Be In The Moment – by Dr. Susan Bartell

August 15, 2011 – 10:12 pm

As the stores begin stocking back-to-school clothing and notebooks, it’s hard not to start thinking about the end of summer. Before we know it, school will be back in swing, and the barefoot, carefree, sunny days will be long gone…sigh!

Of course, it is important to plan ahead in order to get school supplies at a great sale price! In addition, it’s important to help your child get accustomed to the idea that school, routines, hectic schedules and cooler weather, will all be here soon.

But…before boxing up the bathing suits and taking out the sweaters, let’s not rush into the fall and winter. It’s very important to teach kids the value of living in the moment and appreciating the experience at hand, before rushing ahead to the next thing. So, please, take the time to really enjoy the last weeks of summer together with your child. There are many different ways to live in the moment, right now. and here are just a few tips to help you do it:

• Resist the urge to unpack and try fall clothing on your child before the first day of school. It may be convenient for you to see if your child has grown a size over the summer, but for kids, it’s a sign to move on to the next thing. Rather, wait until a week or so before school starts. This will give you and your child a little time to plan without rushing the summer along.

• Limit school supply shopping with your child to one or two specific outings—don’t make it the focus of every day until school starts. If there’s a lot to get done, do some of it without your child so that she can continue to be in the summer mode.

• Spend even less time than usual watching TV, or watch recorded shows so that you can fast forward through the commercials. TV ads for back-to-school products become overwhelmingly prolific in August. This advertising pressure can be stressful for you and your child, pushing you out of summer mode before you are ready.

• Encourage your child to stay focused on the summer fun at hand by limiting conversations about school to once a day—at bedtime or first thing in the morning.

• Regularly ask your child to name activities or experiences that she or he has enjoyed, or is looking forward to enjoying this summer. Discussing these will help you and your child stay focused on the summer “moment” in which you are still living.

• When your child is in earshot, spend as little time as possible talking about back-to-school with other adults (in person or on the phone). Your child will pick up on the conversation and it will make it more difficult for him to focus on enjoying the rest of the summer.

• As the end of summer truly arrives (and teacher assignments arrive in the mail) plan one or two really fun summer activities. Even as you are preparing for the transition into school, remind your child that there are still days left of summer to appreciate; time to run through the sprinkler barefoot and eat that last piece of watermelon.

Dr. Susan Bartell is America’s #1 Family Psychologist. Her latest book is The Top 50 Questions Kids Ask. You can learn more about her at www.drsusanbartell.com

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Falling in love… Again and again – by Jeff Benedict

August 1, 2011 – 8:22 pm

I’m always on the hunt for ways to strengthen my marriage. Not that there is anything wrong with it.  But the point is that marriage relationships can take unintended wrong turns when left on auto pilot.    So last summer I tried something different.  I took my children on vacation for a week and left my wife Lydia at home.  It was the best vacation Lydia has ever had.  And when I returned, our relationship was suddenly fresh and new.   It was like falling in love all over again.

So I decided to make it an annual routine.  We did it again this summer.   The results were just as good.  I’m convinced I’ve found the secret to falling in love again and again – with the same woman.   Plus, I get this fantastic experience with my four children, who are between the ages of five and fifteen.  They think dad is cool.

Meantime, my wife decided to write about her experience.  So I’m going to break with tradition and let you read her blog this week instead of mine.

 

A Week Alone
by
Lydia Hansen Benedict

 

 

Dusk is falling as I jump on my bicycle and head for our mailbox.  It is a half-mile ride from our front door.  I pedal casually at first, looking at our horses grazing in the pasture alongside our driveway.  As I ride between the rows of pine trees, a warm breeze stirs their branches.  All I hear are birds twittering in the trees and the crunch of the gravel beneath my bicycle tires.

Then I hit the dirt road.  Much of it is one gradual, low hill.  I stand up on the pedals to pump harder.  Cresting the hill I sit back, slowing my peddling and breathing.  The fireflies send out their mating call: flash on, flash off.

