MojoMom

Reinventing MojoMom.com and moving this blog!

2010-03-16T10:03:00.013-04:00

After seven years it had become clear that it was time to totally reinvent my website MojoMom.com, so my original web designer Patty Ayers and I really went for it–blowing up our dear old site and replacing it with a new one that offers a host of new features in one place.

Thanks to the renovation process for the new MojoMom.com, we are now able to integrate my blog and many other cool features into the home page.

It’s amazing for me to remember back to 2003 when I started launched the original MojoMom.com and think about how much has changed since then. Back in those early days I had to strike a balance between developing the website and working on finishing my book Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family but I knew from the very start that a interactive online presence was important to me.

Since then, wow, now we practically live our lives online! It’s amazing to think I’ve been at this since “blogging” was a new idea, and “podcasting” had not yet been invented!

So as much as I loved my original online home, it's a great time to move out of my little bungalow and into much roomier digs. On the new site there is plenty of room to invite in readers and experts and create new opportunities to interact.

So I hope you will follow me to my new online home. This blog archive on Blogger, containing my posts from 2003 to now, will remain here for the foreseeable future.

All new content starting January 1, 2010 and into the future will be available on the new website.

Thanks for being my loyal blog reader and I hope to see you over at the new digs!

Mojo Mom Podcast with Renee Trudeau and The Mother's Guide to Self-Renewal

2010-03-05T09:00:00.004-05:00

This week I continue my podcast conversations with Courageous Parents, Confident Kids book contributors, talking to Renee Trudeau about the absolutely essential need for mothers to practice self-care. Renee knows that it's not always easy to practice self care--we each live that challenge every day, and Renee provides a warm and wise voice to help support and guide us. What I love most about Renee's work is that she is committed to helping each woman unlock her own potential and talents, and showing us how to work together with other women to bring out the best in each of us.

Listen in to this week's show:

Renee Trudeau has written extensively about self-care in her book "The Mother's Guide to Self-Renewal," and her training that teaches women how to form and facilitate their own Personal Renewal Groups. Podcast host Amy Tiemann has also written about self-care as a core principle in "Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family." So these two have a lot to talk about!

Listen in to find out why mothers in particular have a hard time claiming their own self care as a top priority, why it's really important to learn how to do so, and how to get started. Then make sure you register on MojoMom.com to reserve a free digital download of the new book that is a collaboration between Amy, Renee, and 12 other experts, "Courageous Parents, Confident Kids--Letting Go So You Both Can Grow."

Sign up now and we'll send you a free digital download of the new book when it's released on April 19, 2010.

Forgive my "Lost" obsession

2010-03-02T17:18:00.069-05:00

I know this blog is supposed to be about motherhood and transformation. But on Lost we have crazy-ghost?-mom-Claire going commando in the Island jungle. Is that enough of a connection? No? Too bad, because I am obsessed with Lost--and therefore I blog.

Writing about Lost can make the best of us sound nuts

The only person I know who is more obsessed with Lost than I am is "Doc" Jeff Jensen on EW.com. And he's gone above and beyond the call of duty with his analysis! Someone should give him an honorary degree, and he should be sure to take his wife out for a nice dinner on a regular basis during this last season. [Note to other Lost obsessives, of course I know you are out there and I am not trying to start a fight!]

In my Sideways-world I co-host the "Totally Lost" series with Doc Jensen. Too bad it can't last.

You see, this final season of Lost took an audacious turn when time-traveling Jack and company set of a hydrogen bomb in 1977 and destroyed the Island--creating a "Sideways" timeline, in which the island is gone, and therefore Oceanic Flight 815 never crashes in 2004, there are no castaways or Island adventure. It's important to note that with the Island's destruction, the timeline has therefore been changed significantly since 1977 and not just the supposed day of the plane crash. And then the other timeline matches back up with the past five seasons we've watched--when the bomb goes off they castaways are propelled back to "current" island time (2007) and remember the crash and their time on the Island and all that happened.

