The Preschool Times

I hope you found the last few postings on Crime and Punishment – oh excuse me, I mean Discipline verses Punishment helpful for your daily life. I think the key points are to maintain a calm attitude and be consistent. Of course, when you apply the techniques consistently you should have a “picture perfect” family.

During my incessant news surfing, I happened upon a very funny posting in the N.Y. Times titled “Framing Childhood” by Virginia Heffernan.

Ms. Heffernan’s premise is that from a sociological point of view children are bred to furnish us with subjects for digital photographs. The moment a child comes into this world it is photographed and the image is e-mailed to friends and family. The first photo often takes place before the baby has even left for the nursery.

From that point forward every event is photographed, edited, and placed in a formatted composition for public viewing. Parents spend endless hours:  cropping, removing red eyes, and changing the background composition of their child’s photos. They spend so much time on the computer there is little time left for interacting with their child.

Now understand that Ms. Heffernan’s blog is written for profit and her humorous depiction of modern life has a purpose. Its purpose is to imbed appropriate links to her paid sponsors. But her tongue in cheek humor does touch upon some truths. The life depicted in photos is nothing like our real lives.  Our children do not sit quietly, dress sweetly or behave appropriately at all times. It is inviting to think that our lives could be like the ones in the pictures but alas, it is not.

Real life is messy. It is filled with spilled milk, pushy siblings, and threats to turn the car around. Oft times the only time it even comes close to resembling the idyllic life pictured in our photos is when our children are asleep! Real life cannot be cropped, edited, reformatted or gotten the red eye out of! The real danger lies in believing that it can.

Every year I meet the “picture perfect family” and those around them envy them. When you look under the surface you will find they have the similar issues to all of us. They yell when they should be calm, they rush their children when they shouldn’t over schedule, and they have issues in their marriages just like all of us. Every day we get up with the intention to be that picture perfect family and every day we fall a little short. Real life is not perfect it was never meant to be. The purpose of life is to learn and grow.

But for now I am going to load some pictures into my Iphoto. I need to edit some of my life and get the red out.

Peace & Light,

Grace