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Did you know that one out of every four girls in middle school today will be date-raped by the time she's 22? That predators try to abduct about 100,000 teenage girls each year, with the risk peaking at age 15? As I consider my 16 year old and her friends, these statistics are shocking, unbearable. READ POST
"Ok, you screamed at your kid. Now what? Unpack your baggage so your
kids don't have to carry it. It's all grist for the mill...The joy of the journey is in the detours." -- Lu Hanessian
As the year turns, and we try to turn over a new leaf, we're
reminded once again of our inability to simply will ourselves to
change. We are human, after all. READ POST
"I find I’m already 10 steps into
reacting and I’ve headed down the “traditional” path with whatever issue
is at hand with my kids. When I am able to remain calm, it certainly
helps the situation as opposed to when I get heated up and emotional,
which only makes things worse. It makes me sad to know that up until
now, I have not been a good example of emotional regulation at all. And
it is so disheartening to see my kids doing things that I know they saw
us do whether it’s throw something, slam a door, etc. Every once in a
while, the little voice inside me says 'It’s too late—damage done' but
then I keep plugging along reading and re-reading your advice and hope
that if I can keep working on myself, my kids can adjust too." – Amy
Sounds familiar, right? We're starting the New Year with emotional
regulation because it’s at the heart of our ability to parent the way
we’d like. In fact, it’s at the heart of most of the ways we trip
ourselves up, from over-eating to over-spending to fighting with our
spouse.
As parents, we know it’s our responsibility to provide
for our child’s physical needs: food, shelter, protection. What about
our responsibility to parent from a state of love? We often hear that
good parents love their children unconditionally, but we all know that
no parent always feels loving. And we’re left on our own to figure out
how we can restore ourselves to a state of love during the inevitable
ups and downs of daily parenting. READ POST
"Dr. Laura, I've already given up on my New Year's Resolution to be a more patient mother because I've blown it over and over."
"Just because I sometimes fall, it doesn't mean I regret the flight." -- Carrie Newcomer
How are you doing at keeping your New Year's resolutions?
(a) Great!
(b) Not so great.
(c) I've given up on keeping my resolution.
(d) I gave up making resolutions a long time ago because they always fail.
If you answered anything other than (a), join the club. Change is
hard. If it were easy, we wouldn't need all these resolutions. But
that doesn't mean it isn't worth trying. Of course you'll make mistakes,
and you won't be perfect. But you'll be headed in the right direction. READ POST
Want to stop yelling at your kids? Ready to start having dinner as a family? Need to find a way to rebuild your relationship with your son or daughter? Desperate to change the tone in your house from sniping and snotty to laughing and loving? READ POST
In honor of the new year, I want to wish you peace-- in your family, your world, and your heart. But peace isn't just something that happens to us, peace is something we create. David Krieger, founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (the mission of which is to support worldwide efforts to abolish nuclear weapons, strengthen international law and institutions, and to inspire and empower a new generation of peace leaders) offers this wonderful little list called 100 Ideas for Creating a More Peaceful World. Happy New Year! READ POST
"In
fact we often don’t feel the wonder and beauty because we are too
busy...trying to live up to the ideal in our head....The cost of
perfection is sometimes that it stresses us out to the point where we no
longer enjoy the moment we are living in." - Pastor Jon
Most of us aspire to give our kids a fairy-tale holiday. We have a
secret fantasy that this will
make up for all of our imperfections as a parent. READ POST
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Comments
my close friends. Any awareness and confidence we can bring to our girls at a young age, will go a long way. Thanks!
*greatly*. Have you read Free Range Kids? She did a nice piece pointing to the number crunched well - which means sorting out which "missing" kids turn up, how many were taken by a relative, and how many actually get abducted by strangers. Which, as it turns
out, is fewer than 100 kids a year. So the world is safer than we might think. There's a big difference between teaching kids - girls *and* boys - how to prevent date rape (which is as important for the boys to know as the girls) and scaring the bejesus out
of them with misinformation about predators around every corner. Here's a link: http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/the-fbi-says-be-afraid-be-very-afraid-for-your-kids/ Regards, Ann Burlingham
from two places: Just Yell Fire (which is the source of the statistic in my post, since that stat is how they begin their video) and Gavin de Becker. He is certainly not a fear monger, if you read his books. He says that teenage girls are the most targeted
population for abduction. I did ask the Just Yell Fire folks for the citation on that statistic, and will share it here when they get back to me.