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Post by liss31d on Jul 3, 2007 9:21:39 GMT -5
Agh the Pike family drive me insane in this book! The Pike parents are treating Mallory like a nanny/slave and their other children like invalids, e.g. Mallory having to clean up after one of the triplets, Mallory having to make PBJs for Claire even though she's working, Mallory aving to look for Frodo, Mallory having to make a friggin dessert, etc... Aaghhhh! Also I felt really bad for Mallory when Claire and Margo whine about her not playing with them and making a play called Mean Old Mallory... that must have been so horrible for her.
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Lauren
Sitting For The Newtons
Posts: 2,026
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Post by Lauren on Jul 3, 2007 9:47:16 GMT -5
I would think the triplets would be old enough to clean up after themselves.
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Post by aln1982 on Jul 3, 2007 10:29:25 GMT -5
^ Agree, Gracie. Then again, most men and boys aren't known for neatness ;D I always feel bad for Mal with her parents treating her like a servant or at least a third parent to the kids but remember feeling especially bad for her in this one. It's been a while, though, since I've read so I should reread. I remember liking it pretty well.
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Post by sotypical42483 on Jul 3, 2007 15:21:47 GMT -5
My computer ate my comment! I'll try again. I think ALL of the Pike kids can clean up after themselves. Obviously there are things the littlest ones can't do, but come on, Claire can pick up her own toys and stuff. And the triplets could make her a sandwich or even - God forbid - her parents could. What the heck does Mrs Pike do all day anyway? It's not like she has a job...
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Post by aln1982 on Jul 3, 2007 23:25:17 GMT -5
Agree about the Pikes all being capable of picking up after themselves. As for Mrs. Pike not having a job, I think she did work outside the home at least part time as a secretary in a lot of the later books. Didn’t she also do a lot of charity work? I know that was mentioned. But being a stay-at home mom (especially for 8 kids – ahhh!), itself, is a big enough job. Lots of people don’t realize just how much work they have, especially because they are the ones that everyone else calls on because they don’t “have a real job” so they end up spending countless hours doing stuff for other people. I can see this a lot with Mrs. Pike, too.
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Lauren
Sitting For The Newtons
Posts: 2,026
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Post by Lauren on Jul 3, 2007 23:28:30 GMT -5
^ I'm a stay-at-home mom and it always annoys me when people say that it's not a real job. For me, it's the equivalent of working two full-time jobs.
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Post by sotypical42483 on Jul 4, 2007 0:00:59 GMT -5
I agree that being a stay-at-home mom would be hard work under normal circumstances, but Mrs Pike seemed to throw all the responsibilities onto Mallory!
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Post by aln1982 on Jul 4, 2007 0:12:08 GMT -5
I think Mal probably took care of the Pikes (which did always bother me, too) while Mrs. Pike took care of the neighborhood. This does seem wrong, though, but.... Gracie, I was thinking of you when I wrote my post ;D
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alula
Sitter-In-Training
Posts: 406
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Post by alula on Jul 4, 2007 2:42:47 GMT -5
Yeah, the Pike parents, and other kids, really don't come off too well here. I think part of what has always bothered me is that Mallory is trying to organize her time and do work! That's something parents should be encouraging. It would be one thing if Mrs. Pike was asking her to do all those things when she wasn't doing something else in particular--just reading or talking on the phone or something, although I think she's still entitled to a little bit of downtime--but it seems really disrespectful and unfair of them to take her away from her homework and a specific project with a deadline to do things the kids should be able to do for themselves.
Part of it I guess is the weird regimentation of ages, where being 11 is practically adult and 10 is a child. In the big families I've known, the oldest kids did have a lot of responsibility compared to other kids their age, but it also tended to flow down--so that kids in the middle would be responsible for helping littlest ones with simple things, like making PBJs, and not leave it all to the oldest. Also, pretty much all the kids had chores from the time they Claire's age or even younger, even if it was just picking up toys or setting out napkins and placemats. I know the Pikes like everything to be freeform, but they seem to have gotten around that by leaving Mal to pick up more than her fair share.
For some reason, I thought it would be kind of funny if AMM or one of the ghostwriters actually wrote a "Tess in the Middle" book. (Hee! They could even have had it printed under the name Mallory Pike as a Special Edition or something--it would have been AWESOME.) I think it's because in the chapter when she talks to her creative writer teacher, the way she describes the story sounds (to me, at least), much more like an author making a pitch than the way writers tend to talk about stuff in process.
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Post by morbiddadestiny on Jul 4, 2007 23:03:53 GMT -5
yeah the entire family was so annoying in this book. i felt for mal.
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Lauren
Sitting For The Newtons
Posts: 2,026
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Post by Lauren on Jul 6, 2007 18:27:45 GMT -5
Quote: My favorite part was where Mallory wondered whether it was possible that an entire family could have a screw loose.
