Parenting/Motherhood

Teach Your Children Well — Another Reason Not to Multi-task

Posted by on Apr 21, 2010 | 0 comments

  Along with the mounting research that says that multi-tasking is ineffectual, let me add one more reason not to do it: your kids. If you want to teach them good manners and focus, you’d do well to practice a little mono-tasking. Maybe it’s just me, but I often have a hard time getting my kids to pay attention to what I am saying. At school, teachers instruct children to give “attentive listening,” while at home I find myself saying, “look at me when I talk to you” with ever more frustration. I was really getting annoyed with with my kids, and then I...

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Getting to 50/50

Posted by on Apr 14, 2010 | 0 comments

  How many women and men in their 30s and 40s thought they were going to have an “equal partnership” marriage and then found that it was not as easy as they thought, especially once kids entered the picture? Finding balance in your marriage can be tricky, especially given the many subtle and not-so-subtle pressures on women to carry most of the burden on the home front and the concomitant pressure on their partners to provide. Getting to 50/50 How Working Couples Can Have It All by Sharing It All is a great resource for couples grappling with the daily reality of caring for...

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Mother-in Law Advice: Just Say Yes

Posted by on Apr 13, 2010 | 0 comments

  I have written a number of times about the power of saying “No.” Today, I want to say something about saying “Yes.” If you are are a parent like me, you say “no” to a lot. No to chocolate at bedtime. No to hitting your sister. No to wearing flip-flops for bike-riding. That’s as it should be. Parents need to set limits and keep their kids healthy and safe. The problem is that “no” can become a reflex. If I’m not careful, I catch myself saying “no” to things for no reason and without even thinking. Or saying...

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Special Time on Your Own Doorstep

Posted by on Apr 12, 2010 | 0 comments

  What makes an occasion special is not so much about what you do or where you go (or how much you spend) but instead about the quality of attention you bring. I already knew this truth, but I was reminded of it this weekend. After our second or third goodnight kiss on Saturday, Margot (age 5-1/2) called out again, “Mommy?” A typical stalling tactic, but I went back into her room. She asked me what we were doing the next day, and I told her I didn’t know. Her confident response: “But it’s going to be special, right?” “Yes,” I assured her....

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Awareness — Wake Up and Smell the Goldfish!

Posted by on Apr 8, 2010 | 0 comments

  Awareness is the beginning of change. Case in point: I never realized how much I was eating between meals until I decided to quit snacking. It turns out that I had been consuming a steady stream of totally unworthy calories: a handful of dry cereal, cashews, crusts off my kids’ sandwiches, old Halloween candy, cold pancakes — you name it. I had known that I was snacking more than I should, but I had wildly underestimated the magnitude of my noshing until I swore off snacks for two weeks. Time after time I stopped myself on the verge of popping some little tidbit into my...

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Taking a Stand for a Mother’s Right to Choose

Posted by on Nov 17, 2009 | 0 comments

  Are stay-at-home-moms damaging their long-term career prospects, putting themselves and their families at financial risk, and wasting their potential? Diana Kapp, author of a recent article in San Francisco Magazine, thinks so. http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/mother-of-all-recessions. Partly because I and several participants from one of my workshops were featured in the article, I want to weigh in on the topic, which has caused a stir among SF moms. No matter how confident we modern mothers may claim to be about our choices around parenting and work, many of us still feel judgment...

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