Given the spate of media bs floating around the Internet these days part of me finds it hard to believe a rumor that anyone would want to botox their kid's feet. Then, part of me realizes the drama is surrounding Sharon Stone and thinks there could be a kernel of truth to the rumor. After all, the actress and one-time sexpot has basically gone off the wall in recent years, making crazy statements and acting crazy in general--and it no longer seems like a publicity stunt to draw attention and viewers to Basic Instinct 2.
Stone is mom to eight-year-old Roan, and her custody of him is currently under question. Allegedly she has lost custody of her son after overreacting to his foot odor by thinking he should get botox in his feet. According to reports (rumors!) the judge agreed that Stone was overreacting and causing pain to her child, and has granted primary custody to the actress' ex, Phil Bronstein. Sharon will get to see him one weekend a month.
That seems so terrible for a mother to lose custody of her child and to only be able to see him on a monthly basis. I would be crushed if that happened to me. Of course, as crazy and hormonal as I am in the last stages of pregnancy, I still wouldn't think it was a good idea to botox my son's feet. Poor Sharon--she really must be suffering from some sort of emotional disorder or complications from her brain surgery to make those sorts of decision (if they're true, and they appear to be).
Actor Denzel Washington has a few words for Americans hitting the voting booths this November. He is urging us to take into consideration the needs of our youth as we consider casting our ballots. He's also urging our leaders to take these matters into greater account.
Washington is a strong supporter of the Boys and girls Club of America, and has taken youth issues to heart. Says Washington, the nation's leaders need to focus on the needs of our youth, including the increases in obesity and the high school dropout rate. The Oscar winner also commented on the violent crime among young people, which increases in the hours right after school.
Washington made his opinion known via a commentary piece for CNN.com and feels that if we don't deal with these issues our children won't be prepared to deal with the "challenges posed by a complex world." Well said!
It's not always easy to find a nanny or babysitter who will nurture your children just like you would while you're away. That's why many moms have trouble rocking the boat when a situation arises. Even though a nanny/parent relationship is also an employee/employer relationship, the domestic nature of the work can make it difficult to confront sticky situations.
Start any difficult conversation with a positive comment.
Sit down and create a written agreement with your nanny or babysitter, one that can be referred to when there's a disagreement or can be altered as the need arises.
Hold a weekly meeting with your babysitter to touch base and discuss issues.
Create clear boundaries in your relationship. It's easy to grow close to a beloved nanny, but remember that you each have your professional role as well.
View the clip below for more tips on resolving conflict. If you employ a nanny or babysitter, how have you dealt with confrontation or disagreement without damaging the relationship that you've worked so hard to create?
Actress and sometime do-gooder Angelina Jolie claims she makes action movies for her children. I'm not sure who got her to come out of her shell long enough to hear this information--Jolie has been tucked away safely since the birth of her twins Vivienne and Knox--but perhaps this is old info just now being issued to keep us satisfied while we await her return to the media frenzy that is her life.
According to Jolie, she wants her kids to be able to see the films and be proud of her. I'm not sure how proud anyone would be of efforts like Tombraider 2, but hey, Jolie claims to also do all her own stunts--that would be pretty rockin' if it's fact. Jolie says she does that to prove to her children they can do anything to which they set their minds. Fair enough.
The star should be more proud of her philanthropic ways, which I am also sure she hopes to pass on to her kids. Learn by example, right? If that's true then there should be six more philanthropists among the Jolie-Pitt clan to carry on the work of Ange and Brad Pitt. Either that or they'll all want to appear in remakes of their parents' films!
OK, is it me or is a national convention no place for a baby? As was widely covered (yet not as much as the Democratic National Convention, interestingly), the Republican National Convention showcased many of Sarah Palin's children (and a would-be teenage groom). Among them, Palin's infant son, Trig. I thought it was a lot to take my newborn to the local diner when he was born!
Now, while the Republicans seemed a little more calm and collected than their boisterous Democratic opponents, they were still a relatively rowdy bunch. The whole point of a convention is to get people riled up for the cause, and there was a lot of that going on, especially from Palin herself. It was a loud, crowded, noisy place, which, to me, is no place for a baby. Babies need stimulation and interaction with the social world, I'm sure, but the RNC is a far cry from what good old Doctor Spock imagined. I am sure that kid was terrified. He seemed ok in the arms of family members as the rest of the RNC wailed on, but I couldn't help but think he should have been home with a nanny or a sitter.