Confusing? Yes, but that's barely getting started. Last week I went on a long road trip and thought about Lost for several hundred miles. Sometimes I think I can pull together a mental picture that almost all makes sense. Darn it though, there are always loose ends. But here's my basic theory:

I think it's fair to say that blowing up a hydrogen bomb is never a good idea and always causes a mess. So I think that in 1977, when Juliet detonated the "Jughead" bomb (Jack's idea, but Juliet actually did it), that created a split in the timeline and created a "bubble" universe, a real but parallel timeline that is unstable and starting to come apart at the seams. And why is it unstable? Because the Island is gone!

I think the Island is essential to the stability of "our" whole overall universe, which in itself is not a terribly original idea, but I draw on the titles of the episodes, "The Variable," "The Constant," and the recurring Numbers that keep showing up to construct a quasi-scientific explanation. Here's my more original thought about what's going on: I think that our universe is almost stable but requires a "fudge factor" to make it work out. So the people who are associated with The Numbers are like the remainder in a cosmic division problem--for whatever reason, the whole equation of the universe doesn't quite work out if they are in it, so they have to be brought to the island (by plane crash, shipwreck, orchestrated by Jacob). This idea connects to some Creationist theories that I heard presented in campus lectures way back in college--now I am not a Creationist but with Jacob and the Man in Black running around messing with people's lives like stones on a cosmic backgammon board, I think we can assume a Creationist universe-view might apply to Lost, with the Man in Black as an important but bored "god"/symbol of chaos who is ready to "win" to end the whole game. I think that Jacob isn't purely "good," but represents the continued tinkering needed to try to keep order. Humanity's free will--to set of the bomb or not--is the wild card.

I don't even know if Google can help me bring this up, but the gist of the Creationist argument was that if gravity or the speed of light or any one of many other scientific values (constants, if you will) were even a little bit off, then the universe could not exist in its current form. The Creationists concluded, see, we barely exist so there must be a God orchestrating it all to make it work out. Scientists might say, that's right, if the constants were different, we'd have a radically different universe.

So that's why the castaways are brought to the Island that exists out of normal space and time--whether they are good or bad people, the overall puzzle pieces just can't fit with them in the world!

And here's why I think that our reluctant hero Jack will be brought back into the ultimate resolution of the series: the bubble universe is unstable, growing more so as the timeline progresses past the the point at which Oceanic flight 815 was "supposed" to crash. The wires are getting crossed--so now Sideways Jack, Kate, and John are really getting confused by echoes of their other existence. But what will the central conflict be? Jack has a son, David, in the Sideways world but is childless in the Island world. For a guy with lifelong Daddy issues this is a huge deal! And now his son's universe cannot hold--ultimately, the Island is necessary and if one universe prevails, it will be the one in which the Island still exists. Jack will do whatever it takes to save his son, even bringing David to the Island and reluctantly but voluntarily taking over the "Jacob" caretaker role himself if need be.

The Remainders

There are loose ends, of course, just like the remainders in my Numbers theory.

One loose end I really cannot tie up may seem minor but it's bugging me--how Benjamin Linus survive the Jughead explosion in 1977? He was present on the Island then in kid form. Did Richard Alpert and Eloise Hawking evacuate the Others in time? However Benjamin ended up teaching history with John Locke as a substitute teacher in the Sideways world--I love it, hilarious, but clearly that's not their ultimate destiny!

A time-traveling coda

I predict there will be a good two or three twists to come between now and the end of the show that will totally change the way we look at the whole series. (So don't hold out for the end of the series to start watching DVDs--watch it now!)

There has been enough time traveling in this show that I think we haven't seen the last of it. Someone has to end up "being his own grandpa" or some other paradoxical time travel twist. My choices:

Penny and Desmond's baby Charlie is actually supposedly-villainous Charles Widmore.

Or, mysterious dude Matthew Abbadon is actually grown up Future Walt come back to try to fix things.

And, Jack's Grandpa Ray whom we met in the retirement home is actually his son David, saved from the unstable bubble universe by the magic of time travel. (A loophole that Jack finds and negotiates in return for staying on the Island?)

And most going out on a limb, our friend Desmond, who somehow operates out of the rules that govern everyone else, is a Christ-like figure who is a roving constant who can operate in the real world, usually unaware of what he's doing.

Okay, enough crazy theories for one day. I hope that at least some of what I have said hits the mark!

