All I Learned in Life I Learned From the Radio
Editor's note: Hello Blog Friends! I'm Rachee from http://www.sayitrahshay.com/ and I'm putting the "GER!" in swinger baby! I'm posting on Jamie's Blog as a part of a blog swing put together by Elizabeth Norton. I am a mom to a tween (The Bee) and a library chick among other things (want to know more...shameless self promotion...see my blog for more!)
My kid is at that age where sometimes I kinda don't like her. Yup, she's a tween that in between age of young child and teenager and there are days that I am ready to throttle her and days when I just want to hug her. Lately I have been counting my blessings. I work with children daily and am proud of the person that she has become. The Bee is not perfect; she is a regular kid so I was surprised when she told me that she wanted to start watching the news.
I cannot tell a lie; as much as I pretend otherwise, in my household we can tell you more about Oprah than Obama. More about The Dougie than the debt ceiling and more about Beyonce than Boehner. We, I am a pop culture junkies and I have got it bad. It wasn't supposed to be this way; during the last presidential campaign The Bee and I we followed the campaign of Obama more faithfully than any Top Model marathon. Nightly...ish we watched the news and saw what was going on on the world and we kept a few politico type blogs in my RSS reader that we would check out in between playing The Sims and other online games. However one evening The Bee requested that we watch something on Cartoon Network, another night I got caught up in some marathon or another (I'm such a sucker) and the slowly, slowly the local news was replaced with something else, the world news was left unwatched and now I feel like I need to play catch up.
When I mentioned to The Bee that we were going to start actively watching the news, she fully exercised her tween-ness and declared that our television viewings were like the time she spent with her grandfather.
"Mom! She said, "We don't have to know EVERYTHING and besides, I'm a kid!". How can I argue with that? But I remembered that indeed I was the parent and help firm. It's been an interesting experiment. A few months ago we got rid of cable and hadn't done the digital switch thing. When I made the decision I was only focused on the saving money aspect and decreasing the amount of time we, I, spent watching crap TV. I never counted that I would miss that vital time after work spent getting a recap of the day or the chirping of Matt Lauer, Al Roker and Ann Curry in the AM.
Gah!
To fill the gap I've been listening to NPR. I reasoned something was better than nothing and I am not the biggest fan. The Bee loves Morning Edition. Go Figure! As I rush to make breakfast, slurp coffee and get the day started I keep the radio tuned to our local NPR affiliate and as I listen I've noticed that more and more The Bee is listening with me. When I am yelling at the radio, she has chimed in with an enthusiastic word of of her own. As we drive to school, work, wherever she has asked what a few things mentioned mean. We are by no means politicos but no longer are we total ignorant of current events that are not surrounded by movies and celebrities.
So far so good. At this point in time The Bee and I are by no means well versed in all things politics but we can offer an opinion of world events, can follow along with talk of the debt ceiling and have much to say about local and world events. It's a good start but I can see the tide turning. The other day as we got into the car The Bee mentioned that at The Dad's house her favorite station is a local radio station that she wanted to give a listen to. When I balked at changing the station she looked me in the eye and said, "It's OK. The news will be there later."
Oh tweens!
- Rachee
This was a guest post from Rachee. To read more from her you can find her at http://www.sayitrahshay.com/.
I am so glad you met Rachee! I am not blogging here today. I am at http://www.afatherknowsless.com/ blogging today. I hope you see me there!!!!
Man, tweens can be tough! I homeschooled my oldest until 6th grade and sent him to school because he was a handful and I had 2 or 3 (I forget so fast!) at that point. I "like" him more now that I can hold almost adult-like conversations with him. There's hope.
ReplyDeleteThanks Jamie for letting me guest post!
ReplyDeleteAh tweens, what fickle little minds they have! It's amazing that she wanted to learn as much as she did!
I think that you are living in my household and just switched out our oldest (the cellist) for your bee. I JUST did a post about this on my blog and I got a handful of comments from other moms and dads who are going through the same thing. From what I hear, it gets worse then better. LOL!
ReplyDeleteNPR, what a good idea! We went cable-less a couple of years ago but are now back to a big giant package deal that I'm starting to feel like ditching again.
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