{"id":363,"date":"2008-03-07T16:19:07","date_gmt":"2008-03-08T00:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/07\/its-possible-and-not-even-that-hard\/"},"modified":"2008-03-07T16:20:35","modified_gmt":"2008-03-08T00:20:35","slug":"its-possible-and-not-even-that-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/07\/its-possible-and-not-even-that-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s possible, and not even that hard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Before I became a parent, we had some strong ideas about what we would and wouldn&#8217;t do, especially as it relates to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/2005\/10\/03\/thoughts-on-gender\/\" target=\"_blank\">gender <\/a>and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/2005\/12\/29\/branding-the-baby\/\" target=\"_blank\">consumerism<\/a>. However, I always kept an open mind since I didn&#8217;t <em>really <\/em>know what it was like to be a parent. Despite being a bit shocked by the use of Baby Einstein videos by very smart friends of mine, I refrained from passing judgment, because maybe it really WAS necessary to get such a break from time to time. I kept hearing that, with a girl, there was no escaping the flood of pink princessy items, and while I hoped otherwise, I left a little mental room for it to be true just in case.<\/p>\n<p>Well. After having been through the first two years of parenting myself, I am very happy to report that NONE of that is mandatory! And honestly, it&#8217;s not that much work, either. It&#8217;s totally possible to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dress your girl in colors other than pink<\/li>\n<li>Avoid character-branded merchandise<\/li>\n<li>Avoid irritating battery-operated toys<\/li>\n<li>Give away any offensive clothing or toys you may get<\/li>\n<li>Have a young child who never watches TV or videos<\/li>\n<li>Avoid stupid children&#8217;s music and play <em>good <\/em>music for your child instead<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m very proud of the fact that Ruby has no idea who Dora the Explorer, Bob the Builder, or the Sesame Street characters are. I&#8217;m sure she&#8217;ll pick up on them eventually, when she goes to school, but there&#8217;s no need for her to know about them now. As nice and cute (and even educational) as they may seem, I never forget that they&#8217;re specifically designed to use a kid&#8217;s affection to get to their parents&#8217; wallet. Ruby has stuffed friends (a teddy bear, kitten, beluga, and doll are her favorites) who, while mass-produced, are not vanguards of a massive marketing campaign.<\/p>\n<p>The things above were easy. There are other things that we&#8217;ve done as parents that were a little more work.  Having one parent at home made it possible to do hippie things like use cloth diapers and wipes and make Ruby&#8217;s baby food from scratch. The parenting work I&#8217;m most proud of, that of helping Ruby become independent and disciplined, takes the most time and effort, but is obviously not impossible.<\/p>\n<p>I do need to acknowledge the importance of having a family that respects our wishes. It&#8217;s been so great that my parents and Steve&#8217;s parents understand our thoughts about toys and clothes and take the time to find wonderful gifts that don&#8217;t cross the line. I think it&#8217;s vital that new or expecting parents take the time to express their thoughts up front about what they think is important. We did that by writing the blog posts linked above, as well as through conversation, and I think it helped to make things clear before any gifts were given.<\/p>\n<p>I still take the open-minded approach when it comes to the future. I&#8217;m going to try to keep doing things this way as Ruby enters preschool and then elementary school, but I can&#8217;t be sure it&#8217;ll all go the way I want. All I can say for sure is: have hope, new parents &#8211; for at least the first two years, it&#8217;s possible!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before I became a parent, we had some strong ideas about what we would and wouldn&#8217;t do, especially as it relates to gender and consumerism. However, I always kept an open mind since I didn&#8217;t really know what it was like to be a parent. Despite being a bit shocked by the use of Baby [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumerism","category-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}