Parenting

Nightmare on Elm Street

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

“Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep.” – Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Remember when you were a kid, you watched a horror film you probably shouldn’t have and from then on, your dreams were nothing but nightmares? Yeah, that happened to me, and that movie was Child’s Play.

The truth is kids will experience their version of a Freddy Krueger dreamscape regardless of whether they see a scary movie or not. In fact, nightmares are part of typical child development as they process what they have observed and experienced in their world thus far. But does it have to be in the form of bad dreams?

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Mommie Dearest

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

NO WIRE HANGERS, EVER! (Mommie Dearest, 1981)

The classic story of a mother off the rails, Mommie Dearest recounts the parenting years of Golden Age Hollywood actress Joan Crawford and her demanding, irrational behavior towards her two adopted children. Sure, it’s campy, but it doesn’t feel that far off when we have our own bouts with mom rage.

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So I Raised an Axe Murderer

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L
Cannot find art origin. If this is yours, let us know!

“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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