--Doc Tiemann

Mojo Mom Podcast with Balancing Professionals career expert Kella Hatcher

2010-02-26T07:25:00.013-05:00

I'm continuing my series of Mojo Mom Podcast conversations with Courageous Parents, Confident Kids contributors, this week speaking with Kella Hatcher of Balancing Professionals consulting. Kella, collaborating with her business partner Maryanne Perrin, contributed a chapter on "Tools for Career Reinvention" to our new book.

Listen to the podcast now:

This week Mojo Mom is talking career strategies with Kella Hatcher, who along with Maryanne Perrin is a principal in Balancing Professionals consulting, advocating or a flexible, strategic, sustainable workplace. Kella and Maryanne have also contributed a chapter on career development to the new anthology that Amy Tiemann is editing, "Courageous Parents, Confident Kids -- Letting Go So You Both Can Grow."

Kella and Amy talk about strategies for lifelong career development, on-ramping, putting your best foot forward and getting your confidence back as you craft your own path, which may go "off-road" rather than follow a career ladder. Fortunately, these days more workers are advocating for alternative, flexible work, and that will benefit both Moms and Dads. Workplace change is coming, and we are the pioneers!

Get a digital download of our new book for free! Sign up on www.MojoMom.com

Free training on "Getting Kids to Listen:" March 18 webinar with Mojo Mom and Positive Parenting Solutions

2010-02-24T16:10:00.055-05:00

"Getting Kids to Listen: The 5 R's of Fair and Effective Consequences"

You're invited to a complimentary webinar sponsored by Mojo Mom author Amy Tiemann Ph.D. and presented by Amy McCready of Positive Parenting Solutions.

Amy McCready and Amy Tiemann have collaborated on a new book, the anthology Courageous Parents, Confident Kids — Letting Go So You Both Can Grow, to be released this April. Now they are teaming up to bring you this new webinar, teaching concrete and effective strategies about Getting Kids to Listen.

Thursday, March 18, 2010, 9-10 PM (EST)

Who Should Attend: Parents of children ages 1-16 who want to learn concrete tools to effectively correct misbehavior without yelling, nagging or punishing.

What You'll Learn: Amy McCready, Founder of Positive Parenting Solutions will present a fun and interactive training session designed to teach you:

- Why kids really misbehave. The answer may surprise you.

- Positive Power... Why kids MUST have it & how to give it without “giving in.”

- Courageous Parenting... Holding kids accountable without being the bad guy.

- The 5 R's of Fair and Effective Consequences

- New resources to reduce parenting stress and feel more confident for any parenting challenge.

Date: Thursday, March 18, 2010

Time: 9:00 – 10:00 p.m. Eastern

Access: All you need is a computer with a speaker to hear the presentation. We'll send you the log in instructions.

Cost: No charge for participants at the live event! The webinar recording will be available for purchase for those who could not attend the live presentation for $29.95.

Please feel free to invite other parents who want to learn proven tools to reduce their parenting stress.

Note Taking Guide: Print this Note Taking Guide (PDF) so you can follow along and get the most out of the webinar.

How It Works: You'll receive an email confirmation with the link to access the webinar. When you "enter" the webinar, you'll see the session slides on your screen as well as a video box to see the presenter and a chat box to type questions or make comments.

While you can see the presenter, no one can see you. You will be able to "go to class" from the comfort of your home and learn how you can reduce parenting stress and feel more confident in the most important job you will ever have.

RSVP: Register now at PositiveParentingSolutions.com

We'll see you at the Webinar! --Amy Tiemann and Amy McCready

Announcing our Courageous Parents, Confident Kids book cover and contents

2010-02-22T09:20:00.055-05:00

I've been "in the hive" all winter working on editing the new book, Courageous Parents, Confident Kids -- Letting Go So You Both Can Grow. We reached a major milestone today with the creation of our book cover!

My thanks go out to Dunn + Associates Design and illustrator Jane Mjolsness for their stunning work! In the book creation process, things always begin to feel "real" when the cover is done.

The new book will be released in paperback in April, and best of all, you register to get a free digital download of the complete book by signing up on MojoMom.com

I am very excited to share this innovative parenting resource with you, created in collaboration with the following amazing experts who contributed chapters.

