Aunt Becky of mommywantsvodka.com discusses many provocative topics on her website. A recently covered topic at her site was life coaching. Life coaching as a profession is not new to our culture. Somewhere around the late 1980's it came into existence in urban areas. Now it seems to be everywhere. Anyone with a few dollars to spare can usually find another person willing to take them off his or her hands.
While life coaching now has various certifying agencies and programs, at this point the term is not protected, and anyone who so desires can declare himself or herself to be a life coach, with or without a self-printed and elaborately embossed certificate. Many have done just that. I personally know two life coaches. in both cases, I am more qualified to dispense advice on how most productively, profitably, ethically, morally, and enjoyably to live one's life than is either one of the two life coaches with whom I am acquainted. Allow me to elaborate.
Life Coach Number One recently moved into her own home. Despite being in her early fifties, it's the first home she has ever owned. For the pst six years, she, her life partner, and her turkey baster-conceived child have moved from home to home, bunking with friends. Life Coach Number One's partner is a dentist, but she is not content to be a conventional dentist. Instead, she treats animals, people, and even babies who do not yet have teeth. It's amazing just what insurance companies can be compelled to cover. unfortunately, insurance carriers typically cannot be persuaded to cover dental treatment for dogs. Equally unfortunately, many human patients are wary of being treated by a dentist who sees feline and canine patients in her office, presumably using the same instruments on both human and pet populations. consequently, Life coach Number One and her dentist partner were, despite at least three college degrees between the two of them, not in a position to buy a house, or even to pay rent on a consistent basis, until recently, when her mother was declared no longer competent to manage her own affairs. Life Coach Number One was granted power of attorney over her mother's finances, and was finally able to purchase her own home. This is a person who should guide others to make financially sound and ethical decisions to impact their future. Right. And Scott Peterson should teach Sunday School.
Life Coach Number Two, who may [or may not] be related to me, has six children. None of these children make a habit of doing what either of their parents or any of their teachers tell them to do. Their parents deliver plates of food to them while they are seated in front of TVs, X-Boxes, or computers at various points around the house, then pick up the plates forty-five minutes or so later. Homework? It doesn't happen. Classwork? It isn't ordinarily done, either. The children sleep a lot in school, because they're up watching TV and playing video games until the wee hours of the morning. Life Coach Number Two has toyed with the idea of home-schooling, but to home-school her children would be not to take advantage of the free babysitting provided by her local public school system. No one in the home cooks dinner, because the children only eat fast food. Life Coach Number Two had some sort of bariatric weight loss surgery about two years ago. While I am normally open-minded and non-judgmental when it comes to things like procedures that allow people to feel better about themselves, I must take issue in the case of Life Coach Number Two. She, as a temple recommend-carrying member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, is most disparaging of my parents because they enjoy the occasional glass of wine [my mom] or the occasional four-beers-in-one-night binge [my dad]. The same Mormon code that would make my parents’ drinking a sin if they were Mormons, which they are not, also makes it a sin for this woman to eat her way into a much-needed Mercedes engine overhaul for her surgeon, yet she and her almost-four-hundred-pound husband (who would likewise benefit from the services of said bariatric surgeon but has not to date summoned the courage to go under the knife) tell any mutual relatives, acquaintances, or anyone who happens to be close enough to hear them that my parents both are absolute, confirmed, bona fide, for real, card-carrying, no-fooling, honest-to-goodness alcoholics. Life Coach Number Two gives everyone associated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints -- even those with only the most remote connections, which would include the Warren Jeffs branch of the fold and other various and sundry polygamists -- a bad name.
Anyone who has legitimate qualifications to tell anyone else how best to manage his or her life typically either is so successful that he or she has no time to devote to life coaching, or else is so successful in a financial sense that he or she does not need the paltry sums paid by clients of life coaches, and provides his or her advice pro bono. Yet still we have life coaches fleecing the unsuspecting population. Does anyone else experience cognitive dissonance with this state of affairs?
Showing posts with label mommy wants vodka. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mommy wants vodka. Show all posts
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Saturday, August 11, 2012
What Should Happen When Parents Split?
The topic of parents separating doesn't pertain directly to me. My brother and I are old enough at this point that it really wouldn't pertain to us even if our parents did divorce; our only issues would be finances and the logistics of holidays and vacations. It does pertain to many people, though, and, in particular, it affects the children of Aunt Becky of Band Back Together and mommywantsvodka.com fame. (Mommy doesn't really want vodka on a regular basis; the blog title is tongue-in-cheek.)
Becky Sherrick Harks (or Becky Harks Sherrick; I can never keep it straight) has made much of her life an open book on her website. Hence, when she announced her divorce, many readers felt free to comment on her childcare and custody arrangements. Aunt Becky and her soon-to-be ex are making what I would consider to be a fairly major sacrifice in that their children will remain in their home. Their parents will come and go as logistics dictate. At least one reader has decided that it will be detrimental to the psychological well-being of the children to see their parents come and go while they, the children, remain in one place. I could not disagree more strongly.
The only instability I've ever experienced in my home life life occurred when my mother was critically ill and my father needed to be with her. My brother and I endured various childcare arrangements during these times. We were mostly under the care of relatives, and usually in their homes. The quality of care, depending upon which relative provided it, ranged for the most part from mediocre to excellent, but still, it mostly occurred in their homes. This was, at least to me, majorly disruptive.
