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Originally Posted by maleficent
With my sister, who is a stay at home mom of 4 rugrats. After the first one, she went back to work and my niece went to daycare, and was there for about 2 years til the other 3 got popped out in pretty rapid succession. She was home for the other 3. The eldest child is much more socialized and much more independent than the other 3 kids, who are clingy and very whiney children. Especially the youngest who is always around mommy and is used to gettign whatever she wants out of mommy. (She started preschool and was booted out because she was so unmanageable)
I also think that staying home has changed my sister. We have never been close, but her being mommy has taken her identity, life for her is all about shuttling the kids to play groups, or after school activities, or class trips. She never does anything for her. Her friends are all also mommies, if she spends time with non-mommies she has absolutely nothing to say, I don't think she's read a book in years, I know she hasn't read a newspaper, she used to be pretty intelligent, and now she's not.
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That would be the Baby-Stole-My-Brain syndrome. My mom says you just get so used to doing 20 things at once, all mommy-related, that it gets hard to disengage, so to speak.
I think my parents (and my mother) really did two things right in raising my brother and I: we went to nursery school, preschool and so on, so we were socialized from a very young age (I started a special toddler program at 18 mos, my brother started school at 2 and a half). My mother also started playing soccer when I was three or so. It gave her a couple nights a week to get out of the house and do something non-mommyish. On those nights my dad watched us by himself (he got very good at changing diapers as my brother would poop himself anytime Mom left). When we were older (me 5ish, my brother 2-3ish) my mom started playing indoor soccer and took us along to her games and practices if we weren't in school--this gave us further opportunity to socialize with kids as a lot of the other players brought their young ones along. I know if/when I have kids I'm going to follow much the same pattern--I've seen what a lack of preschool does to kids when they hit kindergarten, and I've seen what happens when a mom does nothing for themselves. I don't want to go down those roads.