Here is a preview of Courageous Parents, Confident Kids -- Letting Go So You Both Can Grow

Introduction by the Editor, Amy Tiemann, Ph.D., author of Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family.

Part 1: The Courage to Invest in Your Own Development

The Transformative Power of Self-care by Renee Peterson Trudeau, life coach and author of The Mother's Guide to Self-Renewal.

Tools for Career Reinvention by Kella Hatcher and Maryanne Perrin, founders of Balancing Professionals.

Part 2: Developing Your Own Courageous Parenting Style

The Courage to Let Our Kids Solve Their Own Problems by Maya Frost, international lifestyle design expert and author of The New Global Student.

The Courage to Become Your Own Parenting “Expert” by Melissa Stanton, author of The Stay-at-Home Survival Guide. Visit Melissa at www.RealLifeSupportForMoms.com

The Power of Personal Significance for Kids of All Ages by Amy McCready, parent educator and founder of Positive Parenting Solutions.

I’m Worried I Worry Too Much, But How Do I Stop? by Jamie Woolf, leadership expert and author of Mom-In Chief.

Part 3: Real-world Safety Skills for All

Kidpower: Skills for Safety, Skills for Independence by Irene van der Zande, co-founder and Executive Director of Kidpower, Teenpower, Fullpower International.

How to Say Yes to Your Kids’ Online Activities by Linda Criddle, internet safety expert and creator of iLookBothWays.com

Part 4: Finding Your Voice and Raising It for the Community

Becoming a Political Parent: PunditMom on Mothers Raising Their Voices Online by Joanne Bamberger, journalist and founder of PunditMom blog.

Building a Family-friendly America: Challenge and Progress Through the Eyes of MomsRising.org by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, co-founder and Executive Director of MomsRising.org

It Takes a Motherhood by Cooper Munroe and Emily McKhann, co-creators of the award-winning online community, TheMotherhood.com

***

Our goal with Courageous Parents, Confident Kids is to share core concepts and skills you can build upon to become a courageous parent. When you do so, you can experience tremendous growth throughout your whole family, kids and parents included.

Mojo Mom Podcast with "Switch" co-author Dan Heath

2010-02-19T11:00:00.006-05:00

Don't you love the feeling of having just the right book come into your life at just the right time? That's how I feel about the new book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. Reading Switch helped me understand with more clarity what my anthology contributors and I are trying to accomplish with our new collaboration Courageous Parents, Confident Kids. There has been a lot written to motivate people to give their kids more freedom and responsibility. Now with Courageous Parents, Confident Kids. we are adding to that conversation by providing toolbox of skills to help parents and families reach that goal.

I highly recommend Switch for anyone who is involved in leadership or change--and that would include all parents! The new book, which is the Heath Brothers' follow up to their bestseller Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, has just come out this week, and Switch has already rocketed up the bestseller list on Amazon.com. So it is a real pleasure to welcome Switch author Dan Heath to The Mojo Mom Podcast this week.

Listen to the podcast now:

The Mojo Mom Podcast is all about providing parents with valuable information that applies to all aspects of life. Parents are leaders and change agents. So this week Amy Tiemann welcomes Dan Heath back to the podcast to talk about his brand-new bestseller co-authored with Chip Heath, "Swtich: How to Change Things When Change is Hard."

Whether you are a PTA volunteer, community organizer, or CEO, "Switch" will change the way you look at change. In this interview, Dan explains the guiding metaphor of "Switch" and inspiring examples of people creating big change in difficult situations.

Listen in, check out the Heath Brothers' website for more information, and read Amy Tiemann's full review of "Switch."

Mojo Mom Podcast with PunditMom, Joanne Bamberger

2010-02-12T15:25:00.022-05:00

This week on The Mojo Mom Podcast I get to talk with PunditMom herself, Joanne Bamberger. Joanne raises a political voice for mothers through several platforms across the blogosphere, on outlets including her own PunditMom blog, with her Mothers of Intention feature, MOMocrats, blog talk radio, and BlogHer. Joanne was also selected to be a member of the inaugural class of the Progressive Women's Voices program offered by the Women's Media Center.

