I recently came across a fantastic website for non-traditional families that I think is a great resource. The link is in my list of links to the left and also here. The site is called Off-Beat Families and, while it's no longer posting, it has amazing posts about everything you could possibly think of when thinking of non-traditional families. From personal stories of trans*men breastfeeding, to making art with your baby's placenta, to processing miscarriage/adoption/abortion, it answers or at least discusses a lot of really interesting questions.
One of the articles that really interested me was Queer Parenting for Heteros. It discusses what parents (queer or not) can do to actively cultivate gender-queerness in their children."Allowing children to form their own relationship with gender means not imposing gender on them, and this is very hard to do in a gender binary world where there is no gender-free place that we can find and inhabit. So, one way to deal with this is to actually cultivate children's genderqueerness, which means to make sure that children have as many gendered options available to them as you can possibly provide, with an emphasis on cross-gender possibilities."I feel like this is soooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOoo important and people so often overlook it when raising children. Our society is completely heteronormative, leaving no room for children to explore their own gender and identity. Even as a preschool teacher I heard myself say things like "This class has too many BOYS in it! They're so rowdy!" Assessing gender to a specific stage in development when really, three year olds are just generally rowdy and the girls in the class were acting the same as the boys. Dictating what toys your child can play with based on if they're blue or pink is so incredibly limiting! If our children were encouraged and introduced to a wide variety of toys and activities, regardless of what society has deemed 'gender appropriate', our children and we as a whole would be so much happier and better off. I hope as a parent it's something I focus on and emphasize to my children.
I recently discovered Rockabye Baby! which are lullaby versions of rock albums. My favorite is The Cure but they have The Beatles, Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, etc. Really great way to introduce your babe to music that you love but is maybe a bit too loud for bed-time. I also just upgraded my Pandora to be ad-free and listen to the Relaxation station every night to get myself to sleep so I'm sure it'd be great for a bebe too. Those ads were the actual worst. I'd be almost to sleep and the ADS WOULD ALL OF A SUDDEN START BLARING AND WAKE ME UP REALLY ABRUPTLY. There's also a sleep timer with Pandora now so it's not playing all night. Currently, the Disney station plays constantly at our house. At the preschool I often had Kids Bop on, although sometimes it started playing Eminem???? I kid you not.Anyways, hope you guys like the new layout and check out the new links to the left, including my pinterest with tons of baby crafts and crap.
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