As an adopted person, my birthday this week brings thoughts about my somewhat complicated entry into this world, thoughts about some ways that adoption is unique.
Before getting my degree and writing Parenting for Peace, my previous body of work explored the psychological and social issues in adoption. Understanding how adoption is unique can help bring healing and wholeness to everyone involved. {Read more at mothering.com}
I have written often about the shaping power of prenatal life, and the huge influence a mother has on her child’s development during pregnancy. Mounting evidence tells us that circumstances in the womb program our health in critical, life-altering ways. The prenatal environment is equally as important as genes, perhaps even more important, in determining lifelong physical and mental health. The field of prenatal psychology has amassed decades of research to illuminate the impact of a pregnant mother’s inner life upon her child’s personality and lifelong wellbeing.
Many wisdom traditions instruct the pregnant mother to fill her mind with thoughts and images of the splendid qualities she and her partner dream of for their child. This makes pregnancy a wonderful time to read biographies of inspiring peacemakers and innovators whom you admire. We still know so little about the how’s behind the important functions of imagination and joy in pregnancy for the lifelong qualities of the individual, who is steeped in whatever his or her mother experiences during those nine months, so why not?
It seemed to work for Shirley Temple’s mother, who embraced these practices and gave birth to one of the most endearing actresses in our history, who went on to be a devoted humanitarian. Included as a footnote in my book Parenting for Peace, here is a passage from Shirley Temple’s autobiography, Child Star: {Read more at mothering.com}
It makes me sad that so many parents not only struggle with parenting, but struggle with the very fact that they are struggling and might need some expert help! In every other endeavor in which art meets skill, coaching is a central and valued element. With the Olympics upon us, we are vividly reminded that from ice skating to acting, baseball to ballet, soccer to singing, the really gifted world-class contenders wouldn’t make a move or a toe-loop without their coaches.
It’s funny to me that parent coaching appears to many as a luxury or extravagance — or even unnecessary. Or worse, evidence that you are failing somehow, or less-than. Parent coaching, like all other coaching, helps by holding a vision of success when you, for whatever reason, cannot. A coach sees the powers inside you and guides their unfolding. In singing, soccer, life in general — and in parenting. {Read more at mothering.com}
Exactly 23 years ago I marveled at my 7-hour-old daughter, my Eve. In those blissful early moments I thought I might have slipped the skin of pain that had cinched me for a long time after my son’s birth 3 1/2 years earlier. But it was not to be. After a momentary grace of one season…three months…of empowered, unfreighted mothering, Life circumstances stepped in to pull me down again. Into postpartum depression, again.
As odd as it sounds, my children were both in their teens before I realized that I had experienced postpartum depression with both of them. What led to this tardy epiphany? Not the several years of deep therapeutic work with two different therapists and a variety of bodyworkers; not the many years of deep scholarly work pursuing my doctorate in early human development, including the study of pregnancy, birth and postpartum issues; and as you can probably guess, not from my own OB/GYN.
I have Brooke Shields to thank for my big ah-hah. {Read more at mothering.com}
As I contemplate the 23rd anniversary of my daughter’s birth this week, my thoughts go back to the oh-so-tender moments surrounding birth. How powerful they are, for mothers and for babies. (And for fathers, but that’s for another day!) How imprints from these moments can mark us lifelong.
After Eve was born, she never left my side during our 24-hour ABC room stay. This in contrast to my son Ian’s birth, when I gave in and allowed them to whisk him away to the newborn nursery (against the strong advice of his progressive pediatrician, Jay Gordon). With Ian I was in essence revisiting and reenacting my own traumatic beginnings — as an adoptee who had been separated from my biological mother immediately after I was born. {Read the rest at mothering.com}
Gone are the days when we could consider pregnancy a 9-month “grace period” before the job of parenting begins. Mounting research tells us that lifelong wellbeing, including mental health, begins in the womb, and everything parents do – beginning even before conception — shapes their children in critical, life-altering ways.
I began 2013 by writing about the power of beginnings. In 2014 I invite us to recognize that this applies to virtually everything, from baking a pie to building a company to developing a human: the beginning contains within it the seeds of the project’s ultimate success…or less-than-success. {Read more at naturalbabypros.com}
I really hate the concept of “flu season” — it sets us up to be ready to get sick, right?! But I also have a healthy respect (“healthy” — see what I did there??) for statistics, and it is true that lots more folks get lots more colds and flu during the winter months. Here are three tried and true secrets for not getting sick — tips that staved off many bouts of illness in our family over many years. (My kids are now 22 and 26 and continue to use these with great results.)
I have been sharing these tips for not getting sick with friends for years, and finally decided it’s my moral duty to put them out there to the wider world! {I invite you to read the rest at mothering.com}
I bet I’m not alone in harboring mixed feelings as the holidays approach. On the one hand it’s such a special time, steeped in family nostalgia and brimming with expressive potential. On the other hand (and that other hand always seems to be the buzz-kill, am I right?), let’s be honest: the holidays are often a holly-trimmed hotbed of stress.
In trying to make sure our holidays actually fulfill all that expressive potential, we can whip ourselves into a frenzy of sky-high expectations, “must do”s, and short fuses. And that makes for a brain-drain gift we do NOT want to be giving children! {Please enjoy the rest of this post at Dr. Frank Lipman’s excellent blog: click on image below}
One helpful aspect of parent awareness throughout your child’s life is to know when developmental milestones typically occur, while also respecting the individuality of his or her unique timetable. I was reminded by last week’s Wall Street Journal article about waving bye-bye, of just how delightful “milestone spotting” can be over the course of a child’s unfolding! (The article points out that a baby typically acquires the bye-bye wave between 10-12 months, and that premature infants have a delayed and different bye-bye wave.)
Here are a few other enchanting developmental milestones to keep your eyes peeled for:
I’ll be taking the week off from the social media fest we all know and love (and sometimes don’t love so much) — to enjoy some deeper presence with the fullness of my life’s blessings. My daughter Eve is in the air as I write this, returning from a 6-month expat artist’s adventure in Berlin. Dear friends here in my village are poised for some relaxed Thanksgiving enjoyment, and I’ll be cooking up a storm. (To me this is one of the great things about Thanksgiving: cooking is the only thing to do, as opposed to getting an entire day of work done and ALSO cooking. A day devoted to cooking…and eating — what could be better?!) My sister-in-law Anne is planning an excursion up to my mountain cottage for some post-Thanksgiving relaxation & leftovers.
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.
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. A nice, long thanks-giving breath.
Catch you on the flip side of thanks!
Blessings,
Marcy
The more calm and confident we can be as parents, the more our children “catch our calm” and things go much better all the way around. And, as one of my favorite parent educator / psychologists, Lawrence Cohen, points out, our kids really need us to loosen up and be more playful and easy-going!
Problem is, there is a massive epidemic of UNcalm and UNconfidence out there amongst parents. This puts a HUGE damper on “playful” and “easy-going”! I’ve decided it’s time to offer some healing balm & helpful tools, at my FREE TELESEMINAR:
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