Strollerderby : parenting philosophies

How to Discipline Your Child -- Finally, Some Answers!

Madeline Holler — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:13:00 GMT

When your kids misbehave, are you a ranter or a reasoner?

Genetically, I'm a ranter who, until now, has fought hard to become the calm reasoner. I've tried (unsuccessfully) to recreate myself into the kind of mom who, in the heat of a child's blatant disregard for the sanctity of a peaceful home and/or the delicate nature of my own sensitive nerves, could quietly make "I" statements, talk about feeeeeelings and sensibly redirect the defiant child into more acceptable actions or self-expression. You know, so my kid could make better judgments, make better choices, change her own behavior without so much damn intervention (and talking and feeling and discussion -- or ranting).

But guess what? Not only are ranters barking up the wrong tree, reasoners aren't getting anywhere either. At least that's what one child behavior expert, Alan E. Kazdin, says. He's summarized his reasoning and strategies over on Slate. I'm going to give it a try. But here's the strategy in a nutshell:

1. Screaming and/or hitting your kids doesn't change behaviors. And it gets them to scream and/or hit when they face conflict with other kids.

2. Reasoning with you child about bad behavior doesn't change that behavior. Though it does give them practice in talking about their feelings with you, meaning they might come to you as they get older with stickier problems they need help on. So, reasoning isn't bad. It just won't change bad behavior.

3. Focusing on bad behavior doesn't change bad behavior.

4. Focusing on GOOD behavior changes BAD behavior.

5. Tell your child how you'd like them to behave in a given situation (fight with sister, upset when Mom says "no") and then practice it in a pretend situation. Praise and reward with love and hugs. Perhaps even reward with small trinkets.

He says it can take two weeks to a month to change a behavior, but that you won't (and shouldn't) be rewarding it forever.

Think you'll give it a try? I'm going to. Jeez, which behavior should I start with?

Photo: Yourparentingsolutions.com

Badass Japanese Mom

Madeline Holler — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 17:13:00 GMT

Tough talk from a badass 44-year-old Japanese mom:

"I wanted to show my children that if you give up, then you're washed up!"

Kazumi Izaki has been recently named Japan's oldest professional boxer. She was officially certified despite the fact that she is 12 years older than that country's boxing federation normally allows. She made it

The mother of two daughters, 21 and 14, and former aerobics instructor laced up a pair of boxing gloves for the first time back in 2001. She replaces a 46-year-old Japanese man as the country's oldest pro boxer after he declined to renew his license. I guess he's washed up.

PhotoS: (Not Izaki) tribuneindia.com; AFP/Getty Image via Yahoo.com

Spanking Leads to Sex Problems

Madeline Holler — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:06:00 GMT

A new study claims that children who were spanked may be at a higher risk for sexual problems later in life. Initial findings of the study suggest in addition to being spanked, kids who were slapped or hit, had objects thrown at them are at a greater risk for being coercive with a sexual partner or engage in masochism (or get aroused by spanking).

Yikes! Generations of parents flogging themselves from shame after reading this report.

The good news is, there's not a one-to-one causation. Also, most kids who were spanked escape long-term harm. It's worth bearing in mind that these findings are yet unpublished (and, therefore, unreviewed) and the study was conducted by a guy who has made his name by denouncing spanking and other violence in the home (though the 81-year-old admits he spanked his own kids when they were young).

Another spanking researcher said while these findings are the first to link spanking and sexual problems, the connection may well come down to how the child processes the spanking (or hitting or object throwing).

From USAToday.com

"They may internalize that to mean that in loving relationships sometimes there's pain or physical aggression," she says. Another possible lesson is that "whoever is stronger and has more power can overpower the other person and use physical aggression to control the other person's behavior."

Still, makes you wonder how Strollerderby contributor and Babble essayist Cole is taking this news.

Playing With Your Kids May Not Be Good For Them

Patti — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 19:04:00 GMT

Parenting philosophy is a lot like fashion: if you wait long enough, everything comes back into style. Looks like our friend Christie Mellor was on the cutting edge of a trend that might emerge from latest reseach indicating that playing with your kids is not only not the natural order of things, but it might not even be very good for them. Which means it could very well be that my exasperated pleas to "go play. With anything. With my makeup. In my wedding dress. I don't care, just GO AWAY" mean I'm doing exactly what nature intended.

