I'm Mad as Hell and I'm Not Gonna Take it Anymore! Sorta!

Yesterday the ever-thoughtful and balanced Amber had a post up on leashing your child. For safety, not, you know, just for kicks. A commenter posted a link to another post on using a leash for the purpose of not letting your kid hurl him/herself into traffic. A couple of the commenters to that post really spiked my blood pressure.

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I don't like confrontation. It makes me dizzy and sweaty. I also try not to be too judgemental. I'm a firm believer in not thinking you can judge a person until you've walked a mile in their leopard-skinned boots or socks and sandals. Over the past few years, though, I'm realizing that there is a limit to tolerance. There's a difference between not being judgemental and being a wussy push-over who has no opinions. Following different religions is not something I have a problem with. But honour killings are wrong. Being passionate about your culture is great. But cutting off someone else's hands and/or feet because they belong to a different culture is wrong. Denying education to women is wrong.
One of the smaller-scale things that I'm not going to just shut up and fume quietly about is a small subset of 'attachment parenters' who not only refuse to feed their children with bottles, vaccinate their children, let their babies sleep in cribs or do anything that might be construed as discipline -- that's their right, although if you don't vaccinate your child won't be playing with mine -- but also feel justified in telling other parents that they are at the very least neglectful and lazy, and at the worst abusive, if they don't do the same.

One comment said "Leashing a child is wrong -- period". Oh, nothing like that little construction to make the top of my head blow right off. It reminds me of a letter to the editor in the Ottawa Citizen which read "Breast is best -- period." Oh really? Even when you have an inadequate milk supply and your child is starving? What if you have to undergo chemotherapy? What if breastfeeding gives you debilitating migraines so you can either nurse your child or do everything else for them?

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I've always said that nothing terrifies me so much in a person as certainty. People who are absolutely convinced that they are right, not an eyelash's width of room for doubt -- these are the people who, under certain circumstances, strap bombs to themselves and go in search of virgins in paradise. Under other circumstances, they just really bring down a playgroup. There are so very few things that I would add '--period' to -- I can't believe how some people fling it around. Leashing a child is wrong -- period? More wrong than a child running in front of a car or getting irretrievably lost in a department store, causing hours of distress for the mother and the child? Leashing is treating a child like a dog? Sorry, but is that a really bad thing? Most of the pets I know are treated like royalty. Their leashes are a matter of safety too, not a device for humiliation and punishment. The rest of the comment reads "children are meant to be free and parents are their to protect but not stiffle (sic) them". Um, sorry, but have you possibly confused children with African lions or bald eagles? Because my experience has been that children are born with no sense of empathy or self-protection, and I'm here to help them learn those things. Do you send your one-year-old out to forage for dinner? Do you use a car seat, or does letting them ping-pong around the back seat engender more of a sense of freedom? Bike helmets can be sweaty and uncomfortable -- forget those, I guess.

Here's another one: "Why can't you parents keep a hold on your children without a leash? Generations grew up just fine without them. I say it's the parents not wanting to stay on alert all the time, not that kids run. Put a leash on your child and you can continue your conversation with your friends or shop without ever having to think about your child." That's right. All you parents who said your children run away? You're just big fat flat-out liars. And generations grew up just fine without them? What does that even mean? I'd venture a guess that toddler mortality rates are lower right now than they were generations ago. Sure, that MIGHT be because of better nutrition and medical care, but how do you know it's not the leashes? Chew on that, toots. And let's just examine the assumption that wanting to be able to finish a sentence or reach up to the top shelf to get a box of detergent without worrying about your child disappearing makes you a selfish, horrible person.

In the spirit of honesty, most of the comments for both posts were positive. I'm just at the point where I'm ready to say live and let live; you have a God-given right to your own opinion; you have God-given right to go home and talk about me behind my back to your husband about you think whatever I was doing today was loony; but if you want to spout vitriolic nonsense where I will see it, about how not following your every parental tenet makes me a bad mother, and expect me to just slink away, just because that's basically what I've done for the last thirty-nine-and-a-half years? Not gonna happen. I will seek you out and challenge you to a slap-fight. Well, not really, but I will come down on your head with the full weight of my many-adjectived rhetoric, you pusillanimous sanctimonious poop-heads.

There. That was invigorating. I'm going upstairs for Maalox now.