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| More about the comforts and discomforts of food [message #20141] |
Thu, 03 September 2009 18:31  |
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 AJLR
Messages: 2565
Registered: September 2008
Location: England, UK |
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Robin's talking about food again
"Never let a computer know you're in a hurry."
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| Re: More about the comforts and discomforts of food [message #20142 is a reply to message #20141 ] |
Thu, 03 September 2009 18:47  |
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Black Bear
Messages: 3216
Registered: September 2008
Location: Indianapolis, IN USA |
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I didn’t get glasses till the summer before seventh grade, however. Kids can be remarkably good liars.
Oh, well done! I managed to hold out til, I think, 5th grade before they figured out that I really couldn't see a damn thing on the blackboard at school... 
Yes yes a thousand times over on Playing With Kids and Taking an Interest in Kids. As I've said here before, I see so much bad parenting on a daily basis in my job that it's horribly depressing... and I'm not talking here about truly awful abusive parents, but just the type that make it plain that they aren't INTERESTED in their kids, that they don't find them FUN or ENTERTAINING in the slightest. After considerable time spent working in zoos and museums, I can pretty reliably tell the difference between a parent who is having a bad day and is tired of their kid Right Then, and a parent who just doesn't ever think of their kid as being a person--you know? Those parents have a kind of "whatever, are you done yet, come ON, we need to eat/meet up with dad/ride the carousel/go home," attitude that has to convey volumes to the kid on a daily basis that they are not Important. GRAH. Makes a bear angry.
[Updated on: Thu, 03 September 2009 18:47]
"The time is always right to do what's right."--MLK Jr.
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| Re: More about the comforts and discomforts of food [message #20143 is a reply to message #20141 ] |
Thu, 03 September 2009 20:13 |
librarykat
Messages: 566
Registered: October 2008
Location: Redneck Riviera |
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As a librarian in public libraries, I have also seen the parents totally disconnected from their kids. One CAN have a career and have kids and spend time with them. I've managed it, and I have to think that if I can, and I'm fairly obsessive about my work, then everyone should. Of course, that isn't necessarily true, which is sad.
I've always made time to spend with my sons, I've taken vacation time from work in order to do school things with them - drive a carload of kids to the aquarium, be a science fair judge, etc.
Because of my part time job as a school librarian, I do my best to give all the kids at school as much love as I can. I try to be the friendly, caring nonparent adult. I also did that as a public librarian, and I hope to God I made at least a little difference in some young person's life. Kids matter. A LOT. All kids.
Oh, and for glasses, I got them after 3rd grade. We had vision tests in school, and I knew I flunked, so I didn't tell my parents; the school sent a notice home on the last day of school. Been wearing glasses ever since.
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| Re: More about the comforts and discomforts of food [message #20145 is a reply to message #20141 ] |
Thu, 03 September 2009 20:35 |
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Brynne
Messages: 34
Registered: October 2008
Location: Washington State |
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See, but here's my problem with that article you just linked: it's making food and exercise a morality issue, and I don't hold with that. I think the issue is less that people are lazy than that their lives are so full of obligations that they're TIRED ALL THE TIME, because our Western lifestyles are cramjampacked and most people don't have hellhounds to encourage them. 
I had very bad sophomore and junior years of high school during which I tried and managed to whittle my naturally curvy self down to something that, while not "too thin" by medical standards, was too thin for ME. After a year of eating unsustainably little, I realized I was making myself miserable and started eating marginally more...but exercised like 14-21 hours per week. I was "burning off" every calorie I consumed and even so in the next six months I found myself back at the 'set point' my body decreed for me, thirty pounds higher than I wanted.
I'm now a Freshman in college and over last summer I made the decision to stop exercising unless I really wanted to...I gradually stopped running (killed my knees anyway) and finally dropped the competitive tennis that tied me up in knots. It's been a month and a half and I haven't put one more weight, even eating more than I have since I was fifteen....
For someone with a background like mine, exercise doesn't have any positive feedback, just an instinctual mental calculation about calories in vs. out...and my main problem with articles like this is that they were the sort of thing that convinced my 15'year'old self that the only reason I wasn't happy with the me in the mirror was because I was too lazy to change it. And I was lucky; my self-imposed diet definitely involved consuming less-than-healthily limited amounts of food, but it never became a full-blown eating disorder. But articles about weight loss and exercise make me nervous because they can tempt people into believing they have more control over their figures than they do....
DON'T FORGET TO BE AWESOME!