One problem with the whole "play with your kids" directive, it seems, is that parents feel guilty if they aren't really into it. And of course, guilty parents are crappy ones, because getting back to biological basics doesn't mean shaking off centuries of accumulated pop-psychology wisdom. And another problem is that kids raised with the modern idea that they need to be played with by their caregivers grow up spoiled and unable to entertain themselves. Which...yes.

I'm going to go on a limb here though, and say that balance is probably the key.

Attachment Parenting: Giving Kids a Sense of Security or Entitlement?

Alisyn — Tue, 08 May 2007 13:33:00 GMT

Attachment Parenting is becoming pretty mainstream these days - the slings-wearers, the breast feeders, the co-sleepers: they're everywhere! AP is an idea that is so old, it's new again, and most parents today practice AP in some form or another. Thanks in part to mainstream magazines like Mothering, HipMama and good ol' Dr. Sears, it is now fairly common to breast feed on demand, co-sleep, and wear your baby. These are all positive things. But what happens when attachment parenting lets you down?

BadBadIvy, over at Love Shak, Baby recently posted a rarely-heard take on attachment parenting that I feel like I could have written myself. In her post, How the AP Movement Gave My Daughter a Sense of Entitlement, Ivy explores the idea that perhaps anticipating her daughter's every need, and rarely separating from her until the age of 3, may have contributed to her daughter's evolution into a demanding little diva. Ivy is quick to point out that she doesn't blame AP, so much as she wonders how much attachment parenting, combined with her daughter's innate personality and temperament, played a part in her growing into "the exact definition of diva. She expects things to go her way, and she wants that to happen right now. She also wants to be with me every second of every day."

BadBadIvy has done her research: her older son is a "traditionally" parented kid: bottle fed, slept in a crib from the get-go. Her youngest was breast fed, but left on his own a little more. Both are easy going, mild-tempered kids. Her middle child, her daughter, her AP baby, is the one who needs more - all the time. Ivy wonders, "Was this a result of attachment parenting or was this predetermined personality? I think the diva predisposition was there, but I do think APing her pushed her over the edge of divadom. Children need more independence than the AP way allows for. Attachment parenting can make parents slaves to their children.

My personal experience with AP is similar. I nursed on demand and co-slept with both my kids, but was more "attached" to my older daughter, and she to me. She is a highly sensitive person, and has always been high-needs, literally since the day she came home from the hospital. I often wonder if my drive to parent her in the AP fashion arose from her high-needs personality, or if her personality drove me to find alternative ways of caring for her. Would she be more easy going if today, if I had let her operate a little more independently as a baby/toddler? Would she be less easy going if I'd not tended to what I perceived to be her needs as I had? It's like the chicken and the egg. The younger girl was left to cry a little more, roll around on the floor a little longer, passed off to friends and family a little more freely - and she is a mellower, more even-keeled kid for it.

I really sympathize with BadBadIvy here. I believe in attachment parenting - or rather, my take some/leave some version of it - but I wonder: is there such a thing as being too attached for a kid's own good?

What have your experiences with AP been? What would you do differently? What do you love about it?

[Thanks to The Zero Boss for turning us on to Ivy's post]

Will Babies Make Great Lovers?

Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 01:04:00 GMT

Babies who turn to their parents for comfort have better relationships down the road, while babies who show off that head-strong "independent" streak might be in for some relationship woes. This comes from a two-decade study of babies and their relationships with their parents.

"If you are more insecure when you are 1, you are more likely to experience more negative emotions in your relationship with your current partner when you are 21," said psychologist Jeffry Simpson.

Gasp. Whenever Emmeline gets hurt, I try not to rush in and "protect" her. "It's OK," I tell her. "You're doing just fine."

Maybe fine for now, but for how long, I wonder? While I'm not ready to walk her down the aisle just yet, I do want her to have healthy, positive relationships in her future. Is the best avenue for healthy independence simply not to let go?

