It’s time to talk about leading and teaching our kids by example
We want so much for our kids, don’t we? We want them to have what we wanted when we were younger, we want them to participate in life and enjoy every waking moment. We want them to learn, grow, thrive. We want their dreams to be sweet, we want the world to be kind to them. I think we end up feeling that if we throw money at our bag of wishes and wants for our children, somehow it will come to fruition. If we do THIS wonderful thing, THEN we’ll get that wonderful result.
“Don’t do that in public!” I’m paranoid about my public Mom persona
But we worry, don’t we, about what people think? Even parents of the easiest children contend with the occasional wicked tantrum, or a disaster of an eating out attempt, or a terrible diaper blow-out in the airport. Here I am, you think. With my pants down and all my dirty laundry hanging out.
My partner and I speak and sign five languages and are trying to raise multilingual children
As a child of immigrants I ended up bilingual pretty much by default. My parents are from Taiwan and China, so I grew up speaking Mandarin Chinese with them and speaking English with my older sister and at school. Although I dreaded going to Chinese School on Sundays as a child, by the time I left for college I recognized the benefits of being bilingual and I knew even then that I would want my future children to be the same.
On refusing to let your kids take over your life
I want my daughter to see that I am happy with my life now. I want her to understand on a fundamental level that she deserves happiness, too. And, I want her to be able to handle life’s obstacles as a confident and capable individual… Preferably one who doesn’t grow up to live in my basement.
If I could start over again I would totally be a Free Range Parent
I was the parent who kept my kids as safe as possible. Barring the few seconds I couldn’t watch my daughter as she scurried up to new heights, my kids kept their feet firmly on the ground. They never had a chance to explore and learn on their own. It could be argued that the kids might get hurt, but don’t we all take that chance? If I could do it all over again, I would try free range parenting.
The inherent privilege of being a “slacker” mum
Michelle, the blogger at Crooked Fences recently spent some time pondering the idea of a “slacker” parent — in her definition, this is akin to free-range parenting. She observed that many parents espousing free-range ideas also tend to be white and middle-to-upper class… and that this is a problem.
How do I respect friends who openly spank but protect my kid from seeing it?
In our family we are firmly anti-spanking, but we realize that many of our friends and family members are not. We respect that they’re making decisions that work best for their families, but I don’t want my son to see his friends or family members being spanked.
Banishing guilt to be better: let’s chill out and trust ourselves
You may have seen the Wall Street Journal article that’s now circulating called Why French Parents Are Superior. If you haven’t, I’m sure it will pop up on your Facebook feed sooner or later. In it, Pamela Druckerman, an American ex-pat living in France, talks about how French children seem better behaved than American children and French parents seemed much more relaxed.