Upon reaching the mailbox, I retrieve the mail and put it in a bag that hangs from my handle bars.  Then I turn and start for home.  This time, the half-mile ride is almost all downhill.  As I pick up speed, the warm summer air rushes through my long hair.  I grip the handle bars tightly and coast for home.  I feel as carefree as a young girl.

I can’t remember the last time I took such a ride.  But this is an unusual week.  I haven’t left our property in several days other than to jog or bike ride to the mailbox.   My husband took the kids to the beach in Connecticut for a week.  I stayed home to take care of the animals and gardens.  It may sound like I got the short end of the stick, but not so.  In fact, I volunteered for the job.  Yes, the chores take a few hours a day, but unlike children the animals don’t talk back.

When my husband took the kids away this week, he gave me the gift of time.  Quiet moments to stop and gaze at the mountains or listen to the bullfrogs in the pond don’t seem to happen unless I put it on my calendar.  And the detachment from my usual child-rearing role opens up time for me to pursue some of my own interests.

But even with the kids gone this week, there are a multitude of projects that cry out for my attention.  I resist the urge to organize the kids’ closets or clean out their dressers.  Instead I sunbathe and read classic literature and write.

 

 

I let the mail pile up and I stay out of the home office.  Rather, I and go watch a “chick-flick” complete with popcorn and lots of butter.

I even stop myself before I clean the kitchen cupboards and instead take a bath by candlelight.

Of course I love my children.  But one of the biggest challenges of motherhood is not losing oneself and the simple pleasures that bring us satisfactions and peace.  Every mother knows that caring for children is more than a full-time job.  It often starts before you get out of bed each morning and continues long after the children are in bed at night.  With all the cooking, cleaning, homework, shuttling kids from one activity to the next, teaching, disciplining (never mind building relationships), it is nearly impossible to avoid being swallowed up in the never-ending work of motherhood.  Whether reading a book, watching a movie, or some other rare pleasure, a mother is hard pressed to find the time and energy for herself.

 

 

Stay-at-home moms tend not to have time or make time for personal endeavors or pleasures.  Something as simple as reading a book for pleasure, watching a movie of your choice, or taking a joyride on a bicycle become nearly impossible.  Under these conditions, a woman can lose their self identity in the call of action.  (Of course, stay-at-home dads could face similar challenges).  Most fathers go to the office and immerse themselves in their profession.   For a woman who stays home to raise her children, motherhood is her career.  But the difference is that when the five o’clock hour arrives, she can’t check out.

Motherhood is unlike any other position.  It’s a blue collar job like a hotel maid or a bus driver, except there’s no paycheck.  It’s like being a student again with homework and papers to edit, except there’s no diploma.  It’s like being a judge with your decisions constantly questioned, except there’s no prestige.  While motherhood is a lifetime appointment, it ought to come with a few perks.  Some solitude to rediscover the woman inside is just one example.

Thank you, Jeff for a gift that money can’t buy.

To sign up for Lydia’s Blog visit:  www.lydiabenedict.com

Jeff Benedict’s website:  www.jeffbenedict.com

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Arab Spring, Start-Up Summer? – by Hannah Seligson

July 21, 2011 – 9:51 pm

Like so many other young people in Cairo, Yasmine el-Mehairy saw no future in Egypt. What she saw was a dead end.

Then came Tahrir Square.

Six months after an uprising led by people like her ousted Hosni Mubarak and overturned the established order of the Arab world, Ms. Mehairy has joined the ranks of Egypt’s newest business class: the entrepreneurs of the revolution. Instead of leaving Egypt as she had planned, she is staying to nurture a start-up called SuperMama, an Arabic-language Web site for women that has 10 local employees.

“The revolution really made my generation believe in ourselves,” Ms. Mehairy, 30, says. If Egyptians can topple Mubarak, she wonders, what else might they accomplish?

That is a sobering question for educated, affluent Egyptians like Ms. Mehairy — people who, unlike most Egyptians, have other options. She has a master’s degree in interactive media from the University of Westminster in London and hoped to move to Britain or Canada.

