About Parenting: messed-up parenting

The blog has still moved to http://lynnsrants.com but as some still come here to read - I want to let you know about my newest e-book and contest.

You can buy it or enter a contest to win a copy.

#################################################################

Read to bottom for contest and rules for winning a copy in the

Honor your tax deduction contest

##################################################################

Can you mess up in your parenting and still have great kids?

Of course you can!

Parenting is not a science but if you know about child development and read this book - you'll realize you can do it with

less anxiety and much less guilt.

Buy online at e-junkie VIA PAYPAL

Only $9.97 [USD] for an instant pdf file download

99 pages packed with useful information

Buy it here:

FYI - you do not need a paypal account to use paypal

YOU CAN TOTALLY SCREW UP AS A MOM AND STILL RAISE GREAT KIDS

If I, a Developmental Psychologist with an expertise in early childhood, messed up – why should you expect to be perfect?

And while the title is directed at mommies; all I have to say here is meant for daddies too. In most homes still, yet, whatever; mommies are the major child caretakers.

This book was written to hopefully help alleviate the guilt that parents feel before during and after raising their child.

caveats - please be sure to read

If you are a person who thinks daddy or mommy is not to be questioned - do not buy this book - you will be offended..I also have a New York style sense of humor [sarcastic and odd] so if that offends you - please do not buy my book...you'll be unhappy.

Excerpts

From the Introduction

Another parenting book? Yup!

But this one is different – why? Because I am writing it and I have great ideas that I don’t mind sharing with anyone who asks and even with those who do not ask! And at 70 years of age I am entitled to say what I want .

I’ve long been a Dr. Seuss fan and love this:

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

For those who don't know me, I have been in the field of Developmental Psychology since the early 60's when I entered graduate school. I was a college professor, wrote a few text books and edited a life span series. Now I want to get information out in a more readable and less paper intensive fashion so I am authoring e-books about psychological development.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Conversation with my son

My son read the manuscript, of course, and so I asked him for comments.

First he said he did not remember all that I wrote about his early years but he was sure I was accurate about them...

What he did recall was that he felt I was unique because he had a say in decision-making and some of his friends seemed not to have that say. Not that we did as he suggested but that his voice was heard. I was not a totalitarian!

He still calls me his “parental unit” and said that while he is not all that keen on my writing about parenting him, “it’s my life and whether or not I like it, you were there too.”

Yes he has known this book was in the works and has hinted that he may comments to make if I do the parenting teen one.

[not so sure I want to hear those comments again ]

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

This is an honest, thought provoking, informative, inspiring book!

The exercises are great for self-reflection/examination, and the writing is very accessible. This book will help many new and veteran parents better understand their children - even if you are not a parent this book will help you understand children and their worlds.

Well done! This is amazingly awesome :)

Rabbi Shai Specht

RabbiShai.com

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

You can buy it here now

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

from Chapter 1

Lynn’s take on family labels

I hate the term “broken” family. No family is broken. Families are all different. Broken implies a negative that may or may not be there – much as a family that stays married can be either a positive or negative environment. Marriage and divorce are not the biggest factors that define the quality of a family.

The same goes for adopted children – they dislike being asked about their “real” parents when one means the birth parents. The real parents are the ones raising them.

I felt this way before I had a child and I certainly came to dislike the labels more after his father and I divorced. We may have been dysfunctional – but we were not ‘broken.”

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

It's excellent. I wish there'd been something like it when I was raising mine.

She pulls no punches. Straight to the point. Hope parents buy it.

She deserves to be heard.

Mara

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

from Chapter 6 Behaving

To behavior “properly,” that is in accordance with the rules of one’s culture,
people need to know what the rules are. Then they can distinguish right
from wrong.

But, and as they say this is a big but, they also need to want to act in
the correct way and they need the ability to control themselves.

So ask – can young children even be considered as having morality or being
capable of behaving in the adult definition of these terms?

I think not.

The start of this process of moral development and behaving is the ability to
put yourself in the place of another - and that’s a high level cognitive
concept.

I’ve written before that cognitive growth is at the root, so to speak, of all
development – and here it is again. You need a certain amount of complex
cognitive ability to behave in what we call a moral fashion.

But being moral is not the same as being well behaved. In fact many of what
we call “well behaved” children are only behaving out of fear. An older study
indicated that scaring children into behaving as the adult wishes them to
behave tends to result in the behavior only happening when that adult is
around.

For example – if a parent threatens or scares a child about crossing streets –
that child is more likely to look around for the parent – and NOT look at the
traffic. The same can be true for school behaviors. “Well behaved” children
tend to be loved by teachers but it does not mean the child is sitting there
learning academic material – they may be sitting there with all their thoughts
focused on keeping still because they were scared into thinking that was
“correct.” This behavior takes up a lot of mental energy – energy that is not
going toward learning school material.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

From Hayley in Perth

http://allthingswomen.blogspot.com/

You just never know where your words are going to end up!
I was on Twitter chatting with a friend and I told her about my daughter and something she had said when she was a young child. She'd drawn a picture of the family but her younger sister was missing from the picture. When asked where she was, she replied with a very serious face, "She's still in the pencil, silly." We all erupted in laughter because she was such a funny little thing.

