SAHM's remark stings

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JLCecilia

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DH’s cousin - who is a SAHM to ONE child - posted on FB:

“It might shock some people who send their kids to school hacking that I keep my kid home when he’s sick.”

I don’t mean to take it personally, but it stings a little. I have sent my children to school with a cough - you know the one that lingers for days/weeks after the cold and ‘resolved.’ I’ve had to come to work hacking with that very same cough and my co-workers too. It bugs me sometimes that people send their kids to school and come to work all sniffly and germy, but I can’t take off for a full week or even a half week for each one of my kids (much lesss myself) to fully recover. I just can’t miss that much work.

If you’ve read any of my posts, you know I desperately want more than anything to be a SAHM, but I just can’t right now. We’re all just doing our best. I’m sure she just didn’t really think before she posted. I can’t post back, that would be rude, so here I am 🤷
 
JLCecilia said:
DH’s cousin - who is a SAHM to ONE child - posted on FB:

“It might shock some people who send their kids to school hacking that I keep my kid home when he’s sick.”

I don’t mean to take it personally, but it stings a little. I have sent my children to school with a cough - you know the one that lingers for days/weeks after the cold and ‘resolved.’ I’ve had to come to work hacking with that very same cough and my co-workers too. It bugs me sometimes that people send their kids to school and come to work all sniffly and germy, but I can’t take off for a full week or even a half week for each one of my kids (much lesss myself) to fully recover. I just can’t miss that much work.

If you’ve read any of my posts, you know I desperately want more than anything to be a SAHM, but I just can’t right now. We’re all just doing our best. I’m sure she just didn’t really think before she posted. I can’t post back, that would be rude, so here I am 🤷
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Do you think this was directed at you? If not, please try not to let it bug you.
 
I hope to fnd out during Lent, but I should really start NOW!

This is only strike 2 this week. Another ‘friend’ on FB who’s expecting her 4th very soon (also happens to work outside the home) posted a response that there will be no more ‘expecting’ in her house once the current expected arrives (meaning no more babies). Even though she and her DH are both Catholics. An older parishoner responded “But you coop w/ God so well and make such cute babies.”

All I could think was, “yeah, well we can’t all marry a doctor (or in our cousin’s case, a nuclear plant engineer) and stay at home.”

Bitter me:rolleyes:
 
heidi, I don’t think at all that this was directed towards me. I think it just bugs me b/c of where my heart is: struggling to come to work everyday, missing my 6mo old and 4yo. Trying to offer this up, esp. for my dear friend and SIL who can’t even have kids.
 
People post things on FB all the time without thinking it through, or thinking who will see it.

My solution was just to unfollow most of my friends so I remain blissfully unaware. I didn’t have to defriend anyone, so I can still see what’s going on with them if I want, but I don’t have to see pictures of what they ate for breakfast, or their latest screed on whatever political thing is going on.

For Lent this year I think I may give up comboxes - and maybe CAF, too, because that’s been known to get the blood boiling as well. Can’t be good for me.
 
I wouldn’t take it personally either - unless she directed it at you.

And being a SAHM is not going to shield you from criticism. My wife posted on her facebook last week - that a working mom said that my wife should volunteer for a number of activities because she is “just sitting around at home all day anyway”.

Now - my wife does a lot of volunteer activities - she is at the school a few times every week with various things.

But my point is that people post things on facebook that frustrate them. They are looking for sympathy - perhaps she should have chosen her words or audience better - but she was just venting. Don’t blow it out of proportion by reacting to it - it has NOTHING to do with you.
 
The comment doesn’t seem that it was directed at you or any other woman who has to work. Don’t let it bother you.
 
I take any comments like that with a grain of salt. My wife’s cousin just started sending her first to school so we’ve been treated to countless Facebook posts and conversations about the same topic. After one lengthy discussion at her house about those horrible, irresponsible parents who send their kids to school with the intention of making the other children sick, we found out that her little ones had woken up that morning with the same fever they’d had the night before. We didn’t find it out until that night when my wife’s aunt called and said, “You took your kids over there today? But hers are sick!” A few weeks after our kids recovered from what they picked up at her house, she did it to us again. Now she gets upset when we ask if her kids are sick before we go over. 🤷
 
It wasn’t directed at you, and it is in fact rude (at best) to send sick kids to school. If I were a mom who had to deal with a sick kid every other week because other parents sent theirs to school sick, I’d be grumpy too. I might even post about it on Facebook. I don’t think that it was a SAHM vs working moms thing, as working moms also frequently complain about parents not keeping sick kids home (mine always did). You can’t take everyone’s normal complaints about life and internalize them as personal attacks against you. That’s going to drive you crazy and damage your personal relationships.
 
I look at Facebook occasionally, as it’s the only contact I have with my departed DH’s family. They don’t write or call. I couldn’t figure out all the “buttons”, etc… and one of them (a Catholic too!) keeps putting on photos from magazines and fanzines of people wearing little or nothing, and with his wife laughing on facebook about it! I just stopped posting on there at all, and check it a few times a year to see when my nieces are graduating or if anyone got married or died. Except for that, I stay off of Facebook, especially since I can’t figure out how to unsubscribe. I figure they’ll delete me, eventually, and these relatives will probably think I died, unless I send a Christmas card each year to the one nephew who was my DH’s favorite, and who never calls, sends emails or writes.

Thank God for help and friends on CAF! Best thing I ever found on the Internet!
 
JLCecilia said:
heidi, I don’t think at all that this was directed towards me. I think it just bugs me b/c of where my heart is: struggling to come to work everyday, missing my 6mo old and 4yo. Trying to offer this up, esp. for my dear friend and SIL who can’t even have kids.
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When something is blocking a person from being what they want to be, or having what they want to have-we interpret comments a bit more personally.