The revolt now known as the Arab Spring placed Egypt on an uncertain course. After years of corruption, its hidebound economy is reeling. Tourism and investment have plunged. Mass unemployment — which fed Egyptians’ anger — has worsened and protests in Tahrir Square continue. The nation will elect a new government in September, and it’s anyone’s guess what will happen then.

Yet for all the uncertainties, some of those who embraced Facebook and Twitter during those heady days in Tahrir Square are now busily trying to start or continue working on Web sites and Web applications that they hope will yield profits and jobs.

“This is an unusual revolution in that it was led by a very educated and economically conversant, forward-looking group of people,” says Khush Choksy, executive director of the United States-Egypt Business Council, which is part of the United States Chamber of Commerce. “But to secure what they really went into Tahrir Square for, there needs to be economic growth, a modern set of thinking, and a more diversified economy.”

Ms. Mehairy wants to seize the moment, and she and Zeinab Samir, the co-founder of SuperMama, have been on the move… (read the rest of the article here)

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Craving Community by Robin Gorman Newman

July 18, 2011 – 1:06 am

Robin (in black) & a Circle of Friends

It’s always amazed me that I’m a writer at heart because it’s such a solitary craft, and in that sense, it doesn’t suit me.

I love being around people and feeling part of a community.  That’s one of the resounding reasons I launched Motherhood Later…Than Sooner.  But, for me, it’s not just about connecting with other moms, it’s about quality time with people you enjoy, and ideally, those who truly mean something to you.  If they happen to be moms, that’s icing on the cake, but far from a requirement.

I have found that since becoming a mother, coupled with getting older, life for everyone I know is so full, with the operative word “busy.”  In people’s minds, there is often little time for fostering relationships (especially new ones), and pleasure is squeezed in between chores and what easily starts to feel like a stagnant daily existance.

I crave more than that.  I want to enjoy life and the people in my world.  This is a priority.  And, in my book, you’re never too old to make new friends or reinforce longstanding friendships.  It’s worth it.

A few weeks ago…for four days straight, we had a full house.  Marc, my husband, and I felt like keepers of a B and B we called Chez Newman, and though a bit hectic, it was fun.  One very close friend, Debbie, who I worked with some 25 years ago and lives a distance away, came to stay with us for two nights, and it took me back to our professional days as single gals working in NYC.  While it was a time of spontaneity and enjoying all that Manhattan had to offer, ironically it wasn’t all joyous since we were living in the gray.  And, that was a challenging place.  A frequent topic of discussion was our desire to meet the men we would one day marry.  We weren’t in a rush to walk down the aisle, but in a perfect world, we would have had a crystal ball so we’d be assured it would happen.  And, we’d know exactly when and how.  Then, we might have been able to rest easy, and potentially enjoy our 20 something years all the more.

Fast forward, and we’re now both married women with kids living in our respective suburbs.  We got what we wanted.  And, though we love our children and husbands, we yearn for the freedom that feels like another lifetime ago. 

This takes me back to my college days.  When I was an undergraduate student attending Hofstra University, starting my Sophomore year, I lived in a single dorm room.  It was small but had the necessities, and while I appreciated the privacy, I also relished company.  So, when I wasn’t hibernating writing a paper or studying all night for an exam, my room was the “go-to” destination.  I had an open door policy (at times, even if I was in my pajamas), and fellow student friends would wander in ‘n out, and I was in my element.

My good friend Alli (Aunt Alli to Seth, my son), who also stayed with us the same week as Debbie  (for one night), has shared  how she and other empty nester friends have had conversations about communal living. They’ve discussed the possibility of one day buying a large house with ample space for all of them.

I can see the appeal of that or living in a gated or retirement community, when the time comes.  If you’re lucky enough to have neighbors you enjoy, you have a built in circle of companionship.  While I feel fortunate to live in our house, we are only friendly with one set of neighbors, the rest of whom keep to themselves.  I see many at our community pool in the summer, but conversations start ‘n end there.

