so there is a silly somewhat funny website called "dear blank please blank." it includes short supposedly-pithy notes to random people or things, from random people or things. some of them are very funny. some of them are ... ehhhh.
one of them today got me thinking. it goes like this:
"dear mothers,
when your child is 23 months old, it would be easier and less annoying to just say it's 2 years old.
sincerely,
regrets asking"
aside from referring to the kid as "it" (come on - even if you don't like them you have to admit their human!) this raises an interesting point. yes, those months matter to ME, john's mom. and when he was just weeks old, those weeks mattered. but i can't imagine very many other people really care for that level of precision.
and really, i think this is only one symptom of a my-child-centeredness that i'd like to avoid. does that sound silly, coming from a gal who blogs under the psuedonym of johnsmom? i think the difference is that you, dear reader, choose to be here reading about john's mom. you're demonstrating that you care about my silly stories of milk travails and sleepless nights. heck, you might even care that john is 6-and-a-half months old, not 6 and not 7.
but the nice man in the grocery store? he's probably just being polite. he probably doesn't want to calculate how many months 27 weeks works out to. probably, if i said john was "about 7 months" that would be sufficient for him.
the moral of the story is this, i think: no matter what phase we happen to be in, in our lives, we'd be well-served to remember that not everyone else is where we are. share, make polite conversation, but save your in-depth month-counting for the people who choose to be a part of that scorekeeping.
(that would be you, dear reader. thanks for giving this mom an outlet!)
one of them today got me thinking. it goes like this:
"dear mothers,
when your child is 23 months old, it would be easier and less annoying to just say it's 2 years old.
sincerely,
regrets asking"
aside from referring to the kid as "it" (come on - even if you don't like them you have to admit their human!) this raises an interesting point. yes, those months matter to ME, john's mom. and when he was just weeks old, those weeks mattered. but i can't imagine very many other people really care for that level of precision.
and really, i think this is only one symptom of a my-child-centeredness that i'd like to avoid. does that sound silly, coming from a gal who blogs under the psuedonym of johnsmom? i think the difference is that you, dear reader, choose to be here reading about john's mom. you're demonstrating that you care about my silly stories of milk travails and sleepless nights. heck, you might even care that john is 6-and-a-half months old, not 6 and not 7.
but the nice man in the grocery store? he's probably just being polite. he probably doesn't want to calculate how many months 27 weeks works out to. probably, if i said john was "about 7 months" that would be sufficient for him.
the moral of the story is this, i think: no matter what phase we happen to be in, in our lives, we'd be well-served to remember that not everyone else is where we are. share, make polite conversation, but save your in-depth month-counting for the people who choose to be a part of that scorekeeping.
(that would be you, dear reader. thanks for giving this mom an outlet!)
Comments