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| Re: More about the comforts and discomforts of food [message #20156 is a reply to message #20141 ] |
Fri, 04 September 2009 04:29 |
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Diane in MN
Messages: 2729
Registered: October 2008
Location: Twin Cities, MN, USA |
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And another argument against the Tyranny of the Scales. You’re much better off noticing how your clothes hang on you. As you get fitter—and here, finally, is a guarantee—your clothes will decorate you much more pleasingly. So pleasingly, indeed, that you may have to go out and buy more.
This is absolutely true. I have a scale and use it, but the Trousers Test is the best indicator around. I tell people that I don't eat lunch because I want my pants to fit, plain and simple.
It makes me crazy that the default corporate/workplace attitude is—still—that kids are something you do in your spare time and they don’t want to hear about it.
Yes, the corporate environment is not family-friendly, and I think it's worse now that people have cell phones and BlackBerries and are accessible any time, anywhere. "Spare time" is in danger of disappearing, too.
Because I have to save some calories for Green & Black’s, port blueberry bread, brownie shortbread, etc.
Especially etc.
"The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough . . . " Louise Erdrich
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| Re: More about the comforts and discomforts of food [message #20157 is a reply to message #20141 ] |
Fri, 04 September 2009 09:11 |
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I got glasses when I was 9, switched to contacted when I was 20-something, lost 2 pairs and gave up in frustration. I don't mind them; they work. My face looks funny without them. I've worn glasses ever since, only taking them off when I go to bed. I've conditioned myself so that when I take them off, I automatically fall asleep.
Scar
"People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around."
T.P.
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| Re: More about the comforts and discomforts of food [message #20158 is a reply to message #20141 ] |
Fri, 04 September 2009 09:34 |
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blondviolinist
Messages: 1068
Registered: October 2008
Location: Midwestern United States |
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What Robin and other forumites have said about the importance of loving children and spending time with them "as if" they were real people: yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes!
My mother, from whom I have learned more than I can say about how to treat children, says "Children are becoming adults. They are not becoming human. They already are human." Sigh. I *so* wish teachers and parents would *get* this. Their children are wonderful, fragile people. If your child is frustrating to you at times... well, heaven knows you're frustrating to the people around you from time to time.
I'm frustrated at the moment because I cannot find that brilliant C. S. Lewis quote about parents often treating their own children far more rudely than they'd ever treat an outright enemy.
Re: glasses/contact lenses. Yep, had 'em by grade 2. Like Jodi, I didn't realize this was something I should try to hide. If I'd tried to hide it 'till grade 5, I'd have been bumping into trees.
[Updated on: Fri, 04 September 2009 09:35]
"Purity of heart is to will one thing." Kirkegaard
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| Re: More about the comforts and discomforts of food [message #20159 is a reply to message #20141 ] |
Fri, 04 September 2009 12:33 |
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Mrs Redboots
Messages: 943
Registered: October 2008
Location: London, UK |
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| Robin wrote, in reply to my saying I'd dropped around 30 lbs or more since the end of the menopause: |
I am praying my experience of after menopause is going to be like yours: I doubt that this is one of the guaranteed outcomes.
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And I must confess that I eat massively less now than I did then! Have downgraded portion sizes considerably (if you do this slowly, you honestly don't notice, but really only a few grammes a week), and TRY not to eat when I'm not hungry. Keeping a food journal helps, too. And these days, I'd really rather have half a slice of cake than a whole one.... it's largely a matter of habit.
E.T.A. I, too, have worn glasses since I was about 6. My daughter has worn them since she was about 3. She wears contact lenses most of the time now; I only do for skating and the occasional party as otherwise I have to faff about with reading-glasses and sunglasses, and I'd really rather wear my all-in-one-glasses!
[Updated on: Fri, 04 September 2009 12:34]
Mrs Redboots
I love my computer because my friends live in it!
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| Re: More about the comforts and discomforts of food [message #20161 is a reply to message #20145 ] |
Fri, 04 September 2009 15:16 |
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| Brynne wrote on Fri, 04 September 2009 02:35 |
I had very bad sophomore and junior years of high school during which I tried and managed to whittle my naturally curvy self down to something that, while not "too thin" by medical standards, was too thin for ME. After a year of eating unsustainably little, I realized I was making myself miserable and started eating marginally more...but exercised like 14-21 hours per week. I was "burning off" every calorie I consumed and even so in the next six months I found myself back at the 'set point' my body decreed for me, thirty pounds higher than I wanted.
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Brynne, good for you for accepting yourself and being healthy!
