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So.
Junior is out of college and going into the workforce. What's a helicopter
parent to do?
a) Let the young adult gain independence and navigate his own way through
life
b) Talk to HR to see if he can get a better salary. A little nudge can't
hurt!
From NPR's All Things Considered:
Margaret Fiester of the Society for Human Resource Management, or SHRM, says when it comes to parents acting as lobbyists, she's heard it all — from parents calling to negotiate better salaries or vacation time for their kids to complaining when their child isn't hired. "Surely you've overlooked these wonderful qualities that my child has," Fiester says parents often tell her.
Michigan State University surveyed more than 700 employers seeking to hire recent college graduates. Nearly one-third said parents had submitted resumes on their child's behalf, some without even informing the child. One-quarter reported hearing from parents urging the employer to hire their son or daughter for a position. Four percent of respondents reported that a parent actually showed up for the candidate's job interview.
Link (Photo: Shutterstock)
Forget
Tiger Moms! The
secret to raising great, well-behaved kids is ... being French!
Pamela Druckerman explains why French parents are superior:
Why was it, for example, that in the hundreds of hours I'd clocked at French playgrounds, I'd never seen a child (except my own) throw a temper tantrum? Why didn't my French friends ever need to rush off the phone because their kids were demanding something? Why hadn't their living rooms been taken over by teepees and toy kitchens, the way ours had?
Soon it became clear to me that quietly and en masse, French parents were achieving outcomes that created a whole different atmosphere for family life. When American families visited our home, the parents usually spent much of the visit refereeing their kids' spats, helping their toddlers do laps around the kitchen island, or getting down on the floor to build Lego villages. When French friends visited, by contrast, the grownups had coffee and the children played happily by themselves.
By the end of our ruined beach holiday, I decided to figure out what French parents were doing differently. Why didn't French children throw food? And why weren't their parents shouting? Could I change my wiring and get the same results with my own offspring?
Driven partly by maternal desperation, I have spent the last several years investigating French parenting. And now, with Bean 6 years old and twins who are 3, I can tell you this: The French aren't perfect, but they have some parenting secrets that really do work.
If you've got kids that don't listen to you, this is the one post to read today: Link
I was almost 40 when my youngest child was born. Being an older mom isn’t easy, but I personally have nothing to compare it to. New York Magazine has an extensive article on the growing number of women in their 50s and 60s who, with the help of modern technology, are becoming mothers for the first time. Some people think it’s creepy, others are concerned about the children, and obstetricians worry about health problems. But some research finds a bright side.
In 2008, Brad Van Voorhis, head of the fertility clinic at the University of Iowa, decided he wanted to measure how well children conceived through in vitro fertilization do on intelligence tests, hoping to dispel lingering concerns about their cognitive abilities. So he and his team compared the standardized-test scores of 463 IVF kids ages 8 to 17 against the scores of other kids in their classes. They found that the IVF kids scored better overall and in every category of test—reading, math, and language skills. And they found that the older the mother, the better the kid performed.
Van Voorhis guesses that the children of older mothers outperform their peers because the mothers, who’ve waited so long to have them, are more engaged. It’s a recipe for success: “Fewer kids at home, more attention to the kids they do have, and more money to devote to their education.” Other studies corroborate these findings. In research published in the journal Fertility and Sterility in 2007, Richard Paulson, head of the fertility program at the University of Southern California, found that mothers in their fifties reported less parental stress than those in their thirties and forties, the same level of mental functioning, and the same perception of fatigue. The fiftysomething women in his small national sample, incidentally, were also less likely than their counterparts to employ a nanny. They are more checked in.
Link -via The Frisky
(Image credit: Wayne Lawrence/Institute for Artist Management)
An Illinois appellate court dismissed a case that two grown children have pursued against their mother for two years. The lawsuit accused Kimberly Garrity of bad mothering for a long list of complaints, including making the daughter come home at midnight, threatening the son at age 7 over buckling his seatbelt, and failing to buy toys on occasion.
Among the exhibits filed in the case is a birthday card Garrity sent her son, who in his lawsuit sought damages because the card was “inappropriate” and failed to include cash or a check. He also alleged she failed to send a card for years or, while he was in college, care packages.