Of course, the whole point of having her family there was to drive home the point that she's a mom and that she is a working mother, too. And, naturally, rather than focusing on real issues that truly matter to the election, the focus was all on her family. Trig has down syndrome. Bristol is pregnant. Levi will we her. Both Palin and the press have done their best to constantly remind us of these things--things which matter, sure, but they shouldn't be a part of the race for the White House. Should they? Palin and her people say keep the children out of it, yet there they were, even the littlest one, at the convention. Obama was no better--he trotted his kids out for the cute factor, no denying that.
Thoughts? Should we keep candidates' kids out of the political spotlight? If so, shouldn't they NOT be on television?
According to a new report, actress Leighton Meester was essentially born in prison. The Gossip Girl star's mother was allegedly in prison serving time in federal prison in Texas for drug-related charges when her now-famous daughter was born.
Mom was allowed to live in a half-way house until little Leighton was three months old, but then had to serve out the rest of her sentence behind bars. The report appears in the questionable if anything Star magazine, where it is noted Leighton was raised by a relative until mom was released.
The magazine also claims other members of Meester's family, including her grandfather, spent time in the slammer, again for drug-related charges. Do we believe it? Sure, why not--plenty of women have had children while in prison. Can't stop mother nature. Do we care? That I'm not so sure about. With Gossip Girl's second season opening to its largest audience ever, I doubt the show needed such a publicity stunt, but they got one anyway!
Recently we all got a good laugh, intentional or not, from a mom who posted on Craigslist looking for a nanny. For those of you unfamiliar with Craigslist, it's a now international site where one can post or look for anything from a job to household goods (used baby clothes too!) to a hot date, and everything in between. Hence, it should come as no surprise that someone would post looking for a nanny.
Finding a good nanny, especially in a city as big as New York, can be daunting at best. Sure, there are many to choose from, but they're expensive and trolling through their credentials can be arduous. All the good ones seem to have been snatched up by a neighbor uninterested in doing a nanny share. Finding affordable daycare, however, can be twice as hard. There are waitlists and questionnaires long enough to boggle the mind. All the good ones are very expensive, and few if any actually provide a discount for siblings (often they will give your child preference over another if you already have a child in regular attendance).
I find myself in this very situation right now. To live in New York, I have to work full-time, so childcare is a necessity for me. I am a Brooklyn mom so things in my part of New York should be less expensive than, say, the Upper East Side (from whence the poster looking for a nanny hailed), but it's still eyepoppingly absurd how much everything costs. If I were to put both my kids in daycare it would cost more than my new mortgage. Yep. So a nanny seems like a good idea, if I could just find a good one that wasn't too expensive and that didn't need to live with me. I, too, have thought about posting on Craigslist. Perhaps not in quite the manner in which the other mother posted, but it's certainly crossed my mind. After all, folks post for everything else so why not?
Would you post for a nanny on Craigslist or any other site or is that a crazy idea? Also, if you happen to be a nanny or know of a good one in the New York area, please let me know. My kids are NOT a pain in the ass. They're cute.
Do you read parenting books? For real, as in from cover to cover? Did you get anything at all out of the book? Was it overall a great buy with an excellent philosophy, or was there at least one nugget of sage advice that has helped you shape your parenting style? If the answer to that last question was yes, then perhaps parenting books are good for you. For others, not so much.
I remember when I first started writing for ParentDish--way back in the Blogging Baby days. I was pregnant and trying to figure out if I had what it took to be a parent. I bought oodles of parenting books and tried to plow through them as best as I could. I found lots of conflicting information, some of it outdated. I had lots of conversations with other parents and got more of the same. I even asked them what parenting books they recommended. Some loved certain books, some hated said books. One such book was "What to Expect when You're Expecting." I wrote a post about that and got innumerable comments of both praise and abhorring. So it is with any sort of parenting advice.
Once you become a parent, generally all the things you were so scared of dissipate. You become more confident in your decision making and parenting abilities. Most of the time, you actually become a better wife, daughter, friend, sister, etc. in the process. Did the parenting books help? Maybe, maybe not. Being a parent did. The things we all fear--that we'll be bad parents, that we'll hurt our children, that they'll be taken from us through our own negligence--seem to go away the more we actually practice parenting. And that means whatever parenting style comes most naturally to us or works out best for us. And it is different for every person. I don't think it really matters how much attention you paid to WTEWYE--you're probably doing OK in the mommy or daddy department. Parenting books, if you actually have time to read them (see: before children) might offer some insight, but only you will be able to determine the right approach to raising your kids.