Well, Dr Lynn Dorman Phd, an American Psychologist was in the process of writing her e-book, "You can totally screw up as a mom and still raise great kids!" She sent me a direct message asking if she could use that quote in her e-book.

Well, surprise, surprise, her e-book is finished and there is Sarah's quote on Page 84.

I love the thought that a 70 year old woman would take the time to share her wisdom with the younger generations. There is just something very special about our Elders and it touches my heart when they desire to reach out and pass on what they know.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction
Chapter 1 Before We Talk Babies And Children Let’s Talk “Uniqueness”
Chapter 2 Okay Now Let’s Talk Babies
Chapter 3 Early Infancy
Chapter 4 Infancy 1-3
Chapter 5 Those Developmental Tasks
Chapter 6 Behaving - What On Earth Does That Mean?
Chapter 7 Putting It All Together And Taking It On The Road
Chapter 8 Those “Pesky” Other “Things” That Raise Your Children
Chapter 9 Conclusion

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

You Can Buy the Book Right Here:

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Or you can enter the

Honor your tax deduction contest.

Win a free copy of You Can Totally Screw Up As A Mom And Still Raise Great Kids

How?

Write a short vignette about the ways in which you screwed up as a parent and how your kid came out okay anyway.

Or write a short vignette about how your own parents screwed up raising you and how you turned out fine.

All entries must be emailed to contest@parenting201.org and sent in by April 24^th at 9PM PDT

[This allows the last-minute tax doers to have time to write theirs]

By submitting an entry you are agreeing that what you write and submit can be posted on the website http://parenting201.org and possibly be used, with attribution, in other written formats.

A panel of judges will read all the entries and one daddy and one mommy winner will be chosen by Mother’s Day 2010 [May 9^th]

Go and have fun writing.

BLOG HAS MOVED

I have moved most of my blogs to WordPress and this one can be found at lynnsrants.com

If you were subscribed to this blog - you will need to re-subscribe [I think] after I set up all the plugins

Learning WordPress was not an easy task but enjoyed the exercise when I was not frustrated by all the possibilities and forgetting to click on a few thingies.

Laughing at Job Loss

It isn't just South Carolina and Minnesota that have Reps who keep us laughing - add Georgia to that fold.

That Gingrey finds it funny that 14,000 a day lose jobs [and health insurance] shows you exactly what these Republics think of anyone but themselves. See - it's the job loss that's funny and the FACT that your insurance goes along with your job is a secondary issue - not a main issue.

Why we ever tied insurance to jobs is a long story but it now needs to end - it's is a form of servitude.

Hate your job? Too bad! HA HA HA

Low wages but decent health insurance? We gotcha stuck here for life! HA HA HA

Got a health issue? Now you re really stuck because if you change jobs that's a pre-existing condition making you unrecoverable

Hey State of Georgia - you deserve better - fire this guy and find someone who doesn't laugh at your misfortunes.

Ted Kennedy; Boston and my political life

I moved to Boston in 1963 when Teddy Kennedy was a new Senator. Not having been very politically active in New York, I quickly jumped in the political frays of the '60s in large part due to my friend/professor Freda, who died in July. and the Kennedys who were my President and my Senator [although I remained a registered NYer for a while.] And I lived for years on Francis Street, near where Teddy's funeral mass was recently held.

Even after I left Massachusetts I continued to write to Ted Kennedy about political issues as I felt he truly represented ME! No other Senator or Representative since has come close to being "my" person in Congress and that is a sad commentary on the current crop of politicians. [But I have ranted about the state of being a DC insider elsewhere.]

So Teddy's funeral marked a weird kind of ending in my life. My political gurus and motivators both died this summer and I am left to wonder who will take their places for the up and coming generations ready and willing to jump into a fray.

Yes we have the ideologues ready to feed lies to a new generation and teach them to yell and scream louder than anyone else - but that's not a way to solve problems; only a way to create more. We have alleged liberals who sell their souls for corporate donations and vote for legislation that their Masters wish for.

Hopefully some energized people will come into politics and become the "new" progressives.

Guns, Guns and More Guns

After living in D.C. for a long time I grew to hate guns. They give their "owners" a sense of superiority in that they seem to think the gun in and of itself gives them power and makes what they say more "right" and what people like me say more "wrong." A gun does not have that power; but to hear the gun totters - might does make right - true in the sense that it's making the rabid right wingers more right [wing - not correct.]

Frank Rich has a great column today called The Guns of August. He says and quotes:

... the biggest contributor to this resurgence of radicalism remains panic in some precincts about a new era of cultural and demographic change. As the sociologist Daniel Bell put it, “What the right as a whole fears is the erosion of its own social position, the collapse of its power, the increasing incomprehensibility of a world — now overwhelmingly technical and complex — that has changed so drastically within a lifetime.”

Bell write that in 1962 - but the Republican party today is in more dire straits - it's become a white southern group of scared persons who do not value public or liberal arts education and who refuse to listen. All they know is how to cause fear and to out shout reason - and the ones who represent them in congress go along with this and give them credence.