Parenting 101 « Parental Wisdom® by Tina Nocera

Archive for the ‘Parenting 101’ Category

Perception is not reality – the safety of our kids

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

I was speaking with the mom of an eight-year-old girl. Her daughter wanted a friend to come over and the mom thought it would be a good idea to take the girls out to the park to play. The other mom’s response, “No, it isn’t safe.” The irony is that the 2nd girl has a TV in her bedroom with cable, a cell phone and a computer with Internet access. What that mom hasn’t realized is that she has opened the front door of her home to the entire unsupervised outside world.

Under pressure, MySpace.com announced that it will take further steps to protect children from adult content and possible predators on the site. Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says that MySpace agreed not only to third-party monitoring but also to working on age verification technology.

I was curious about how this works so I downloaded a white paper on this topic to learn more. If you’re interested visit IDologoy.

The bottom line as always parents, the best protection our children have is us in their lives.

Tags:center for missing children, children, internet preditors, media, myspace, Safety
Posted in Media & Marketing, Parenting 101, Popular culture, Safety | No Comments »

The Link Between Music and Family

Saturday, January 12th, 2008

I’m grateful that our son Michael has shared his interest in music with us. In addition to the obvious benefits of learning something new with your child, I realized we can all learn a lot from musicians. Michael is taking In Home Voice Lessons now and his voice is beautiful and he even though about making a band!

Passion
It is never work if you love what you do. Musicians don’t call it practice, they call it play. The more you play, the better you get.

Respect
Musicians appreciate and respect each other’s work. They encourage solos in performing and always share creative ideas.

No discrimination of any kind
Watch a concert by Eric Clapton and you’ll see him performing with B.B. King and John Mayer; always giving guest performers the limelight. He proves that you can learn from those around you, young and old.

There is always a new song to sing
Music is infinite, and we all have something to offer, and a new way to play it. Finding ways to harmonize our uniqueness with the uniqueness of others can be very rewarding.

As we try to teach our children life lessons, these are lessons we can all benefit from.

Posted in Parenting 101, Play, Teens | No Comments »

Hoorah! Finally, a Mean Mom

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

Jane Hambleton of Fort Dodge, Iowa has dubbed herself “the meanest mom on the planet.” Despite her harsh personnel criticism, she has people cheering, and I’m one of them.

I would suspect that if you questioned educators, coaches, emergency room nurses, school counselors, and police officers they would stand up and cheer for the mom who put an ad in the paper and sold her 19-year-old son’s car after she found alcohol in

It appears that parents of teens choose a camp. They are either as President Ronald Regan suggests, from the ‘trust, but verify’ school of thought, or the ‘blissfully ignorant’ camp, or from that river in Egypt, ‘selective denial.’

Under age drinking doesn’t make sense at all – period.

Jane Hambleton decided to be a parent at the sake of friendship. Kudos to you!

Posted in Parenting 101, Teens | 7 Comments »

Babies are the new accessory

Thursday, January 3rd, 2008

It is quite fashionable these days to have a baby. Better than a handbag or Chihuahua, babies are the new ‘it’ accessory.

Those of us who are professional parents (non-celebrities) always knew that. The difference is that when our babies become toddlers and eventually teens, we never loose interest in the fashion moment.

The next time a celebrity sits on Oprah’s couch and gushes about their baby, just be confident in the thought that your little star will always be shining even if your baby’s name doesn’t result in any Google hits.

Posted in Babies, Parenting 101, Popular culture | 11 Comments »

Please respect our privacy at this very difficult time

Tuesday, December 25th, 2007

My mom often says, “Don’t spit in the water, because you may have to drink it someday.”

Loosely translated that means you shouldn’t talk about other people’s kids because your kids could make the same mistakes.

The announcement of 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears’s pregnancy is not a reason to question the parenting skills of Lynne Spears or the decision to delay the release of her parenting book.

Each parent has one variable we have to constantly be reminded of – our children.

Since I’m not standing in her shoes I can’t question Lynne Spears’s parenting skills. What I can question is who is selling the photos and stories to the media.

Their older daughter has to live with constant paparazzi bombardment and would welcome privacy. Knowing that, why would the family agree to invite the media into this very difficult time.

As parents, we wear many hats. But one of the most important roles is to be our child’s advocate. That means giving them time to learn from the mistakes they make.

That is, out of the limelight.

Posted in Parenting 101, Teens | 2 Comments »

The front porch in communities

Friday, December 14th, 2007

In the book, Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors the authors Bill Cosby and Alvin F. Poussaint have a powerful message for families and communities as they lay out their visions for strengthening America, or for that matter the world.

They address the crises of people who are stuck because of feelings of low self-esteem, abandonment, anger, fearfulness, sadness, and feelings of being used, undefended and unprotected. These feelings often impede their ability to move forward. The authors aim to help empower people make the daunting transition from victims to victors. Come On, People! is always engaging, and loaded with heart-piercing stories of the problems facing many communities.

The issues the authors bring to light in this book are not exaggerated. But the problems to a much lesser degree are not limited to this community. Children simply exist and do not reach their potential in even the most affluent communities. The deciding factor seems of how successful a child turns out seems to revolve around how much the family and community care about the child. By success, I don’t mean to limit the discussion to grades or future earnings, but contentment and self-esteem to believe they can do anything they set their minds to.

