How Boredom Builds Brains… and Screens Can Drain Brains!

(Part 3 of my 5-part series at DrGreene.com) I’m not talking about the deep, serious kind of boredom associated with neglect, poverty and anguish. I’m talking about that “I’m not being distracted / entertained / stimulated at this very instant and I don’t know what to do with myself” kind that I fear is becoming more and more common.

I’ll let you in on a little behind-the-scenes shock I had while searching for a photo to illustrate this article. I searched the term “child relaxing” and I kept finding these gorgeous pastoral scenes of a child in the middle of a lovely meadow… using a laptop!! Or a child kicking back in a hammock… using an iPad! 

And why would that distress me? Read on…

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Brain-Wise Parenting: The Importance of Relationship & Rhythm

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(Part 2 of my 5-part series at DrGreene.com) Yesterday I invited parents to relax about pushing academics for their wee ones, because their best preparation for true intelligence is play. But there is a very important area of your young child’s brain that does need active parental participation for optimally healthy development. It’s called the orbito-frontal cortex, or OFC for short.

The OFC is the seat of common sense thinking… the ability to read other people’s “signals” and recognize their intentions… to sense their emotions, and have empathy… to imbue intellectual thought with feeling, and vice versa — to moderate emotion with rational thought. In short, the OFC is the seat of social intelligence. It manages the skills of being truly human! {Read more at DrGreene.com}

 

 

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The Importance of Play, Puttering & Pretending

I’m pleased to have been invited for a 5-day guest blog spot at DrGreene.com, which begins today and runs all this week. Dr. Greene is a pediatrician whose focus is children’s health in a progressive way. So I’m chiming in with 5 new articles all centered around ways to foster children’s optimal lifelong wellbeing.

And it’s all NEW material that I haven’t previously blogged about!

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3 Guidelines for Bedtime Reading

I’m here for you, Nicolle Wallace of The View, who says there aren’t any guidelines out there for choosing what to read to your baby!

The gals were discussing the “hot topic” of this newly-published fun fact: Chelsea Clinton reads the news to her infant daughter every morning. There seemed to be a consensus among them that it’s appropriate to shelter the wee ones from the harsh realities of RulesReadingour world — and I completely agree. Whether it’s an intentional choice or not — young children’s exposure to adult news and conversation is typically inadvertent and “accidental” — the young brain & psyche simply aren’t equipped to process foreign affairs, environmental brinksmanship and other front-page fare.

With an avalanche of so-called children’s books to choose from, three simple guidelines can help parents decide which bedtime reading fare will best serve their child. {Read about them at mothering.com}

 

 

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And the Golden Globe Goes to… YOU, Evolving Parent!

I realize the Golden Globe telecast isn’t super-high on the priority list for some parents, so I wanted to loop you in on this, in case you missed it: in accepting the award for Best Direction of his extraordinary film Boyhood, Richard Linklater dedicated it to “parents that are evolving everywhere.”

Or as I like to call us, “parents in progress.” We are all ages, and our children range from pre-birth to adult. We are the curious ones, the researchers. We are the parents who have our ears tuned for new information that will enrich our family’s life. We are the status-quo buckers. We are the ones who rarely (if ever) say things like, “Well, my parents spanked me and I turned out okay.” {Continue this post at mothering.com}

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Improve Your Parenting & Enrich Your Life With This Simple New Year’s Resolution

I noticed something distressing as my plane took off from JFK last week. It was the first gorgeously sunny day in over a week, there was an amazing view of Manhattan / Brooklyn / New Jersey as we climbed skyward, and everybody had their window shades closed!!

Have we become so blasé that soaring over one of the most astonishing cities in the world doesn’t even warrant a glance?! Are the games we play on our smartphones (in airplane mode, for heaven’s sake) that important or captivating that we can’t spare some attention for a breathtaking aerial view? Can’t 22 Jump Street on your personal entertainment screen wait till we’ve reached altitude? {Read more at mothering.com}

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Pausing to Give Thanks

This year I’m blessed with TWO Thanksgivings! My son Ian flew out from NYC to spend his first California Thanksgiving since (as far as he and I could figure out) his freshman year in college — that is, nine years ago!

