Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Oprah Epiphany

We usually don't have tv in the house. We watch DVD's, but don't subscribe to cable or have an antenna and for us it works. The kids are less sedentary and they play outside and read more because of the no TV standard. I think my husband misses it the most, especially during football season and so this year, he decided to get cable, just from October until the Superbowl in February.

Well, now it is March and he still hasn't called the cable company to cut the cord, pull the plug, and we have all become addicted again. I think we need an intervention. A television intervention.

On a positive note though, I have been able to have all sorts of mini-epiphanies. Between Oprah and Ellen and Rosie on the View and Martha and even Dr. Phil, I have been pushed and pulled in so many domestic and self-actualized and improve-yourself directions that I feel like a fully kneaded loaf of bread just proofing in the dough bowl.

Make that Fruitcake dough - a la Jimmy Buffett.

;-)

You know, the lyric "human beings are flawed individuals. the cosmic bakers took us out of the oven a little too early." I hope I get to cook long enough. I hope I don't end up half-baked.

Anyway, I digress again.

So, back in February, I thought this was so important that I typed it in here and saved it as a draft. I think I wanted to blog about it, but I forgot to blog about it. I still don't feel like taking it somewhere, but maybe just putting the beginning idea out here is good enough.

~~~


On Oprah just now was this idea that was one of those, well duh, but head nodding, oh yeah, need to remember this more often, kind of ideas. Sorry I don't remember any more who said it.

"You want them to never ache, but in reality you need to teach them what to do when they ache. Learning how to be self soothing in healthy ways is one of the most important things that mother's can teach their children."

To say that another way -

The nature of maternal love is to want your children to never ache. The nature of being a human being is that you are going to ache. So one of the most important jobs of a mother is to teach your children healthy ways to deal with life when it hurts.

~~~

Sometimes this is a tough one. Sometimes it is a lesson that grown ups need to re-learn as well.

3 comments:

Pelagian Poet said...

Very good Oprah-grab. Too many parents end up trying to protect their kids from every disappointment, difficulty and pain. You just end up with kids who can't cope and it's a drag to watch and be around.

Hello! Life is painful sometimes. Embrace it!

I too tried to be a TV Nazi when the kids were small. I pretty much failed, but without cable, they are limited to 65,832 episodes of the Simpsons and network TV, which often is so banal that even they turn it off.

Huge addiction, TV is.

Jackie said...

Word. I hate being addicted to TV, it makes me feel worse about my life most of the time. (I"m looking at you "What Not To Wear".)

Worse yet, I was reading the other night about how to sleep train your kids, basically letting them cry till they fall asleep at night, because it teaches them how to fall asleep without you. Wow. Talk about a hard way to teach kids that life is painful! I am having trouble thinking about doing this, ever!!!

Annie-go-lightly said...

HUGE .... brain sucking, time sucking, motivation sucking, procrastination inducing eeeeevil!

;-)