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Strollerderby
I should be posting a picture of me pulling my hair out as THAT is how this story makes me feel. I’m trying to raise two (so far, young) but intelligent, self-reliant, independent children. This means I intend to love them unconditionally, teach them to work hard and make sure they understand what it means to both accept defeat with dignity and success with grace.
In other words – there WILL be disappointment in life.
The school you see pictured here? The University of San Diego was not my first choice, but it ended up as one of the best decisions of my life.
Apparently, in some New York Prep schools, they would prefer to shield their kids from the ‘shock and pain of disappointment by instituting new policies preventing high school seniors from announcing acceptance to the colleges of their choice (especially if those schools have an ‘Ivy’ designation) – this means no yelling, ‘I got in’, no wearing of the college’s colors and no posting on Facebook.
I first read about this on The Stir and then saw further posts on The New York Post quoting Darby McHugh, the college coordinator at Bronx HS of Science. “We send a notice out to all faculty telling them, ‘Please don’t congratulate students in public, no high fives, no hugging, and please be sensitive so that if you see someone crying, you refer them to the college-adviser office immediately.’ ”
Is this a JOKE?
The very teachers who spend their DAYS and many NIGHTS grading papers doing everything they can to help these students achieve the dreams of attending certain schools aren’t allowed to congratulate them because it might hurt feelings??
P.S. Welcome to the REAL WORLD
Read more from Danielle on Strollerderby and her personal sites ExtraordinaryMommy and DanielleSmithMedia.
You can also follow her on Twitter.
More from Danielle on Strollerderby:
Pinterest Is Making Money From Your Posts: Sneaky Or Genius?
Will You Teach Your Kids To Give Like The Anonymous Kmart Donors?
McDonalds Outsmarts San Francisco Happy Meal Ban
Sticks and Stones: My Son Cut His Hair So Another Child Would Stop Calling Him A Girl
Do you hide in the bathroom when you need a mommy time out?
It was with our first child that we created the dreaded Time Out Chair. The modern, silver-fabric-upholstered side chair was the only location to which our firstborn was sent whenever a stern talking to didn’t do the trick. My boy knew things had gone to Defcon 4 whenever he got sent to the Chair.
The Time Out Chair has moved with us three times since, and still retains its job of housing the bottoms of two children who need some space to calm down, or think VERY SERIOUSLY about whatever it is that they have done.
But what about me? Where do I go when I need to cool off? Is it the fancy chair?
Nope. It’s the bathroom. The downstairs half-bath, or powder room, to be exact.
You’d think I’d pick a nicer spot than the bathroom to cool my jets. I could go lounge on my comfy bed for a moment, or sit out on the patio and watch the leaves rustle in the breeze. Instead, I run to the loo and sit on the toilet lid, head in hands. Continue reading »
I have been thinking about my role as a parent a lot lately. More specifically, I’ve been thinking a lot about the feelings of guilt associated with being a parent. I often joke that guilt decended on me like a warm blanket the very moment the plus sign appeared on that positve pregnancy test.
Would I be a good mom?
What if they wouldn’t eat vegetables? (And then?? How bad is it when they DON’T eat them??)
When my daughter came home the other day with hurt feelings, did my words help her to heal?
How bad is it when I let them watch too much TV? Or stay up too late?
The irony is that years ago, I started a website specifically designed to combat these ‘guilty’ feelings and instead embrace the EXTRAORDINARY jobs that parents do loving their children each day.
A recent, incredibly painful loss and some deep thinking has brought me full circle on this way of thinking again. It is important to me to embrace the extraordinary, rembember I am truly enough and let go of the guilt.
What are the greatest sources of your ‘parenting guilt’ and what do you do to combat these feelings?
Read more from Danielle on Strollerderby and her personal sites ExtraordinaryMommy and DanielleSmithMedia.
You can also follow her on Twitter.
More from Danielle on Strollerderby:
Pinterest Is Making Money From Your Posts: Sneaky Or Genius?
Will You Teach Your Kids To Give Like The Anonymous Kmart Donors?
McDonalds Outsmarts San Francisco Happy Meal Ban
Sticks and Stones: My Son Cut His Hair So Another Child Would Stop Calling Him A Girl
Now, often when I talk about traveling for work… and the fact that it isn’t always easy, someone will inevitbably say, “Then just stay HOME!”. Well, I’ll just go right ahead and get that part out of the way now…. I do travel for work. I love my family and I love my work. I love that I am providing an example for my children of following my dreams. And even though we have MOMENTS that aren’t easy, overall, I know my children have never doubted my love for them…our arrangement works. My kids aren’t struggling in school, crying all night or clinging to my leg when I leave. But we do miss each other.
The same is true when my husband travels. He doesn’t like being away from the small people any more than I do, but, our job as parents (we believe) is to soften the edges, to give our kids tools to work through the times that don’t feel easy.
When my husband is gone, he likes to Skype and he always brings a surprise home with him (my dad used to do the same thing).
But I have a few other suggestions….
I would love to know if you have any additional tips, tricks or suggestions for making this traveling transition easier on your family.
Read more from Danielle on Strollerderby and her personal sites ExtraordinaryMommy and DanielleSmithMedia.
You can also follow her on Twitter.
More from Danielle on Strollerderby:
Pinterest Is Making Money From Your Posts: Sneaky Or Genius?
Will You Teach Your Kids To Give Like The Anonymous Kmart Donors?
McDonalds Outsmarts San Francisco Happy Meal Ban
Sticks and Stones: My Son Cut His Hair So Another Child Would Stop Calling Him A Girl
We’ve all had those days where raising our kids was just too much.
The days when everything is met with a whine, tantrums are more frequent than smiles and we feel we have utterly failed at even the most basic tasks. You know what I am talking about. The day it takes six hours and four outfit changes just to get out the door for a playdate. (Yes, I’m having one of these days right now.)
And we all know the impulse, on days like this, to hand your offspring to the next helpful stranger who points out that your baby has no shoes on or tells you she’d calm down if you just held her a certain way. “You can solve this problem child? Here! Yours for the taking. I will even throw in the pack of gum she’s crying over, and her baby sister.”
In real life, though, we carry on. We parent through the good days and the bad ones, the tantrums and the triumphs. But is that such a good idea?
Psychology Today blogger Jim Taylor doesn’t think so. In what I can only describe as a modest proposal, he suggests outsourcing the raising of our kids.
If you are among the many parents who were sent down a new luge of anxiety by this week’s New York Times story about precocious puberty, Lisa Belkin wants you to relax. This may be news, but it’s not new. We’ve been worrying about the creeping onset of adolescence for more than a decade. Case in point: This article, which Belkin herself wrote in 2000, and was quoted in Sunday’s piece.
Belkin’s point isn’t (necessarily) to draw attention to lack of originality. This is an example, she says, of what she calls the Groundhog Day effect of parenting media. Attention-grabbing, anxiety-producing headlines that seem to be about new discoveries or theories…and are really just the same old song over and over. Continue reading »
Jail TIme for a Baptism?
This seems like something that would only occur in a country where there isn’t religious freedom. But this is something that can happen right here in the United States. A Tennessee mom is looking at contempt of court charges and possible jail time because she had her two children baptized. Why did this happen? Continue reading »
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