July 2009

I wish I had kept all of our “packing lists” from when Sam was a baby.  Before each trip we took, we’d take almost a whole day just making a list of stuff to bring for Sam. (In the early days, I’d start the list a week ahead of time and I’d be adding things each day until we left.)  We always set aside an entire day to pack.

We still make a list, but it’s so much shorter now.  It still changes every time, though.  At first, we needed to bring dozens of baby washcloths and burp cloths, but as that need fell away, we started needing to bring baby food, spoons and bowls.  Now we don’t need to bring baby food, but we do need Sam’s toothbrush and toddler toothpaste.  Depending on where we are going, we might bring diapers for the entire trip, or we might plan to buy some at our destination.  In the past, we always had to bring Sam’s “white noise machine” which she only recently gave up, plus a CD player and CD’s, and the baby monitor.  Sometimes we might need the car seat, sometimes a stroller, and we always need the Pack ‘n Play, except when we go to Adam’s parents’ house, where they have one waiting for her.  Most of the time we bring some children’s Iboprofen, but we used to bring her whole “medical kit”  which included her baby nail clippers, an aspirator, and a thermometer.  I can’t even remember all the stuff we used to need to bring along, but I remember that it would fill a whole sheet of paper.  Now, it’s down to half a page.

Her needs change so quickly.  I think it would be fun to have a history of all the “stuff” of babyhood, and a record of how it evolved.

Maybe next time…

I recently finished listening to Susan Crawford’s Children, Parents, and Power Struggles lectures.  Susan runs a parenting e-mail list that I subscribe to called the Rational Parenting List, and these lectures were given at the 2004 Objectivist Summer Conference.

This course was a great complement to my other reading on parenting.  Much of the material Susan covers is similar to what you would find in my favorite How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk.  I’d definitely put Susan in the Positive Discipline camp, although I don’t think she uses that term.  She does give the best explanation of “consequences” that I’ve heard.  I’m paraphrasing, but she says that choices have consequences, and that consequences are logically related to the choice.  Further, natural consequences are the ones that follow automatically, while logical consequences are the ones that parents impose, but which attempt to maintain that connection between action and consequence.  So, a natural consequence of a child’s forgetting to take his lunch to school would be that he would go without that meal.  A logical consequence of a child’s not coming home on time would be for the parent to disallow him going out for a period of time, the connection being that the child can not be trusted.  I liked this distinction because I think it will help me work on consequences.  I now can always ask myself:  Is there a sufficient natural consequence for this behavior?  If not, do I need to impose a logical consequence?  It’s occurring to me as I write this that the need for logical consequences probably arises mostly in connection with social requirements.  It’s analogous to the difference between the laws of physics and the laws of man.  I’ll have to think about that more – it’s just a germ of an idea.

I did find the course to be somewhat disorganized.  I’m not good at listening without taking notes and I listened to this in the car over a few weeks, so that didn’t help.  But Susan’s outline shows that what she’s really doing is covering a range of discrete issues in the context of power struggles.  Here are just a few topics that she covers:

• Time Outs
• Picky Eaters
• Tattling
• Procrastination
• Honesty

What I found very helpful was that she gives so many examples and concrete suggestions.  She often lists off a dozen or more specific ways you can deal with a particular issue.  The presentation can be dry because of this, but I feel like many of those ideas are lurking around in my subconscious now, ready to be pulled out when the moment arises.  I suspect I’m going to listen to this course every couple of years just to restock my toolbox.

You can purchase the course from the Ayn Rand Bookstore.  I do recommend it, especially if you have more time to listen than to read, or if you are an auditory learner.  If you’re interested in signing up for the mailing list (for a small yearly fee), you can send an e-mail to rplist at aol dot com.  If I recall, Susan does allow a trial membership.

Do you remember when you were a little kid and you were sick and you missed your nap and all your friends had to go home and you fell down and scraped your knee and the whole world was just BAD?  And then your mommy took you in her arms and whispered in your ear and stroked your hair and you fell asleep because the world was just GOOD?

I can do that.