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Strollerderby
Loving your mama body
My belly sags. My breasts droop. My thighs have seen firmer days. It’s all proof that I’m a mom, but it’s hard to look in the mirror and love it some days. Especially when I’ve been hanging out with the moms from my daughter’s school. The ones who run triathlons and dress like runway models.
Seeing this fantastic post on Love That Max made me take a second, loving look in my mirror today. She writes about the gorgeous diversity in women’s bodies, in all their curvy, unruly glory. It made me proud of my own well-worn body.
Shut out of your kid's sports obsession?
As one of those picked-last-for-kickball kids with no affinity for team sports, a longstanding aversion to gym teachers and a son who is a particularly avid baseball fan, I have the eerie feeling that Elana Sigall is describing me when she writes in the October issue of Parents:
I never liked sports growing up. My poor hand-eye coordination makes it a challenge to drive a car, let alone hit a ball with a bat. I don’t like watching sports on TV and I don’t even like sports metaphors. So I never imagined that I would have a kid who was so focused on baseball. It was alienating to watch my son drift farther away from me – toward anyone else he knew who could talk about plays and records and suicide squeezes. I was starting to feel a little desperate, reduced to begging for good-night kisses. I knew I had to find a path to baseball or I was going to lose out on a connection with Julian.
In the piece, Sigall (a writer-mom I now know socially after our sons bonded over their mutual baseball obsession) recounts how she found a way back into 6-year-old Julian’s world by baking him a baseball cake, learning about all his favorite players as she lovingly formed them out of fondant. Somewhere along the way, as she drew pinstripes on Yankees jerseys with a food-writer pen and carefully sculpted mitts and belts and shoes, she became a fan, invested in a game her son adored and able to speak with him about it.
Recall is the right thing for Fisher-Price to do
Look, I’m not one of those parents who thinks kids should never take risks, never have fun, never get injured. I actually think it’s good for little ones to bruise their noggins once in awhile. Those natural (and painful) kinds of consequences will go far in helping them assess where the real risks are in life — and what their own pain thresholds are.
That said, I don’t think we should be sold products that, no matter how unintended, could unnecessarily lacerate our children. The Fisher-Price recall — a recall of bikes and trikes that have protrusions that could easily meet a child’s most delicate of places — is a good one.
These recalls are no doubt expensive, but perhaps that’s a painful enough injury to the company that maybe somebody in design should check for sticky-out-y things located at kid crotch level. And those protrusions in the back of the high chairs that are causing kids to get stitches? How did they not see that coming? Continue reading »
Free apps to help kids make healthy food choices
As part of her “Let’s Move” campaign, First Lady Michelle Obama partnered with the Agricultural Department to invite software developers, game designers, students and other tech types to develop applications that would encourage kids to eat healthy and exercise. And with $60,000 in prize money and a special White House event on the line, the entries poured in.
After being reviewed by a panel of expert judges, the apps were narrowed down to the best of the best and yesterday, the final winners were announced. Continue reading »
The real story behind all those celebrity-penned kids books
Ever read anything from the stack of kids books written by a celebrity? With one exception (Jamie Lee Curtis), they’re mostly unfunny musings from comedians (Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld), self-pitying tales of woe (Tori Spelling, Madonna), or illustrated capitulations to the hand they were dealt in life (Julie Andrews, Sarah Ferguson).
Gwynne Watkins breaks down the stories for kids written by movie stars and other celebrities in a hilarious Vulture post in New York Magazine.
Watkins gives us the real moral of trendy Hollywood kids lit.
Tyler Clementi jumped from a bridge after being bullied online.
Cyberbullying claims another victim. Tyler Clementi took his life after his roommate secretly videotaped Tyler with a man in his room, and posted the video to Facebook.
The time has come to abandon the old singsong, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”
Names do hurt. As Tyler’s tragic death makes clear, bullying kills. Even when the bullies never lift a hand.
It’s especially pernicious when the vicious name calling goes virtual. Jessi Slaughter and many others have experienced the brutal sting of cyberbullying. Tyler is only the latest victim to be bullied to death.
Schools and state laws are scrambling to catch up with the changing landscape of children’s cruelty.
In the meantime, parents need to take the lead. We need to learn with our children how to protect them from bullies, online and off.
The danger facing our kids from sites like Myspace and Facebook isn’t limited to the shadowy specter of a predator masquerading as a 13-year-old. It’s in the real 13-year-olds, who are capable of turning on each other with surprising viciousness.
While we work to keep our kids safe, we also need to teach them not to bully others. We can’t shrug off namecalling or childish pranks. From their earliest years, our job is to raise kids who will treat each other with kindness and respect. In the schoolyard and on Facebook.
More by Sierra Black:
Why I Don’t Miss Homeschooling
How Smartphones Made The Playground Fun
Should we teach girls to 'act like ladies'?
Over at MomLogic, Dr. Wendy Walsh writes that she’s starting to wonder about all this gender-neutral parenting and where good old-fashioned manners come in. The single mom has done the hard work of getting her two daughters to chew food with their mouths closed by telling them to, well, chew with their mouths closed.
But at a recent dinner with another family — one with a mom a dad, two girls and a boy — she’s reminded of the shorthand for eliciting good behaviors from little girls: do X like a lady.
And you know what? Dr. Walsh kind of likes it. Continue reading »
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