On the front of the American Greetings card is a picture of tomatoes spread across a table that are indistinguishable except for one in the middle with craft-store googly eyes attached.
“Son I got you this Birthday card because it’s just like you … different from all the rest!” the card reads. On the inside Garrity wrote “Have a great day! Love & Hugs, Mom xoxoxo.”
Children have the right to sue parents for emotional distress, but courts will only pursue a case if the parent’s behavior is “extreme or outrageous.” The Illinois court found that none of the mother’s behavior fit that description. Link -via Fark
(Unrelated image credit: Flickr user EikeR)
Remember our post from way back when about the cost of raising a child totaling about $250K? Well, economist Bryan Caplan decided to take a closer look as to exactly why (and how we can lower that cost). The Week summarizes:
So… we’re spending too much on kids?
"In a nutshell," says Sierra Black at Strollerderby, "Caplan believes that parents are ‘overcharging’ themselves for their children." By committing to intense tactics like attachment parenting, which requires moms to carry newborns non-stop and respond to their every desire, they’re unnecessarily robbing themselves of time. Parents also feel obligated to spend a fortune on lessons of every kind, and an endless stream of educational videos and toys.And all that expensive attention is really unnecessary?
Yes. Caplan says the bottom line is that nature — the kids’ genes — mostly determines who they’ll be; the power of nurture, he says, is minimal. Research on twins and adopted children shows that kids raised by highly educated parents with big vocabularies, for example, tend to know more words when they’re tiny. But by the time they reach age 12, "the effect of enriched upbringing on vocabulary was barely visible," Caplan says in The New York Times.
Link (Photo: Caitlin Caplan)
Worried that your kids are falling behind, missing the opportunity to learn and excel? What parent doesn’t? After all, it’s natural for parents to want … and push their children to have better lives. But is that very same act actually setting them up for a life of misery instead?
The battalions of mothers — and they’re mostly mothers — managing their children’s lives these days are talking about their anxiety. They see the frighteningly stressed children in "Race to Nowhere," a film in which teen after teen talks about how his or her life is all college prep and no play. They test their homes for hazards such as radon, and they provide lists of foods children may not have during playdates. [...]
Parents hire doulas, night nurses, nannies, camp consultants, batting coaches, SAT tutors. They try to be deeply attuned to every pimple in their child’s life path and scurry to remove it. They fret they’ve destroyed their 4-year-old’s future if she doesn’t gain acceptance to the Center for Early Education in West Hollywood.
They fear predators, or that kids are having oral sex at bar mitzvah parties, or that only 10 colleges in the country are worth going to, said Wendy Mogel, author of "The Blessing of a Skinned Knee" and "The Blessing of a B Minus," at a recent talk to parents at the private Westside Neighborhood School. She knows of a school where the washcloths were red so that children who got cut were protected from the sight of blood.
College officials are calling students "teacups" and "crispies" — the former so overprotected they’re fragile, the latter pushed so hard they’re burned out, said Mogel, a clinical psychologist.
Mary MacVean wrote this interesting article over at the Los Angeles Times about how anxiety affects parents nowadays: Link (Illustration: Ellen Weinstein/LA Times)
Previously on Neatorama: Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior
Ask most parents and they’ll gush about the joy of having kids or that having children is the best thing they’ve ever done. But if you look deeper, parents with minors who live at home are angrier and more depressed than non-parents … and the more kids they have, the angrier they get!
So why the disconnect? Are parents simply fooling themselves into thinking that they’re happier with kids than if they were childless?
The answer is yes, according to psychologists Richard Eibach and Steven Mock.
The studies tested the hypothesis that “idealizing the emotional rewards of parenting helps parents to rationalize the financial costs of raising children.”
