I often have some trouble finding stuff to talk about with other parents. If I'm in a group where people tend to be competitive and judgmental, the combination of using a minority parenting style and having a kid who was crazy precocious and now is just showing very odd development means every topic is full of landmines. It can be hard to get off a topic once it's broken (yeah, you saw him walking at 7 mos. Yeah, he's doing it about the same as he was then. No, not really any different. Yeah, about 2-3 times a week. No, not really any more stable. Yep. Just the same. Really. The same.)
I haven't found a good solution yet. And I'm a talkative sort, so I WANT to talk. Lately I've been kinda making friends with a few individuals in a group who take a more "Oh, he does that, eh? Interesting..." kind of approach to life. And then we spend a lot of time whispering in corners, which annoys the staff
(the staff are easily annoyed, I got in trouble for reading a book to DS in a reading program the other day. Apparently he's not supposed to be interested in books that long yet, and reading the actual words is to complex for him, "developmentally speaking," so instead, I should sing a short jingle three times and only show him a few pages. Even if he's the one turning pages, and begging me to keep reading with those cute little eyes of his. And the look I got when they pressed me to NAME the bedtime story we "use...")
And sometimes I just talk to the kids and ignore the parents. It's surprisingly easy to make a joke like "Well, tom/dick/harry, I think your mom expects me to talk to HER, now why would I do a thing like that when I've got such a lovely little boy to talk to..." and get away with it!
Anyway, I really am kinda scared of doing something like that by accident, especially in groups where the standard conversation begins with "how old is ___" and proceeds through the milestone chart from there... And I'm deeply afraid of missing the boat on DSs interests. I think that's just me, because I was having nightmares about not understanding what he needed before he was born. I'm pretty sure I can avoid some of the bigger things she was doing, but in some groups it's really hard not to have the same conversation over and over and over, and often it wasn't constructive the first time.
DS demands a lot of stimulation, and to get it I take him to programs and things. I think the programs tend to draw nervous moms. The staffs tend to encourage it, and get really frustrated with me because I'm not lapping up their every suggestion. I don't have a good solution to that, either.
<sigh>
See, everything anyone notices is really just a reflection on what's goin' on inside their heads...
Oh dear, this is both incomprehensible and rambly. Maybe I'll just shut up now!
