Many of us want to have it all…but let’s be real…is it possible? My guess is, it depends on what “all” means to each one of us. Our definition of “all” may also change and morph over time just as we ourselves do. Marissa Mayer is the new, young, mother-to-be, CEO of Yahoo. This week she is causing a stir and is a trending topic among moms. It seems, she plans to work right through her maternity leave…does she not have a clue how becoming a parent changes your perspective. That is not to say that her plans are not “realistic” for her. What it seems to say is, she has no experience to reference her wishes as to how she will handle motherhood and a high profile job.
“Mothers feel so overwhelmed by the sexualizing messages their daughters are receiving from the media that they feel they can do nothing to help,” she said. “Our studys findings indicate otherwise — we found that in actuality, mothers are key players in whether or not their daughters sexualize themselves. Moms can help their daughters navigate a sexualizing world by instructing their daughters about their values and by not demonstrating objectified and sexualized behaviors themselves.”
Healthy Child Healthy World is one of my favorite sites for excellent information…this week has been a long one for me but I would love to share these wonderful articles that as so apropos for summer.
Have a great weekend!
See you all next week…hopefully!
The dog days of summer have arrived early at Chez Sorensen and my girls are practically living in the pool. I love that they’re spending oodles of time outdoors, but we’re going through copious amounts of sunscreen and my kids aren’t exactly fond of the laborious effort it takes to slather their bodies repeatedly throughout the day.
I read this post yesterday and it made me sad and angry.
Today, I am listening to the Penn State sexual abuse scandal being reported in the morning news as the Sandusky trial is beginning to get under way… so many thoughts are running through my head.
As a social work and nursing student, I saw more child abuse/sexual abuse than I ever wanted to witness. It was very sad and disturbing. At that time in my life, my feelings of sadness did not overwhelm me because I was involved in caring for these little victims. But today, as I write the words “little victims” it feels like a knife is stabbing me in the heart.
These “little victims”are innocent children until an ” adult” robs them of the feeling of safety. Some are robbed of their innocence by other “children” such as cousins or friends who are not technically “adults”. Sad…very sad.
My own mother was “molested” as a young girl in the 1920′s in Brooklyn, NY…she was doing an errand for her own mother, when a shop keeper exposed himself to her. That event affected my mother, my grandmother, me, my children and on and on…
I was warned of stranger danger as a young child…as early as I can remember…my grandmother told me to tell her of anything “strange” and to be careful on my way to and from school. In the 50′s and 60′s we walked to school through a large park in Yonkers, NY. Parks were places where “things” could happen…”caution and be aware”…all warnings from my grandmother.
When my own girls were young…I suspected even parents of their schoolmates …I know this is sick…Right? But when my kids would repeat some “off color sexual” jokes that their “school mates” would recount after hearing these jokes supposedly from their parents, the hair would stand up on the back of my neck.
As a young mother, I remember being keenly aware of situations that made me uncomfortable, while at the same time trying not to alarm my kids. I was always trying to keep communication open….not easy…believe me.
Now… I have been talking mostly about girls…nothing is to say that boys are not equally at risk for child molestation. My thoughts are that Penn State has certainly brought this into the forefront or has it? Some of my young therapy patients were young boys who were molested by their fathers, grandfathers, uncles, cousins or their mom’s friends. Some of these molestations were covered up by moms, who, for various reasons, refused to believe what their children were telling them … denial…at its worst.
Child molestation causes ripples that keep going and never cease, just like the ripples of the tide on the shore.
Sometimes, the ripples will become tidal waves and do some irreparable damage…other times, the ripples will just quietly erode the beach, seemingly without notice.
My hope is to support people like Meghan, who share their stories and provide a place where others can also share how certain “life” storms changed the flow of their lives forever.
I forgot to mention that because this is a brand new website, if you were subscribed to Parenting in the Loop, previously in order to continue to receive new post notifications you will have to subscribe again to the new site.
I hope you will do so I enjoy all my subscribers and their blogs as well.
Tantrums are not easy to deal with…even though you love your child and grandchild to the moon and back!
During a tantrum you might want to send them to the moon!
It sometimes can seem that they are possessed by something or someone when having a tantrum…but who or what has set this usually charming child into an uncontrollable rage?