I don’t want to think about old age at present.  I have no desire to wish the years away.  But, I do know that I appreciate the company of people I can have heartfelt discussions with.  Other women who get raging hormones.  Other women who decided to be a stay at home mom and grapple with the challenges that come with that.  Other women who yearn for topics of discussion beyond parenthood.  Other women who want to get to know you despite having an existing social circle.  Other women engaged in stimulating pursuits, who you can learn from.   And, I’m certainly open to getting to know men as well (of course, not romantically).

So….to all  who know and love us….Chez Newman is open for business.  Don’t be a stranger.  And, if you are a stranger, don’t be afraid to say hello.

Robin Gorman Newman is the founder of http://www.MotherhoodLater.com, a worldwide organization for those parenting later in life. She blogs on Fridays on the site and heads the NY in-person chapter of moms age 35+. Motherhood Later…Than Sooner has been featured in USA TODAY, NY TIMES, REAL SIMPLE FAMILY, HEALTH, NPR, etc.  Robin is also the author of How to Meet a Mensch in NY and How to Marry a Mensch, and has been featured as a relationship “guru” on The Today Show, CNN, and beyond.  She is currently adapting the material from her books for the stage.

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Being A Parentless Parent: The Effect on You, Your Children and Your Marriage – by Allison Gilbert

July 8, 2011 – 12:37 am

Both of my parents have passed away, and little has shaped the way I raise my children or affected the relationship I have with my husband and in-laws more than the fact that my mom and dad aren’t here to be grandparents to my children. I am a parentless parent.

Because women are having babies later and later, the number of parentless parents in America is skyrocketing. While life expectancy is also on the rise, it isn’t growing fast enough to guarantee the children born to these parents will have more time with their grandparents. What this means is that all of our assumptions about grandparents being around longer than ever before — because they’re living longer, after all — are simply inaccurate.

For the first time in U.S. history, millions of children (and their parents) are actually vulnerable to having less time with their grandparents than more. Between 1970 and 2007, the average age for a woman to give birth rose 3.6 years. During the same period, life expectancy for a 65-year-old increased 3.4 years. While that doesn’t seem earth-shattering on its own, consider another trend: While women overall are having fewer babies, mothers between 40 and 54 are having more. For example, 180,000 children were born to mothers 35 and older in 1972. Nearly 40 years later, that number soared to 603,113 — a 235 percent increase. This jump is so significant it can’t be explained away by increasing population size. Unquestionably, a revolution is happening in the way generations are connected in America.

This has massive consequences for every member of the family. Parents are raising kids without the support of their own mothers and fathers, and kids don’t have grandparents, with all the social, behavioral and cognitive benefits associated with these grandparent/grandchild relationships.

For the last three years, I’ve conducted one-on-one interviews, led numerous focus groups, and launched the Parentless Parents Survey, the first of its kind, which gathered responses from across the United States and a dozen countries, in order to study this growing population. Most shocking to me during this time is that I couldn’t find any research like it. Dozens of government institutions, committees and commissions are tasked with researching the changing landscape of the American family; yet while the American population is shifting in such a dramatic and measurable ways, no other investigation has been done on what these changes mean to parents and their children.

Here are some of my findings… (read the rest of the article here)

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Sweet Fix – by Leslie Ayvazian

June 28, 2011 – 11:31 pm

When Susan Rose and Joan Stein first met with me about writing for Motherhood Out Loud, my son, Ivan was a Senior in High School. He has now graduated from college and he is in New York City playing the clubs with his band Sweet Fix. My husband Sam and I still attend almost every show. We stand in the back and cheer as the band plays and the crowd sings and dances and yells. It is an outstanding time. Rock and Roll!

Click here to watch the video for Sweet Fix’s song Help Is On The Way.

