The boys are fighting. Again. Probably over a Lego minifigure, if history is any guide.

Part of me thinks, This time I’m going to stay out of it. I’m going to have them work it out themselves.

And then my youngest begins to shriek and I can’t stand it. My gut tells me I need to intervene.

I swoop in and try to determine who “owns” it and when they can’t stop yelling at each other long enough to even hear me I impound it, adding it to the bin of other impounded toys.

Did that solve anything?

They are still yelling – at me, now.

They are still angry.

They still haven’t learned anything. (Except possibly that the youngest’s shriek will send me running into the room.)

A lot of parenting is going with your gut. Does this feel right? Does this fit in with how I function as a human being? Does this fit in with my vision of how I want my children to act and behave?

Most of the time my gut is right. I have a strong sense of self and well-honed instinct. If my gut told me to go and comfort my crying baby I did it. If my gut told me they were fussy because they were hungry I gave them a snack. When my instinct told me to back off and let my second grader struggle with that math problem a little longer I listened.

And most of the time it worked out.

Sometimes, however that gut instinct was actually me being triggered. That shriek that sounded off like an alarm bell in the middle of the boys’ argument? It turns out that is a huge trigger. That isn’t me following my instinct. That is one of my buttons being pushed and me responding like a well-trained dog.

Okay, I am not actually a well-trained dog. It turns out there is a ton of scientific research out there that has been done on parenting. Thousands of websites, research papers, and books have been researched and written on parenting and child development.

There are numerous experts out there who can tell you, in obsessive detail, about how the brains of children develop and how our parenting choices effect that development. There are also experts that can help me learn how to recognize how my own brain works and how to disarm those trigger buttons of mine.

Any of that research could have been helpful to me during the argument between my two boys. Let’s break down that argument and my response using just four researchers and their theories.

[Read more…]

I am not going to do it and you can’t make me!!!

My youngest is now laying on the floor, screaming out a guttural cry of defiance like some kind of Scottish warrior in Braveheart. Laying next to him is the cause for all this yelling and crying – his violin.

He does NOT want to play his violin.

Not today. Not tomorrow. Not now. Not in 5 minutes. Not in an hour. Not. Ever.

“NEVEAHHHHHHHHHRRRRRR!” he shouts, writhing on the ground.

We have come to an impasse.

Because there is nothing I can do or say right now that is going to cajole him into playing his violin. No bribe in the world will be big enough, no promise I can make grand enough to get him up off the ground and happily practicing Go Tell Aunt Rhody.

Here are a few of the thoughts that crossed my mind during this episode:

1. Oh my God!
2. What is wrong with him?
3. If he screams loud enough the windows are going to break.
4. I wonder if the neighbors can hear this.
5. Are they going to call CPS on me?
6. How am I going to get him to practice?
7. His lesson this week is going to be awful.
8. Why is he doing this to me?

But is he doing this to me? Or am I doing this to him? Or are we doing this to each other? And what is this?

[Read more…]

“Bam!”  The door has just, yet again, shut in my face.

This is not a metaphor. The door literally just shut in my face.

I was out with my children. And, as kids usually do, my son ran ahead, eager to lead the way. But, just as quickly as he barged through a door ahead of us, he hardly glanced back as he let the door shut in my face.

We’ve all been through it.

We bristle and wonder how we’re managing to raise our children to be so thoughtless and rude. To become the very type of person we don’t want them to be.

We want our children to demonstrate empathy for others. We want our kids to be the light of helpfulness in a world that sometimes feels dark with selfishness. But how do we do that?

[Read more…]

Oh, the things we believe before we have children!

My kids won’t be picky eaters.

They won’t live off fruit snacks and goldfish crackers.

My kids will joyfully eat everything I give them, and I’ll only give them healthy, organic, free-range, no additive, locally grown foods from BPA-free containers.

That soooo did not happen for me.

I tried to do all the right things and follow all the advice. I ate a wide variety of food when I was pregnant and nursing, so my baby would experience the flavor of different foods. I made homemade baby food, often using fruits and vegetables that I’d never tried before just to develop their palate.

It was fun and easy. Everything was going great. I had two babies who happily ate everything for the first year and a half.

Then, they became toddlers (I’m pretty sure a lot of horror stories begin that way). When my son started pushing, or rather, throwing, food off his plate, I realized I needed to get creative if I was going to continue feeding him healthy meals.

I was surprised by how quickly my son’s preferences changed. However, experts are not. In the journal, Frontiers in Pediatrics, Dr. Jason Lam reminds us that, “Picky eating is a relatively common behavioral problem that most children will eventually outgrow. Its roots stem from both environmental and genetic influences.”

Knowing it was a stage, like all others that arise in parenting, encouraged me to persevere and not take it personally. I didn’t fail as a parent… I just had to come up with a new plan.

Dr. Lam advises, “Repeated exposure to new food in a non-coercive manner and in an environment that is both fun and rewarding may help overcome picky eating. Patience, time, and repetition may be the keys to success.”

After experimenting with my first son, I was more prepared once my younger son started rejecting foods, though I still had to modify some of my strategies. I also found I had to continue being creative to keep my older son interested in a variety of foods and not stuck in a beige colored food rut.

For our family, these 6 tricks, some of them a bit off-the-wall, worked best –

[Read more…]

“How come Betsy has two Moms?”

We were at my son’s therapy surrounded by Moms and other children when my three-year-old daughter popped that particular question. One of those Moms happened to be in the clinic at that moment.

I know I’m not alone.

On Facebook recently I saw a post from a mother asking how to deal with the hard questions.

You know, the extremely embarrassing questions our kids ask out of the blue.

Questions that leave you in shock that they’ve been brought up at all at this age.

Questions that they ask when it is the most inappropriate time to hold a discussion about the answer.

The ones that you might not have answers to yourself.

So when my child asked “Why does my friend have two Moms?” My reply was the classic, “Um, ah, let’s talk about it later when we get home.”

I needed a minute to think about how I wanted to respond to the question because I was not expecting this question from my 3 year-old. (Of course it would be my youngest who would ask this because she is extremely observant of social nuances around her.)

How many of you have had your child ask you one of these gems?

“Where did Grandpa go when he died?”

“What is sex?”

“Where do babies come from?”

“Why is that boy’s skin so dark?”

“Why is that girl missing a leg?”

Or the immortal question, “Is Santa Claus real?”

These questions take us by surprise. We don’t expect that question to come out of our child’s mouth right then. “Deer in the headlights” is probably one of the best descriptive phrases of this situation.

I’ll never forget when one of my children asked the question if Santa Claus was real. We were in the drive thru at Walgreens and had been waiting forever to pick up our medication.

[Read more…]