I spent from 16 - 23 exercising myself into the floor too, because I wanted to look model thin. When I finally let my body decide what weight it wanted and which exercise I gained some and STOPPED at that point. I think that our bodies have a 'natural' weight. We'll get there and stay there if we can live naturally. (but living naturally in this society is a challenge)
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| Re: More about the comforts and discomforts of food [message #20208 is a reply to message #20198 ] |
Sat, 05 September 2009 19:12 |
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Julia
Messages: 531
Registered: October 2008
Location: Library School |
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| Robin wrote on Sat, 05 September 2009 18:39 |
Yes, I was a tree-bumper too . . . but I was such a DREAMY child, you know . . . always off in her own little world. . . .
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Well me too. That's [partly] why I still wander into doors and trees and other difficult objects that simply insist on jumping into my path.
My mother still thinks that I am off in my own world, and, to her way of thinking, far too often... which is often true- my reality diverges from her's fairly frequently. I survive on books, on the wonders of story, while she is practical and scientific.
It is a good thing, though. Usually.
Makes life interesting, when I will come wandering in out of a fog, book clutched tightly in hand, still in that semi-dazed state that captures one upon the completion of a [good] story, only to be met with solid realities that must be dealt with... especially now that the semester has begun and I am back at school.
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| Re: More about the comforts and discomforts of food [message #20225 is a reply to message #20143 ] |
Sun, 06 September 2009 11:47 |
celticengineer
Messages: 8
Registered: October 2008
Location: Cincinnati |
Junior Member |
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Regarding Nandalia,
Each of us can remember being a child, and the shortcomings of our parents, in razor-sharp detail. The interesting thing is - when you get to be a parent -there's a whole new perspective, and you generally find out that you know a lot less about being a parent than before you had actual, you, know, kids.
Yes, I love mine and take care of them and make them do all the things they might not select if left to their own devices. (Think homework, bedtime). Yes, I get very tired of being taken so completely for granted, of cleaning up the mess again and again and again, of being the Responsible Parent and Party-Pooper, but that's the nature of the job.
Parents do not always treat their parents with the same courtesy and respect they would give a colleague or friend - true - but kids treat their parents with so much self-centricity, freeloading, evasion, bizarre demands that you would not tolerate for five minutes in a colleague or friend. (You probably don't remember that you did that. You did, I did, we all did.) That's the nature of kids, and it's part of our task to socialize them out of it by the time they leave home- to help them grow up -and it's really, really hard graft. (Whine completed).
If you disapprove of the bad temper of a parent herding children, why not offer to help?
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| Re: More about the comforts and discomforts of food [message #20238 is a reply to message #20225 ] |
Sun, 06 September 2009 18:08 |
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| celticengineer wrote on Sun, 06 September 2009 11:47 |
If you disapprove of the bad temper of a parent herding children, why not offer to help?
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Heh, in my experience, people don't usually respond well to unsolicited advice/help. Usually just makes them angry.
Smooshes!
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| Re: More about the comforts and discomforts of food [message #20251 is a reply to message #20238 ] |
Sun, 06 September 2009 21:17 |
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Black Bear
Messages: 3216
Registered: September 2008
Location: Indianapolis, IN USA |
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And I, at least, wasn't talking about bad-tempered parents of fussy kids--I see misbehaving kids every day that I'd cheerfully toss out a window (first floor, with something soft below, of course--it's the thought that counts.) I was referring to parents who are at our museum--a children's museum--or at the zoo or at the amusement part presumably because it's a place you go to interact with your kids, and they're not interested in interacting, at all. They talk on their cell phones or to their adult friends, they tell the kids to hurry up or slow down or look-at-this-thing-but-don't-ask-me-questions-about-it... and we think, god, if there is anyplace a kid ought to be able to have some fun with their parents, we are IT, and yet that's obviously not what some parents are looking to do with their kids. Which is, frankly, sad.
Developmentally, all kids go through a phase of being completely self-centered; usually this lasts from age 2 to age 5 or so. It's necessary, that's how they learn to define themselves and the rest of the world. And yeah, it's the parent's job to ride it out and (hopefully) ensure that phase does END, and that the kid learns empathy and manners and all that good stuff. Parents are key to the growing-up process, absolutely. But talking to your kid, really listening to your kid, and interacting with your kid in a positive way--those are skills that not all parents bother to develop, and the sad part is that some of those kids probably don't even know what they're missing.
"The time is always right to do what's right."--MLK Jr.
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