And, I am very proud that Joanne has joined my latest project, as one of our team of Courageous Parents, Confident Kids anthology contributors.

So I hope you'll listen in to this week's Mojo Mom Podcast, which is part book discussion; and then gets into our personal opinions and a bit of group therapy for (currently) discouraged Democrats trying to get our mojo back.

Listen to the podcast now:

Amy Tiemann continues her series of interviews with "Courageous Parents, Confident Kids" anthology contributors, this week by talking politics with Joanne Bamberger, creator of PunditMom blog.

In Joanne's book chapter, she talks about what it means for parents to connect with their political voices, and proclaim their opinions, often using blogs as an outlet. Here Joanne and Amy get right into it, sharing their own opinions about their frustrations with the Democratic Party, politics, and the seeming inability to get anything done, even when one party has the Presidency and majorities in the House and Senate.

Hear what's on Amy and Joanne's minds, and then feel free post a comment here to let us know what is on yours!

Progress on the new anthology: We have a final title!

2010-02-12T14:40:00.014-05:00

I've been hunkered down this week in book production mode, with my sick kid at home as well! So I haven't been able to blog very much. But I have major progress to announce. Not only do we have a completed book manuscript, we have a final title for the new anthology coming out this spring.

Courageous Parents, Confident Kids will be published this April. I am very proud of the breadth and depth of expertise and inspiration we'll be sharing with you through this new book.

Make sure to sign up on MojoMom.com to participate in our free digital download giveaway, and we'll send you a digital copy of the brand new book when it comes out!

More details to come...for the next major milestone, I will unveil the book's cover design!

Mojo Mom Podcast with Equally Shared Parenting

2010-02-05T15:00:00.009-05:00

When Marc and Amy Vachon married and started a family, they could not have predicted that their personal commitment to each other to act as equal parenting partners would contribute to a growing social movement. But it has grown into a movement that Marc and Amy cover through their blog and their new book, Equally Shared Parenting. On this week's Mojo Mom Podcast, the Vachons stop by to talk about their co-parenting strategies and the benefits--for both Moms and Dads--of developing an egalitarian parenting partnership.

Equally Shared Parenting is one of the books I was most looking forward to reading in 2010, and the Marc and Amy did a great job with it. They build on their personal experience, interview other families, and draw on sociological research to show other families how they can move toward an more equally-shared parenting style.

I have learned a lot from Amy and Marc, and I hope you'll listen in to our conversation on this week's episode of The Mojo Mom Podcast.

Listen to the podcast now:

Mojo Mom's Six Word Memoir. What would yours be?

2010-02-05T11:43:00.019-05:00

Super quick post: The other day I heard the segment on NPR's Talk of the Nation about six word memoirs and it got me thinking about my own. I had heard of this project before, but the shared radio musings captured my imagination in a new way. Rather than a description of the past, I wanted to capture a snapshot of where I am right now.

So here's Mojo Mom's six word memoir:

Trying to take my own advice.

There are no rules other than six words. Write what speaks to you!

I would love to hear your six word memoir in the comment section.

Mojo Mom's LOST obsession--Countdown to Season Six!

2010-02-01T18:12:00.033-05:00

My mind has been taken over by Lost this week--delightfully so, obsessively so. Regular readers of this blog may not care, heck, maybe no one cares what I think, but I am writing about it anyway--because today and tomorrow are the last days that we can write about Season Six without knowing anything about what is going to happen.

I just rewatched last season's finale, "The Incident," and I am not going to write a whole Doc Jensen-like dissertation right now, but I will start out by listing the pop culture references that the show is making me think of now.

[A Dharma-influenced] Wizard of Oz: The classic film was given a serious name-check in "Henry Gale," Ben's assumed identity, when he said he'd arrived on the island in a balloon. I think that the whole show's eventual theme will turn out to be "There's no place like home," but "home" will turn out to mean accepting your life as it is and being comfortable in your own mind. Of course the characters are just as far away from this as they could be right now as they set off a hydrogen bomb to reset the future!