If we want to improve the success of today’s youth we can take the approach of bringing back front porches; literally and figuratively. It’s a metaphor for people to watch out for their community and to know that each of us is known and accountable for our actions.

It does take a village to raise a child.

Tags:bill cosby, community, parenting
Posted in Family, Parenting 101 | No Comments »

Let’s Educate Not Legislate

Saturday, December 8th, 2007

The work will teach you how to do it. -Estonian Proverb

Imagine if we taught our children to be good people the same way we are taught to be good parents. If done the same way, we would wait until they did something wrong, criticize, possibly incarcerate and then instruct.

Somewhat counterproductive, right?

That is what I think about the recent attempt to ban spanking in Massachusetts.

When we first become parents, our hope is that parents raise good people. On the surface that seems relatively simple; almost too simple. In reality, it is simple for a very short time; when our children are completely in our care, before the outside world has an influence. The bottom line is that parents are never taught how to be parents, and many of parent the way we were parented. If our parents spanked, we learned to spank and fear it will become out of control because we’re not the parents who go anywhere near abuse.

By doing a little homework on the topic of spanking we would learn that it is harmful. Children that hit are children that hit others; the lesson is that it is ok for the bigger person to hit. Furthermore, if we are spanking, we have probably lost our temper, which teaches our children it is ok to lose our temper, and does put us in the danger zone to become abusive. But still creating laws against spanking is simply wrong.

Consider education before legislation.

Posted in Helping Families, Parenting 101, Safety, Self Esteem, Stress | No Comments »

Reality TV and our boring lives

Sunday, November 25th, 2007

Have you ever watched your life from the outside looking in? If someone were to do that and look in on my life, it would not be very good television. That makes me happy. It isn’t my goal to be a guest on Dr. Phil or Nanny 911. The same applies to my friends and family.

In fact I’ve often wondered about the families that appear on these shows. Where is their ‘village’ in their lives that offer support. They either don’t have any or didn’t listen if advice was offered.

A new book is out by Dr. John Rosemon entitled “Parenting by The Book” (Howard Books, 2007), his 12th book on parenting, Rosemond attributes parental stress, frustration, anxiety, and guilt to the fact that they’ve adopted a postmodern psychological parenting paradigm that doesn’t work.

He suggests that we move away from child-centered parenting, which he believes is the cause of so many negative parenting experiences.

Without having the benefit of reading his book, I would believe his theory has some merit. I know that many families are reluctant to abandon the play dates and aggressive activity schedules simply because they would be the first to do so, and then what would their children do?

Collectively, we need to start and take back control of our families. Now is a great time to start.

Posted in Parenting 101, Play | No Comments »

Relying On Your Own Instincts

Monday, November 12th, 2007

I’ve always felt that there is a lot that business and parenting have in common, but at the top of the list is a tremendous reliance on instincts supported by good information.

This realization started for me when my kids were little and the experts said that they should cry it out when they went to sleep. That didn’t quite sit right with me. Not knowing any better, we let the kids sleep on our floor. The unspoken message was, ‘we not shutting the door on you, we’re always here for you.’

I suppose our problem is that we often look at things in black and white, when most are a bright shade of grey. The case of helicopter parenting is looked on as parenting having a long distance umbilical cord – I even wrote about this! But in reality, perhaps the difference between excessive hovering and parenting is simply about being there when needed.

Seems pretty black and white to me.

Posted in College Age, Parenting 101 | No Comments »

The Kids Are Always Watching

Monday, October 29th, 2007

The families of two 5th-graders involved in a pushing incident are called in for a counseling session after words between families were exchanged. After the counseling session ended, an argument and altercation outside the school followed. When it was over, the father of one of the boys was dead.

How do our children learn? What do our children learn? They learn from us, their first and most important teachers. They learn how to behave, how to resolve arguments without violence, and they learn that sometimes they are wrong.

Scenario

Two best friends try out for the high school varsity cheering squad. Tracy makes it; Allie doesn’t. They walk home together in silence. Allie walks in her house, tosses down her book bag, and tells her mom, “I can’t believe she didn’t say a word to me. I can’t believe she didn’t say, ‘I’m sorry you didn’t make it!’” At the same time, Tracy arrives home in tears. “I can’t believe she didn’t congratulate me,” she tells her mother.

A parent has a tremendous opportunity to help her child, and at the risk of hyperbole, even get us closer to world peace, by pointing out to her child the other person’s point of view. What if the same scenario played a little differently?

What if Allie’s mom replied, “Honey, maybe Tracy was struggling with feeling good about making the squad and feeling guilty that you didn’t. It’s very possible that she simply didn’t know what to say.”

Tracy’s mom could have replied, “Tracy, put yourself in her shoes for a moment. Allie was really disappointed that she didn’t make it. Give her a day to deal with that.”

The world looks very different when you hear the same scenario from the other person’s perspective.

What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.
-Mother Teresa

Posted in Communication, Empathy, Parenting 101 | No Comments »

Parental Wisdom® by Tina Nocera