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Lori Hamilton, Co-host of the “Weekly Toddler Hour”

June 27, 2011 – 4:40 pm

I gave up a daughter for adoption when I was seventeen. I became a step-mom of two precious little girls when I was thirty-seven. The twenty years in between were filled with all kinds of efforts to be a good mom someday. I unpacked emotional baggage. I wrote in fifty journals. I took workshops. I wrote poems. I beat myself up. I reconstructed myself from scratch. I cried. I hoped. I kept mental lists of what I would and wouldn’t do if given the chance to parent again.

Now that I look back, all the pieces make a lot of sense. It all fits together, even the part about marrying someone with a mean, mentally ill ex-wife who is an expert at parent alienation! Seriously, I think I chose this on purpose. I think, when I was in Heaven planning this life, I put each ingredient in the mixing bowl carefully. I felt honored that these three young ladies asked me to play the role of birth mother and step mother. Since I wanted to do a good job, I asked the adoptive mother and ex-wife to keep a close eye on me to keep me on my toes. Well, now I’m practically a walking ballerina who glides and skids on eggshells.

It would be a lot easier if my husband and I were the only primary parents. The girls are with us for a week at a time every other week. We have custody. That doesn’t always help. I call this 2nd Thought Parenting. I don’t make any parenting decision without thinking about how it will affect the girls, their mothers, their loved ones, my husband’s reputation and then mine.

If these moms only knew how much love I am, and how I would never want to interfere with the bond they have with their daughters! I just want to have a bond with them, too…a separate but special one…one that is pure…untainted by their mothers’ opinions, body language or comments about me. And I promise to bite my tongue over and over to make sure that I am not saying things the girls could construe as negative about their biological mothers.

The latest weekly battle (which I’m trying to turn into a mere routine) is dealing with the hateful emails from the ex that report all kinds of lies, twisted truths, and painful stabs. A borderline/bipolar mother is really good at gathering team members, and the team members do anything to keep the team captain happy. I’m just worried that the girls will continue to believe this false childhood that their captain is building for them.

My husband says he knows what it was like to live with her. He understands that the girls are doing the best they can with the tools they have. We should focus on the laughter, love, and connecting that we experience with the girls on our weeks. He also reminds me that regardless of what the ex-wife is trying to put into their conscious memories, they will also have all the good stuff deep down in there in the subconscious. I work with brains for a living, so I know that he is right. It just doesn’t make it any easier to forget all the horrible things that she says the girls report to her. This is especially true when I’m coming home, knowing they will be inside,  knowing I better walk in smiling.

I try deep breathing. I scream in the car. I do a brain balance and Theta clearing. Then, I send angels ahead. I open the door, and I’m flooded with hugs, bright eyes, and a cheer from the crowd, “Lori!” It’s all going to be ok! Plus, I only have to do half of their laundry.

We have another good week full of puns, walks, chores, homework, and cuddle. Then, I send them off with angels and hug them as I say, “Have a great week with your Mom!”

Lori Hamilton. M.S., BIT/s Practitioner
www.twitter.com/lorilynnhamilto
www.2ndthoughtparenting.blogspot.com

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Tonys 2011: Where Are the Women?

June 20, 2011 – 8:47 pm

By Jill Dolan, The Huffington Post

The Tony Awards season confirms what anyone concerned about the status of women in theater has long come to expect: plays by women are excluded from the nominations once again. When will power brokers and critics realize that until work by women is produced and recognized, Americans will continue to hear only one side of the stories of our lives?

Women’s unheard stories represent a gold-mine of narrative intrigue and revelation. But of the four plays nominated as the best of Broadway this year, none are written by women and three are almost exclusively about men: Nick Stafford’s War Horse (a gloriously theatrical British import that tells a basic boy-meets-horse, boy-loses-horse, boy-finds-horse tale); Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem (another British import about a character the Variety review calls a “wild man,” a “once noble animal gone to seed”); and Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Motherf**ker with the Hat (directed by the talented Anna Shapiro), whose macho title can’t even be fully printed in most newspapers.

