Another post that I received by email. In this crappy economy, it is easy to fall into a downward spiral when thinking about all the costs associated with a child, but the endless smiles make it worth every penny!
The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 and came up with $160,140.00 for a middle income family. Talk about price shock! That doesn't even touch college tuition.
But $160,140.00 isn't so bad if you break it down. It translates into:
* $8,896.66 a year,
* $741.38 a month,
* $171.08 a week.
* A mere $24.24 a day! Just over a dollar an hour.
Still, you might think the best financial advice is; don't have children if you want to be 'rich.' Actually, it is just the opposite.
What do you get for your $160,140.00?
* Naming rights. First, middle, and last!
* Glimpses of God every day.
* Giggles under the covers every night.
* More love than your heart can hold.
* Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs.
* Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies.
* A hand to hold usually covered with jelly or chocolate.
* A partner for blowing bubbles and flying kites.
* Someone to laugh yourself silly with, no matter what the boss said or how your stocks performed that day.
For $160,140.00, you never have to grow up. You get to:
* finger-paint,
* carve pumpkins,
* play hide-and-seek,
* catch lightning bugs,
* never stop believing in Santa Claus.
You have an excuse to:
* keep reading the Adventures of Piglet and Pooh,
* watch Saturday morning cartoons,
* go to Disney movies, and
* wish on stars.
You get to frame rainbows, hearts, and flowers under refrigerator magnets and collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas, hand prints set in clay for Mother's Day, and cards with backward letters for Father's Day.
For a mere $24.24 a day, there is no greater bang for your buck. You get to be a hero just for:
* retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof,
* taking the training wheels off a bike,
* removing a splinter,
* filling a wading pool,
* coaxing a wad of gum out of bangs, and
* coaching a baseball team that never wins but always gets treated to ice cream regardless.
You get a front row seat in history to witness the:
* First step,
* First word,
* First bra,
* First date,
* First time behind the wheel.
You get to be immortal. You get another branch added to your family tree, and if you're lucky, a long list of limbs in your obituary called grandchildren and great grandchildren. You get an education in psychology, nursing, criminal justice, communications, and human sexuality that no college can match.
In the eyes of a child, you rank right up there under God. You have all the power to heal a boo-boo, scare away the monsters under the bed, patch a broken heart, police a slumber party, ground them forever, and love them without limits, so one day they will, like you, love without counting the cost. That is quite a deal for the price!
Children are the best investment you'll ever make!
Received by email
Raising Children
by Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author
All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief.
I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast.Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like.
Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.
Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon, and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages, dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, and finally what the women on the playground, and the well-meaning relations -- well what they taught me was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.
Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything.
One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2.
When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome.
To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow.
I remember 15 years ago pouring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.
Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made.They have all been enshrined in the "Remember-When-Mom-Did " Hall of Fame.The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs.The times the baby fell off the bed.The times I arrived late for preschool pickup.The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp.The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, "What did you get wrong?" (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?
But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1.
And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night.
I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.
Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top.
And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity.
That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me awhile to figure out who the experts were.
by Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author
All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief.
I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast.Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like.
Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.
Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon, and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages, dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, and finally what the women on the playground, and the well-meaning relations -- well what they taught me was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.
Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything.
One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2.
When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome.
To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow.
I remember 15 years ago pouring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.
Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made.They have all been enshrined in the "Remember-When-Mom-Did " Hall of Fame.The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs.The times the baby fell off the bed.The times I arrived late for preschool pickup.The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp.The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, "What did you get wrong?" (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?
But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1.
And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night.
I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.
Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top.
And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity.
That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me awhile to figure out who the experts were.
It's Official
My committee has agreed on a defense date. The big day will be Monday, April 20th at 10am. I don't know whether to cry, vomit, or jump up and down with excitement. I should probably just skip all that and get straight to writing.
Leave a comment, people!
I've always been one of those people who enjoys receiving mail. To this day, when my sister and I are both at my parent's house when the mail arrives we fight over who gets to go get it. Ummm...neither of us live there anymore, and I'm fairly certain that none of said mail belongs to either one of us. Still, the excitement of "getting the mail" remains. My mother-in-law calls this the "mail" gene (my father-in-law has it too). Although, it apparently wasn't passed down to Andrew. Before we lived together, I'd find piles and piles of mail sitting on the kitchen table when I'd come for a visit. The least he could do is get the junk mail to the trash can, but that doesn't happen either.
So, my point in all of this...receiving blog comments is just as exciting as receiving mail. Even more so probably because I'm not likely to discover any bills! So, if you're coming to be entertained reading about my exciting life, then leave something to entertain me too.
So, my point in all of this...receiving blog comments is just as exciting as receiving mail. Even more so probably because I'm not likely to discover any bills! So, if you're coming to be entertained reading about my exciting life, then leave something to entertain me too.