Case in point- if an infertile woman was to read your post above and wanted to be a mom- they would take offense to the comment-can’t EVEN have kids. It implies that they cannot do the simplist thing. Others would not notice perhaps because it does not affect them on a personal level. And we all know you did not mean it this way. A nicer way to say this would be-can’t have kids.

So perhaps the facebook post was like this.

🙂
 
JLCecilia said:
DH’s cousin - who is a SAHM to ONE child - posted on FB:

“It might shock some people who send their kids to school hacking that I keep my kid home when he’s sick.”

I don’t mean to take it personally, but it stings a little. I have sent my children to school with a cough - you know the one that lingers for days/weeks after the cold and ‘resolved.’ I’ve had to come to work hacking with that very same cough and my co-workers too. It bugs me sometimes that people send their kids to school and come to work all sniffly and germy, but I can’t take off for a full week or even a half week for each one of my kids (much lesss myself) to fully recover. I just can’t miss that much work.

If you’ve read any of my posts, you know I desperately want more than anything to be a SAHM, but I just can’t right now. We’re all just doing our best. I’m sure she just didn’t really think before she posted. I can’t post back, that would be rude, so here I am 🤷
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Some people are skilled in the art of the ‘hidden barbs’, JLCecilia. That comment of your cousins is such an instrument. She could have just as easily said, “I wish people would find a way to keep their sick kids home from school.” or “I hate it when my kids pick up something from kids who shouldn’t be in school” or even more generously “I feel so blessed that I can keep my kids home when they are sick”, but “it might shock some people who send their kids to school hacking that I keep my kid home when he’s sick” … just the whole barbed tone betrays her as mean spirited.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
It wasn’t directed at you, and it is in fact rude (at best) to send sick kids to school. **If I were a mom who had to deal with a sick kid every other week because other parents sent theirs to school sick, I’d be grumpy too. ** I might even post about it on Facebook. I don’t think that it was a SAHM vs working moms thing, as working moms also frequently complain about parents not keeping sick kids home (mine always did). You can’t take everyone’s normal complaints about life and internalize them as personal attacks against you. That’s going to drive you crazy and damage your personal relationships.
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I have to agree with you BEL. I would be grumpy too.

I was. When my son was young, I was room mom for his Kindergarten class. Yes, I was a SAHM and yes, I spent a lot of time at the school.

One child showed up with pink eye. It was passed from child to child and to me, twice. According to the doctor, the children that had it should have stayed home until their eyes cleared up. But a lot showed up early. It ended up costing me quite a bit of money because very time I got it, I had to trash my contacts. The only way we got rid if it was Christmas Vacation.

I can say that if I had belonged to Facebook I would have posted something very similar to what the friend of the OP posted. And it wouldn’t have been a dig at working Moms. Or stay at home Moms. *It would have been about Moms that send their children to school when they are still contagious. *

Please, JLCecilia, don’t take it personally. :hug1:
 
My mom was a SAHM. If she’d kept me home every time I had a runny nose I’d still be in 8th grade: 30 years later! Colds are a normal child condition in winter. If it progresses to bronchitis, sure stay home. Tell her to get a grip.
 
JLCecilia said:
DH’s cousin - who is a SAHM to ONE child - posted on FB:

“It might shock some people who send their kids to school hacking that I keep my kid home when he’s sick.”

I don’t mean to take it personally, but it stings a little. I have sent my children to school with a cough - you know the one that lingers for days/weeks after the cold and ‘resolved.’ I’ve had to come to work hacking with that very same cough and my co-workers too. It bugs me sometimes that people send their kids to school and come to work all sniffly and germy, but I can’t take off for a full week or even a half week for each one of my kids (much lesss myself) to fully recover. I just can’t miss that much work.

If you’ve read any of my posts, you know I desperately want more than anything to be a SAHM, but I just can’t right now. We’re all just doing our best. I’m sure she just didn’t really think before she posted. I can’t post back, that would be rude, so here I am 🤷
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Her remark was an unnecessary put-down, and really uncalled for. I can sympathize with your urge to post a reply to her snide bit of self-congratulation. If I had a nasty sense of humor, I would be tempted to let this SAHM know that it *might *shock some people to know that there is a SAHM with only one child that sends her child to school instead of homeschooling! OK, obviously I do have a nasty sense of humor, but we can’t come out and say the things we think to say, whether wise or wicked, or we’ll die without any friends. The problem with Facebook, IMHO, is that so little of what ought to be left unsaid ever is!

If it makes you feel any better, OP, am a SAHM and my husband works at a hospital. We send our kids to school when they’re coughing. Good grief, they can’t miss three weeks of school with a cough that the entire school has! Schools have rules about when children ought to stay home. Follow those, and you are doing fine, SAHM or not. Don’t let people sting you when it is they that ought to be stung by their carelessness, not you.
BlueEyedLady said:
It wasn’t directed at you, and it is in fact rude (at best) to send sick kids to school. If I were a mom who had to deal with a sick kid every other week because other parents sent theirs to school sick, I’d be grumpy too. I might even post about it on Facebook. I don’t think that it was a SAHM vs working moms thing, as working moms also frequently complain about parents not keeping sick kids home (mine always did). You can’t take everyone’s normal complaints about life and internalize them as personal attacks against you. That’s going to drive you crazy and damage your personal relationships.
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If you don’t want your kids sick every other week, try teaching them to wash their hands and keep them away from their faces. In the meantime, nobody ought to miss two weeks or a month of school because they have a cough. That is nuts.
 
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