We have experienced our share of tantrums in our house…and what I have learned as a grandmother I only wish that I knew as a mom of two children less than two years apart in age.
There is always one or two events that stand out in the family tantrum history…one was my own memory of tearing a newspaper to shreds when my working mother told me she had not brought me home anything from work that evening. I was not so much spoiled as I was unhappy that she forgotten about me. I was left alone until I calmed down and the paper was completely shredded.
With my own kids…the sentinel tantrum was one at the entrance to the Miami Zoo when my younger daughter did not want to go and see any animals. She was around 3 years old. We were hoping to have a family outing on a very hot Miami day.
I recall trying the old standby…”bye, we are leaving…you can stay here if you want”. Is that wishful thinking on the part of parents during a horrible tantrum.
Of course, nothing worked until she was ready to put her anger aside after what seemed an eternity. We then visited a pond where the resident Koi made us all laugh as they fought over food that visitors were encouraged to throw into theirwater. It was the Koi version of ‘Hunger Games“.
Usually temper tantrums and anger in children is induced by stress. Young children do not know how to handle stress and do not have the verbal skills to explain why they are so upset.
Even if they try to tell a grown up …commonly it is about something that many times parents do not have patience to listen to nor attempt to understand.
I am no different. At least I wasn’t when my kids were young.
Anger in children often comes from stress. Yes. Stress is part of a child’s life as much as it is a part of an adult’s life. Teaching a child how to handle stress is one of the best things we as parents can do for our children. A healthy dose of stress actually builds resilience …and optimism. At the same time, parents must also be aware that anger is a sign of child anxieties. There are ways to address child anxieties.
The most important thing to keep in mind when you’re faced with a child in the throes of a tantrum, no matter what the cause, is simple and crucial: Keep cool. Don’t complicate the problem with your own frustration. Kids can sense when parents are becoming frustrated. This can just make their frustration worse, and you may have an escalated tantrum on your hands. Instead, take deep breaths and try to think clearly. via Temper Tantrums.
Dr. Karp’s advice is simple and easy to follow. It is called the “fast food rule“
Follow the Fast-Food Rule. This rule is simple: When your child is upset, you should take a lesson from the order-takers at a burger joint — always repeat back his “order” (what he wants) before you tell him your “price” (what you want). Toddlers who are in the middle of a meltdown are incapable of hearing our message (our reasons, reassurance, distraction or warning) until they’re sure we understand and respect their message. So when your tot is upset, before you mention your ideas, take a minute to sincerely describe what he’s doing and how you think he feels.
Janet Lansbury who writes her own blog has this to say to a mom regarding tantrums. In this particular situation there is a ‘new baby’ that a toddler is trying to accept.
Don’t feel responsible when your daughter doesn’t get her way and falls apart…. What she needs most of all (especially right now) are confident, stable, unruffled parents who project calm in the face of her storms (and the freedom you are giving her to have them).
Clarify the situation and make a plan. During more peaceful moments together, talk about life after new baby. Give her details about the changes that will occur, an imagined play-by-play of the day with the new baby. Be honest and realistic. Toddlers are way too perceptive to believe any whitewashing, and that won’t help her feel settled. Tell her that although you will be very busy taking care of the baby and not be available for her all the time, you’ll make sure she always gets what she needs (through daddy, grandma, etc.). Tell her that you two will have some special time together each day and maybe once (or twice) a week a special outing that she picks.
Then, later, when you are busy with the baby and she’s upset you can say to her calmly and confidently, “I know you want me to do such-in-such with you now, but I can’t. I know it’s hard to wait, but we will have our time together in an hour (or whatever). I’m looking forward to it.” She may have to keep testing that limit until she is certain you will hold your ground.
If you can make the outings work, I highly recommend them, even if you can only give her a choice between a walk down the street and a half-hour outing to the park. It’s not about what you do (or even the amount of time), just about being together. From my experience, those little one-on-one dates with your big girl will be very special, just the way dinner dates with a husband feel extra special once you’ve become parents.
Encourage her to process the feelings. Another thing to do in peaceful moments together is to check in with her about her feelings. The goal is not to get her to label them, but to assure her that anything and everything she is feeling is normal, expected, perfectly all right. You might put it this way, “When children have a baby brother or sister they have all kinds of feelings.
