October, 2014 | PulseonParenting

A PhD in Mommyhood?

Oct 30 2014

Mommy Brain. We all know someone with it. We all joke about it. Any mom who has ever locked her keys in the car, left the milk under the grocery cart in the cart corral or who has said, “What? (Some event) has happened in (insert name of country here)?!” know exactly what Mommy Brain is. Or do we? If I had the foresight years ago to scrapbook all the clever ditties I read about motherhood, I could tell you who derived my favorite factoid and how but since I can’t…Well, I’m going to tell you about it anyway. Because…

Clarity

Oct 28 2014

I hate to be cryptic instead of concrete but this time I need to be, to protect those involved. For several months I have been ruminating over something, wasting my energies. I was investing emotional currency into a situation I could only speculate about and it was unhealthy, draining and unproductive. Then recently, a turn of events shed light onto the whole deal and things seemed to make sense…the reactions or lack thereof, avoidances and interactions that I tried to dissect came together to form a picture different from what I mentally painted. What a relief it was to have…

Happy Birthday! (Hold the Cake…)

Oct 23 2014

A highlight of a child’s birthday is bringing treats to school. The interruption of the school routine for personal attention, a “Happy Birthday” serenade complete with “Cha-cha-cha’s” and a decadent treat to eat drive my kids to plan this particular event not days, but months in advance. Despite their intense pre-planning (motivation I wish would spill over to doing homework, cleaning their rooms….) the request from mom’s kitchen is predictable: cupcakes with sprinkles or fancy toothpicks, please. However this year my daughter threw a sweet curveball. As some of her friends are on a gluten-free diet, she wanted gluten-free brownies to…

Sorry, Mr. Robbins, My Mind Just Doesn’t Work That Way

Oct 21 2014

Life is short. Too short to drink bad coffee (as is advertised by the coffee shop I’m sitting in right now), eat processed cheese and to not give downhill skiing a second chance (God help me). Well, I tried and tried to get into Nurtured by Love, the account by violinist Shin’ichi Suzuki on his “talent is learned” philosophy, but have struggled through the first third of his 142-page book. As my frustration grew with trying to learn valuable insights on our son’s violin method my husband told me Life is short. Read something you enjoy. His advice got my attention. Because when…

The Principal Always Rings Twice

Oct 16 2014

What do parents and doctors have in common? Call. Which means we must have some sort of electronic gadget within easy reach (surgical attachment, anyone?) so the school or the sitter (or the hospital) can get ahold of us at a moment’s notice. The only difference is parents must take this responsibility round the clock, not every third weekend or weekday (which, don’t get me wrong, is plenty tough). But like doctors, we parents can have a degree of superstition about how to ward off bad news delivered by phone. For me, my mobile is always in my pocket or…

Cheaterpants

Oct 14 2014

My younger son loves to play games. And not surprisingly, he loves to win. He is so driven in fact, that he is a flagrant, and I mean flagrant, cheater. As in he grabs a handful of cards from a deck and chooses the one he wants, right in front of his opponents. Or he tries to break the rules by announcing just that and then shoots us the I-am-so-guilty-but-maybe-they-won’t-notice look. Therefore, my son has been dubbed “Sir Cheaterpants.” Fortunately he is a good natured boy and takes the ribbing well. But his inclination to “stack the deck” in his…

Runway Model?

Oct 09 2014

I am barely five-foot four. There is nothing in my closet with a designer label (unless Osprey and Merrill count). I firmly believe my own flesh-and-blood heels belong no higher than a couple centimeters off the ground. So I doubt anyone would mistake me for one of the genetic enigmas we call “runway models.” But the other day, something happened that could change that.

Learning the Language of Music (Yes, There are Strings Attached)

Oct 07 2014

I first heard about the Suzuki method of musical instruction when my sons voiced respective interests in learning violin and classical guitar. After we talked with both instructors, and observed their differing styles in response to our inquiries, I grew curious about the methodology that tied these teachers together. So enter the book for October 2014: Shin’ichi Suzuki’s book Nutured by Love. Suzuki was an accomplished Japanese violinist who astutely observed that children learn their native tongue through simple repetition. He felt that by using the same approach, with an understanding that ability is learned and not innate, children could learn…

Overscheduled, Underworked

Oct 02 2014

I’m just going to come out and say it: Kids need to work more. They need to scatter legos and build, build, build. They need to challenge each other with board games and don old clothes, pretending to be a Spy Kid, Dorothy from Kansas or Captain America. If play is a child’s work, why don’t they get to do it more often?

Archive - October 2014