I’ve been “off-duty” from blogging, posting, tweeting and the like, since Friday. I treated myself to really savoring the grocery shopping, home care and general preparation for Ian’s arrival to my mountain cottage. I’m wishing the same for you — moments, even fleeting ones, that are set apart from the normal routine. Moments in which to pause and feel that enlivening wave of gratitude.

I cooked a full-on Thanksgiving feast for the evening Ian arrived, on Sunday. The next day we went on a forest outing to take in the fresh air, gorgeous sun… and forage for great fire kindling! We did some cool local brew IPA tasting, watched select TV highlights and a couple movies, and shared lots of wonderful conversation. We caught up in that deep heart-way that really only happens in person, and when there are many hours here and there over a few days.

Can you pick out the New Yorker, lol? Ian (center) with my friend Sarah-Jane and my love Larry.

Can you pick out the New Yorker, lol? Ian (center) with my friend Sarah-Jane and my love Larry.

Ian just now hit the road back to L.A. to spend actual Thanksgiving with his dad and grandmother. I sent him forth equipped with multiple containers packed with leftover food. (It’s official: I have become my mother-in-law, the aforementioned grandmother. At least in that regard.)

Ian’s younger sister Eve is three weeks into a 2-month artist’s residency in upstate New York. She could spend the holiday with a college friend whose family invited her,  but that would mean missing five days at her studio. So she’s chosen instead to stay at the residency grounds with a handful of other artists.

Not long before Ian left, I got a text from Eve: “Can I have your stuffing and cranberry sauce recipes?”

Mmmm, wave of gratitude.

I plan to spend time on the (good ol’-fashioned) phone over the next few days connecting with friends & family without the usual “tick-tock” time pressure that busy-life-as-usual tends to exert. Thursday I’ll go with Larry to spend turkey day with some of his family, and meet lots of new people.

My wish for you is the opportunity to be present to YOUR blessings, with the gift of a lightened agenda. A pause in the typically daily To-Do roster.

So… (for those of you in the U.S., that is) what might you drop off your To-Do list these coming few days to help mark Thanksgiving in a more joyful, thankful way??

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Catch you on the flip side of thanks!

Blessings,

Marcy

 

 

 

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Holidays With Your New Baby

MotheringFeaturedSantaBaby2For anyone who becomes a mother within nine months of a major holiday season (and, taking into account all of the holidays within every faith and cultural tradition, that means almost everybody!) I have a radical idea for you: Simplify your idea of how the holidays will look this year. Better yet, let yourself let someone ELSE handle everything. {Read more at mothering.com}

Image:
JodyDigger through a Creative Commons license | Flickr

 

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Not Your Mother’s “Mommy” Problem?

MotheringMommyProbHeaderI saw that several people on Facebook this weekend were sharing & discussing Heather Havrilesky’s New York Times rant about our cultural uber-focus and pressure on parents, and particularly mothers.

It takes me awhile for my thoughts to coalesce into something I can put on paper (or on screen, rather), and meanwhile, our collective attention span darts away to the next conversation. If you take more than 48 hours to respond, you risk irrelevancy!

If you’re interested in an aspect of this perennial issue that hasn’t been raised yet, read on! Here’s a snippet from Havrilesky’s piece:

We smugly shake our heads at the backward attitudes of Mad Men, but at this particular moment in our history, some combination of overzealous parenting, savvy marketing and glorification of hearth and home have coaxed the public into viewing female parents as a strange breed apart from regular people. You might feel like the same person deep inside, but what the world apparently sees is a woman lugging around a giant umbilical cord.

She seems to suggest that the existential pressures and identity crises of motherhood she so witheringly parodies are unique to this moment in human history. They’re not. {More at mothering.com}

Images
donjd2 through a Creative Commons license / Flickr

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Boo! Are Fairy Tales Too Scary for Kids?

RidingHoodColor“But they’re so awful!”

This is a response I often hear from parents when I recommend Grimm’s fairy tales as basic reading fare.  The idea of regaling their young children with stories of orphans and witches, kidnappings and murders—at bedtime no less—is daunting, understandably.

As parents we tend to want to present something of a Hallmark world to our children, so we naturally gravitate to soothing, sunny, children’s books, including sanitized versions of fairy tales classics.  Wishing to shield them from the darker aspects of humanity, such as anger, greed, anguish, and cruelty, we wean our children on the proposition that people are all good.  The problem is that even the youngest child knows differently in her heart of hearts. {Read more of this post at mothering.com}

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