One Hot Mama

Vent time, beware! I was recently told that I was not carrying on the correct way of handling my two year old. Any good parent who has received that kind of feedback will tell you in a heartbeat there is not faster way to get a mama's blood boiling than with an offhand remark like that. It has been weighing on me ever since the comment took place. Especially since the unfortunate individual who gave me the parental review was not such a fantastic parent themselves. I stewed for a while about the comment and that led me to confront the individual again to see why exactly they had that perception of my parenting. You want to know what the reason was? Because I am a woman. Now I'm not some bra burning feminist by any means. I hold on to some of the values the 1940's wives gave us. I stay at home with my son. I take care of the house. When my husband is in the country he is always greeted with a hot homemade meal for dinner. I do the majority of the house cleaning. And I am okay with all of this. Simply because my husband is the bread winner. He works his ass off fighting for the country and the least I can do for him is to maintain the household. Don't get me wrong, he helps me with the cleaning and our son. I don't walk three paces behind him or take his boots off and rub his feet or anything, but for the most part I enjoy my role as a housewife and I do the job with a smile on my face. My husband has been gone for the better part of two years with training and deployments so it has been up to me to take care of our son full time. Because of that my son takes on some of the things I do, but he is by no means feminine. He is a rough and tumble boy who likes to wrestle and only sheds a tear if something is broken or bleeding. He is also a typical two year old toddler. He is a good kid, but as any parent that was present for more than five minutes will tell you, terrible two's are a bitch. I don't care how strict you are with punishment and rules, if you're kid is that young you are bound to have mishaps. I will be the first to tell you that I am not soft on my son. I instill in him very strict discipline. When he is bad he gets timeouts or spanked according to the severety of the situation. When the comment about my parenting was initially made, it was a poke at the lack of discipline my child receives. Let me tell you now, this occured in a public place. Parents face so much scruitny because today's generation doesn't believe in spanking. For that reason I refuse to do that in public. (see my post crime and punishment) I would rather let my child have a tantrum in a public place than have DSS up my ass because I popped my son on his diapered butt. I know you moms out there are giving me some amens right about now. But I digress. The comment was made and then later reinforced that the disciple was not present because I am a woman and I make my child soft and I'm a bad person for doing so. Excuse my while I extricate my extremely feminine 7 1/2 out of this person's ass. The point being, I would love for someone to challenge me on the way I raise my son. He is very smart, as well behaved as he can be, and he knows who his mom is. Unlike said accuser, I am involved with my child's life in every way and nothing anybody can say is going to change how I do things. I know that I should not take to heart someone who is a joke as a parent giving me critiques but it really has been weighing on me. From all of this, I have to commend my mom. I get a small taste of what it was like for her raising my brother and myself by herself and I respect her so much for it. I think some people would be in a better position to do the same. And before you open your ignorant mouth, you should remember that you were not there for your kids so the original effect of your words missed the target since they did not come from a place of experience, but a place of bitterness and hypocrisy.