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“Love is as love does, and it is our responsibility to give children love. When we love children we acknowledge by our every action that they are not property, that they have rights—that we respect and uphold their rights. Without justice there can be no love.” - All About Love: New Visions by Bell Hooks
I have seen a number of people wondering why Tom and Sabine didn't get Marinette into a new school to get her away from Chloe's bullying.
Based on family experiences we can see a couple reasons.
Chloe's behavior has been escalating as she has gotten a better grasp on how to take advantage of Andre's position as Mayor and therefore what she can get away with. You can tell by the way she threatens Mr. Damocles in a way that if he had actually protested she might have been able to deny. She has become much more overt and direct in her threats in the last year. And she states that she is planning to get worse.
Marinette naturally tries to down play how bad things are until they get to a breaking point. And she tries not to cause her parents distress. It's not unlikely that they are only recently aware that Chloe has been a problem and have no Idea just how bad it is. Kids this age frequently avoid telling their parent's about issues they are having. Even if their parent's are supportive. As Marinette has observed her teachers not doing anything she may not think her parents can't or won't either and so just doesn't tell them.
I know we like to Head Cannon Sabine as having figured Ladybug out but that hasn't been shown, and as well as she knows Marinette there are still things she doesn't know.
She may have practice hiding things from her mom and dad that predates becoming a super hero.
Me to me when my kids ask to FaceTime me before school because they want me to see their outfits and tell me to have a good day and that they hope I have fun
The Red Hand Files
ISSUE #239 / JUNE 2023
My oldest child just turned 19.
When they were born, she was called Maisie. They are now calling themself Claude and using male pronouns. I struggle with it out of habit. I understand intellectually, but something has me resist calling the person who was once my daughter “him”. And as for Claude, well - I just don’t like the sound of it. I use nicknames. I work around pronouns. It is complicated. They have told me that it is like armor - a mask that makes them stronger in public - that they are a proud woman but feel more comfortable as “he”. with the state of traditional gender roles, it makes sense that this generation would rebel against them the same way that we rejected all manner of norms and mores.
but this is not the point.
The point is that I have introduced my child to your work, and it has become a topic that we bond over. It started with Curse of Millhaven (which she began illustrating) and progressed. She texted me from the city bus today to tell me that Jubilee Street came on her playlist during her ride today, and she wept.
I received a text shortly after that which read “O Children” is on now - I think it is my third favorite.
To be fair, I really dismissed Lyre of Orpheus. I have mentioned why before. I couldn’t afford to buy records, I took it out of the library, it wasn’t where I was at, etc.. But my kid loved it, so I put the song on.
And I wept. I had actual goosebumps. That my child loves that song is beautiful. And that I can say to my child - this is something that I deeply understand as a parent and as a child - is something that I am so grateful for.
I was going to bother you to play all manner of old songs that I like when you play here in fall. Things that you will probably not play that I will feel clever for requesting. A Box For Black Paul. Knocking on Joe. Good piano songs. But instead, I will ask you to please play “O Children” in Minnesota, and if you think of it, please say that it is for Claude.
Damon, Saint Paul, USA
Dear Damon,
This beautiful love letter to your child is full of a common sadness that many parents feel when we lose our children to the world, as they grow up and step into their own notions of how they wish to be. It is the common parental anguish – a loss of control, or worse, a profound understanding that we never had control of them in the first place. I understand your conflicted feelings about losing a daughter and gaining a son, but I can also feel your awareness that the soul remains consistent and unchanging and that love, real parental love, runs eternal and unconditional through that soul.
It means a great deal to me that you found a common bond through Bad Seeds songs, and I can understand the allure of songs like O Children and Jubilee Street, these epic, defiant and complex songs of change and transformation. I found the final sentence of your letter particularly moving, implicit within it was the recognition of the great privilege it is to be a parent, and the awareness that as parents ultimately we exist at the behest of our children. You understand that often their gains are our losses, and although we fight for our children and want to protect them as best we can, there comes a time when we have to let them go, in acceptance and gratitude, to be as they wish to be. This is the supreme act of love and sacrifice. I would be delighted to play O Children in Minnesota and dedicate it to Claude.
