Category Archives: Everyday Parenting

Give Up Screentime Fights

So much worry, arguing, screaming, and power struggles are spent between parents and kids over screen time. The jury is still out on the effects but enough has been written about brain damage, nature deprivation, inactivity, eye damage, etc., etc. to keep parents tethered to a rope yanking their children away from the very thing that fascinates them most.

Video game addictions, internet obsession, contact with cyberspace predators all have us living in fear for our children’s minds and safety. Many parents report angry, hostile moods in their children once they are removed from their device. All very real concerns, which make it very difficult to trust what I am about to suggest.

I have been trying an experiment with some of the parents I work with and finding an amazing success rate. My suggestion is to lay off your children’s screen time.

“Yikes! How can I do that and be a responsible parent? My child will stay glued to one device or another forever.” “I can’t just let him rot in front of the computer screen.” “She spends her Read more…

Are you an Ostrich Parent?

Just two weeks ago a new study came out of the University of Manitoba showing the effects of spanking and corporal punishment including slapping, shoving, grabbing, and hitting. Researchers examined data from more than 34,000 adults and found that being spanked significantly increased the risk of developing mental health issues and mood disorders in adults, which includes depression and anxiety, as well as personality disorders and alcohol and drug abuse and that spanking ups the risk of major depression by 41 percent, alcohol and drug abuse by 59 percent, and mania by 93 percent. This study only looked at regular discipline involving physical punishment and excluded more severe physical, sexual, and emotional abuse.

The study was no surprise. The comments from readers were. Almost all were like these:

• My Mom was a serial spanker when I was a kid. I am 63 and have managed a pretty normal life and I am no murderer or haven’t attempted suicide. I don’t remember ever getting spanked when I didn’t deserve it.

• This article is ridiculous. That is all.

• Read more…

Are we ready or able to stop bullying?

The youtube capture of the 68-year-old bus monitor being bullied by a group of 12-14 year olds has been viewed by almost 5 million and has raised the ire of each one of us. We are all full of opinions and judgments. But what would you do if you were the parent of one of these children?

The situation was so horrifying that our knee jerk reaction would likely be to shame the boys (I think they were all boys) with almost as horrific threats and punishments as they gave to their bus monitor. That’s what we do in reaction mode. And look where it’s gotten us.

The school district’s assistant superintendent for student services said, “Certainly the behavior of the students on the video is a clear violation of our district’s code of conduct and will not be tolerated. Disciplinary action to the fullest extent appropriate under New York education law will be taken against all involved.” I’m sure it will. But what will that disciplinary action be, and will it be effective? My guess is not at all. Read more…

Is Your Graduate Ready for Graduation?

If your child is graduating from kindergarten, elementary school or middle school, the next step is obvious. Worse-case scenario is repeating a grade. Many high school graduates will go on to college. But for those at the end of their academic journey, there is the world at large waiting for them. Most parents are left with the big question at the end of their active parenting years: Will they be embraced or will that world knock them down? For most graduates, anxiety may grow to major proportion: Can I make it? Will I be able to earn a living? Can I afford a place to live? Am I ready for this? Will I fail?

Whether a job is waiting or not, more and more adult children are moving back home for both financial and emotional support. Many situations are positive with another wage earner helping make ends meet. But the growing population of adult children unable to find jobs and continuing to live off mom and dad does not bode well for our economy and the future of our youth. Read more…

The Parent-Child Baggage Cycle

Ever wonder why you yell at your kids, take away privileges and put them in time out and nothing seems to change? It’s because you are spinning the endless cycle of action and reaction instead of stopping it. You are expecting your child to make the change and be the grown-up first.

A father I am working with has established a deep cycle of resistance with his eight year old daughter, who is a very strong-willed child and says things to her father like, “You don’t love me”, “You’re mean”, and “It’s unfair”. She has a little brother who is easy and flexible and gets his parents approval because of it.

Dad complains, “She says no to everything, even something she knows is coming up and she is supposed to do. For instance, I told her when we got home it was time to go up to bed – twice. Calmly. But when we walked in the door, she went directly over to the table and started to draw. That started it.”

