{"id":2719,"date":"2007-03-04T20:37:18","date_gmt":"2007-03-04T20:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/how-many-times.html"},"modified":"2007-03-04T20:37:18","modified_gmt":"2007-03-04T20:37:18","slug":"how-many-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/how-many-times.html","title":{"rendered":"How many times…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past 24 years of parenting, how many times have I been a part of exchanges like this:<\/p>\n

"What do you want for your birthday, Mom?"<\/p>\n

"Oh, all I want is a good boy for my birthday."<\/em><\/p>\n

or <\/p>\n

"I wuv oo, Mommy!"<\/p>\n

"If you love me" (<\/em>fatigued tone of voice) you’ll do what I say."<\/em><\/p>\n

This morning it was the latter exchange with the two year old who no doubt had no idea what my response meant, but no matter. Given his sudden penchant for stamping is foot, feet and whole body and screaming "NOOOO," – he’ll hear it often enough to figure it out.<\/p>\n

But this morning as the exchange occurred for the millionth time with the fifth child, a morning I was getting him ready to go to Mass, I heard myself say, If you love me, you’ll do what I say…<\/em>and like Ruby Turpin, bellowing, "Who do you think you are?"  in the pigpen in O’Connor’s "Revelation"<\/a>, my own words came echoing right back, resounding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the past 24 years of parenting, how many times have I been a part of exchanges like this: "What do you want for your birthday, Mom?" "Oh, all I want is a good boy for my birthday." or "I wuv oo, Mommy!" "If you love me" (fatigued tone of voice) you’ll do what I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nHow many times... - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/how-many-times.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How many times... - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Over the past 24 years of parenting, how many times have I been a part of exchanges like this: "What do you want for your birthday, Mom?" 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}