For actress Brooke Shields, life is far from perfect. And she's not afraid to admit it. The Lipstick Jungle star was very free with her words when she spoke with TimesOnline. And she's not afraid to admit that having and raising kids is tough for the working mom. Shields, now 43, is mom to two daughters with husband Chris Henchy, Rowan who is five and Grier who is two.
She's thankful to be on a hit show like Lipstick Jungle (from acclaimed Sex in the City creator Candace Bushnell) and to have had an incredible career that started when she was a mere fourteen years old, but, states Shields, ""I'm on the set of Lipstick, committed, yes, but constantly wondering how my kids are, where they are, sad when my daughter asks if she can stay up until I get home...." Just like any other working mother. Shields also says she's acquiesced to letting her kids stay up until she gets home and letting them into bed with her, which she said she would never do. Yes, even Brooke Shields, who once sported little more than Calvin Kleins and arm candy like Andre Agassi, has to make compromises. Good to hear they're for a five- and two-year-old.
It's also refreshing to hear that a celebrity mom thinks parenting and working is tough, that she admits to not being perfect and to giving in to her kids, and that she misses them and cares about what's going on with them. Celebs act like things are so hard all the time and they have these armies of nannies and other kinds of help that regular folks like us could never dream of. Occasionally we see them out with their kids for little more than what amounts to photo ops, whether they intend such outings to be such or not. I'm sure Brooke has her share of help--it would be impossible to star in a television series and not--but at least she's being realistic and honest with us that parenting--parenting done RIGHT--is not easy, and that perfection is far from reality.
My kid takes showers. He is sixteen months old. I took showers as a kid, but spent most of my time in the bath, surrounded by various toys and lots of suds. When our children are first born we barely bathe them, then move them into the little plastic tubs, then eventually into the tub for big kids. I don't even know when the technical transition from bath to shower begins.
I got the idea to put my child in the shower from a friend who always took her three girls into the shower with her (not all at once). The concept was that mom was in the shower and wet already anyway. Showers also use a lot less water than baths, and they're faster. Baths are tough in our apartment as the bathroom is small and the bathtub is awkwardly placed.
So, my husband and I tried taking our son, who was able to stand very comfortably on his own, into the shower a few times with decent results. Over time he became less intimidated by the water and now enjoys splashing around in it. He still plays with his toys and we all get clean relatively quickly. Still, I wonder if there's any reason to go back to baths, or to only do baths. There will come a point when our son is too old to be in the shower with us, for obvious reasons. There will also need to be a time when he lathers himself up instead of having a parent do it. I'm not wild about leaving him alone in the bath or the shower, and I wonder if either is really "safer."
Do you do showers or baths for your kids? At what age did you settle on a routine?
How do your kids get to school? How did you get to school when you were a kid? Taking the yellow school bus, walking or riding a bike may all seem like normal methods of getting to school. In the modern world, we drive and carpool as well. But what about in urban environments where a lot of parents don't drive or even own a car? They take the subway.
And they do it ALONE. That's right--I've seen it myself. Kids popping onto and off of the subway without a parent in sight. How do they manage it? And why, you might wonder, do their parents let them do it? Well, necessity is the mother of invention and a lot of other things, it turns out. Kids are going in one direction, their parents in another (to school versus work), and the main way to get around town in New York, for example, is underground.
Turns out, it's probably safer too. Driving in this city is a disaster on a good day. You're a LOT less likely to get into an accident on the subway than you are in your car. Plus, the kids tend to travel in packs on the subway. I never see a kid get onto an empty car at an odd (non-rush hour) time. They pick which car to meet up on and collect as the train makes its stops toward their final destination. I know because I can hear them screeching above my iPod.
I was at least twelve years old before I was allowed to cross the street by myself. It was several years after that I was allowed to stay home alone during the summer while my parents were at work instead of going to summer camp. I always felt like I could have stayed home earlier; now that I'm a parent I know how my parents felt: it was NEVER time to leave me home alone!
So at what age is it appropriate to start leaving your little ones home alone--without a babysitter? A recent New York Times article tackles that very question. There are few laws or guidelines to help us make such decisions. Pediatricians don't have much to offer. Ultimately, it becomes a decision between the parents and the child. Both have to feel ready to allow such a thing to occur. And, generally, it starts with an experiment. Leave the kid at home alone while you visit a neighbor for a cup of sugar (do people still do that?). Next time leave her home alone while you pick up the dry cleaning, and so on.