When this dad, like so many parents, is Read more…

A Breastfeeding War?

Is this the age of guilty parents? Have mothers always felt this guilty? I don’t think guilt was part of my mother’s generation of parenting—even though she felt plenty guilty…but we won’t go there.

Revolution requires a pendulum swing. We know so much more in the past two decades about brain development and children’s needs that our current revolution is fighting hard to banish traditional parenting modes of fear, pain and suffering to get desired behavior.

It is the extreme ends of the continuum that are needed to push our buttons into action. Let’s hope we can learn what we need to as a parenting culture from these polarities and not get mired in blame, shame, and guilt.

The singular idea of a mother breastfeeding her 3 year old doesn’t provoke much emotion anymore. It’s the captured attitude of this casual, hot, hand-on-hip mother breastfeeding a child who looks eight that throws the pendulum and raises all kinds of issues and ideologies (evidenced by the comments on my facebook page).

Inevitably when revolutionary ideas grab for attention, a lot Read more…

For Mother’s Day: Is Mothering the Hardest Job?

Thanks to Hilary Rosen’s comment about Ann Romney never working a day in her life, the subject of mothering has come to the fore once again – just in time for Mother’s Day.

While I believe that parenting, whether done primarily by a mother or a father, is indeed the hardest and most important job anyone will ever undertake, I do not think that society as a whole gives mothering any more than lip service. On Mother’s Day we can give mothers that pat on the back fulfilling our obligation and then be done with it. If indeed it is the hardest job, why do we not feel the need to give parents every opportunity to do the job well?

We certainly consider doctoring a critically important job, hence the years of training necessary to do it. The same can be said of any job. We need education to drive a car, fly a plane, work in a bank, be a neighborhood watchman. But giving birth requires no education at all. We place so little value on the job of Read more…

Does Whining Drive You Crazy?!

I’ve never met a parent who likes—no, is even okay with—whining. For me it was like nails on a blackboard. Many parents don’t know of another torture that would be worse.
Whining is as developmental and normal in a toddler’s life as discovering the pleasure of saying “no”. Don’t think about teaching your child not to do it. Do think about ways you can help yourself deal with it calmly and perhaps shorten it’s duration. Here are a few:

1. Don’t call it whining. It’s very hard to talk to your child about whining without being critical and blaming. “Stop whining.” “I can’t hear you when you’re whining.” These proclamations will not get you what you want. It may only make it worse.

2. Make a compassionate association when you hear it. Can you instead think about how frustrated your child is feeling—even if it’s over something you won’t allow. I once heard Aletha Salter say that whining is stuck crying. A child who whines is actually trying hard not to cry so the cry gets stuck. Sometimes validation of Read more…

The Perils of Replacing Play with Homework

When are we going to get it that young children need free and unstructured play in order to learn at their best? More and more kindergartners and even preschoolers are getting academic work and even some to take home.

I just returned from London where I ran a number of parent workshops. In one, I was asked by a frustrated mother if I could help her convince her five year old to do his homework. I told her that I couldn’t do that because I am so opposed to young children having any academic work and that homework was the last thing her son should be doing. The whole group supported this mother in resisting the school’s assignments, but she became very worried about what it would mean for her child’s chances to move ahead into the proper schools.

Strangely, I hear that most schools are pressured by the parents to give homework at younger and younger ages. I entreat parents to come together to defeat this trend and to stand firm on allowing young children to be just Read more…

Too many toys?

Watching the toys pouring in for my grandson has made me think about our grossly material world and how important it seems to parents that their children have everything the culture provides. Coinciding with this—granted I have not done a study on the connection—seems to be an epidemic of bored kids who want nothing more than to be interfacing with a screen of some kind.

I wonder if children have so much to play with from a very early age, they switch quickly and mindlessly from one toy to another, get bored easily and then demand more. What if a young child had two toys? I imagine that child would use those toys in many ways that the child with lots of toys would not. What happens to imagination when toys and games fill in all the details? Do you want your child thinking about ways she can dress her doll from found things around the house, perhaps learning to sew, or do you want the doll that comes with complete wardrobe and accessories? Can your child imagine what he Read more…