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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
"Are you part of the problem, or part of the solution?"
We all feel the urge to blame someone when things go wrong. We seem to
think that fixing blame prevents a recurrence of the problem, or
absolves us of responsibility. In reality, blaming makes everyone
defensive, more inclined to watch their back -- and to attack -- than to
make amends. READ POST
BlogHer and LG (one of the largest cell phone manufacturers in the world)
asked me to post about Mobile Meanness on BlogHer.com. Their
“LG TextEd Ambassador” program hopes to arm parents with the info they
need to help kids use their cell phones responsibly. My post, which includes Rules to Help Your Child Handle a Cell Phone Responsibly, is here on BlogHer.
READ POST
"Try to see your child as a seed that came in a packet without a label. Your job is to provide the right environment and nutrients. You can’t decide what kind of flower you’ll get or in which season it will bloom."
-- Anonymous
Are there things about your child that drive you crazy? Often we think we our job is to "stamp out" those traits and mold the perfect child. But humans can't pare away our weaknesses, because they're the flip side of our strengths. That's who we ARE.
If she has trouble controlling her anger when her brother disrespects her, is she an equally passionate fighter against other injustices? Is his dawdling a sign of immense imagination -- like Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes, is he secretly Spaceman Spiff? Will her emphasis on socializing shape the perfect talk-show host? Will his stubbornness help him succeed at a difficult task against all odds?
We can't sculpt our kids. All we can really do is give them nurturing conditions in which to grow into who they are, and teach them to manage their weaknesses so their strengths can blossom. READ POST
"The art of mothering is to teach the art of living to children." -- Elaine Heffner
Should you strategically ignore mouthy behavior, from a toddler or a tween? Never. But that doesn't mean you "crack down" with discipline, either, because that erodes your relationship with your child and makes disrespectful behavior even more likely.
What's effective is to always keep the connection with the child at the same time that you calmly and kindly re-establish the standard for respect. Here's the three step strategy.
1. Monitor your own language and model respect and kindness in every interaction with your child. If you find yourself criticizing or yelling, bite your tongue. If you need to set limits, wait until you can speak calmly and respectfully.
2. Strengthen your relationship with your child by looking for every opportunity to positively connect. Kids think twice about hurting the feelings of parents they feel connected to. Be sure you spend at least 15 minutes alone with each child every day, giving him your focused, positive attention.
3. If your child speaks hurtfully to you, calmly confront the behavior and re-set a clear expectation for respectful behavior while staying connected to your child: "Wow, your tone of voice hurts. You must be very upset to speak to me that way. That's not like you. You know I don't speak to you in that tone. Want to tell me what's upsetting you?" Or, if you know already, "I'm hearing that you're very angry at me right now. I hear how much you wish I would say yes to what you're wanting. Let's talk about this when we're both more calm."
Notice that we're teaching kids how to be in relationship with another person. If we ignore their disrespect, we do them no favors. If we react disrespectfully to their rudeness, we perpetuate the behavior. The secret? They learn their behavior from us. READ POST
"I miss my baby.
I can't believe that she's a going-to-school girl,
a climb-into-my-own-chair-and-make-my-own-sandwich girl,
a brush-my-own teeth girl,
a take-off-my-coat-and-hang-it-on-the-hook girl,
a go-to-the-toilet-and-wipe-my-own-bum girl.
Where's that baby who didn't want to do anything but snuggle up with me? The
cuddly, chubby one who was constantly on my hip as I made dinner,
vacuumed the living room, talked on the phone? My back is very
grateful that she's a do-it-myself girl. The rest of me gets a bit sad
from time to time."
--www.flickr.com/photos/notcatherinezeta/ 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.