There’s been another dust-up in the news this week, and this time the big story is how great the French are at parenting. I mentioned it briefly in yesterday’s vlog, and I really need to expand on it because parenting and its various styles is a topic for which I have endless passion. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, click here to read the Wall Street Journal essay/excerpt by Pamela Druckerman, author of “Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting”.) First, let me give you the disclaimer: I am not ragging on the author OR the book, which I have not read.…
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Mission Accomplished.
When it comes to the stereotypical teenager-parent relationship, it would seem that there is non-stop eye-rolling, sarcasm, and lying on the teens’ part. On the other side of the coin, parents are “supposed to” enjoy embarrassing their teens on a daily basis, intentionally. Jim and I never fed into that. From the time the boys were very little, we have insisted upon mutual respect. MUTUAL respect. When the boys became tweens (11-12 years old) and were influenced a little more by their friends, they both became a little suspicious of us. It seems as though tweens start to talk with their friends about parents’ motives when it comes to everything,…
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Are You Teaching Your Kid That Stealing Is Okay?
Before I begin this post, let me apologize in advance because I may end up sounding a little judgmental. I have very strong feelings about this issue and though I do believe that my opinion is the right one (of course I do!), I do encourage respectful conversation in the comment section, from both sides. I would guess that every parent in the world (except for Madonna, I’m sure) has had the experience of bringing their child(ren) along to the grocery store. It’s not always a fun time, especially when the child is very young. (I always found the toddler age to be most challenging because I had to focus…
- I've Got Mad Skillz, Jim Has Mad Skillz, My Dad Has Mad Skillz, My Kids Have Mad Skillz, My Mom Has Mad Skillz, Reflections on Parenting, We Are An Awesome Couple
Parenting Secrets From Behind the Tiara
I wrote this post a couple of years ago, for a friend who needed a guest post on her blog. She has since shut down her site, so I thought I’d post it here! My husband Jim and I are successful parents. Really. If we were in Oprah’s magazine, our mad parenting skillz would be featured on her “What I Know For Sure” page. Of course we are not the only successful parents in the world, but we’re the only ones that matter…to our kids. I am happy to report that our boys are fine, upstanding young men–and it’s not only because we think so: that’s the general consensus from…