Many states see the tender age of 12 as the start of this new way of life. Twelve is different for each child. How the kid reacts makes all the difference in the world too, as does the general personality of the child. Is your child independent and can get things done on his own? Does your child fear being alone or throw temper tantrums? Do you find your child is in trouble all the time, even when you're around? All these things are taken into consideration when deciding to leave a kid at home. Many parents also have no choice but to leave their children alone--scary but true--even when they're not yet twelve. Luckily things like cell phones and other modern technologies have made it easier for us to keep in touch with our children.
I'm terrified to even think of letting my child stay at home alone or go anywhere alone in New York City, but I know it's a future I face. What about you? When did you let your children start staying at home alone? Was it earlier or later than when you stayed home alone as a kid?
It can be tough to travel when you have a family. Being away from your little ones can be as tough as the grueling red eyes, hard hotel beds and crazy meeting schedules that await you. For parents of children with special needs who find themselves business travellers as well, another layer of challenges present themselves.
In response, the parents have become quite creative in handling a hectic work schedule and managing the care of their special needs children. In a recent New York Times article, parents of special needs children discuss how they manage family and career. One child, with Prader Willi syndrome, took a trip with his travelling parent. His meals were portion-controlled and given to him every three hours. The meals were pre-made and frozen in a giant grid.
Other children require shots given with a specific technique or visits to specialists. Some parents, rather than try to cobble their family's schedule around their job, do it the other way around. Or, one parent will take on the schedule so the other parent can avoid all the appointments and have a less hectic day. Still other parents enlist the help of parents, friends and nannies. Some have even gone so far as to get help outside their regular circle by using services like sittercity.com, which helps match children with special needs with the appropriate caregiver.
The article offers some good resources for parents. Any additional thoughts or suggestions not covered by the article?
As many of you may know, I have a sixteen-month-old-son. When I first became pregnant I never thought whether I wanted a boy or a girl. I was simply thrilled to be having a child at all, and wanted only a happy, healthy child--the sex of the baby was inconsequential. Then, at one point I found out I would be having a son. I was an only child and a girl and knew not the first thing about having, and raising, a little boy. Now I'm on track with my second child, a little girl. I'm nervous and flustered and wondering just how different raising a child of the opposite sex will be. After all, I've had experience raising a baby, but he is all boy, all the time.
Is there such a difference in raising children of the opposite sex? Ask anyone, whether or not they're parents, and they'll have a pretty strong opinion about the world of boys vs girls. For example, when I found out I was having a girl, the pink clothing literally started pouring in. Everything is pink! When I was pregnant with my son I received clothes in all manner of colors, but not with my daughter. People also always comment that boys are much more rambunctious than girls in the beginning, but that girls are ever so much harder to deal with as teenagers--and that as the would-be mother of a teenage girl I have a lot of drama to look forward to.
The only real difference I've come across in my research is how you change a diaper. For girls you simply wipe in a different direction than with boys. Perhaps there's a little more clean-up involved as you're dealing with internal parts as opposed to external parts, but really that's the only difference I can discern. All of my friends who have two children, oddly enough, started out with a boy and then followed up with a girl. They all say that there is a real difference, even if it can't be defined in words, to raising a boy vs a girl.
Thoughts? Is there any real difference? Is it just society straining its concept of norms over us? Or is there more to raising girls than pink clothing that makes them intrinsically different than boys? After all, aren't little boys made of snails and puppy dog tails and such, while girls are made of sugar and spice?
As the world will know soon enough if it doesn't already, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are debuting the pictures of their newborn twins today. Courtesy of People Magazine, who reportedly paid $14 million for the pictures, which will be given to a charity of the Jolie-Pitt's choice, the pictures feature mom and dad with the newborn twins and big sister Shiloh holding a babe.
Says Angelina Jolie about her ever-expanding family, which now clocks in at six, the brood is "chaos." She means that in a good way, of course, but how could it be otherwise with that many children in the house? I have one child with another on the way and sometimes wonder how I'm going to get through my day! Twins Knox and Vivienne join Maddox, Pax, and Zahara as well as Shiloh.
Jolie adds that despite the zaniness, she and the family are having a great time. She also claims her daughters Shiloh and Zahara have taken on the role of "little mommies" by helping change the twins and pick out their clothes. Perhaps she can give us some hints and tips on how to get the older kids to help out with the new ones!
Congrats to the couple, who are clearly delighted with their newest additions!
