Listen, motherhood is hard (feel free to check out my personal site to see just how bad I am at it). I try really hard not to criticize celebrities for their parenting choices (I don’t always succeed, *cough*JennyMcCarthy*cough*) because raising human beings ranks up there with not gouging my eyes out while watching The Beautiful Life — in other words, nearly impossible.
It’s been building up for awhile, but I always figure that there are some sort of extenuating circumstances. I can stay silent no longer. I live in the Boston area. Yesterday, the weather was so cold and blustery that a tree fell on a 12 year old who was walking home from school. People lost electricity. Did I mention cold and blustery? Then why, oh why must Katie Holmes insist on letting her three year old walk around Faneuil Hall with no coat and bare legs? I see pictures of this all the time. Last week, she was barefoot in Boston. It’s cold here and the Cruises have the bucks to afford a coat and shoes, so, uh … what the fuck?
Maybe she’s hoping CPS will see this and launch the investigation that will finally free them.
In other news, how’s Tree Kid?
Katie’s not wearing a coat either. Xenu must keep them warm.
Ericka, you just made my morning.
From everything I’ve read about them as parents this child has no disciplinary limits so not wearing a coat when its cold seems like just one more. Cute now but she will be a hellacious, entitled teenager.
It’s not a matter of discipline. Whether or not to wear a coat is a choice a child should be allowed to make, and suffer the natural consequences if they choose not to. It’s not like the kid’s going to get injured if she doesn’t wear a coat. Trying to force a kid to wear a coat when they don’t want to is an unnecessary power struggle and it doesn’t teach the kid to make the right choices on her own.
And that’s a fine sentiment for a kid who’s over the age of five.
Unfortunately, Suri is only three.
Three is plenty old to be learning to make a choice about whether to wear a coat when it’s cold. That’s certainly not a lesson to start teaching when a kid’s in kindergarten, they’ll eat paste in school because no one told them not to.
(I’m speaking from experience – both my kids ask what the weather is going to be and make choices on how to dress based on that, and have been doing so since they were two. Whether or not to wear a coat is one of the easy early lessons that translates to a deep understanding later of the consequences of choices and actions, and it’s one that doesn’t generally result in physical harm to the child if the child makes a poor choice. Obviously things have to be handled differently if, say, there’s danger of frostbite, but that’s not the case here.)
Is she gonna die from not wearing a sweater. Some people sleep in igloos all naked together and shit. Some people just don’t get cold easily get the fuck over it.
I keep hoping that this site, which I enjoy very much, will take a stand and say, “enough, i won’t encourage the paparazzi and showcase any more images of children.”
Whether we want to mock the Cruises, or the Afflecks or Kate Hudson… that’s fine… but leave their children out of it. These are innocent kids. There is nothing kind about what you are doing here. And while I know that kindness is not the point, think for a moment about the children.
My guess is Suri doesn’t want to wear the coat or shoes or sweater, and Katie or the nanny or whomever is too lazy to make her. Sadly lots of kids call the shots these days. Listen and look around in the gorcery store sometime while you are shopping.
Well, at least it’s never been reported that Katie had called her daughter a “total fucking bitch” or a “crabby little bitch” like you have on that POS blog of your’s Wendie!
how do you know she hasnt?
I don’t dumbass…. I said it had not been reported. I do know Wendie has said those exact things on her shitty blog. What is you… ignorant?
I believe you mean to ask “What *are* you, ignorant?”
I can tell you that regardless of if you have said it out loud or not, every single parent in the world has thought their child was a bitch or asshole at some point. It’s human nature, you just don’t tell the child you think they might actually be Rosemary’s baby.
Tabby,Tabby,Tabby… Can it be that you are not familiar with Eddie Murphy’s movie Trading Places? You poor neglected soul… hop up on ol’ Uncle Chaz’s lap & we can discuss your obvious lack of 80’s pop culture education! One of his cellmates in holding asked that very question… What is you, ignorant? It was the best line in the movie! I seriously thought people would have picked up on that one, oh well! Digression aside… it’s one thing to think of one’s child as being such, it’s another to post it online in perpetuity. Having said thusly, I humbly submit Wendie as being a complete hag! Just sayin….
For my fellow advice-column junkies, Slate’s Dear Prudence answered a question just today about a kid who has a nervous breakdown every time his parents try to put on his coat. Prudie’s advice was, just let him be chilly on the way to daycare.
What are you talking about? You criticize celeb parents all the time for their parenting choices.
I just saw the pics from the same day and suri she is wearing a pink sweater. I guess you guys couldn’t buy those pics???!!!
As far as I can see, the pictures of Suri bare are all taken while she is at the same fence. It may very well be that she only were without proper clothes for a moment. We also see that katie is carrying her under a big sweater when she got cold (I presume).
I have always found Katie to be a responsible parrent so if she thinks her daughter is dressed acceptable, I’m sure she was.
The kid looks happy and so does her mother and granny. Nothing looks wrong to me.
I recall sometime last winter, during a interview, that Tom admitted that they could not get Suri to wear pants or a coat. She loved dresses and her Mary Jane’s. And they always carried a coat for her while out but it was a fight to get her to wear it.
I also wonder about how much power a small child can exhibit and still not turn into a terror by the time she is thirteen.
Makes one wonder if the two older children of his got away with the same behavior.
Uh Wendie, are you not aware that The Beautiful Life was the first new series of the season to get the ax? After only 2 episodes!
Wearing a coat is not a matter of discipline. She probably just isn’t cold, why should she wear heavy clothes just because YOU or other people are cold? How difficult is it to grasp that just as some people get cold easily, others get TOO HOT easily? Especially a child on the move!
I have worked for years in childcare and I hate seeing parents struggling to put layers and layers on kids who simply aren’t cold! I have yet to see a healthy child die in teh developed world because they didn’t want to put a coat on…
I was never cold as a child and I hate it when adults made a big deal out of it – I am still not cold often and I am a winter swimmer. On teh other hand, heat makes me really uncomfortable and irritable. People’s bodies are built differently and their metabolisms are different.
I roll my eyes everytime I hear people going on about how you’ll catch a cold if you go out with wet hair, without a coat, etc. It’s viruses that make people sick, not the weather.
A child that is hungry will eat, and a child that is cold will seek to warm up – it is nothing to make a battle of wills over!