Sunday, May 13, 2012
This week's Evil Mother Lady confession: I support breastfeeding and attachment parenting
So, now it is time for the next confession—I support breastfeeding and attachment parenting. The flap about Time magazine’s attachment parenting cover astounds me. The cover features a mom with her toddler standing on a chair nursing, both facing the camera. The magazine fears stores will “cover” up the cover, like a recent Jessica Simpson pregnancy cover, or ban the issue entirely. And over what? No breast showing beyond her workout clothing, certainly less than many ads selling questionable products with sexual innuendo, nothing of substance showing, merely the suggestion? This is not a wardrobe malfunction, it is a child utilizing his mother’s breast for what it was intended, nurturing her child. That is why breasts produce breast milk…
Thursday, May 10, 2012
This Mother's Day, and every day, saying no more often will help you to deploy your own oxygen mask first. This way, you can better breathe for the rest of the world.
As a woman with two young daughters of my own and a mom a couple of hours away, I face this coming Mother’s Day with what I hope is a more enlightened approach than my usual. My usual is feeling unsure of what to expect my own family to do for me, while also worrying I’m not doing enough for my own mom. Ah the mother-guilt of it all! This year I’m determined to be more intentional with my approach to this day that is both time-honored, and possibly made up by the Hallmark Corporation. I actually want to take the opportunity and forethought to ask this week: How can I best honor a woman who’s a mother and all her life brings to the world? I think of a recent picture from a friend on Facebook. It showed a comics-style image of a smiling, …
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
This week's Evil Mother Lady confession: Ever notice how cute truly little people are when someone else is entertaining them and chasing after them?
So, now it is time for the next confession—ever notice how cute truly little people are when someone else is entertaining them and chasing after them? At the airport, flying away from my little people, I found myself gravitating where the little people were. Each flight, I was in front of or behind a toddler. Sitting at the gate, I parked near the overly energetic preschooler whose parents were frantically trying to burn some of that energy off before we had to sit still for our second four-hour flight. During the flight, I played “got your finger” with the 18-month-old in front. Whenever her “requests” penetrated my earplugs, we played until something else captured her attention. I chuckled to hear another parent singing a made up song …
Friday, April 27, 2012
This week's Evil Mother Lady confession: Going away is hard to do.
So, now it is time for the next confession—going away is hard to do. Here I sit, on the cusp of a (hopefully) wonderful 10 days away on the East Coast for a conference. I have college friends to visit, family to stay with, shopping and museums in New York City, and no one else’s schedule to accommodate or no one to travel with me. Instead of mapping out the highlights of my trip, who to visit, what to see, where to go, I am in packing panic, mom-style. Six days until blast off and I am lost in a sea of preparation. Going away feels like developing a mini-battle campaign. Anxiety rules. I feel like there is always something I have forgotten (and there usually is). There’s advance planning and scouting, supplies to be obtained, contracts to …
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
As precocious puberty in girls is on the rise in this country, this mom asks what we can take away from this uncomfortable trend.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about young girls in short shorts and hormone-free cheese. I know the connection isn’t obvious so allow me explain. As the kids in my neighborhood begin to grow up, some of the girls are allowed to dress in ways that I find a bit alarming. One recent example: super-short shorts with midriff baring tops and high-heeled sandals on an 11-year-old. I’m sure my attention to this matter is increased now that I have two daughters of my own. But even before having kids, when living near a private school while the Britney Spears 'school-girl slut' look was so in, I felt just as protective of those beautiful young ladies in school uniforms who played that role to the hilt. 'They have no idea how much attention they’re…
Friday, April 13, 2012
This week's Evil Mother Lady confession: It's a scary world out there as a parent.
So, now it is time for the next confession—it’s a scary world out there as a parent. (For those of you with small children, you might want to skip this one. Sorry, graphic conversation ahead.) This week our reading group discussed Crash Into Me, an autobiographical account of a naïve college student who was assaulted her first year in college, a true story that John Grisham based his story, The Associate on. The book brought back all the naïveté of college, when people were assumed to be friends and safe until proven otherwise. The world of fraternities, drinking parties, college administrators more worried about protecting their reputations than their students, a place, frankly, I didn’t like revisiting. I spent too much time in college …
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Here is a fun egg craft and some children's book ideas to help your family celebrate spring.
Recently, we took a neighborhood walk. Above us in the bright blue sky, hawks darted at one another in mating rituals. My daughters and I counted 27 bee sightings, 12 ladybugs and six different shades of yellow. Spring has come! In our house, this means a few changes in reflection of the seasons. Our nature table will shift from winter’s whites and blues to the bright bloom colors of spring. Egg and flower shapes will replace pine cones. I’ll also change out the books out in our living room book basket to include ones with a spring, or spring holiday theme, and weed out those from winter. Our long-ignored veggie garden will now begin to get its due. Of course these things are just goals at the moment and I repress the urge not to say them …
Friday, April 6, 2012
This week's Evil Mother Lady confession: I'm not good at balancing everything.
So, now it is time for the next confession—I don’t do balancing well. So why do people compliment me so much on it? I feel trapped on the roller coaster of mommy-dom, climbing arduously up the pinnacle to accomplish something, then screaming down the hill at warp speed, navigating all the whiplash turns and twists before starting the next climb. How anyone can mistake this for a balanced life and a balanced mom is beyond me. Maybe it’s the calm look on my face as panic and chaos wrestle for control of my mind that deludes them. But it’s definitely not balance, more like juggling stacks of teacups and fire in tandem and very badly. Take this week of spring break, for example. The school scheduling gods aligned, all three children with three…
Monday, April 2, 2012
We all fundamentally yearn to be seen and understood—it's as if we're hard-wired to strive for this kind of sympathetic connection with others. So if it takes plastering a clever phrase on the back of your vehicle to achieve this, I say go for it.
Recently, I began a new adjunct position teaching Visual Culture at The Art Institute of San Diego-California. At the all-day faculty meeting (and I do mean all day) there was one other woman there who had young kids at home. In a conversation she had with someone else right next to me, she reported how glad she was to have this new job. She told him, “I’m just not one of those moms who can sit at home all day!” As a person who has always been home with my girls 90 percent of the week, you can imagine how I felt when I heard this. The mental howling came in stereo. Out of one side, I heard, “Is she crazy? Does she think all I do is sit home all day, as if I’m on some sort of vacation?!” From the other side, “And what if I do sit home all …
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Anyone close to a serious life's tragedy, will tell you to treasure every second you have with your loved ones. Here are some tips on how to attain that same level of appreciation for your children, even when not facing loss.
“The days are long but the years are short” Recently, I wrote about a discussion my book club had about how to live a happier life according to Gretchen Rubin’s, The Happiness Project. Our favorite quote from the book is above. As moms of small children this quote means trying harder to stay present through all the daily trials of raising kids. Because, even though we may secretly roll our eyes when strangers tell us how fast it all goes, we can quickly see just how right they are. Around the time we read this book, another friend changed her entire life around after the sudden death of a friend’s 4-year-old, a playmate to her own children. She began a new routine including more time for herself and her body. Also, as you can imagine, her…
Abi Cotler O'Roarty
3:16 pm on Monday, April 2, 2012
Not to mention sick days, right? Thanks for reading, Silvia, I hope we are changing awareness one comment, or license plate, at a time! more ›