Parenting

So I Raised an Axe Murderer

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L
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“Charlie, have you ever stood at the edge of a cliff or subway platform with someone, and you thought just for a split second, ‘What if I pushed him?’”

“Well, not really. Usually, I follow the Judeo-Christian ethic of ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but that’s just me.” (So I Married an Axe Murderer, 1993)

Sometimes we wonder if we’re raising our kids to be good humans. We question if we may have been too harsh or hot-tempered in the moment, and that our actions will leave our kids with permanent emotional scars. We worry that if we don’t get this parenting thing right, our children may become one of those psycho killers in a slasher movie. I recall sobbing to one of my friends that my then 2-year-old son was going to grow up to be a serial killer because I yelled at him one time.

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Child(ish) Reads: Momfluenced

| Patti Webb

When our blog project started, Mary got slightly offended about Child(ish) Advice being conveyed as a “mommy blog”. I told her, “You are a mom. You have a blog.”

Child(ish) Advice the blog is obviously a type of long-form media and we have multiple social media accounts; so regardless of our following, I guess we qualify as “influencers”. And today, even though this is a book review, it is also a bit of a meta moment.

Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture by Sara Petersen.

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Your Restaurant Game Plan

| Patti Webb

It feels 100% weird that I am writing this post on taking kids to restaurants when I just had a very frustrating experience on Saturday. But here we go…

When I was in high school, my little sister was about a year and a half old. My stepmother had made it a point that every Friday, they would go out to a restaurant for lunch and work on manners. I’m not exactly sure what this meant because I didn’t really see any actual teaching or etiquette going on. Instead, it was more like sitting in a booth with a toddler and correcting every single move she made.

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Expectation vs Reality: Table Manners

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

“Eat dinner as a family”, they said.

“It’ll help boost morale and connection with your kids,” they said.

“It’ll be a great time had by all,” they said.

Then why do we feel like we’re banging our heads up against the wall when our kid’s behavior and manners at the table are like a scene out of Gremlins? Well, no one said it was going to be easy (and if they did, they are liars).

Family dinners have been a cultural norm in the US for decades. But all those wholesome Norman Rockwell scenes of sitting together and politely eating a meal are not the realities of what we ACTUALLY experience on a daily basis right now. In fact, it’s quite the opposite (kids getting in and out of chairs, refusing to eat their food, spills/messes on the floor, you and your spouse trying to talk over the calamity, etc).

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There’s No “I” in Team: The Parent-Teacher Relationship

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

When my son was three years old, his teachers expressed concerns about his behavior in class. He wasn’t following directions, had a tough time staying seated during circle time, and was distracting his classmates. With all of the other kids in the class, they were having a difficult time dealing with my son and unsure how to handle him. End story.
What? That’s it? That’s all you have to say?

With this news, a rush of anxiety came flooding in.
OMG, they think he’s a bad kid.
Does he have ADHD?
Am I a bad parent?

I know that other parents have these kinds of talks with their kid’s teachers, doctors, counselors; and more times than not, that is the end of the conversation. But it doesn’t have to be.

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