I wasn't going to post that last post.  I've been doing some old fashioned journaling lately.  Writing stuff down in my notebook while I'm on the subway, and dumping it in the recycling bin at the station of my destination.

What?  You don't journal that way?  The Purge Method?  Slap a bunch of crap on paper and then throw it in the trash?  Weird.
I'm not one to keep a diary type journal.  What if I die and someone reads it?  Oh, the horror.

Trashpickers finding my words I'm okay with.  Someone I know finding them?  Terrifying.

Luckily my manic handwriting is practically unintelligible.

I wasn't going to post that last post because I was afraid I'd strike a nerve with someone.  Someone I know who has said something to me.  Someone I don't know who has said something to someone else.  I was afraid I'd hurt someone's feelings.  Someone who really didn't mean to be mean, but was maybe a bit unsure of how to say something and it came out all wrong and they feel awful about it.  Someone who I said something to and hurt them.

I'm in the business of teaching parents how to parent.  I know how to do it gently, but sometimes I suck at my job.  I've been known to effing freak the eff out when someone is doing something harmful to their child and will tell them in no uncertain terms that you can really hurt your kid by doing XYZ and if I've known a child to die while their caregiver did XYZ?  Forget it.  I'll tell a motha.  Or a fatha.  In no uncertain terms.  (see: cereal in a bottle, misused carseats, crib bumpers/fluffy baby blankets or fluffy blankets in a co-sleeping bed, medicine overdoses, feeding a baby dangerous foods like grapes or hotdogs, feeding a child with food allergies any old thing out of the kitchen, leaving a child in a crib for so many years that he can climb out and fall and break his neck, and so on and so on).  I can list all the ways how babies and children die or get seriously hurt all day.  Ways how I've heard the moms and dads tell me how their babies died or their children get hurt.
I'm tired of hearing moms and dads tell me how their babies get hurt or die and I certainly don't want you to be one of those moms or dads.

***

A bully is someone who uses rank, coercion, or force to intimidate another person into behaving or feeling a certain way.  That's not out of the dictionary, but I'm sure the dictionary definition is close.
We all know that bullies usually insecure or unsure of himself and have most likely been bullied themselves.  They want to assert themselves as a strong or correct or influential individual.  They do so by mandating behavior, belittling people.  We all know that words hurt just as much if not more than sticks and stones.

So that's why I wrote that last post.  Because I recognized what grownups do to other grownups sometimes stems from insecurity and being unsure about things and it's human nature to want others to do what we do because it makes us feel right and strong and smart.  If someone does what you do, it makes you feel good about what you do.  If someone does something different, it makes you wonder why.  Makes you feel disrespected.  Makes you feel like you  may have done something wrong.  Makes me feel.  Makes her feel, him feel, us feel.  Makes everyone feel that way.

If a mom spanked her child and yelled and fed him this and made him do that, she might expect that child to do the same to his child.  And when he doesn't, she probably wonders why.  And might have a really hard time with that.  No one wants to feel like they did a bad job, and nothing says "you did a bad job" than when someone you taught to do something does something completely opposite.
Because that's where most of us learn parenting.  We do what our parents did to us.  That's how nature works.  It comes naturally.  And we are breaking nature when we break cycles.

Breaking nature is hard and nature has this crazy tendency to take over no matter what we do to stop it.  But, with care and time and maintenance, nature can be kept at bay and we can begin to lay foundations and pathways and (insert another corny analogy here) and things can start shaping up and we can create a new nature that we pass on to our children and they pass on to theirs.

And we can do it together.

So, I wasn't going to post that last post, but I did.  And someone somewhere musta liked it because it was featured today over at Five Star Friday.
So thank you, reader that nominated that last post.  Thank you for validating my feelings and making me feel like I just may be doing something right in this crazy world.  It's nice to feel that way every now and then.  It's a nice balance to the general flogging and "I'm so stupid why did I do that what is wrong with me" head punches I manage to do to myself on a daily basis.