upset at nanny -- vent

Elizabeth Reid wrote:

Dawn Lawson wrote in message news:NY9Xb.490487$ts4.223593@pd7tw3no...

Elizabeth Reid wrote:



See, I would love to do this, I just can't quite figure it
out how to get it to happen. s
Now, I love reading to him, and it's a nice wholesome thing
which hopefully will leave him hooked on books forever, and
we have a great time, but it's not an activity which meshes
well with getting anything done.

However, nor is it one that you MUST indulge your son in at any moment
he asks. I don't think cold-turkey is the way to go, but having him
monopolising your entire household doesn't seem appropriate to me, any
more than letting him wail for an hour while you do laundry.


No, it doesn't to me either, which is why the subject is on my
mind. I'm finding it hard to get to that in-between point. My
son's not a kid who whines, which I could ignore, he's more
the kind that goes from 0 to red-faced overwrought screaming
in about a second and a half, and once he's in that state
he can cry for a really long time. I feel awful just letting
him scream and follow me around going, "Up, up, up, Mama,
up, up Mama!"

*g* I've just discovered that someone's suggestion in the biting thread
I started of holding DS facing away from me calms him down quite
dramatically.

I still have DS in my arms a good deal of the time, and do stop whatever
i'm doing for a meltdown. (I'm no pro, just thinking through stuff
along with you on this topic ;-)

Why do you think he gets so upset? Does anything work to calm him? Can
you gradually build up the time you can have him calm (or even just
slightly pouty ;-) )?

But I recognize that this completely has the
potential to get ugly down the road. I feel exactly the
way I did when I was trying to use the No Cry Sleep Solution
to help him to sleep. I don't know if he's the one for whom
gentle transitions don't work well or if I am.

how did you feel then? what worked instead?



I guess the thing that I'm finding tricky is managing the
transition from infancy (when it's appropriate to cater to
the baby's every whim) and childhood when it's not.

I have to admire that you are looking at it this way, actually. I do
find it is kind of a weird time around here, where one hour is infant
and the next young child. I *do* know one Type 1 family that had two
difficult children (the middle one was and is extremely
placid)...perhaps I will ask the mum what worked for her. They are the
best behaved kids I know, and I hugely admire their parenting style,
which is the quietest, calmest I have ever seen. (*and* their house is
spotless ;-) )


Maybe
that's part of it for the Type 1 families - if whatever you're
doing instead of child care is something you're really
committed to, it counteracts the pull of caring for the
infant so that as the baby gets older the transition is
more seamless. I don't really care about cooking dinner,
not in a spiritual way anyway, so it's all too easy to
put it off, especially when screaming is involved. :-)

I guess for me, that sort of thing was never an option, since if I
didn't cook I went hungry and as soon as DS was eating solids more than
nursing, so would he if I didn't cook.

Like we were saying at some point, there's also the idea of tasks as
part of the pattern of life, and tasks as separate and distinct things.
(I'm really not writing well tonight, bear with me) Obviously for
you, supper is a task that doesn't mesh well with your pattern, at least
not right now.

I'm not completely sure I follow the idea that the Type 1 families are
committed to things other than child care, maybe because the idea of a
pattern of life fits so well with how I see things in the families that
I can't quite tease out what they do that isn't just all part of child
and/or family care, iykwim.

Things are not always sunshine and light in the Type 1 families, but
I've known several of them long enough to go through some troubles and
tragedies with them, and the general tone stays very constant. There is
an extremely strong sense of community too, which probably helps and
which I think a lot of Type 2 families are lacking (myself included in
*that* part of it, I'm afraid, and I miss it very much from when I was
more like a part of the Type 1 family community)

(*g* The whole Type 1 & 2 thing makes me chuckle though it is easier to
discuss than rehashing who is who each time)

Dawn, with apologies for rather rambling writing tonight.

(Elizabeth Reid)

No, it doesn't to me either, which is why the subject is on my
mind. I'm finding it hard to get to that in-between point. My
son's not a kid who whines, which I could ignore, he's more
the kind that goes from 0 to red-faced overwrought screaming
in about a second and a half, and once he's in that state
he can cry for a really long time. I feel awful just letting
him scream and follow me around going, "Up, up, up, Mama,
up, up Mama!" But I recognize that this completely has the
potential to get ugly down the road. I feel exactly the
way I did when I was trying to use the No Cry Sleep Solution
to help him to sleep. I don't know if he's the one for whom
gentle transitions don't work well or if I am.

IME they just outgrow this and nothing ugly happens. Hunter was like
that his first 2-3 years. He's a polite boy now that plays well by
himself. Luke was actually very easy as a baby. Very tolerant and
played by himself. He's very challenging now, Still, at 2.5 and 4.5
and I'm once again a Type 1 family for the most part :=) If I could
get dh on board to any kind of routine I'd have it made but that
apparently is impossible.

--

Nikki

Bruce and Jeanne wrote:
Michelle Spina wrote:
Bruce and Jeanne wrote in message
...
[...]
I hear about how working moms "sneer" at SAHMs, but I haven't met one
yet.

