Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Mixed messages

I've heard of couples getting married and when it comes time to start planning a family they hit a speed bump. Or even a brick wall in some cases. Those couples clearly never discussed whether or not each wanted children. My husband and I dated for several years before getting married so we had plenty of time to discuss children and we both agreed we wanted to have them. I knew that I didn't want to get to that point and be like "ok, let's make a baby and he look at me like I'm crazy".
My question is, do couples discuss child raising and rearing ideas? I'm sure there are some that do. We never did, not really. I do remember before kids we would jokingly say, "If we ever have a daughter she's not wearing this or that" when we would see some young girl wearing something inappropriate. I never really thought about how we would raise our children. Until now..
My husband obviously has different ideas than I do. Well... not to bash him without giving him a voice on this...but he obviously has NO ideas on what his plan on raising them is. It's come to a point now that our daughter is 6 1/2 and our son is 2 1/2 that he needs to grow up. I feel like I'm the only one who is an adult when it comes to taking care of the kids.
Yes, hubby takes care of the obvious. He can feed them meals, get them bathed, help with homework and get them to bed. And he's really good at entertaining them when it's involving a computer or video game but anything else in between I might as well write a manual. It frustrates me!!
I would rather have our children enjoy outdoor activities(weather permitting) versus sitting in front of the computer or television. If the weather is bad, then stimulate their minds with board games and crafts.
I agree that the kids need snacks between meals, but small portions and healthy snacks. Not an open bag of Doritos (found the almost empty bag in the computer room) on which both kids graze on for a half hour and then don't want to eat lunch. That just gets under my skin because we had already discussed our daughter not eating snacks because she does not get them in school. So she is already used to going in between breakfast and lunch without a snack. Why does he have to go against me on that issue? I have a hard time with the food anyways because I was a chubby kid through from 4th grade to 8th grade and I don't want my daughter dealing with that.
I guess I could put a stop to the unhealthy eating (since I am the grocery shopper) and not buy those items anymore. Hmmmm, now there's an idea..
I really do think, before this gets too far I need to sit down with the hubby and discuss our parenting ideas, goals, expectations and what such. I need to see if he has any ideas. Because we need to be on the same page about our children. We're sending them mixed messages and later down the road when they get into those teen years we're going to need to be a united front.

So maybe we need parenting counseling or a book. I am not sure.