I have WMD
That's Worried Mothers Disease.
Symptoms: Asking yourself questions like, "Why isn't my child awake yet? Did the peas he ate for the first time yesterday cause a silent allergic reaction in the middle of the night? Was there a piece of plastic in the peas container that he had somehow swallowed without pain, but now is causing his stomach to bleed? Am I playing with my child enough? What if I am playing with him too much? I should be talking to him more, but what do I say? What if he's not smart because I didn't talk enough/play enough/played too much and didn't let him be independent?"
Onset: Symptoms typically occur shortly after the birth of one's first child; however, some patients may notice symptoms immediately after a positive pregancy test.
Treatment: There is no known cure for WMD. Some fathers have found success treating their ailing WMD wives with a straight jacket and tranquilizer. Lots of alcohol might also do the trick, but this won't help those breastfeeding with WMD.
As of 6:30 this morning, I officially self-diagnosed myself with WMD. Last night we went to another ASU baseball game. This makes four games that Caleb has attended since Thursday, with one more planned for later today. He's been such a champ and everyone loves him. We've gotten off of his bedtime schedule a bit, and we weren't quite sure how that would affect his sleep. The past few days, it hadn't affected things at all. No matter what time we get him home and into bed, he still wakes up at 5:00am. This was getting a bit frustrating for Andrew and I since we were getting less and less sleep. Last night we got home from the game, gave him a bath, gave him a talk about sleeping until at least 6am, nursed him, and got him to sleep just before 10pm. At 10:20, I was ripped from my sleep to my child crying in pain. I still don't know what the cause of that was, but I checked his diaper and nursed him back to sleep. The first time I heard him after that was shortly after 5am. I thought for sure he'd be up for the day, but not another peep was uttered. A little after 6am, the loudest emergency vehicle I've ever heard came barreling down the street adjacent to our house. Andrew and I were again ripped from sleep, but not a peep from Caleb. Of course, at that point I couldn't go back to sleep, my mind filled with worry from the dreaded WMD. I begged Andrew to let me go check on him, but being the level headed dad that he is, he assured me that Caleb was fine. Oh, and if he wasn't fine, what was I going to be able to do about it? Thanks, that made me feel so much better. Fortunately, Andrew was right (as usual) and everything was fine. Caleb finally woke up around 7:15 this morning. Oh, how I'd love it if this were the start of a new "sleeping in" trend!
Symptoms: Asking yourself questions like, "Why isn't my child awake yet? Did the peas he ate for the first time yesterday cause a silent allergic reaction in the middle of the night? Was there a piece of plastic in the peas container that he had somehow swallowed without pain, but now is causing his stomach to bleed? Am I playing with my child enough? What if I am playing with him too much? I should be talking to him more, but what do I say? What if he's not smart because I didn't talk enough/play enough/played too much and didn't let him be independent?"
Onset: Symptoms typically occur shortly after the birth of one's first child; however, some patients may notice symptoms immediately after a positive pregancy test.
Treatment: There is no known cure for WMD. Some fathers have found success treating their ailing WMD wives with a straight jacket and tranquilizer. Lots of alcohol might also do the trick, but this won't help those breastfeeding with WMD.
As of 6:30 this morning, I officially self-diagnosed myself with WMD. Last night we went to another ASU baseball game. This makes four games that Caleb has attended since Thursday, with one more planned for later today. He's been such a champ and everyone loves him. We've gotten off of his bedtime schedule a bit, and we weren't quite sure how that would affect his sleep. The past few days, it hadn't affected things at all. No matter what time we get him home and into bed, he still wakes up at 5:00am. This was getting a bit frustrating for Andrew and I since we were getting less and less sleep. Last night we got home from the game, gave him a bath, gave him a talk about sleeping until at least 6am, nursed him, and got him to sleep just before 10pm. At 10:20, I was ripped from my sleep to my child crying in pain. I still don't know what the cause of that was, but I checked his diaper and nursed him back to sleep. The first time I heard him after that was shortly after 5am. I thought for sure he'd be up for the day, but not another peep was uttered. A little after 6am, the loudest emergency vehicle I've ever heard came barreling down the street adjacent to our house. Andrew and I were again ripped from sleep, but not a peep from Caleb. Of course, at that point I couldn't go back to sleep, my mind filled with worry from the dreaded WMD. I begged Andrew to let me go check on him, but being the level headed dad that he is, he assured me that Caleb was fine. Oh, and if he wasn't fine, what was I going to be able to do about it? Thanks, that made me feel so much better. Fortunately, Andrew was right (as usual) and everything was fine. Caleb finally woke up around 7:15 this morning. Oh, how I'd love it if this were the start of a new "sleeping in" trend!
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