Tag: moms month

Rules Without Relationship Leads to Rebellion in Teens

Welcome to Moms’ Month on Dr. Stephanie! This month I will be featuring guest posts from some awesome moms around the country.  They will be sharing tips, tricks, and funny stories about motherhood.  This will be a fun celebration – thanks for joining us!  Today’s author is Melony Bishop.  Welcome, Melony!

Melony Bishop
“temporarily retired” Occupational Therapist
Stay-at-home mom to Savannah – 16, Tyler – 10, Haley – 8, and Lexi – 5
Long Valley, NJ

As a mom, I’m a firm believer that “rules without relationship = rebellion”.
When I became a mom, my husband and I vowed that our relationships with our kids would remain paramount no matter what!  I hope and pray that as my kids continue to mature, that I will be able to keep that promise.
Something I’ve learned recently is the reality that my kids need to be able to trust my responses to them.  I have always thought that trust was kind of a one-way street between parents and kids…… parents needed to be able to trust their kids, not the other way around.  What I have come to learn is that my kids need to be able to trust ME!  They need to be able to trust that I will respect them, to trust that they can confide in me, to trust that I will not overreact to various situations, to trust that my love is unconditional, to trust that my yes means yes and my no means no, to trust that I will keep my word, to trust that I have their best interest in mind no matter what.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not consider my children equals to me, nor do I consider myself their “friend” before being their parent…… BUT my relationship with them needs to be a trustworthy one if I am to expect the highest level of fruit to be beared.
Kids are up against a lot of obstacles these days….. just as we were when we were young.  I want my kids to trust that they can come to me with anything!  In order for this to happen, I am finding that I must be diligent in my day-to-day responses to them so that I can remain a character in their lives that they can trust with all the nitty gritty of life.  The old adage, “don’t cry over split milk” applies here.  As a fairly reactionary type of person, I am likely to squeal and possibly rant and huff over an overturned glass at the dinner table……. to what result though?  I must purpose to keep control over my responses and reactions in all the dailies of life if I’m going to lay a solid foundation on which my kids can firmly plant their feet, in order to be sure that they’ll bring me the bigger “spills” in life as they grow up.

 

Solving Your Kids’ Problems? Not a Great Idea.

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Welcome to Moms’ Month on Dr. Stephanie! This month I will be featuring guest posts from some awesome moms around the country.  They will be sharing tips, tricks, and funny stories about motherhood.  This will be a fun celebration – thanks for joining us!  Today’s author is Caroline Moore.

I am the mother of two daughters who are 10 years apart so in essence I had 2 “only” children.  I am an Occupational Therapist and have always worked part-time until my very recent retirement.  Although working part-time, I often felt I didn’t do the best job at either being a mother or a therapist, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.  I feel very fortunate that both my daughters live nearby and they and my 3 adorable grandchildren are a very important part of my life.

I really feel that my life began when I became a mother 37 years ago.  It has given me the most profound joys as well as the deepest pain but has made my life so full and rewarding.

The one tip I would pass on to others is that when your child faces tough times (in childhood, teenage years, adulthood), it’s best to communicate your love, support, and encouragement in various ways, even though it would be easier to stay away, take on the problem yourself, lecture, cry, or blame others.  Communication can be as simple as a hug, pat on the shoulder, supportive phone message, invitation to take a walk, or a shopping outing, or even just sit next to your struggling child.  Just knowing you are there in support of your child can help. You can’t  and shouldn’t solve your child’s problems but you can give them the strength they need to face the issues themselves.

The Smells of Motherhood

Welcome to Moms’ Month on Dr. Stephanie! This month I will be featuring guest posts from some awesome moms around the country.  They will be sharing tips, tricks, and funny stories about motherhood.  This will be a fun celebration – thanks for joining us!  Today’s author is Jeannie Hulse.

Hi I’m Jeannie Hulse, State Farm insurance agent in Erie, CO. I’m married to my best friend, Robert, and we have one son, Brian, who is 23 and serves in the military.

Jeannie's son Brian. Serviceman and light of her life!

Having grown up with brothers (three of them), I was quite prepared to raise a son (dirty hands, lots of cars and smelly sports equipment, etc).  What blew me away was and is the unconditional love I have for him.  I, like many mom’s,  had to juggle having a full time job, being a wife and mom and add being the only parent during the week  (my husband drove a truck over the road for the first 5 years of our son’s life).  My favorite memory of being a mom is the smells (baby powder to smelly hockey skates) and bedtime…we’d snuggle together and read books and talk about our day.  Those special times made every struggle and/or sacrifice worth every minute.

A Month of Moms

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Welcome to Moms’ Month on Dr. Stephanie! This month I will be featuring guest posts from some awesome moms around the country.  They will be sharing tips, tricks, and funny stories about motherhood.  This will be a fun celebration – thanks for joining us!

I am kicking off Moms’ Month with my own tip for moms of young kids.  In addition to being a clinical psychologist in Colorado, I am also a mom of three kiddos.  A most humbling, challenging, and agonizing experience, becoming a mom has also been the most fun journey of my life.  Here goes:

No generation of moms is perfect.  We all love our kids, but we all make mistakes.  Some of the mistakes, we KNOW are mistakes at the time.  For example, when I recently told my daughter that I didn’t care if she ever did homework, I pretty much knew it was a mistake as soon as it came out of my mouth.  Other mistakes take years, or even decades to recognize.  I’m thinking of Mad Men-era moms who drank and smoked while pregnant, and 70’s moms who drove their kids around untethered in the backs of their station wagons.  These moms loved their kids just as we do, but just didn’t have the same information we have today.

So, what will our generation’s big mistake be?  Here’s my best guess: our incessant cell phone, laptop, and i-pad use.  Not so much the overuse of these gadgets, but the way many of us use them when we really should be paying attention to our kids.  For example, at the dinner table, when we pick them up from school, during school performances, during bedtimes, etc.  It’s alarming that many of us (me included) put off or outright ignore our kids so that we can catch up on Facebook.  This is a great way to ensure that our kids will be complaining to a psychologist in a couple of decades that they were never heard, not appreciated, and thus don’t know how to really love.  Ok, I’m exaggerating – but it’s a possibility for sure.

So my advice to moms is this: Put the electronics down and listen, play with, and engage with your kids.  Days might go by slowly, but years go by fast, and pretty soon the kids will be off doing their own thing, and we will pine for the days they couldn’t wait to share the intricacies of their days.  Facebook can wait, and so can email.  Our kids can’t.