Their hypothesis comes out of cognitive-dissonance theory, which suggests that people are highly motivated to justify, deny or rationalize to reduce the cognitive discomfort of holding conflicting ideas. Cognitive dissonance explains why our feelings can sometimes be paradoxically worse when something good happens or paradoxically better when something bad happens. For example, in one experiment conducted by a team led by psychologist Joel Cooper of Princeton, participants were asked to write heartless essays opposing funding for the disabled. When these participants were later told they were really compassionate — which should have made them feel better — they actually felt even worse because they had written the essays. (More on Time.com: Five Things for the New Mom Who Has Everything)
Here’s how cognitive-dissonance theory works when applied to parenting: having kids is an economic and emotional drain. It should make those who have kids feel worse. Instead, parents glorify their lives. They believe that the financial and emotional benefits of having children are significantly higher than they really are.
Remember our post on Amy Chua, the so-called Tiger Mother who asserted that her extreme "Chinese"-style of parenting produces superior children?
Chua didn’t let her own girls go out on play dates or sleepovers. She didn’t let them watch TV or play video games or take part in garbage activities like crafts. Once, one of her daughters came in second to a Korean kid in a math competition, so Chua made the girl do 2,000 math problems a night until she regained her supremacy. Once, her daughters gave her birthday cards of insufficient quality. Chua rejected them and demanded new cards. Once, she threatened to burn all of one of her daughter’s stuffed animals unless she played a piece of music perfectly.
As a result, Chua’s daughters get straight As and have won a series of musical competitions.
In her book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” Chua delivers a broadside against American parenting even as she mocks herself for her own extreme “Chinese” style. She says American parents lack authority and produce entitled children who aren’t forced to live up to their abilities.
Well, after the predictable blogorage that swept through the Internet (Amy, a Yale law professor, even got death threats), David Brooks writes in this New York Times Op-Ed that she’s actually coddling her kids:
The furious denunciations began flooding my in-box a week ago. Chua plays into America’s fear of national decline. Here’s a Chinese parent working really hard (and, by the way, there are a billion more of her) and her kids are going to crush ours. Furthermore (and this Chua doesn’t appreciate), she is not really rebelling against American-style parenting; she is the logical extension of the prevailing elite practices. She does everything over-pressuring upper-middle-class parents are doing. She’s just hard core. [...]
I have the opposite problem with Chua. I believe she’s coddling her children. She’s protecting them from the most intellectually demanding activities because she doesn’t understand what’s cognitively difficult and what isn’t.
Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group — these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale.
Link (Image: Tiger Mother nursing piglets in a Thai Zoo)
Cornell and other universities once incorporated live babies into their undergraduate teaching programs.
Once upon a time, infants were quietly removed from orphanages and delivered to the home economics programs at elite U.S. colleges, where young women were eager to learn the science of mothering. These infants became “practice babies,” living in “practice apartments,” where a gaggle of young “practice mothers” took turns caring for them…
Cornell’s program ran from 1919 to 1969 (which strikes me as incomprehensibly recent). At Cornell, eight female students at a time spent a full semester living in a fully-kitted out practice apartment. The women were there to learn the entire spectrum of homemaking skills…
Further details and a discussion of the “scientific method” of raising babies is at the PLoS Wonderland link, where it is noted that when the babies were returned to the orphanages after several years as teaching tools, they were in great demand by adoptive mothers.
Link.
Parents experience unbelievable joy at many of their baby’s accomplishments -the first smile, the first step, the first words. There are also many not-so-joyful firsts, as you’ll see in this list at NeatoBambino.
The first time they spit up on a friend who doesn’t have children. I’m convinced this is why some of my friends are still childless. Really, I am so sorry.
The first time your newborn son pees in your face. Yes, it really does happen. I finally got wise and started covering him up with a wash cloth while changing his diaper.
The first time they have massive diaper failure. I call these poo-splosions. They typically occur when you are in a hurry, you have placed them in your favorite little outfit, or have somehow forgotten a change of clothes.
The First time they put something really gross in their mouth. Babies are like ninjas. They have stealth reflexes. They can grab and lick the bottom of a shoe faster than you can scream “NO!”
