A Short Post About Love Posted by Unknown on 10/17/2009

Just wanted to mention that last week I wrote a guest post for the Baltimore Sun blog, Charm City Moms. If the controversy in the last post wasn't enough (I really didn't mean to be controversial), maybe a post about not loving my newborn son will do.

The short version of the post--and I hope you read it there and comment either there or back here, or both--is that the one thing the classes and the books and well-meaning parents didn't tell me was that I might not fall in love with my baby.

I think it's an important issue that should be talked about more, and whether or not my writing did any justice to this issue, well, at least now it's out there. And if someone stumbles upon this post or the one in the Sun, then at least they know they're not alone.

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My Neighbor Spanks Her Child Posted by Unknown on 10/06/2009 32 comments

So we don't live in the best area in the world. Not even the best area in North-West Baltimore. This might be all the background you need to guess our neighbors' 2-year-old gets spanked a lot. A recent study showed a link between spanking and lower IQ, but really, there's a chicken-and-egg issue here. To be the kind of parent that spanks, you're probably not the kind of parent that spends too much time helping with homework later.

And my 22-months-old son, 6-months-younger than his neighbor, is in love. He doesn't care that she pushes him away, and he doesn't care that her hair smells like cigarettes, and he doesn't care that her mom is a heroin addict. And neither do I.

But when the girl is asked by her mom to share a toy with my son, but refuses, she gets spanked. When she pushes my son out of her way, she gets spanked. When she stands too close to the road, she gets spanked.

And I'm not talking about child abuse here. None of the spanking is done with anger, but none of it helps the girl learn either. And I don't want any of it near my son.

It's not an easy situation to start avoiding my neighbor and to stop my son from running around with his friend, but I can't deal with it anymore.

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