Sunday, March 29, 2009

Nuances

Kids are somewhat literal. Ahem.

We invited some new friends to come over for lunch after church today.
Of course, when someone is coming over the boys have two standard and immediate questions:

Who is coming? and
Do they have kids?
The second question being the more pressing.

I'm trying to teach the boys to be good hosts; to think of activities that might interest our guests, whom I've only observed in church. So I started my Mom-ologue by explaining that the boy and girl are both a bit older than Wyatt (12) and seem very calm and quiet. Possibly even shy. Like, hint hint... they're probably not going to want to have plastic light-saber duels, fir-cone wars, or certain other things my boys find entertaining.

The second the words calm and quiet left my mouth Gunnar piped up, "Oh. So they're not our type, Mom."

Friends, if you ever read this, please know that our kids enjoyed your kids and would like to play with them again (!) and that Gunnar meant only that they are Not Like Us, as opposed to Not Liked BY Us.

3 comments:

Mary said...

Hi, Julie! I left a comment on Taunya's blog about how you remind me of my girl scout leaders -- they were not the tea party type, but were wonderful wives and mothers who always had time for us even though they had many children. Their girls were in the scout troops and their husbands watched the other children. They taught us about camping and nature and animal care and crafts and all sorts of good things. I admired them.

Oh, the light sabers! My younger son is 19 and still loves that stuff!

It reminded me of when we lived on an Air Force base. These two little girls lived next door and snubbed my boys. So (and this is awful), my husband took our boys to the BX and bought them two toy machine guns and had them chase the girls with them, going rat-a-tat-tat.

The girls were screaming, their long blond hair flying out behind them. Their mother came over and complained and said she couldn't see how we could be Christians and let our boys play with guns.

My husband goes, "What do you mean? We are in the military! Your husband is a paid killer and so am I!"

(Does this mean we are bad?)

Herding Grasshoppers said...

Oh that's funny! One of our hippy-pacifist neighbors is critical of the boys for shooting SQUIRT GUNS at each other!

Good grief!

Glad you had a good girl scout experience. My concern with some of the things Taunya was mentioning was that women and girls will be alienated from Christianity if they are made to feel like "good Christian females all..." and then tack on something that is outside the Biblical description of a godly woman. Even if it may be something good. Some women like tea parties and cross-stitch, some (godly) women like camping and sailing. :0)

Mary said...

Yeah, to tell you the truth, even though I am the tea party type, I get tired of all of those pictures of indolent ladies in lace dresses reading a book, from the 1800's on peoples' blogs. I mean, you would have to have a servant (a ladies' maid) dedicated just to laundering and ironing those dresses, and buttoning you up in them! You can bet that women in the 1800's who actually dressed like that had tutors for their children to teach them at home, hired wet-nurses and nannies and gardeners and cooks and maids.

Funny. What an unrealistic picture is being put forth for Christian women. Maybe it is an over the top reaction against womens' lib. I don't know.

I once made an innocent comment about how I don't really like to cook (I do it, and have gotten somewhat good at it over the years, out of necessity) and sometimes use packaged dinners.

Well, I get these e-mails from these young ladies asking me if they are really poisoning their families by using packaged meals once in a while.

They are living in cramped apartments with husbands who make minimum wage, no extended family support, paying off college bills, and finding managing one child difficult.

Then they are told by some of these ladies on blogs (who live in large homes out in the country, educations that were paid for by their parents, extended family support, healthy bodies, older children to help, experience teaching and raising children, etc.,) that they have to have 15 children and homeschool all of them, and give birth at home, farm, grind flour to bake their own bread, etc. (Not that any of these things are wrong in themselves; they have an appeal for lots of women.)

It puts burdens on young ladies, but nobody lifts a finger to help. They are told, "Just trust God!" Kind of like, "Be ye warmed and filled." (James)

Reminds me of the extremist word of faith teachings that tell people to throw away their medicine and "just trust God."

Anyway, it is an abuse of influence. Glad you are no influenced by people like that. Not every aspect of homemaking appeals to everybody.

I told my husband that so many of these blog ladies say they are trying to encourage younger ladies, but the end up discouraging them instead. He said, "They are not trying to encourage ladies. They are trying to set ladies straight!"

Overall, I thought Taunya's blog was great.