I agree - the only sneering I've ever seen is in Usenet, and it's
always the other way around (SAHM's toward WOHM's). In real life,
however, none of my SAHM friends are like that in the least. And I've
also seen that no-one is 100% happy, as you said! I think they have it
great, they think I have it great.

The grass is always greener, I guess...

I think the grass really *is* greener over there...when I was on holiday
with my son, it was wonderful--I got more sleep, I got a lot done...I could
really get used to that. Of course, I've only got the one--I know SAHMs
with two or more small children, and they do seem like they've got a lot on
their plates.

You're lucky to have supportive friends. I stopped going to a mom's
support group because some of the SAHMs seem way too defensive about
staying at home. When I re-joined the group, I made the mistake of
saying "I sometimes work, but I decided to stop when my son was born..."
and a woman chimed in immediately "All mothers work..." I apologized
and clarified worked outside the home. Whereupon another woman said
"well you're doing the right thing now. After all, why bother having
kids, if..." Well you get the picture. I decided it wasn't a very
supportive moms' support group.

Well, I don't get to mothers' support groups and the like because they're
always during work hours, but some of the SAHMs I know seemed like they
might be inclined to take a similar attitude, i.e., starting out defensive,
until I made it clear that I'd really rather be at home with my son, and
told the reasons why it's not possible...

I do feel like I'm missing out by not being able to meet with other
mothers, but every group I've looked into isn't possible with my schedule.

--
z e l d a b e e @ p a n i x . c o m http://NewsReader.Com/
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze1vy2t/sprogly/

Dawn Lawson wrote:



Chotii wrote:

Just because her nanny only

reads Chinese doesn't really mean there's a language barrier. ;-)



Okay, here you've got me. I know nada about Anita's family. I know
that if I
had a nanny who read only Chinese, there's a good chance she and I would
have *some* degree of language barrier. The same would be true for
virtually
anyone who read only (some language other than English). I do speak
Spanish,
and a little French, and a bit less than that of Italian,


That presumes that all other English typing posters have English as a
first language and basically no other. Not much of the world is this
way ;-)


Sorry gotta jump in here. The inference wasn't "reads Chinese therefore
doesn't speak English fluently" but rather "reads only Chinese therefore
probably doesn't speak English fluently". I suspect it's very rare for
someone who is literate in one language (esp. one that requires learning
3000+ individual characters for literacy) to speak another language
very fluently without being able to read it (esp. one that has a
[roughly] sound-based writing system).


Emily, fluent enough in "usenet" to know better than to do this...
--
mom to Toby 5/1/02
#2 EDD 7/19/04

In ,
Tine Andersen wrote:

*You are right - I checked my vocabulary - it's 'black'. Was negro a bad word
*35 years ago? (read: when I learnt the word) Words tend to change meaning

Well, I'm only almost-34 so I can't really say what was going on 35 years
ago . That being said, the word "Negro" went out of favor, so I'm told,
when the Black Panthers were raising a fuss about it in the 1960s. It was
in 1967 that the US government body in charge of place names (whoever they
are) changed the word N*gger to "Negro" in a bunch of place names, though.
So it was still being used in that sense then. I wouldn't have
characterized the word "negro" as a "bad word" even now, though!

When I was growing up, we had a part-time housekeeper, a middle aged black
woman from the south, relatively uneducated, and she always told me "I'se
happy bein' colored, I'se happy bein' Negro, don' know why they wanna make
me be black and REALLY don' know 'bout this African bidness. I'se
American, ain't I?" Seriously. That's what she used to say. I have always
remembered that.

Every once in a while I'll talk with some of my black friends or
co-workers about the issue of what black people want to be called, and I
have to say not one single person has ever said the word Negro is in any
way offensive. The only word that seems to **** people off around here is
n*gger. Black seems to be the most popular among people uner 60 though .
Almost uniformly, "African-American" is scorned, belittled, and ridiculed!
This is among more highly educated people, though. I have no idea what the
urban poor think of "African-American."

--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large

In BgyWb.39216$QJ3.8247@fed1read04,
Circe wrote:

*reason for it. (Of course, "white" is a ridiculous term to apply to people
*of European ancestry, anyway, since we are quite clearly not white, but
*varying shades of pinkish-tan.)

Well, all of the black people I know are varying shades of brown, not
actually black.


--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large

Emily wrote:
Dawn Lawson wrote:



Chotii wrote:

Just because her nanny only

reads Chinese doesn't really mean there's a language barrier. ;-)




Okay, here you've got me. I know nada about Anita's family. I know
that if I
had a nanny who read only Chinese, there's a good chance she and I would
have *some* degree of language barrier. The same would be true for
virtually
anyone who read only (some language other than English). I do speak
Spanish,
and a little French, and a bit less than that of Italian,



That presumes that all other English typing posters have English as a
first language and basically no other. Not much of the world is this
way ;-)


Sorry gotta jump in here. The inference wasn't "reads Chinese therefore
doesn't speak English fluently" but rather "reads only Chinese therefore
probably doesn't speak English fluently". I suspect it's very rare for
someone who is literate in one language (esp. one that requires learning
3000+ individual characters for literacy) to speak another language
very fluently without being able to read it (esp. one that has a
[roughly] sound-based writing system).

