TGIF-Weekend Reading

Weekend Reading:

Weekend Light

Sunshine

 

Spring Break has come to Chicago. As we approach this holiday weekend of Easter and Passover, family time takes over. Many of us will be enjoying food, and visits with relatives and friends as we celebrate and relax and spend some “quality time” with each other.

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Parenting and boundaries…do you embarrass your kids or do you shame them on Facebook or even in your blog? As parents, we probably should learn some boundaries when it comes to “talking” to or about each other on social media.

 

We as parents do terrible things to our teens all the time. Our fashion humiliates them, we hold their hands in public or try to kiss them goodbye in front of friends. These are hurtful actions to our teens who are sometimes awkwardly maneuvering into adulthood while trying on different hats. Sometimes it’s slow and plodding, sometimes it’s at breakneck speed but always it is a path they are attempting to make for themselves and though we’re invited along for parts of the ride it’s appropriate for us parents to stand back a little and let them explore their worlds.

I love cooking but on any given day it can be a challenge putting dinner on the table. As a young parent, I definitely had more energy to accomplish this task, but as a grandparent it has become difficult with maintaining weight management and making healthy choices for three generations in the meal planning. I really related to this new mom, who wanted to have  home made dinners but cooking was no longer a relaxing time for her in the kitchen.

 

This became a habitual meditation — imagining my pre-baby dinner routine every time I sat down to feed my baby. Cooking had been my relaxation habit for years, the chop-chop-chopping of onions and the swirl of oil in a pan my fragrant, rhythmic ritual for slowing down after a hectic day. I loved it, and the memory of it calmed me when I needed to be patient with my fussy eater.

“Quantitiy vs. Quality Time” is always a parenting discussion. Do you use weekend time as quality, quantity time?

 

As an exhausted parent who doesn’t get enough time to work out, who hasn’t seen a grown-up movie for months, and who wishes that date night were an actual night rather than an idea, I understand why so many of us might seize on studies suggesting that we should take more time for ourselves. Perhaps we should. But we should do so without relying on misleading research. Far better that we make our parenting choices informed by the broader set of more reliable studies, which Ms. Kalil summarized for me as suggesting “that when parents spend high-quality time with their children, their children are more likely to succeed.”

Of course, you can’t have those transcendent moments unless you’re together — to some small extent, quantity begets quality. And that’s where this research should come back to reassure parents. We are spending time with our children, particularly when you look, not at one bad day, but at a week, a month, a year, an entire childhood spent together. When we are questioning ourselves, we tend to look not at the cumulative sum of our time, but at what we fear we’ve missed. We don’t need to spend every minute with our children, or every minute engaged in intense togetherness. The time we spend apart (sleeping, working, studying, building blocks, playing sports, staring into space) brings something to our interactions, too. It’s time to look at our family calendars as half full, not half empty.

Hoping that you all have a restful, enjoyable weekend!

Blog Boundaries, Where Do You Draw the Line?

Volleying Back and Forth with Comments

BLOGGER BOUNDARIES

This past week I have been following Christine Coppa’s blog on Babble.com. Christine’s blog is one that I have “toasted” to in my Tuesday posts.  One of her recent posts has stirred up a lot of her reader, me being one of them.

As you may know, I am a clinical social worker, a maternal child nurse and a blogger. I have worked with families and children for over 35 years. Since I began blogging, I have been reading many blogs written by moms, Christine’s blog being one of them.

Some of these moms write for Babble.com and other blog groups. They write from their perspective and many are personal. Some topics are of course more controversial than others and generate more interest and comments.

More than a week ago, Christine Coppa wrote a piece about whether parents should split the costs of a birthday party. What followed in the comments violated my idea of boundaries. Many of the comments were totally unrelated to the initial discussion. They were commenters’ personal feelings towards the father of Christine’s son, who for his own reasons chooses not to recognize his son. One commenter bashed Christine and her family in uncalled for ways.

For whatever reason, Babble’s editors chose to support Christine’s wish to keep these comments on her site even though they stated that their policy is to not publish hostile comments.

There were a handful of comments including my own that felt this line of commenting was not only unpleasant but that it could be potentially harmful to Christine’s 5 year old son in the future. It was said in several comments that this kind of back and forth “slinging” of angry words would be better kept private.

Needless to say for various reasons this was Christine Coppa’s most viewed Babble blog. I am not sure what that says, after reading most of the comments which had nothing to do with the original topic. To me it was an airing of dirty laundry, which generated the popularity of this post and at whose expense?

I have often thought about boundaries when it comes to airing one’s life on a blog and it seems that it gets even more complicated when you are getting paid to do so and it involves a young child.

I  also do not find it appropriate when the blogger/writer gets hostile in her own comments. I lose respect for the writer at that point especially where a young child is concerned. The comments that were made with concern for JD and the effect this might have on him in the future were met with anger although I did see some acceptance of the comment from a lawyer who deals with families in conflict. One of my comments was not even published and I am not sure why.

I also sent a message to Babble via their Facebook page asking why they did not uphold their own policies in this case especially where a young child is involved. I have gotten no response so far.

Are numbers of readers so important to a blog that a child’s boundaries are all but ignored?

Do you think that boundaries are important for mom/dad bloggers who discuss personal family issues? Do you have concern for the possible long range effects of this type of blog on children?

I would be happy to hear your opinions?

NOTE:

I will continue to support Ms. Coppa’s blog even though I disagree wholeheartedly the way this comment section was handled. I am disappointed in the Babble editors decision.

8/20/2012

http://blogs.babble.com/kid-scoop/2012/08/09/should-parents-split-the-birthday-party-fee/

I visited the link above and the very hostile comments have been removed from this particular post at “Kid Scoop”. Without these comments, it will be difficult to fully appreciate what I wrote in the above post.

I am glad that the comments are no longer able to be viewed.