Star Wars: The episode "Some Like it Hoth" was a funny and self-conscious Star Wars homage but there were flashes of Star Wars in the finale--Sawyer shooting out the submarine communication system a la Han Solo in the original Star Wars. Jack giving Kate meaningful "I love you" glances without saying it, a la Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back.

Carrie: Not only was the Stephen King novel the book club selection at The Others' camp, the finale with the magnetic flux disturbance that caused all the metal to fly around and impale people was very Carrie. Poor Juliet. (To this day, Carrie is still stands out in my mind. Very well done, not just a typical horror movie by any means, and scary as hell.)

The Rolling Stones: "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need." That's basically what all these characters need to learn.

Queen, "Bohemian Rhapsody:" The whole operatic saga and sense of reality/unreality, destiny/doesn't matter any way, seems very Lost.

Raiders of the Lost Ark: Any time they go into the temple it reminds me of Raiders, especially the scene in which Ben gets judged by Smokey. He's lucky his head didn't explode.

As for the Jacob/Man in Black conflict, I am the first to admit that I am quite confused. Sometimes it almost all comes together in my head, but not in a way I could articulate! I definitely don't think that Jacob is "good." I think he's meddling to prove a point, almost like a Greek God gone rogue (aren't Gods supposed to avoid intervening directly in human affairs?). I think Jacob is on the one hand telling people they have free choice, but at the same time going and interfering with the past timeline to try to make things turn out differently this time. The Man in Black talks about a "loophole" and I think Jacob may have the castaways in a time loop. Who knows how many times they've been through this before, with similar outcomes, as Jacob tries to direct them to a "better" fate, not because he cares about them, but just because he can? He seems really old and bored to me, like he's seen it all, and messing with humanity is his little project. In the flashback when Jack met Jacob in the hospital, and Jacob got Jack's stuck Apollo bar out of the vending machine, Jacob said the machine was stuck and "Maybe it just needed a little push."

I also think that the Man in Black has been the same spirit appearing as Jack's dead father this whole time. He was also trapped in what was called "Jacob's cabin" but was really the prison that Jacob created for the Man in Black. Not such revolutionary guesses, but there it is for the record.

I will say that I think that since Jacob knew of the Man in Black's plan, namely that Jacob couldn't be killed directly by the Man in Black but could be killed by a true believer acting on his own free will (Ben), Jacob put in an extra twist so that if this ever happened, he wouldn't really be killed, but would transform, just like Obi-Wan Kenobi said to Darth Vader "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."

And that, my friends, could be the ultimate "Long Con," a theme talked about in Sawyer's story line. After hundreds of years of looking for a way to kill Jacob, the Man in Black thinks he's found one, but he ends up giving Jacob the ultimate final victory, causing the very thing he is trying to prevent, as Miles wondered about Jack setting off the hydrogen bomb.

So where I get confused is thinking about Richard and the Others, Eloise Hawking, Daniel Faraday, Charles Widmore vs. Ben, etc. Categorizations will go beyond good or bad but not clear whose side will "win."

I do think the show's creators are intelligent and mature people who will come up with an ending that works and has a meaningful message. I do think they believe in destiny, or else the whole show's premise and existence wouldn't be worth exploring. But the resolution they choose and how they get there will be very interesting. And if they reboot the timeline, any character could come back and anything could happen.

I hope they are done with the time travel shifting storylines for now, but I would not be surprised in the end if Jack ends up being his own grandpa....

Mojo Mom Podcast and Kidpower -- Skills for Safety and Independence

2010-01-29T17:00:00.006-05:00

I am having a great time talking with my Courageous Parenting contributors on The Mojo Mom Podcast. We'll be mixing things up in this series, not doing all of the Courageous Parenting interviews back-to-back, but I hope to have everyone on before the book comes out. We are just putting the final manuscript to bed, so this is a big week, hooray!

I always love talking with my colleague and mentor, Irene van der Zande about the personal safety skills she teachers as the co-founder of Kidpower. Her training is amazing--I am doing my best to tell everyone about Kidpower, and I teach classes in the Triangle area as the Center Director of Kidpower North Carolina. I taught four Kidpower classes myself this week, which was a wonderful opportunity to get into action with kids in my community, after doing six intensive days of instructor training in Santa Cruz, California earlier this month.

