where's the box

"I don't want to be put in a box." Do you know how many times I have heard that? People say this about their theology, methodology (about anything), personality, etc.

Well, parenting has made me realize something about myself. Boxes don't scare me or bother me. Actually I prefer them. As I became a mother I have sought to understand all the different styles. I read and talk to anyone I can. I see there are different camps on parenting. Recently I realized that I still find myself wandering about what I think and I long to place myself in a specific place. Thus I will know the code to follow. If I am attachment I do this, this and that. I am not desiring to, as others have told me, "try to figure it out on my own". Nor do I know what to do with "just follow your mother's instinct".

Well, as a TCM I am in the perfect place, except for the fact that I don't necessarily agree with the box that exists here. The mothers here don't have a choice often in how they raise their children. They are told by their mother in laws and mothers and aunties and grandmothers and elders how to do so. When I have challenged something I see, they give a head wobble and semi shrug indicating that they don't have a choice. Its just the way it is done. One friend commented on what she saw. "You people learn [to parent] from books, we do it as we always have."

This sort of mentality lends itself to all sorts of good and bad. Trying to invoke change is another story. But people are not waffling around trying to figure out what to do.