Parenting Blog

Note: We're on the home stretch in our series on Nurturing Yourself While Raising Your Child.  In honor of Valentine's Day, #8's on the importance of adult love. 

"We don't talk enough about how not having a tribe affects ...us as parents.... I have the fervent hope that we start talking about the exhaustion, need for community and help that we parents need." - Jennifer

 “This style of parenting is for a short season in a marriage—or in your own personal life—and when you devote yourself fully to that season and find the fulfillment that it brings, the season passes soon enough.  You are left with no regrets about distance between you and your partner because you didn’t allow that distance to happen to the point that you couldn’t reconnect.” – Martha Sears

You're a fountain of love for your child, but you can't keep all that love flowing if you don't get some yourself.  We all need connection and affection from other adults, and without that supply of love, we end up with hungry hearts. That means finding a way to connect in mutually nurturing adult relationships.  Maybe that’s your partner. Maybe it’s your BFF, your mother’s group, or your own mother. While it’s true that meeting the needs of our children can take all of our time, there is always a way to savor adult connection. How?   READ POST

 This is #7 in our series on Nurturing Yourself while Raising Your Child.

"Dr. Laura, I'm great with my kids on vacation.  But most of the time, I'm just so stressed out, my default is yelling!" -- Camille

As every parent learns, you can't be a good mom or dad when you're stressed out, no matter how positive your intentions.

It's true that modern life creates stress, but it's also true that what stresses out one person may just roll off the back of another.  Each of us has a responsibility as a parent to manage our own stress.  After all, do you want your kids to have the best of you -- or what's left of you?   READ POST

"The French aren't perfect, but they have some parenting secrets that really do work." - Pamela Druckerman

“An internet poll by the Paris-based Union of Families in Europe shows that 65% of children in France think la fessée - French for a smack on the bottom - is a normal part of their upbringing...More than 95% of the 2,000 grandparents, parents, and children polled said they had been spanked at some point in their lives. Punishing a child with a fessée does not seem to be a generation thing. A nationwide poll carried out nearly 10 years ago revealed that more than 85% of French parents spanked their children, compared with 87 % in the new survey."- Emile Boyer King writing in The Guardian Newspaper

Did you see the Wall Street Journal article Why French Parents Are Superior?  It's by Pamela Druckerman, promoting her new book.  The WSJ loves to criticize American parents, as they did last year when they told us that Tiger Mothers raise more successful kids. (If you're still wondering whether that's true, here's an article on What We Can Learn from Amy Chua).  READ POST

This is Part 6 in our series on Nurturing Yourself while Raising Your Child

“Don’t look at it as exercise — instead, play games and have a ton of fun! The main thing is just to get outside every day and do something you think is fun. You can play sports like soccer, basketball, or badminton. You can play games like freeze tag or ride a bike or do running races with your friends or family. You can go on hikes with your family or go swimming or paddling. Do lots of different things, and again, focus on having fun, and doing it often.” – Leo Babauta

You're a parent, so you don’t have time to exercise, right?   I can relate.  But moving our bodies is a basic part of self-care.  We can't talk about nurturing ourselves without figuring out a way to get physical.    READ POST

This is Part 5 in our series on Nurturing Yourself while Raising Your Child.

“There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.” -- Martha Graham

Raising a child takes so much out of us that we often sacrifice most everything else that's important to us. But if we don't stay connected to what keeps us energized, we run dry.  READ POST

This is Part 4 in our series on Nurturing Yourself while Raising Your Child.

"The only way to help our child is to do the work ourselves. Our child needs a guide through the tsunami." – Leslie Potter, Purejoy Parenting

Life has a way of doling out lessons that we didn't ask for, but that help us develop more wholeness. When we resist those lessons, they land in our lap again in exaggerated form, until we finally tackle them.   READ POST

This is Part 3 in our series on Nurturing Yourself while Raising Your Child.

"What I start to feel is not just anger appropriate to the situation, but old feelings I carry from the past.  And those feelings have nothing to do with my child or the situation.  They have come up for me to take a look at them.  They are part of me.  But they don't belong in my relationship with my child.  They have to do with me and the person who raised me."  -- Laura Davis & Janis Keyser  READ POST