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Princesses and Homeschooling in the News

February 3, 2012 By 1 Comment

I read two stories this morning that might interest our readers.

The first talks about an ambition gap in the way that parents are raising boys and girls, and suggests that our girls are getting the message that pretty matters more than smart. The second, from Newsweek, discusses why educated, urban parents are taking a DIY approach to life — from chicken raising to homeschooling. It confirms something that I’ve seen with my own eyes — that homeschooling has become trendy, and that educated moms (mostly) are giving up their careers to dedicate themselves to their children around the clock.

The homeschooling topic has been on my mind a lot lately, as the Temples are planning to pack up and move to California for joint sabbaticals next spring! It’s an incredibly exciting proposition, and the homeschooling question looms large. We’re leaning toward enrolling the kids in school, but I’m still toying with the idea of a 1:2 teacher-student ration.

Do you have any thoughts on these pieces?

Girls as Young as 7 Wearing Makeup. Discuss.

February 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

My 10-year-old isn’t at all interested in makeup, but some of her classmates are. And the pressure she sometimes feels to conform bugs her. Part of it is not wanting to look “girly” — and part of it is not wanting to feel like she has to grow up fast.

“Look, I know it’s OK that I don’t want to look girly,” she told me yesterday, running her fingers through her super-short hair. “I just wish everyone else knew that, too. And I wish there weren’t ads around me all the time telling me what kind of girl I need to be.”

This piece by our friend Amy Hatch talks about the exploding tween beauty market, so I’m curious to know what you think.

Should cosmetics be marketed to little girls and tweens? How young is too young for makeup?

Good Enough Inspires 5-Week Class

January 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

So, check this out, friends: A Chicago-area counselor and coach is offering a new workshop based on Good Enough is the New Perfect: Finding Happiness and Success in Modern Motherhood. We’re thrilled to see the book used as a teaching tool — and even happier to know that mothers will be coming together to create plans for achieving their own New Perfect. The five-week class, developed and led by Marielle Schmidt of Cadeau Coaching, will be offered at The Family Room in Evanston, Ill. Session begins next month and, yes, participants will receive a copy of the book as part of their registration.

 

 

What Do You Believe?

January 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

 By Nancy Stefanick

As I was cleaning up after a Stress Management workshop I taught right before the holidays, one of my participants, a young woman, came up to me with tears in her eyes.

“What you said, about belief systems causing stress, I really needed to hear that today.”

Belief systems.  We all carry thousands of assumptions about the way life should be.  Do any of these sound familiar?

“If I want something done right, I need to do it myself.” “Families need to eat together at the dinner table every night.” “Children are better off if their moms stay home with them.” “Real men don’t cry.”

Or, this belief that was the source of this woman’s anxiety: “Families need to be together at Christmas.”

She had recently relocated with her husband and two small children for her job.  Doing so put 1,000 miles between her and her parents.  For weeks, her mother had been calling, asking her when she could expect them to arrive for Christmas.

Nancy

Because of her new job, she didn’t have any vacation time to use and, in addition, they couldn’t afford to travel.  She had begun to avoid her mom’s calls because she was so afraid of disappointing her.  I asked her if she believed that she would be damaging her family if they didn’t all gather this year.  She shook her head no.  “They know we love them and they know money is tight right now.  We asked them to come here, but the tradition is for us to all be at my parents’ house on Christmas Eve and I know that’s what my mom really wants.”

When your belief system is in conflict with someone else’s beliefs, the stress that results comes from the fact that our assumptions become our truths.  I asked her what she believed about Christmas.

“I think that I need to take care of my family and help them adjust to their new home.  The travel would add so much stress that they don’t need.  And I think that I need to work as much as possible this month to feel more confident in my job.”

Unknowingly, her mother, whose only desire was to see her daughter at Christmas, was driving a wedge between them with her incessant phone calls and, as a result, creating more distance.

We inherit many of our belief systems from our parents and some we pick up along the way.  But like that pair of ripped up jeans that you loved so much in college, we frequently outgrow our belief systems as our lives change.  Human beings, by nature, are dynamic creatures.  We are constantly evolving our style, our friends, our jobs, our hobbies.  If we don’t examine our belief systems and allow them to evolve and change, they will become some of our most damaging stressors.  You must ask ourself when examining your beliefs- Does this belief system still work for me?  If the answer is no, then you must realize that you have the power to adopt a new belief system.  In the words of Glinda the Good Witch, you’ve always had it.