Only Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People is even about a woman, the salty, working-class Margie from South Boston, played with sharp dignity and empathy by Frances McDormand. With a disabled daughter and few skills besides impressive street-smarts, Margie can’t make economic ends meet, while her old boyfriend, Mike, has escaped his poor background with a scholarship and a medical school education… (read the rest of the article here)

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My Big Little Guy – by Robin Gorman Newman

June 14, 2011 – 2:00 pm

Red Rock Canyon, Nevada

Seth is growing up in a flash before my teary eyes.

Second grade will soon come to an end, and this week, parents were invited into this classroom to watch a year-end slide compilation created by Seth’s teacher. It was so immensely touching and well done…from the choice of heartfelt music to the overall presentation. Songs from the Little Mermaid and Beaches had me all choked up. I didn’t expect it. But, what struck me the most from the experience was the fullness of my son’s life when I’m not with him. As I strive to be a stimulated (if not overwhelmed) stay at home working, multi-tasking mom, jumping back in forth between personal/family and professional pursuits, my son is creating a life of his own.

He has friends he plays with. Teachers who engage him. Bus drivers who transport him. Experiences that enrich him. And, he’s only 8. There is so much more to come.

While I was aware of the special in-school ceremonies, occasions and outside field trips to places like the local firehouse, police station and children’s hospital, I was truly taken by the rich array of activities, and the fact that from day to day, he is occupied filling his young mind with the vastness of the world. His school is wonderful, and we are hugely fortunate to have such good public education available to us. That was definitely a consideration when deciding where to live, knowing our goal was to one day have a family.

As Seth continues to mature, he will have more ‘n more adventures and experiences outside the home, with and without us….both good ‘n bad.

He’ll meet kids and adults he likes and doesn’t like (he’s already encountered what he calls “the bully girls” during recess), and will learn to navigate the complex world of relationships.

He’ll learn about romantic love. He has had a “girlfriend” since kindergarten, and one day, he’ll have a serious girlfriend and even have sex. It’s hard me me to wrap my brain around that notion, as I help dress him each morning for school, and he gets a kick out of giving me glimpses of his buff little butt….which will no doubt become the object of desire of women when he’s grown.

He’ll establish priorities. He already knows what is important to him and how he likes to help others, whether it’s assisting the lifeguards at our community pool or standing up for other kids (as one mom told me at his class this week), who are having a hard time for whatever reason.

He’ll ultimately decide his profession of choice. At this point in time, if you were to ask, he’d state emphatically fireman, followed by FBI agent, SWAT team member, etc.

He’ll one day have a dog. On an almost daily basis, he asks my husband and I if we’ll ever get a dog. He adores animals in general, and since he also loves police, he’d welcome a German Shepherd, which he would raise as if it’s a member of the K-9 force. But, Marc and I have no plans to get a dog…..we currently have a cockatiel, and that’s enough in our book.

I could go on ‘n on about all that life potentially holds for him, but for now, I’m grateful to still be able to hold his 50 lb. trim body in my arms and on my lap, and that he still likes to cuddle and craves my good night kisses and hugs. No matter how old he is, I will never stop taking pleasure in that, and I hope one day, he’ll return my hugs with a huge muscular bear hug when he’s a man, and I’m an old woman, looking back on the years well spent helping to create the fine human being that Seth has turned out to be.

Robin Gorman Newman is the founder of http://www.MotherhoodLater.com, a worldwide organization for those parenting later in life. She blogs on Fridays on the site and heads the NY in-person chapter of moms age 35+. Motherhood Later…Than Sooner has been featured in USA TODAY, NY TIMES, REAL SIMPLE FAMILY, HEALTH, NPR, etc.  Robin is also the author of How to Meet a Mensch in NY and How to Marry a Mensch, and has been featured as a relationship “guru” on The Today Show, CNN, and beyond.  She is currently adapting the material from her books for the stage.

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Welcome to the MOTHERHOOD OUT LOUD blog!

May 19, 2011 – 3:53 pm

Thanks for stopping by! Stay tuned for real stories about being a mother, from acclaimed authors to fans of the show…

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