teenager might say, ‘Well, duh!!!’” Due to the complete lack of any other comments on gay teens it rather looks like he’s saying it’s their own fault for having problems. (Interestingly this page appears to be missing from Google Books. All the other quotes show up on the appropriate page, but searching by several words on page 265 does not find anything.)

After writing all this, I looked at the reviews from Google Books, which are invariably positive. I would probably have not been so irritated by this book if it did not have the preachy condescension and insults or the anti-divorce, anti-feminism slams.

I'm such a terrible Mommy. I gave my daughter flan for breakfast today.

MOMMY: Come on, read with me! Don't you want to know what happens?
ROSA: No, I want to stay in suspense.
MOMMY: *laughs hysterically*

***

Recipe for Abomination Sandwich (a Rosa speciality)

White bread
Lunchmeat ham
American cheese
Ketchup

I'm a horrible mommy. I completely forgot Rosa's girl scout meeting
yesterday. She's missed two or three through parent stupidity, but this
one...This one was the last one of the year, the "Bridging Ceremony" for
moving up from Daisies to Brownies. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Yesterday morning about eight, the girl got herself up while we were all asleep, put on clothes, and went outside. She was halfway to Leo's house when Chris caught up with her; he'd heard the doors opening, thank gods.

That's the second time this spring she has gone walkabout on a Sunday morning. Time outs aren't working to stop it, and there's not really any deprivation punishment I can think of that makes sense in this context either. She wasn't going to be watching TV anyway.

Ray, and his parents, have a very irritating method of "disciplining" Rosa when she's dilatory about making ready to leave. "Mommy's going to leave without you, Rosa!"

Today, I called him on it. "I don't like you saying that to Rosa."

"It's the logical consequence." (Which is one of those phrases used by some parenting instruction book we read. You know, the punishment should be a logical consequence of the misbehavior.)

"No, it is not. I'm never ever ever going to do that."

"Don't correct me in my house."

"I did not. I said I do not like it." And I don't. It's not just because it's a threat that will never be followed through on, and worse yet a secondhand threat, but it imputes horrid motives to me that are not mine.

I think I'll have to tell him his "logical consequences" threats are not to state anything about *MY* actions.

I talked with Jen late last night over IM and began to feel better about things. I still hate that life comes between us, but she's a mom too, and I know that her son has to come first. In the end it turned out to have been for the best, anyway, because Rosa insisted on sleeping with me, and she was very restless. Still feverish, waking up every half hour or so to ask for water, or to be covered or uncovered, or for hugs...I did not sleep at all well, and was very tired this morning when Jen came over. She didn't have a very good night either, only getting Phaelen to sleep at 3 am.

Rosa was being clingy and difficult even in the morning, until the Motrin finally began to take effect and she let Jen watch her while I took a shower. Then we each changed into the clothes we were going to wear to the Ren Faire: she wore a chemise and overskirts with a leather corset, and I wore the new leather bodice and skirt I bought the other day, with fishnet thigh-highs and boots. Totally non-period, but a hella lot of fun all the same. I discovered an unexpected talent for lacing corsets.

When Ray arrived to collect Rosa for his day with her, I answered the door dressed as described. He was rather taken aback, to make a drastic understatement, but recovered and said "You look like you're going out." Well, duh. Then he saw Jen, and said to her, "You guys look fabulous. Especially her," slapping me on the back in a rather superior way. It felt like a claim of ownership, and I gritted my teeth so as not to bite his head off. They told each other how nice it was to see each other again, and after he left with Rosa Jen and I laughed for quite a while at the patent untruth of that statement.

And off to the Ren Faire. The day started drizzly, and just got wetter. We wandered around the grounds several times, checked all the vendor stalls, greeted some people and vendors she knows...got accosted by a 15th century lady who wanted to know how I got into the leather. I said, "with a zipper" and then was struck speechless because she wanted to know what a zipper was and how it worked. Oops. Jen teased me about that for quite a while.

We were followed around by a lot of eyes. "You're going the wrong way." We ran into those two guys several times during the day. Another who said I was just the right size: with my boots on we were exactly of a height. A vendor who told me he thought I'd be interested in the other thing he sells, but wouldn't say it out loud. "Latex," he whispered, and we got into a conversation about latex and fetish nights and so on. He thought I should wear something called the goddess dress: long sleeves, full circle skirt, and a V neckline. Four hundred dollars. Ouch.

Eventually we ran into Jill, who now has to believe in Jen's existence and can't call her a figment of my imagination anymore. But they'll come up with something else to tease me about, of that I have no doubt.

Jousting was called off on account of mud, but the knights were mud-wrestling, which was greatly amusing to watch. After that, though, Jen had to get home for family time (Mother's Day and all that) and we were both quite thoroughly wet, so we took off. She told me to take a nap--a good idea, that--and I curled up on the couch, not to wake for a good two hours.

Ray called me this morning around nine to warn me that Rosa was sick. She has a fever and had thrown up twice the previous day. She was perfectly chipper when I got there to get her, though she was very clingy and cuddly, and went to sleep around 11 and woke up about 1. She was very very hot; I gave her some Motrin and a lot of water. She kept asking for water. Then I fed her some lunch, she threw up three more times but most of what she had eaten stayed down. She was happy-baby for a while, she asked for some more food but didn't really eat any. And then she went over to the couch with her big stuffed bunny, pulled a blanket off the back of the couch, curled up under it and went to sleep. She put herself down for a nap! I've never seen such a thing from her.