Pink Elephant
Well-Known Member
Nothing to be ashamed of over being gifted with your first bicycle, etc. Do think that work (more so the responsibilities attached to) was good for me. Aside from enjoying buying my own things and paying my own way, having to show up at someone's house to babysit (on time), made me aware at a young age that life wasn't just about me. I think that's why I was always miles ahead of my counterparts when it came to maturity.I am ashamed to say my first bike was given to me, not that I rode it much. Material things were given to me, although I had far far far far less and much cheaper stuff than my uppity peers. My mother sewed my clothes and I got teased for that. Our car wasn't the popular Cadillac (to this day they still make me retch). My mother was odd. She didn't like Barbie dolls so I wasn't allowed to have one. She didn't like any toys other kids had so I couldn't have them. Made me even more of an outcast. I super rebelled against her in my teens and my peer relationships were better after I pulled away from her and broke her rules. But she screamed at me a lot. It didn't help. I wasn't going to let her make me an outcast again.
Pink, if somebody had told me to change a nasty cloth diaper with rubber pants when I was a kid, I would have refused. Period. I could throw a mean tantrum and refuse to do things I didn't want to do. I was not particularly fond of my younger siblings anyway and had no baby cousins. It is possible that if babies had worn disposables at the time maybe...but I doubt it. I was not an easy kid, which is one reason my mother didn't like me, and if I didn't want to do something, It was impossible to make me do it. I was a very depressed and anxious kid who was picked on at school and by my mother at home and I was not interested in helping out my worst enemy, my mom. You seem to have a clear memory of diapers. I didn't pay attention and don't remember but for the smell. They were not a part of my life.
Once I had my own kid's I was 100 percent Mom but not at all interested in that stuff before that. My childhood was dark and gloomy with peers and a mother who picked on me. All I wanted to do was grow up and get out. My good old days started when I met my current husband! I don't WANT to be anywhere else but now! The childhood years were not good memories.
I recall a friends parents owning a Cadillac when I was still in elementary school, and how that car made me feel so bad. We were poor, and the vehicle my parents drove was rusted-out and out of date. Somehow even today the hurt still resides in me, not as a result of my elementary days and memories, where I always seemed to find myself comparing my parents to others, but rather, when I see an older, rundown vehicle in passing today, it tends to resurrect the awareness I had at such a young age for being different from everyone else as a result of my parents struggling financially, and then my thoughts turn to feeling sorry for the person behind the wheel of the old rundown vehicle.
We were allowed dolls of all types, and had many, as did my own kids... drink-and-wet dolls included. I think it's good for a child to have dolls. I remember when my baby brothers had their Big Jim and G.I Joe dolls. They had lines set up in the yard where they could repel the dolls down the string just like in real life, and they had different army stuff for them. So sad to deny a child of play.
Changing diapers (for me, SOT), made me feel grown up. Whenever my mom would call out or ask me to change (so-and-so), I felt like a real mom, and that my help was appreciated, which it was. As for the diapers my mom used, when you grow up with cloth in the home and that's all you know, you just run with it. You get used to it, because everyone all around used them, too, so it was the norm. When I was first started changing baby siblings, my mom never had me rinse diapers out. Wet ones went into the pail, and poopy ones went into the toilet to soak. My mom was always right behind me to do the rinsing afterwards.
But once I got older and more familiar with the process, any diapers I changed, I rinsed. I was old enough to feel that there was no reason whatsoever as to why I couldn't perform that task, too, and besides, I was already babysitting outside of the home for neighbours and family, so rinsing-out diapers at those homes was a necessary duty. Believe it or not, you get used to it. No, it's not pleasant, but it was a fact of life back then.
Diapers, bottles, feedings, outings (stroller rides)... I remember it all from my baby siblings days, probably because I was so involved with them. It just has a way of sticking with one.
As for living a full and rich life as a kid, boy, did I ever. I was one of those kids that had already done a lot of domestic things at an early age. Things I know neighbourhood kids my own age never even sniffed, until they were much, much older. My maturity must have shined through, because when neighbourhood moms needed a sitter, it was our phone that always rang. I had made a good solid name for myself in and around the hood as being a mature and reliable babysitter, and all the moms knew it.