It's a Story about a Story Thing

Dear America,

so speaking of family.

my girl comes home from college TODAY!!!

and you know the best part -- she is just as excited to come home to see me as I am to see her. 

Verily feeling all the more proud, with my anticipation all the more heightened, and the value of all the many years of my single-parenthood's ups and downs affirmed --  I realize I have done something right; she will be flying high and happy wee wee wee wee all the way home.

See what I did there?

It's called tapping into a little game we play on the toes of our babies -- beginning with the little 'piggies,' nursery rhymes and story times produce results; developing the miracle that grows from their little pea-brain from the moment our children come into the world benefits all of us in the long run.  And lo and behold, it can be done even through the most unsuspecting of ways...

Of course, here in G land, we are long past "this little piggy went to market."

Like a blink of an eye, somehow or other, we have made it to a brand new stage; and "this little monkey goes to college" seems to fit just fine.

One of a parent's many responsibilities and duties is to ensure that we build up and validate what our children do right, and likewise discouraging -- even with consequences, if warranted -- what our children do wrong, Think of that mother of Baltimore recently, Toya, who smacked her son upside the head on national TV [no recollection? then go back and read my blog from a couple of days ago..]

[oh this is rich...just got a text after she hum and hawed about my insistence she get to the airport two hours early...she writes  "it's 12:30 sitting at the gate an hour and half early are ya happy"]

beautiful girl.

anyhow.

The thing is, I appreciate any validation from the universe of my fine parenting skills, large or small, or, given her latest text, totally unseen.

But you know what I really love?

 -- getting validation of some of the ideas I schlep day in and day out @this American girl thing.

And today, we can thank a little post titled, "Is having a loving family an unfair advantage?"

Allow me to just cut to the chase, my little piggies --  at the end of the day, it's a rather twisted and absurd thought process of some highly intelligent people.    But who am I, right?

Apparently [even though I'm completely stuck on the notion as to how nobody connected the dots on this before...duh] -- there needed to be a study on the value of reading bedtime stories to children at the end of the day.

And you know what they discovered?

After all has been said, read, and done,  there was more of an advantage in doing just this one thing than sending our children to private schools, let alone reading nothing at all.

It's just amazing!

Someone -- seemingly in a position of authority on the matter -- affirmed my simple-simon approach to parenting;  something as easy as reading to our children a bedtime story, or playing with the little piggies in nursery rhyme, add up to something pretty wonderful: a loved and well adjusted child with an advantage!

So what becomes twisted and absurd happens to be THE RESPONSE to this realization by these yahoos; that when something so simple as reading to our kids can be so influential, to the extent of giving some children an advantage,  that surely the answer must be in the take away of this advantage! 

Or so they have you think anyway....

Are you kidding me?

With the advantage being seen as totally unfair, the summation to the equation --  in order to even it all out --  might just be to subtract the loving family and the bedtime stories? seriously?

I love this part --

Setting it up like so....

So should parents snuggling up for one last story before lights out be even a little concerned about the advantage they might be conferring?

‘I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally,’ quips Swift.

Or how about --  Swift -- you simply get up and tell the  whole world to bloody hell read to your kids!!! 

Why isn't this news on the front page of the Wall Street Journal?  How come the nightly news isn't championing this latest incite,  perhaps in rhyme and unceasing, until we all get it smacked upside the head and do it?

ahhh these are the days that try a mom's soul.

"No bother,"  (Eeyore), "Promise me you'll always remember you're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think"  Christopher Robin to Winnie-the-Pooh

I have a baby coming home and I plan on rubbing her arm and telling her a story or two just like the olden days.

Make it a Good Day, G