Sandra Dodd

Someone had posted on her own facebook page, and I want to share it.  It’s not about who it is, at all, so if anyone knows, forget about that.  Don’t even go there.
Read it coolly and neutrally:

_________
Having to tell your kids the reason why you're a POS mom sucks!!!
#thankshumira
_________

So I read it as some drug she was taking was dragging her down (or something) so she had disappointed herself with something she had said or done (POS/piece-of-shit moment).

But some of the comments were:

"You are an amazing mama! A role model to me ❤
The best of the best”

and

"You my friend are an amazing mom! I get it!! I really wish you could see yourself through your babies eyes, your husbands eyes all of your friends eyes, through my eyes and my heart!! I get those down times but please don't judge yourself on those days. We are so much more than that!! I love you with my whole heart!!”
__________________

 I wanted to remind people of the damage that such “affirmation” can do.  It might sound find in the moment, but run yourself an analogy.

If a man wrote that he had hit his wife, should his friends say “You are an amazing husband!  A role model to me.   The best of the best”?
If a mom wrote that she had spanked her child, should someone write “I really wish you could see yourself through your babies eyes, your husbands eyes all of your friends eyes…”?


Be nice to people.  Encourage people!  But encouraging someone NOT to do better, to stop even thinking “this was not the way to be,” is not really nice, and not really encouragement.

http://sandradodd.com/support/problem

Real support should be encouragement to feel the sorrow or guilt and use it to be and do better.  Real support should be support to improve.

Sandra

bonniecrocker2003@...

It's interesting that you just posted this because it couldn't have been 5 minutes later when someone posted a meme on my facebook asking the following question: 

 When you touched a hot stove, what was your parent's reaction?  There were two pictures labeled A and B with A depicting a mom holding her crying child and B of a black male smiling/laughing that said bet you won't do that shit again, huh?  

There were already 2-3 replies such as my parents laughed until they cried and a couple of B answers, B, of course, being the correct answer.  I said that I would hope A as I wouldn't laugh at anyone's pain, adult or kid. In fact, I burned myself yesterday and my kids were very concerned about me because I mentioned it was painful.  My oldest asked if we had anything to put on it.  I also mentioned that it didn't make sense to tell anyone that they would never hurt themselves again as if anyone would purposely touch a hot stove. I said there was nothing funny about this meme.  Wrong answer.

Needless to say, the responses back were defensive.  The person who posted it not knowing I was responding and assuming it was my husband asked him if he was okay insinuating that there must be something wrong with him to post such a response.  She also said it wasn't meant as a parenting class thus indicating she was quite irritated with my answer since I was suppose to laugh and agree.

Your post actually brings up another question for me. Do you ignore these type of posts?  Give feedback? Unfriend? I share a facebook account with my husband and some of these posts come from his family or people he worked with so it's not really up to me to say anything.  There was one showing a young child being spanked hard by his mother with another pic of 3 boys looking like gang members.  It said something along the lines of if we did more of this (spanking) we would have less of this (the 3 thug looking teens) 

I would like to know what others do when they come across things like this.  I waver between wanting to speak out on behalf of kids and subjecting myself to the wrath of these types of people that can be quite draining.  Sometimes I can seriously feel like I'm the lone ranger out there.

Jo Isaac

-I would like to know what others do when they come across things like this.  -

If it's mostly coming from people your husband works with/knows/family then i'd make my own account on FB and not friend those people, and stop sharing an account with my husband so I don't see that kind of stuff.

If I have friends on FB that continually post negative stuff like that, I'll defriend them, and if I don't feel like I can do that (because they are family, or people I see IRL a lot) I hide their posts. FB is my happy place...I will do all I can to keep it that way :) 




From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of bonniecrocker2003@... [AlwaysLearning] <[email protected]>
Sent: 21 October 2016 20:26
To: [email protected]
Subject: [AlwaysLearning] Re: Real support
 
 

It's interesting that you just posted this because it couldn't have been 5 minutes later when someone posted a meme on my facebook asking the following question: 


 When you touched a hot stove, what was your parent's reaction?  There were two pictures labeled A and B with A depicting a mom holding her crying child and B of a black male smiling/laughing that said bet you won't do that shit again, huh?  

There were already 2-3 replies such as my parents laughed until they cried and a couple of B answers, B, of course, being the correct answer.  I said that I would hope A as I wouldn't laugh at anyone's pain, adult or kid. In fact, I burned myself yesterday and my kids were very concerned about me because I mentioned it was painful.  My oldest asked if we had anything to put on it.  I also mentioned that it didn't make sense to tell anyone that they would never hurt themselves again as if anyone would purposely touch a hot stove. I said there was nothing funny about this meme.  Wrong answer.