Love, Nick
from Good Bones by Maggie Smith
Source.
I think about this graph sometimes. Or, rather, I attempt to think about it, and find I can't wrap my head around it. What was it like to live in a world where parents routinely outlived their children? In the world. Until about a hundred years ago, the world where parents routinely outlived their children was the only world that had ever existed.
From Antonia Fraser's The Weaker Vessel, about life for women in 17th-century England:
William Brownlow kept a meticulous recording of [his wife's] child-bearing from 27 June 1626 when their first child Richard was born, who died in October of that year, down to the birth of their nineteenth child twenty-two years later... At one point, between 1638 and 1646, seven children, born at almost exactly yearly intervals, died in a row: Thomas, Francis, Benjamin, George, James, Maria, and Anne. William Brownlow's exclamations of grief as each new tragedy struck show some attempt at reconciliation to the workings of providence -- "Though my children die, the Lord liveth and they exchange but a temporal life for an eternal one" -- but absolutely no diminuition in grief. Little George, his fifteenth child, managed to live from October 1641 to 29 July of the following year; when he died, his father wrote, "I was at ease but Thou O God hast broken me asunder and shaken me to pieces."
Or take the case of Peter the Great, quite possibly the most powerful man on earth for much of his reign: of his fifteen legitimate children, eleven died before their fifth birthday and a twelfth only made it to age six and a half. The chart above has a more expansive definition of "child" (to age 15) and even by its count, Peter the Great and the Brownlows were particularly unlucky. But still.
The other day, at a book sale, I picked up the diaries of Martha Farnsworth, who grew up in Kansas in the 1870s; her only child was born in January 1892 and lived five months. You can read the entries yourselves: January 24th, "The dearest, sweetest little treasure ever a mother had"; April 15th, "I can't thank God enough, for sending this baby into my life"; May 23rd, "My little treasure, don't get sick, for it makes mother's heart ache and ache"; May 31st, "My heart aches with fear"; June 27th, "God sent the angels for her and her terrible suffering ended and mine commenced."
And then I put the book back and went to pick up my kids from school.
And I think now: Martha Farnsworth would trade places with me in a heartbeat. Two children, both of them well past the age of five. One of them missed school today with a cold. I'm not worried. If you zoom out far enough I am in a cohort of the luckiest parents who ever lived.
So why don't I feel my good fortune more?
Part of it, granted, is that constant grateful joy is not necessarily the most useful tool in the parent's toolbox. Sometimes you have to stop thanking God that your children are alive and start pointing out to them that if they're going to borrow your phone then they need to tell you when someone's trying to reach you (for example). But in theory one can correct them, or have activities separate from them, and still think, "Wow, I'm a lucky dog," all the time, because if your kid is alive and healthy and growing then you are a lucky dog all that time.
I want to make a larger sociological statement, about how "X doesn't make us happier," for whatever feature of the modern world X, maybe should have very little value as a criticism. The tenfold decline in child mortality has to be one of the most profound shifts in human history; if we can take that for granted, then there may be no limit to our ability to make lemons out of lemonade. But I can't criticize other people for failing to do what I seem very bad at doing myself.
Good morning Miss Faerie :)
I had a question that I'm going over. Is corporal punishment biblically prescribed for parents?
You don't have to answer if you don't want to. But I'd love your thoughts if you don't mind sharing!
Good morning ☀️
For your question:
“Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol. My son, if your heart is wise, my heart too will be glad.”
Proverbs 23:13-15 ESV
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“Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.”
Proverbs 13:24 ESV
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“Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.”
Proverbs 22:15 ESV
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“The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.”
Proverbs 29:15 ESV
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Yes, the Bible prescribes it. It also teaches how we all should view discipline, for at all times it ultimately comes from God— whether child or adult.
“Blessed is the man whom you discipline, O Lord, and whom you teach out of your law, to give him rest from days of trouble, until a pit is dug for the wicked.”
Psalm 94:12-13 ESV
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“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
Proverbs 1:7 ESV
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“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”
Hebrews 12:7-11 ESV
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The Bible also gives instruction to parents on how they are to treat their children, not exploit nor exasperate them.
“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”
Ephesians 6:4 ESV
Hope that helps.