Is Wal-Mart Too Evil for Parents?

JasonAvant — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 10:34:00 GMT

Those who travel through the parenting territories of the Blog-O-Sphere know that there are a number of hot button topics, which when brought up tend to lead to discussions bearing an uncanny, almost eerie resemblance to the one depicted here. Absolutism, in case you haven't noticed, is the bread-and-butter of many a parenting blog, and Evil can be found everywhere, from parents who (gasp!) give their babies formula to a certain cadre of happy-go-lucky Australian entertainers who extoll the virtues of fruit salad and New York firefighters.

One big (big, as in "makes more money than most of the nations on Earth" big) target of derision is Wal-Mart. Full disclosure: I rarely shop there, for a number of reasons (chief among these - the greeters, with their empty smiles and lifeless eyes...black eyes, like a doll's eyes...when they come at you, they don't seem to be living...), and I don't really have an opinion of Wal-Mart (other than "the greeters, they ain't right") either way. But a lot of parents choose not to shop there, for reasons that are decent ones: the company has a reputation as a low-paying, small business-crushing behemoth that's made its fortune on the backs of sweatshop slaves. Thus we have the argument over Wal-Mart - whether or not it's morally right to shop there. So is Wal-Mart really evil?

Perhaps not, suggests Jeremy Siegel in this article. Siegel brings up some good points: Wal-Mart's average salary hovers at the $10 an hour level, higher than the Federal minimum wage and that of most states; the company is moving to offer a variety of health care plans; and (this is his weakest argument, and in no way excuses the often horrific conditions found in many overseas factories, but he does have a point) the inclusion of overseas manufacturing provides for jobs and growth in developing nations. But perhaps the most compelling reason why Wal-Mart isn't all bad: the fact that it enables a sizable percentage of people to buy products - stuff as basic as groceries to "luxury items" like PC's - that they might not otherwise be able to afford.

I'm pretty happy that I can pop on down to Whole Foods or Bristol Farms for a six pack of Saison Dupont and a pound of lox flown in from New York the night before. I'm also pretty goddamn lucky that, financially speaking, Wal-Mart's just one of my many shopping options. So does this mean that Sam Walton should be put on the fast track to beatification? Probably not - the monster he spawned still has a way to go before it becomes a model company - but it's interesting to consider the other side of the Wal-Mart argument. It is an argument. Yes it is. It is. Is!

LinkLove: You're Not The Only Parent Doing Things You Never Thought You Would

Alisyn — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 17:57:00 GMT

I'll admit it: I do things as a parent I didn't ever think I'd do. I think we all do, right? (Please say I'm right.) I mean, it's easy to have principles and philosophies and parenting theories and all that, when you're pregnant, or when you have tiny, sling-bound babies. But once you have real, live, flesh and blood kids running around tearing up the joint - jonesing, whining, wheedling, arguing, laughing, talking, jumping, oh my! - those principles get put to the test. Some of those philosophies may start to seem slightly unattainable. Some may even be downgraded to "guidelines" or "pipe dreams."

One of the things I love the most about parenting today is that we talk openly about things like parenting philosophies (or lack thereof), post-partum sex (or lack thereof), baby daddies, babyproofing our marriages, and the cold, hard fact that raising kids is hard; it doesn't always go how you want, or plan, for it to. And you have to learn to go with the flow.

I let my kids watch TV. Never thought I would. I also let them eat organic meat. Never thought I would do that either, as a longtime former vegetarian. I also - and this drives some people insane - let my kids call me by my first name. They don't do it all the time, but pretty regularly. I think it's cute.

CityMama moves her family around more than she thought she ever would.

Gir's Gone Child lets her kid walk around with goose eggs the size of Texas on his forehead.

Mom-101 finds joy in her daughter's snotty nose.

Lisa Whelchel (yup, she's Blair from "The Facts of Life") takes giddy pictures when her hubz falls off the roof while putting up Christmas Lights. (Hey, you've got to see the sunny side, right?)

Suburban Misfit is realizing that this parenting gig is serious.