What the...? Pre-school peer pressure.

Every little Boy-Man treasures attention from bigger boys. One of that MacDonald's crew has a future in advertising--or computer programming.

Meanwhile, Mo has learned that you don't think being a mouthpiece is an acceptable career.

He could have been sent over to a supervising mother to say, "Lady do you f***."

Kids are so cute!

Calamity Jane--

Ramifications!

You start off thinking that a few clips will subdue the long-neglected forsythia bush.

Ramifications. Hydra heads. The whole damn afternoon and more....plus the mess with the sap and the blood and the heaping piles of leftovers.

How about ramification as in consequences? No?

CJ--

Branching, proliferating consequences.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It's kinda like how we were talking about on shewolf's thread how even though a baby will eat only a certain food for a stretch of time, big-picture, it evens out. When you have to deal with the kind of stress you do, and that you were dealing with yesterday (phone call), it's completely understandable that there would be an overreaction here, an "underreaction" (reacting way more calmly and rationally than most people) there. Big-picture, it evens out.

But under-reaction-wise, I can't imagine how it would flavor my parenting to have that hanging over me -- it's remote, to be sure, but there is an actual somewhat credible chance that any mistakes you make would be held against you in a court of law.

<shudder>

I think you are doing an absolutely stupendous job. One thing that keeps coming up, I think, is that something happens and you worry oh no, is this it, is it the thing that can be held against me or at least the beginning of a trend of something that can be held against me, and we all reassure you that no, that's just what kids do. Even paragon-of-parenting kids. It happens.

Hugs.

Well, what happened next?

Boomerang, I have to admit, from the perspective of a mom with grown kids and one who has lived through nearly every awful thing that can happen at a McDonald's... that story is the kind that in our household (and in our preschool adult meetings) would be told over and over again, getting funnier with the telling.

He's only four. It's OK for him to be a little kid who doesn't follow all the rules of polite behavior. He doesn't have to be perfect. When he's hanging with other kids... and especially at that age... he's going to try to act independently from you, even if that means being the kids' mouthpiece. In a way, that's a very daring and highly-respected kid role. To me, that's OK and, in fact, what you're hoping for (the independent part). Now, obviously you don't want him to be a little smart-ass, but I can't imagine the father being offended. Didn't the man laugh this off?

Sorry to bring this up again, but english isn't my mother tongue
and I'd like to know if "ramification" is normally used in context of "consequences" or in botanical terminology only?
-----

Als for little Mo, I do understand boomerang's concern. My daughter
is adopted and at the beginning I was very unsure of my mothering
abilities and must have called my mother a thousand times to ask
for advice. In time I got more relaxed and hopefully I'll stay that
way for the sake of my daughter.

If it is not your biological child, you just question yourself more so.

I dunno, I questioned myself plenty. :-) Pathologically, even. Still do, but I settled down gradually -- one of the best reasons I can think of to have another kid, is I would be SO much more relaxed the next time around!

I forget how old your daughter was when she came to you, CJ, but babyhood is really good for assauging those fears, in that the fears are more basic and more readily shown to be baseless.

Sozlet used to take her naps on the big bed often when she was a baby -- I'd put rolled-up towels next to her and keep an eye on her on the video monitor, but I was absolutely pathologically terrified that she would roll off and fall on the (carpeted) floor, about 2.5 feet. This was a daily occurrence, keeping an eye on the monitor, she'd roll out of range, I'd tiptoe in with my heart in my throat expecting to see her sprawled on the floor, a bone or 20 broken, instead would see she'd just wiggled over a bit, adjust the video monitor, and tiptoe out again.

One day, it finally happened -- she fell off. She was maybe 8 months old? I came in and she was on the floor, not crying. Utter panic, eventually figured out that she was not crying because she was sleeping, but was that sleeping or passed out? Woke her up, she was grumpy for being awakened but I didn't notice anything. A bit of red on her forehead (ack, OK I'm trying to relay this as silly me but now I'm remembering the terror too clearly), she wanted to go to sleep, I was worried that the sleepiness was because she had a concussion or something, called the doctor in a panic...

Sigh.

It was awful.

But she was fine. Totally, 100% fine.

That happened over and over and over again when she was baby -- not falling off the bed, but something that I was horribly nervous about happening, and me thinking it was the end of the world, and it turning out to not actually be anything at all.

Enough of that and I was finally somewhat sanguine about the more complicated travails of toddlerhood/ preschoolhood.

Jane -- to answer your question... ramifications is commonly used as a synonym for consequences, but it often describes a legal or business-like set of consequences. Say, you're in a business meeting talking about the effects of a change in marketing tactics... you'd likely describe those as ramifications, not consequences. You'll notice that these words are almost always used in the plural, too.

The word "consequences" is also more likely to have a bad connotation. In fact, I think that most people imply (bad) if they say "there will be consequences" or "face the consequences." You'd never say "I'll face the ramifications." But you might say, "We'll analyze the ramifications of that."

In addition, according to this website, the word ramification implies that the end will be more complicated, vs. consequence, which is a single event, though remember, they are almost always used as plurals.

Here's what one website says:

This reminds me of our first child... we used to tiptoe in for every nap and sleeping period to make sure she was still breathing. I'd hold my breath so I could hear the slightest sigh coming from that little girl and she was a slow breather. (Everyone at that time was desperately worried about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.)

It does get lots easier with the second child... you don't have the time to question every single thing and often you've created a support group of other moms by then with whom you can examine and usually laugh off your fears.

Thank you Piffka for your thorough explanation.
For a while I was terrified, as I do use the word ramifications often in my business dealings, and I thought now: "Oh my God, they all must think I'm babbling about pruning my garden"

I'll pay more attention to this in future, thank you!

-----

Sozobe, little Jane was almost 3 years old when she
came into my life and for the first year thereafter I was
a nervous wreck, always questioning myself and at
the beginning she got away with murder, as I simply
was too much of a softy. She looked at me sadly with her
big beautiful eyes and I melted away.

It didn't take long though for my lessons to be learned,
yet it was so much harder then to implement discipline
and I think it took us twice as long to finally arrive at
a mutual consens, which is more relaxing for the both
of us.

Calamity Jane--

You asked:




Piffka did her usual magnificent job.

The Latin root is "rami"--"branch" which has meaning in both business and botany.

Woman is a being who makes metaphors.

Gee whiz, Noddy, thanks for such a spectacular compliment. As it happens, I'd never heard of using ramification in a botanical sense (and I've taken a few pruning classes, so maybe I just wasn't paying attention).

Oh I've been so negligent in thank you all for your kind advice (and english lessons, no less).

I think part of my problem is that I never paid much attention to kids. I didn't expect to need this wisdom that was being so freely handed over.

Thank you for the votes of confidence.

I love that about being the mouthpiece is "a very daring and highly respected kid role".

You know, you're right.