Confessions of a slack-jawed reader

So, a while back I read the book Confessions of a Slacker Mom. I was expecting to like it, a lot. I thought it would be sort of like, "Well, I let my kid eat at McDonald's and watch Sesame Street, and that's OK!" What do I get for having expectations? I get, "Well, I was raised a certain way, and my brothers and I turned out JUST FINE, thanks. So that's how I'm raising my children. Everyone should, really."

There are many things about this book that bother me. Here are just a few of them.

1. The author grew up on a ranch in Wyoming. She's from a ranching family, and grew up doing ranching chores on her family's ranch in Wyoming. Her ranching family did things a certain way on their ranch in Wyoming, and she and her brothers turned out just fine after growing up in a Wyoming ranching family. Did you get the part about the ranch in Wyoming? It's OK if you didn't catch it the first few times. The subject comes up frequently.

2. The author doesn't like to take or organize photos, really. Her mother wasn't really into keeping photo albums either. Therefore, women who make scrapbooks are building little shrines to their children; their scrapbooks are full of trivial and predictable content, and their children will develop an overinflated sense of importance (and be totally embarassed) when they see the scrapbooks their mothers made. Oh, but due to her personality type, she could no doubt make a wonderful scrapbook if she felt like it. But she doesn't.

3. The cardboard tube story! This one sent me into fits. As a toddler, the author's daughter found a cardboard tube from the inside of a paper towel or toilet paper roll, and began playing with it: using it as a musical instrument, looking through it, whacking a fence with it. The author seems very impressed by this, and later wonders if her daughter is a prodigy, or if she was just using her imagination to turn the cardboard tube into a toy because she wasn't overloaded with regular toys. My vote goes to, "She's a kid. They do that with cardboard tubes. Whether or not they have other toys." In my family, we even have a special name for them; we call them doodle-oos. This is because every child in my family, when presented with one of these, would put his or her mouth to one end of the tube and say, "Doodle-oodle-ooo!" or some variation of that. Generally, dancing was involved as well. We have home movies of my cousin and I dancing around on a beach with a couple of cardboard tubes. I have a picture of Boy Wonder using one as a telescope. I think it might be universal.

Anyway. Where did my point go? Oh, there it is. There seems to be no middle ground in this book. (Which I suppose is par for the course if you're coming up with a parenting philosophy. It's your philosophy; better stick to it!) The author was raised a certain way, so that's the way to do things. The author doesn't care about pictures with Santa or the Easter Bunny, so no one should. The author does not believe in praising children for doing everyday things, so all parents must save praise for carefully selected special occasions. The author doesn't buy a lot of toys for her kids...etc. And, finally, someone invented the LeapPad, so children will turn tnto dullards who can't read books for themselves.

Well, Boy Wonder has a LeapPad. He likes it; it makes fun sounds. But it hasn't turned him off of traditional books. And he sure as hell doesn't ask the LeapPad to read him a bedtime story. He asks me (and Dragon too, of course). And I will try my darndest to be there at his soccer games (or school plays, or chess matches, or whatever his activity of choice might be). I'll praise him for small things, and I might make a scrapbook or two filled with photos of him. And I'll do the same for Baby Boone, and for any other children I might have someday. I'll even buy them toys (although my relatives pretty much have that covered). Because that's how I was raised. And I like to think I turned out JUST FINE, thanks.

But I'm not about to write a book advocating that people do things my way.