I think her parents have a screw or too loose what with having that many kids in so short a time.
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Katie
New To Stoneybrook
Posts: 153
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Post by Katie on Jul 8, 2007 21:44:41 GMT -5
I teach pre school and the average 5 year old is capable of making him or herself a pb&j if given the materials to do it. If a butter knife or spoon, loaf of bread, jar of jelly and some peanut butter were around couldn't Claire made herself a sandwich? Or peeled herself an orange? My preschool kids love making their own snacks and doing snack activities. Their favorites are the nut cracker and the juice squeezer but they love the banana slicer too. It all gets kept on a shelf where they can help themselves.
I felt awful for Mallory. I'm the oldest of 5 although we are spaced out more than the Pike's. The baby is 9 and a half years younger than I am.
When I was 11 like Mallory the others were 9, 6, 3 and 18 months. I did do some baby sitting of them but I never got paid for it and I wasn't really babysitting the 9 year old or even in charge of him. Why Mallory gets to boss her 9 and 10 year old siblings around when she is only 11 is beyond me. The baby needed attention since he wasn't potty trained yet but the 6 and 3 year old mostly just played or watched tv together. And when my parents were home I was not being asked to chase all 4 of them around because my parents actually parented. My baby brother and I are close now because I did spend a lot of time babysitting him when he was small but it never came at the expense of my homework.
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alula
Sitter-In-Training
Posts: 406
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Post by alula on Jul 9, 2007 1:43:37 GMT -5
Hee. This reminds me of when I was little, around 4--I used to like to get up and watch cartoons on Saturday, so the night before my mom would pour out a serving of dry cereal into a bowl and pour milk into the creamer pitcher (because the half-gallons we bought were too hard for me to control). And usually some sliced up fruit or something, too, and a glass of juice. That way, she got to sleep in an extra hour, and I felt super grown up "fixing" my own cereal (deciding to put the fruit in the cereal or eat it plain, ooh!) and so forth.
But I agree, I know I was making PBJs by age 5 (although to be honest, I'm still pretty awful at peeling oranges--I just cut them up or make someone peel it for me!). And I was definitely responsible for picking up my own toys, picking up dirty laundry, and setting the table, plus whatever miscellaneous "run-and-find-this-that-those-your father" errands my mother needed me for. I definitely was not lounging around waiting for my brother to serve me.
It's amazing to me that the triplets even listen to Mallory at all, and Vanessa's cutting it close.
The more I think about it, the more it seems like we as readers are supposed to respond with pleasure to the freedom and the spontaneity of the Pike household, and how it lets the kids be so creative, but in my rereads, I feel more and more that the household dances on the edge of chaotic, and Mal pulls more than her fair share in keeping things sane. I'm not talking about major regimentation, but I think EVERYONE, down to Claire, needs to be doing some regular chore--picking toys up off the floor, making beds, setting and clearing the table, collecting dirty laundry, to start with, and then maybe more housecleaning/yardwork things as they get into the habit. Maybe this will sound naive, but I really think having to do chores like that are good for kids---they may grumble about it a lot, but I think it makes them feel connected and important to the family, that they have something concrete to contribute.
(Not to mention the number of kids who I met in college who had NO idea how to use a washing machine or an iron, or why you can't heat up a METAL can of soup in a microwave. :headdesk: Once this boy came to my room practically crying because he was on his last clean button down shirt, he had a presentation that day, and he'd just ripped off half the buttons and he didn't even know how to thread a needle. Or the guy who wanted to really clean the common room and his own room before his girl came and raided both my own cleaning supply stash (I liked to share!) and the RA Hall Closet--left to his own devices, the "super scrubbing mix" he propbly showed me when I got home was a mix of bleach and ammonia and we all had to evacuate. So, the point of that long and winding rant was MAKE YOUR KIDS DO CHORES so they don't embarrass themselves, or be forced to rely on the kindness of strangers, which is especially hard if someone has set the fire alarm of by microwaving canned soup at 2 a.m. on a school night, and even more so if someone has filled the dorm with toxic, possibly carciongenic fumes. Chores: the REAL college prep).
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lilafowler
Sitting For The Johanssens
Posts: 1,163
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Post by lilafowler on Jul 9, 2007 11:04:39 GMT -5
^OT, but I had never used a washing machine when I went to college, and I swear I'm not a horrible person! I think I learned not to mix bleach and ammonia when I was in the fourth grade, though. It was either fourth grade or fifth, I remember hearing about it in the elementary school library during a Girl Scout meeting.
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starrynight
Sitting For The Kuhns
The Royal Diner of Pizza Express
Posts: 4,004
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Post by starrynight on Jul 9, 2007 12:45:08 GMT -5
^ I had never used a washing machine when I went away to college, either. My mom didn't really like anyone else touching ours at home. It wasn't very hard to figure out, though.
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