Although ‘Hunger Games‘ is a movie…in my opinion, it is much more than a big box office hit.
It is a commentary on the fierceness with which we approach certain parts of our lives.
It is very popular with our teenagers…why?
Why is it that they love the type of competition that ‘Hunger Games’ portrays?
At dinner with friends the other night, I tried to initiate a discussion about ‘Hunger Games’…I asked what they thought of the violence in the movie?
Now, I have to admit that none of us have even seen the movie. So I probably had no business even starting a discussion in the the first place.
But my friend popped up and said …”it really isn’t that violent”…which is what she had heard somewhere in a review…she did not get a chance to go on, because the men at the table changed the subject.
Are some kids being raised with a ‘Hunger Games’ mentality?
To answer all my questions, I may even have to go see ‘Hunger Games’ in the theatre instead of waiting for the DVD …but then haven’t I just fallen into the media hype pit?
Please click the link and read the cartoon segments that precede this quote in the ‘OP-ED’ New York Times.
Amy Chua’s best-seller, “The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” trumpeted the benefits of raising children with draconian strictness in the Chinese fashion (or allegedly so). Pamela Druckerman’s “Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting” made the case for a more casual, laissez-faire approach. But each mode has something to offer! Thus, cruelty and indifference combine to perfect effect in the philosophies of the “Hunger Games” Mother. Who better to help parents navigate the brutal, futuristic dystopia that is contemporary childhood? A primer, above.
It is frightening for parents to even think about this happening but there are American Academy of Pediatrics‘ recommendations to follow to lessen the risk of SIDS .
SIDS is considered by some professionals to be a disease. Here is what Norman Lewak, Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at UCSF … had to say:
SIDS is a real disease. The “Triple Risk Model for SIDS is described in the Technical Report that accompanies the Policy Statement on-line edition only. Thanks to the work of Hannah Kinney of Boston Childrens, we know that SIDS infants have lesions in the respiratory center of the brainstem. This is the first risk pre-exiting respiratory center lesion. The second risk is the vulnerable developmental age, peaking at 2-4 months, in which CNS respiratory control changes. The third risk is an “environmental trigger“–an environmental event that blocks continued respiratory activity.This trigger appears to many of us to be deep sleep brought on by increased comfort from increased warmth. Prone sleep has been proven to increase warmth.The pacifier effect is most likely caused by an increase in activity, thus a lighter sleep.http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2011/10/12/peds.2011-2284/reply#content-block
consider using a pacifier which leads to a lighter sleep
avoid soft bedding
avoid overheating of the room where baby sleeps
avoid exposure tobacco smoke, alcohol and illicit drugs
According to recent information, SIDS a disease which can be triggered by other environmental factors such as sleeping on soft surfaces, or stomach sleeping. These situations can set off a reaction whereby an infant ceases breathing due to an abnormal increase in his/her CO2 level. SIDS is not “suffocation”.
Every parent-to-be should be given information about SIDS prior to delivery and any questions should be answered by nurses or pediatricians early in the newborn period.
It is easier to follow sleeping guidelines when they are explained and make sense as to why they are important and how they can make a difference in the prevention of SIDS. Of course unfortunately, there are never any guarantees but parents can do their best with the knowledge that they have to prevent a tragedy.
There is so much to being a parent … children are precious… we are their protectors…just as we use car seats to protect them in the car we should protect them when we put them to sleep.
I loved ”A Tree for Max”…it is delightful read for a child as well as an parent.
This is a book I will happily share with my 3 year old granddaughter throughout her childhood.
At first, I am sure she will enjoy a synopsis of this fable, while focusing on the beauty of the photography and the imaginary conversations occurring among the forest trees.
What a wonderful way to stimulate her sense of make-believe and awe!
As she gets older, I know she will appreciate the story of Max’a move from one home to another, as she experiences along with Max the changes which take place when a child is transplanted.
“A Tree for Max” is a book which continues to grow along with a child as he/she journeys through life and will bear fruit all along the way.
Disclosure:I personally know Jerry Halberstadt and was given a copy of “A Tree for Max“, my review was unsolicited and my opinions are as always my own.
