IndieWeb Carnival: Parenting - roundup post
A little late to my roundup on my IndieWeb Carnival on parenting, which got 10 submissions - not counting the AI ones I haven’t added. Just as I had hoped, there is great variety in how people have approached this subject. Some are sad, some funny, some nostalgic, some optimistic, some academic and all worth reading. Thanks to everyone who participated and all readers out there.
Some quotes from each post:
Death and Parenting as a Single Father by Lump Motif
When I think about my inevitable death, the fear of the unknown is not what troubles me the most. The thought that causes me the most pain is the effect my death will have on my son.
Recognizing my parents by Nullish
I could barely read, and I was learning to navigate DOS and use the CLI. My favorite games were Starquake, and later Zeliard. Then, in the late 80's, my mom discovered this game company called Sierra. She started bringing home "adventure" games from their catalog, which we would play through together. I can't think of a better way to teach a young kid to love technology.
Back to the (School) Future by Jackdaw
I was amazed, though, how much Bug was willing to tell us about how bad things were at school. They've always been a really open kid with us, which I'm grateful for, but it occurred to me that all the things we were doing were things that, for the most part, were not things that happened when I was in school, despite a number of the situations sounding similar.
[Parenting] What Money Can't Buy by Liza Rose
I think I had it backwards the whole time. What's good for me, what's good for the world. Maybe even what's good for my parents. I haven't really cared about their well-being for a long time, outside of their ability to fund my continued existence. But for the sake of the other people around them, once I'm gone, maybe it will help someone else if my parents learn their lesson from me. Money and good intentions may be necessary to fix certain problems, but they are rarely sufficient.
On Parenting by George
My parents tell me that having a child is not as you'd imagine it. For instance, my mother before she had children had the image she would be the carefree, hippy mother, dress billowing in the wind, picnicking and frolicking with her smiling children in the verdant fields; in reality, she was trying to get us to put suncream on at the beach whilst we kicked and screamed and drew attention.
Raising kids when you're not a parent by Frances
We do joke though about gifting my sister and her husband a weekend away. So we can look after the kids. She barely goes away. She likes being with her children, or something. Very inconvenient when The Aunties want to have a sleepover.
When my daughters started playing music by winther
When your kids are small, of course you are the grown up, the experienced one who can show, explain and teach them things. From using the toilet to riding a bike. Now they can laugh at me while pointing at their music scores because I don't understand how a dot on that line becomes F sharp, or why another one is B flat, or whatever.
Homework by Sara Jakša
If I ever become a parent, and if I do I know I will be a single parent, I wonder how would I be able to deal with this? I mean, if my children kept bringing enough homework home, that it would became too much problem, I will most likely let them skip it as well. I will be that parent that complains about homework and how the school is a place to learn these skills, not to pile it on the parents.
'No' as a Parenting Option by andrei
This weekend I’ve been on a citybreak in a town about 350km away from home with my best friends and their one-year old girl. I love her to the moon and back, she smiles at everyone and she’s instantly becoming the mascot of every place she steps in (or crawls). However, while everyone notices her and smiles and waves at her, it’s so easy to miss the hardships of being a parent: the incessant crying when something isn’t right, the challenge of understanding what the kid wants, and so much many more.
parenting is healing by Nadja Bester
the English noun arrived through Old French and Latin parens—related to parere, ‘to bring forth’—by the early fifteenth century. by the 1660s, it was also a verb: to be or act as a parent to someone. by the 1930s, we played around with parentcraft, a fitting word for anyone who’s had enough fights with their Terrible Twos and their teens to realise that parenting is an acquired skill, not a magic gift bestowed on us at birth. the intransitive sense of ‘be a parent’ is recorded by 1959.