I've been thinking

This morning I wanted to make a comment on the article in the New York Times ‘Accepting that good parents may plant bad seeds’ by Dr Richard A. Friedman (a professor at Weill Cornell Medical College of Manhattan), but there was no comment box. I wasn’t deterred; I have a blog!

Dr Friedman writes, “For years, mental health professionals were trained to see children as mere products of their environment who were intrinsically good until influenced otherwise; where there is chronic bad behavior, there must be a bad parent behind it.”

I can’t help, but think that most people who go into the mental health profession (if they were taught this and believed it) must have predominantly been either only children or from very small families who didn’t regularly go to church and interact with numerous other whole families over any length of time. I have six siblings. I’m the second child, the oldest daughter. Every week we went to church and interacted with a  group of families. I knew the families as a small child into young adulthood many of them in public and private spheres. People have always fascinated me. Over the years I watched and listened; I know good parents can have bad children. I know bad parents can have good children. I also know that good parents aren’t always as good as they think they are. [Read more…] about A comment I couldn’t make…

This evening I went to see Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I’ve had the tickets for over a month so I knew I was going (though the fact on the way there I had an anxiety attack and had to double check with my husband what day it was just to be sure I had the right date should have clued me in that trouble lay ahead). The Goblin dropped me and my friend Liz off at Tolethorpe, where they have an outdoor summer theatre and we ambled past the picnickers and sat down on this little wall. I took out my phone to take a picture of us (for the blog post I knew I’d want to do) and found my phone battery was dead. No phone. I turned to my friend and said (in complete seriousness) “I don’t know my phone number…do you know my phone number?” “No, she said, and I didn’t bring my phone either.” I had taken two calming pills right before we left, but they take at least half an hour to start working…have I mentioned I suffer from anxiety or that I regularly find myself in these sorts of situations? I do. I started to panic; I have no phone…I don’t know my own phone number and I’m several miles out of town…half a mile up a road with no lighting and no sidewalk/pavement (I’ve walked it in broad daylight-it’s dangerous) and my friend Liz is a pensioner with a cane and four broken ribs (healing). Amid the panic I somehow remembered that after I bought my wallet I’d put one of my husband’s business cards in it…because it has my address and all his phone numbers. I sighed with relief as I took out the card. I had my coin purse that for once had change in it…all I needed was a phone because the Goblin wasn’t going to come pick me up until I phoned him to tell him the play was over. [Read more…] about A Midsummer Nightmare…

As I don’t have children, possible repercussions of allowing one’s offspring to interact with one’s employer had escaped me until my sister Becky relayed an incident that happened last week. Her husband, my favorite brother-in-law, had to fly to Seattle with his boss and several co-workers for some business. They were all leaving from the boss’s house to drive up to the airport together. My sister had the idea that it would be nice to take the children over to say goodbye to their father. I forgot to ask her why they hadn’t said goodbye earlier at home. Suffice it to say there was my sister with her kids leaning out the window of the car (doutless trying to escape) when the middle child, who’s seven, shouted out to her father’s boss… [Read more…] about Truth-fairies…