Recently, I got an email from the woman.  She had a long discussion with her mom that night.  She explained to her that maybe the tradition needed to change in order for the family to get together.  What they realized throughout the course of their conversation was that the location wasn’t the tradition; it was the memories, the closeness and the laughter that were the real traditions of Christmas.  As her mother let go of a long held belief for the sake of her daughter, they were able to make arrangements that benefited all.  This was only possible through honest and open communication and a close examination of both belief systems.

As mothers, we all have expectations of how perfect we want our children’s lives to be.  Last weekend as I gazed around the room at my son’s first birthday party, I noticed the balloons had deflated, the icing on the cake had smeared and chocolate had gotten all over his new stuffed animal.  I looked at all of those things and realized that in the book of my memory, those details won’t even be footnotes.  The laughter, the single glowing candle atop the cake and the faces of everyone I love who gathered to celebrate this milestone were all that mattered.

And that’s what I believe.

Nancy Stefanick is a Learning and Development professional, actress, wife to Trevor and mom to Jack, age 1. She is passionate about working with other parents to discover how to better integrate their personal and professional lives. You can follow her journey at http://lovethislittlefamily.blogspot.com/ She resides in southwest Michigan.

Battling Our Perfectionism Bullies

January 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

It’s easy to feel like there’s a Perfect Mom out there, and we’re not measuring up. Here’s a piece I wrote for the Learning Care Group, in which I compare that ideal to a bully — and offer suggestions for fighting back!

MWF Seeking BFF

January 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I often think back to my early days of motherhood, when I stacked my schedule with baby classes and kept my calendar full of “playdates.” B was an infant when I started doing this, so let’s be honest: The get-togethers weren’t so much about finding friends for her. They were about me: I was dating for mommy friends … under the guise of enriching my child’s world.

Which always seemed a little lame.

Or at least it did until I spoke on a panel last fall with fellow writer and Medill grad Rachel Bertsche. You see, Rachel had undertaken an actual (and way cooler) friend quest, minus the kid. The book that resulted, MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend (Ballantine Books, December 2011), is one I wish I’d had when I was navigating the hilarious waters of deliberate friend-making. She took an experience many of us have had in one form or another — in a new job, in a new city, as a new mom — and gave it context. She said out loud the things we often think but don’t admit (“I’m afraid to reach out and risk rejection!”), folded in social research to explain the oddities of human interaction and friendship, all while capturing the inherent imperfections that make such a journey so relatable. As I read, I began to see my playdate days in a whole new light. MWF Seeking BFF is poignant and funny, and it’s about more than the 52 friend dates Rachel went on as a newcomer to Chicago. It’s about having the guts to go after what you want, getting over the fear of rejection — and recognizing the value of friendship.

I recently had the honor of chatting with Rachel on the phone. Here are some of the highlights:

BECKY: You spent a year going on friend dates, searching for your girl-talk soul mate. Some of those initial encounters led to follow ups, and some didn’t. All this experience probably taught you a thing or two about first impressions. So, how good is your radar now? How much can you tell about a person — and her BFF potential — right off the bat?

Author Rachel Bertsche

RACHEL: There’s this research that says we can tell what kind of relationship we want with a person within the first 10 minutes of meeting, which is pretty quick, right? And there’s a lot of truth to that — you can get a sense early on whether someone’s a match. But in the same sense, there were people who … I would see their Facebook status or hear their back story and think, “Oh, no, we’re not going to fit.”  And often I was wrong.

But I think when you meet someone (in person) you can tell pretty quickly. One of the things that was always an indicator to me is if we laughed together. With some people it’s like exchanging monologues — and with others, it’s a dialog interaction.

B: One thing that intrigued me as I read: Although you worried about rejection, nearly all the women, and one man, you approached were receptive. Some had even wanted to befriend you but hadn’t asked. This has Life Lesson written all over it. How did this realization change you?

R: I went into this really believing that people would think I was crazy and weird. And that was sort of my thesis: People aren’t open to friendship, the world is an unfriendly place. But that was totally not the case. The life lesson here is we (just) think that people aren’t open to friendship and are closed off. The reality is we’re all waiting and hoping that someone will approach us. The world is friendly place. People want friends.

I was watching on Twitter last night and two girls (who had been at one of my signings) were writing about my book back and forth. They were tiptoeing around the idea that they should get together, and I wanted to interject, “You two should go out!”

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