Experienced parents will laugh; others may run screaming after reading this list. You are invited to add your experiences in the comments. Link
Mothers, you’ve certainly noticed that some parents look at child rearing as a competition. There are those who strive for perfection in every aspect of their kids’ lives (according to the latest parenthood buzz, which may change tomorrow), and have no problem crowing about it to any other parent who doesn’t measure up in their eyes. You’ll enjoy this exchange at NeatoBambino. Link
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As they welcome the incoming freshman class, colleges across the United States are finding that nowadays they have to do something they never had to do before: kick the helicopter parents out.
In order to separate doting parents from their freshman sons, Morehouse College in Atlanta has instituted a formal “Parting Ceremony.”
It began on a recent evening, with speeches in the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel. Then the incoming freshmen marched through the gates of the campus — which swung shut, literally leaving the parents outside. [...]
Moving their students in usually takes a few hours. Moving on? Most deans can tell stories of parents who lingered around campus for days. At Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., a mother and father once went to their daughter’s classes on the first day of the semester and trouped to the registrar’s office to change her schedule, recalled Beverly Low, the dean of first-year students.
Link (Photo: Brian C. Frank / The New York Times) – via Fark
I’m sure you’ve all heard your parents tell you how they walked to school in the snow, uphill, both ways, but how has parenting changed through the ages?
John Farrier wrote a very interesting post over at NeatoBambino about the parenting customs and techniques of 5 ancient civilizations. Here’s what it was like in ancient Rome:
In theory, under the law and principle of patria potestas — the power of the father — the male head of household held absolute power over his children. He could discipline them as he wished, or even kill them or sell them into slavery. In practice, however, there were many formal and informal limitations to this practice. Exposure at birth was common for unwanted children — provided that it was the father who made the decision — although this infanticide was legally considered murder during the last centuries of the western empire. Valued children were given a bulla or bag of magical charms worn around the neck to protect them from harm.
Childhood lasted until about thirteen for girls, when they were married off, or fourteen for boys, when their medallion of childhood was replaced with the toga of adulthood. Girls were educated in domestic skills at home, and sufficiently wealthy boys attended local schools. Discipline could be harsh, but many Romans realized that the rod was counterproductive.
This CLIO award winning commercial shows an interesting and hilarious perspective on sibling rivalry.
– via clioawards
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by djinny.
What do you get when you combine "honesty is the best policy" with "Do as I say, not as I do"? Here’s an interesting study showing that parents lie to children surprisingly often:
"We are surprised by how often parenting by lying takes place," said study researcher Kang Lee of the University of Toronto, Canada. "Our findings showed that even the parents who most strongly promoted the importance of honesty with their children engaged in parenting by lying."
Lee and colleagues acknowledge that their work is preliminary, bringing to the forefront an issue that is rarely studied. They are not sure the implications of parental lying, but suggest such tall tales could give kids mixed messages at a time when they are trying to figure out how to navigate the social world.
Lies could also harm parent-child bonds, said study researcher Gail Heyman of the University of California, San Diego.
It could even keep children from learning certain rules. "If I am always lying to the child in order to get the child to do X, Y, or Z, then they have never learned why they should do X, Y, or Z," said Victoria Talwar of McGill University in Montreal, who was not involved in the current study. "If it’s constantly being used, [lying] may be preventing learning opportunities for the child."
Should you love your children unconditionally or should you dole out love only when they behave? Do your children become better adults if you are selective about your approvals – like many of the new parenting advice books say?
Author Alfie Kohn wrote an interesting article for The New York Times wrote about some interesting studies on conditional parenting:
In 2004, two Israeli researchers, Avi Assor and Guy Roth, joined Edward L. Deci, a leading American expert on the psychology of motivation, in asking more than 100 college students whether the love they had received from their parents had seemed to depend on whether they had succeeded in school, practiced hard for sports, been considerate toward others or suppressed emotions like anger and fear.
It turned out that children who received conditional approval were indeed somewhat more likely to act as the parent wanted. But compliance came at a steep price. First, these children tended to resent and dislike their parents. Second, they were apt to say that the way they acted was often due more to a “strong internal pressure” than to “a real sense of choice.” Moreover, their happiness after succeeding at something was usually short-lived, and they often felt guilty or ashamed.