In one particular instance, we were cared for, if you could call it that, by the relative of a relative in our own house. The quality of care probably wouldn't have been a hell of a lot worse if we had been under the guardianship of Charles Manson himself. The "care provider" talked on the phone, watched TV, and slept almost all the time she should have been supervising us. She didn't prepare meals for us. In an infamous incident about which I've already blogged http://alexisar.blogspot.com/2010/05/man-or-woman-or-child-cannot-live-by.html, I chose this time of lax supervision to test my hypothesis that a body can sustain itself in more or less good health on candy alone for an indefinite interval. (My hypothesis did not hold up to testing, and I was eventually transported to a hospital by ambulance.) We had a cleaning lady who came in twice a week and did, among other things, our laundry, or we would have been wearing the same dirty clothes for the entire four months or so that the person was responsible for us. We were five most of the time this took place, and turned six shortly before the "care giver's" employment with our family was discontinued. The only thing that kept me remotely functioning during this time was that I was in my own house, with my very own bed and familiar surroundings.
I grew up among children whose parents were divorced, with a variety of custody arrangements. The arrangements that seemed the most pejorative to the kids were those in which the kids spent half their time in the homes of each of their parents. All of such kids that I happened to know spent half their times with their moms and the remainder of their time with their dads, but neither house was actually theirs. It was a sad arrangement. Those who lived primarily with one parent and visited with the other parent fared better. There was still the disruption of going off to the noncustodial parent, usually without all their stuff, but those kids did at least have a place they called home. One of my friends had a situation where she and her brother stayed in their original home. The parents shared rent on an apartment, and the parent who didn't have custody at a given time stayed at the apartment. Once one parent remarried, the parents then maintained separate residences for their noncustodial times, but the kids still stayed in the house all the time. This must have been a major inconvenience for the parents, but they did it anyway for the good of their kids. Years after the fact, I suspect any added expense they incurred in maintaining the house for their kids will be offset by therapists' bills for their kids that they won't have to pay.
I think Aunt Becky and her prospective ex are doing a very noble thing for their children. Even though I've never lived through a divorce, my own life experiences have taught me that a child can withstand much more if he or she has the stability of familiar surroundings on his or her side.
Becky Sherrick Harks (or Becky Harks Sherrick; I can never keep it straight) has made much of her life an open book on her website. Hence, when she announced her divorce, many readers felt free to comment on her childcare and custody arrangements. Aunt Becky and her soon-to-be ex are making what I would consider to be a fairly major sacrifice in that their children will remain in their home. Their parents will come and go as logistics dictate. At least one reader has decided that it will be detrimental to the psychological well-being of the children to see their parents come and go while they, the children, remain in one place. I could not disagree more strongly.
The only instability I've ever experienced in my home life life occurred when my mother was critically ill and my father needed to be with her. My brother and I endured various childcare arrangements during these times. We were mostly under the care of relatives, and usually in their homes. The quality of care, depending upon which relative provided it, ranged for the most part from mediocre to excellent, but still, it mostly occurred in their homes. This was, at least to me, majorly disruptive.
In one particular instance, we were cared for, if you could call it that, by the relative of a relative in our own house. The quality of care probably wouldn't have been a hell of a lot worse if we had been under the guardianship of Charles Manson himself. The "care provider" talked on the phone, watched TV, and slept almost all the time she should have been supervising us. She didn't prepare meals for us. In an infamous incident about which I've already blogged http://alexisar.blogspot.com/2010/05/man-or-woman-or-child-cannot-live-by.html, I chose this time of lax supervision to test my hypothesis that a body can sustain itself in more or less good health on candy alone for an indefinite interval. (My hypothesis did not hold up to testing, and I was eventually transported to a hospital by ambulance.) We had a cleaning lady who came in twice a week and did, among other things, our laundry, or we would have been wearing the same dirty clothes for the entire four months or so that the person was responsible for us. We were five most of the time this took place, and turned six shortly before the "care giver's" employment with our family was discontinued. The only thing that kept me remotely functioning during this time was that I was in my own house, with my very own bed and familiar surroundings.
I grew up among children whose parents were divorced, with a variety of custody arrangements. The arrangements that seemed the most pejorative to the kids were those in which the kids spent half their time in the homes of each of their parents. All of such kids that I happened to know spent half their times with their moms and the remainder of their time with their dads, but neither house was actually theirs. It was a sad arrangement. Those who lived primarily with one parent and visited with the other parent fared better. There was still the disruption of going off to the noncustodial parent, usually without all their stuff, but those kids did at least have a place they called home. One of my friends had a situation where she and her brother stayed in their original home. The parents shared rent on an apartment, and the parent who didn't have custody at a given time stayed at the apartment. Once one parent remarried, the parents then maintained separate residences for their noncustodial times, but the kids still stayed in the house all the time. This must have been a major inconvenience for the parents, but they did it anyway for the good of their kids. Years after the fact, I suspect any added expense they incurred in maintaining the house for their kids will be offset by therapists' bills for their kids that they won't have to pay.
I think Aunt Becky and her prospective ex are doing a very noble thing for their children. Even though I've never lived through a divorce, my own life experiences have taught me that a child can withstand much more if he or she has the stability of familiar surroundings on his or her side.
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