I don't suspect it's rare at all, but YMMV. However, I don't think
there's been anything to say that the nanny DOES speak English fluently,
since Anita speaks Chinese fluently. (which seems to be escaping some
in this thread)

Because Anita posts here in English and her nanny reads only Chinese
needn't mean there must be a language barrier between them. And just
because OTHER posters may have a langauge barrier if their nanny spoke
or read only Chinese isn't at all relevant....in fact, my point was just
that a language barrier only exists if the two people don't share a
language, and the statements were made without knowledge of whether that
was the case here (which is isn't)

Dawn (who'd be screwed if Anita posted here in Chinese ;-) My Cantonese
is at least as bad as my Mandarin, which is to say...non-existant.)

Dawn Lawson wrote:

Sorry gotta jump in here. The inference wasn't "reads Chinese therefore
doesn't speak English fluently" but rather "reads only Chinese therefore
probably doesn't speak English fluently". I suspect it's very rare for
someone who is literate in one language (esp. one that requires learning
3000+ individual characters for literacy) to speak another language
very fluently without being able to read it (esp. one that has a
[roughly] sound-based writing system).


I don't suspect it's rare at all, but YMMV. However, I don't think
there's been anything to say that the nanny DOES speak English fluently,
since Anita speaks Chinese fluently. (which seems to be escaping some
in this thread)

Ah -point taken. I hadn't realized that Anita spoke Chinese fluently,
and certainly wouldn't have guessed from her name. I also just assumed
that she was posting from the US, and therefore was relatively unlikely
to speak Chinese.

--
Emily
mom to Toby 5/1/02
#2 EDD 7/19/04

"Hillary Israeli" wrote in message
...
In ,
Tine Andersen wrote:

*You are right - I checked my vocabulary - it's 'black'. Was negro a
bad word
*35 years ago? (read: when I learnt the word) Words tend to change
meaning

Well, I'm only almost-34 so I can't really say what was going on 35
years
ago . That being said, the word "Negro" went out of favor, so I'm
told,
when the Black Panthers were raising a fuss about it in the 1960s.
It was
in 1967 that the US government body in charge of place names
(whoever they
are) changed the word N*gger to "Negro" in a bunch of place names,
though.
So it was still being used in that sense then. I wouldn't have
characterized the word "negro" as a "bad word" even now, though!

When I was growing up, we had a part-time housekeeper, a middle aged
black
woman from the south, relatively uneducated, and she always told me
"I'se
happy bein' colored, I'se happy bein' Negro, don' know why they
wanna make
me be black and REALLY don' know 'bout this African bidness. I'se
American, ain't I?" Seriously. That's what she used to say. I have
always
remembered that.

Every once in a while I'll talk with some of my black friends or
co-workers about the issue of what black people want to be called,
and I
have to say not one single person has ever said the word Negro is in
any
way offensive. The only word that seems to **** people off around
here is
n*gger. Black seems to be the most popular among people uner 60
though .
Almost uniformly, "African-American" is scorned, belittled, and
ridiculed!
This is among more highly educated people, though. I have no idea
what the
urban poor think of "African-American."


It must be regional.
1. Colored is the term used by most black people above age 60
2..Negro isn't offensive, but is old fashioned and w/in the black
community does
have some negative connotations re- "Uncle Tom" and all.
3.African-American isn't universally scorned by educated
African-Americans,but it is
the more formal term, used mostly in formal situations or in writing.
3

Emily wrote:

Dawn Lawson wrote:

Sorry gotta jump in here. The inference wasn't "reads Chinese therefore
doesn't speak English fluently" but rather "reads only Chinese therefore
probably doesn't speak English fluently". I suspect it's very rare for
someone who is literate in one language (esp. one that requires learning
3000+ individual characters for literacy) to speak another language
very fluently without being able to read it (esp. one that has a
[roughly] sound-based writing system).


I don't suspect it's rare at all, but YMMV. However, I don't think
there's been anything to say that the nanny DOES speak English fluently,
since Anita speaks Chinese fluently. (which seems to be escaping some
in this thread)

Ah -point taken. I hadn't realized that Anita spoke Chinese fluently,
and certainly wouldn't have guessed from her name. I also just assumed
that she was posting from the US, and therefore was relatively unlikely
to speak Chinese.


You may be making too many assumptions.

You would be surprised how many people speak Chinese in the U.S. - I am.
I keep running into them :*(.

I'm Chinese-American (with an Angelized name). In the 90s, in Northern
Virginia while trying to get a VA drivers license, the clerk (white man)
behind the counter spoke fluent Chinese. I don't. Turns out he spent
10 years in Taiwan teaching English.

At my 10th year high school reunion, a man (white) I've known since
elementary school came up to me and asked if I spoke Chinese. No.
Turns out he was now (then) fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese and had
lived in Hong Kong. In school, he was just a really nice Jewish boy who
was class president in 6th grade. Who knew?

Jeanne