In a companion study, Dr. Assor and his colleagues interviewed mothers of grown children. With this generation, too, conditional parenting proved damaging. Those mothers who, as children, sensed that they were loved only when they lived up to their parents’ expectations now felt less worthy as adults. Yet despite the negative effects, these mothers were more likely to use conditional affection with their own children.
Need a good excuse for why you’re late to/absent from work? The Office Kid kit lets you pretend to have a child, which you can then use as an excuse for your questionable work ethic. Each kit comes with a framed picture of a child (ethnicity of your choice), a work of children’s art, and a list of suggested excuses. For additional fees, you can have the child photoshopped into a sports team picture or a doctor’s note on official-looking stationery.
Link via Bits & Pieces
Get ready for Mothers Day by getting to know how animal mothers take care of their babies.
From the jungles to the oceans, from the rainforests to the frozen poles, mothers in the wild can bear some similar resemblances to mothers in the city. They bring us into the world, nurture us, love us, teach us the skills we need to survive and protect us from harm, until we are ready to go off on our own. And with Mother’s Day just around the corner, what better way to celebrate motherhood than by looking at how the motherly instinct runs through the wild.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by smellslikepurple.
Even ancient folks expressed their appreciation for mothers -maybe not enough, but mothers have been celebrated for a long time.
While some complain that Mother’s Day is a Hallmark holiday, celebrations of motherhood can in fact be traced back to ancient times. Ancient Greeks celebrated Rhea, the mother of the gods, while ancient Romans had a holiday to celebrate Cybele, a mother goddess. The tradition of celebrating mothers in springtime can be traced back to the celebrations of the goddess Brigid, which occurred at the first milk of the ewes. This brief history traces the way embarking on motherhood moved from being women’s sole purpose, to an assumption, to a duty to produce heirs, and finally, to a decision for the woman
herself.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by smellslikepurple.
Psst, moms! Want to know the secret of having your husbands pick up some of the workload at home? Here’s the secret:
New research into the idea of "maternal gatekeeping" shows how attitudes and actions by the mother may promote or impede father involvement.
"For women who insist they have the gold standard around parenting and housework, men just tend to walk away," says Joshua Coleman, a clinical psychologist in San Francisco and Oakland. "They feel their own ideas about how the house should look or … how the children should be raised aren’t given equal share."
Kenney presented research she co-wrote at a meeting of the Population Association of America over the weekend. The study of 1,023 couples from 20 large cities in the USA found mothers were protective of their caregiving and educational engagement with the child but were less so for playtime activities that "were not considered threats to the mother’s caregiving identity," the paper says.
"Maybe he’s not more involved because mom is holding him back," Kenney says.
These are a great idea and are certain to get children to play with their food -of course, that may not really help get them to eat their veggies. They will be availible on April 10th and are a reasonable $10.
CNN commentator Jack Cafferty is mad. Steaming mad. At your bratty kids for disturbing his meal.
In his new book, Now or Never: Getting Down to the Business of Saving Our American Dream
Exhibit A: My wife and I have just been seated for dinner when the maitre d’ walks over and seats a young family at the table next to us and the kids start carrying on like orangutans on a leash.
The parents are going, "Timmy, that’s not nice, don’t throw your food, stop stuffing your mashed potatoes up your nose." Are mom and dad having fun yet, picking food up off the floor, apologizing to people like us, and wiping food flung across the table off their faces?
Some parents still have this attitude that their kids are too special to be burdened by discipline. And the rest of us are supposed to put up with their little mutants. That attitude really pisses me off.
I hate to break it to them, but the kids aren’t special, and I don’t have to put up with their behavior. If you can’t control your obnoxious little brats, leave them home.
Bill Zeman’s daughter is the Tiny Art Director. She tells him what to draw and then tells him just exactly how much she hates it. Bill has been recording her comments and posting them with his art since she was two and a half.
Here’s a sample:
The Brief: Purple Gatorade [Rosie's Fish]
The Critique: Dad, that doesn’t look like Purple Gatorade. Only mine looks like Purple Gatorade. You’re going to scan it, and then when you’re done with it, it’s going to be scrappled up and thrown in the garbage. And then mine will be our final picture.
Job Status: Rejected
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by bz.