Needless to say, the responses back were defensive.  The person who posted it not knowing I was responding and assuming it was my husband asked him if he was okay insinuating that there must be something wrong with him to post such a response.  She also said it wasn't meant as a parenting class thus indicating she was quite irritated with my answer since I was suppose to laugh and agree.

Your post actually brings up another question for me. Do you ignore these type of posts?  Give feedback? Unfriend? I share a facebook account with my husband and some of these posts come from his family or people he worked with so it's not really up to me to say anything.  There was one showing a young child being spanked hard by his mother with another pic of 3 boys looking like gang members.  It said something along the lines of if we did more of this (spanking) we would have less of this (the 3 thug looking teens) 

I would like to know what others do when they come across things like this.  I waver between wanting to speak out on behalf of kids and subjecting myself to the wrath of these types of people that can be quite draining.  Sometimes I can seriously feel like I'm the lone ranger out there.

Michelle Marr

I don't think my parents ever *let* me touch a hot stove. I can't remember if my children ever did. I sure tried to keep them away from hot/sharp surfaces until they were old enough to understand.


Quinn says that once he touched the hot metal surface at a buffet and Leif has bumped the edge of the frying pan while helping make dinner. Neither was a memorable occasion.



As an adult, I'm a spectacular klutz and provided lots of opportunities for my kids to see what happens if you touch a hot surface. Sometimes they've laughed with me when the injury was minor and the situation was ridiculous. (Knocking the big carving knife off of the counter and onto my bare foot just after starting blood thinners is one example. I got lucky and it didn't even break the skin. I think the laughter was mostly relief that we weren't on the way to the ER)

> Do you ignore these type of posts?  Give feedback? Unfriend?


I've seen the one about the spanking/gang members. I unfriend if someone posts too many things like that (except a couple of family members -- those I just try to ignore) I'm not going to reform the people who are posting them, at least not the ones in my life.


Michelle

Sandra Dodd

-=-Your post actually brings up another question for me. Do you ignore these type of posts? Give feedback? Unfriend? -=-

In the days long before facebook, I got an e-mail with several people on it (eight or ten), with some jokes about kids that were all mean. Cruel adults (parent or teacher) jokes, sent by a teacher I knew in another state, had known for years. I knew three of the people on the copy list were teachers, and it was probably sent to me because I had been a teacher.

I responded, and I don’t remember exactly what I said, but in a reply to all, I said that as a parent, I didn’t think cruelty should be laughed about, and that teachers should be more compassionate or some such, and responded to the whole group. One person wrote and said “I don’t even know who you are, and don’t know why this is in my mailbox,” and someone else wrote that it was humor, and I shouldn’t be critical.

It was pretty much the end of my friendship with someone in that group, which is okay.

On facebook, depending who it is, I might just write “not really funny,” or “Wouldn’t be funny if it were a joke about violence to a woman,” or maybe would ignore or unfriend. Depends.

Sandra

LEAH ROSE

I rarely respond to those mean-to-kids or parents-shouldn't-be-their-kids'-friends memes (I don't see them too often either, thank heavens), but I will always "like" and maybe comment on or repost things that are about connection and compassion towards children. 

I have relied a lot on the "unfollow" option on Facebook to stop seeing posts from people who I don't necessarily want to unfriend (that usually feels like too big of a statement to me) but who post too much stuff that bothers me. It's a great tool for cleaning up your newsfeed. ��

~ Leah Rose

Sent from my iPhone

bonniecrocker2003@...

" and stop sharing an account with my husband so I don't see that kind of stuff."


Yes, I think I've been realizing this for some time and Sandra's post was the catalyst for me to do it.  I was feeling a lot of negativity and irritation every time I opened fb. My husband handles things much differently than I do with a very different personality and it was causing a lot of friction.


I actually had my own fb account but inactivated it some time ago because I was constantly putting pics of the kids on his my husband's who had a lot more friends including his family which weren't on mine.  I really hadn't paid too much attention to my fb account at the time. I just decided to merge to his one day.   


Many of these people come from a certain area and have the same mentality and always seem to be the most vocal.  I don't care for the majority of them based on their negative posts though a couple I've met in real life who are okay if the friendship is kept on a superficial level.


One thing I've noticed about acquiring a new facebook friend is that when meeting them in a group and sharing a common interest, we may hit it off but as soon as they request to be a fb friend, in many cases, the relationship  changes and I don't necessarily like it.  This is when the real person comes out.  It's sort of like going on a date and really liking the person only to find out that he wasn't so great after getting to really know him.  


I see quite a bit of that.