So I encourage you to listen to the podcast, check out the international organization's web site, and consider getting real-life Kidpower training.

Listen to the podcast now:

Here is the description of this week's show, Courageous Parenting Series: Mojo Mom and Kidpower

How can parents teach their kids to be independent and safe? Kidpower personal safety skills are designed to do just that, for people of all ages. Listen in and learn how to "co-pilot" your kids (without becoming a "helicopter parent") as they take their first steps out of the nest.

You can register to get a free electronic download of Courageous Parenting when it is released in Spring 2010 by signing up on MojoMom.com.

Apple, you hardly knew me. Why the iPad naming fiasco matters.

2010-01-28T16:12:00.053-05:00

So, we ladyfolk finally got our own viral internet giggle yesterday when Apple really did name its new tablet computer the iPad. "iTampon" quickly became a hot trending topic on Twitter.

Even as the "Mac's-i-Pad" period jokes continue, a little bit of a backlash has begun ("really from all the noise we should just call it the i-bitch,") and people are also asking will period jokes will hurt the iPad?

I think the iPad name is a major mis-step for Apple, but not just because it's embarrassingly funny. For me the iPad naming fiasco pulls back the curtain on Apple Computer's branding and marketing and reveals it as another Silicon Valley boy's club.

I say this as a devoted Apple user. I got my first computer as a college freshman back in 1986, a "Macintosh 512K enhanced." I was in one of the first college cohorts in which just about everybody had a personal computer. And yes, there was a day when you could put "512K" and "enhanced" together and it made sense. (Take that, Fanboys, I've been using a Mac since some of you were in diapers, or, egads, before you were born.) Over those 23 years I have personally bought at least a half dozen desktop Macs, four laptops, two iPhones, and more generations of iPods than I can keep track of. I run my whole Mojo Mom media empire, from book authorship, to blogging and podcasting, on a Mac.

And all the while Apple's branding made me feel like I was part of something, "I'm a Mac," after all. And with their intuitive, elegant design, as Apple brought new products to life that I hadn't even known that I needed, but now can't imagine living without, I felt like Apple knew me, too. But now with their naming choice of the iPad and all it's testosterone-fueled cluelessness, it became immediately more noticeable how overwhelmingly male Apple computer is. Can you name one woman associated with Apple, as an employee or its image? Watch Apple's own near-orgasmically-fawning video promoting their new gadget. It's eight minutes of male developers talking about how awesome the iPad is.

So then we get thinking about the iPad and wonder, "Were there any women involved in its design process? Its naming or marketing?" And reporting comes out, such as Business Week (via Jezebel) saying that "women account for 40 percent of gadget spending..." and the inconvenient fact that Apple doesn't have any women in its top corporate positions.

I have spent a lot of time in the tech world socially (my husband is a computer guy) and professionally, when I was a freelancer writing the parenting and technology blog for CNET in 2007 and 2008. I appreciated that opportunity and I thought I did bring a different perspective to the conversation. Unfortunately, my opinion was not always appreciated. I received a lot of nasty, hurtful comments. I had not how realized how radical it would be to bring a mom's-eye view perspective to the tech world. Many libertarian, male commenters seemed to instantly view me as the enemy, someone who represented the "nanny state" that clashed with their worldview. I should have realized what a culture clash I was walking into. It's a shame that a wider diversity of opinions are not represented and respected on tech websites, as I did report on some interesting stories that other journalists may have overlooked, some of which made it to the main front page of CNET. (I should say CNET was great to work with. And I know there were people who liked what I wrote, but they tended to email me directly rather than leave a public comment.)

So, just as we women have an uncomfortable relation with public displays of pads, perhaps all the brouhaha also has a connection with how women feel overlooked and excluded from the world of high tech. I had been pretty happy with the illusion that Apple knew me. But now, while they can still win me over with their products, my decades-long relationship with the Apple mystique has evaporated in a flash--surely not what the Apple marketing department was hoping to accomplish with their sexy new product release.

My fave iPad slam: "Are You There, God? It's Me, Marketing."

2010-01-27T16:37:00.022-05:00

So, Apple Computer has named their shiny new gadget the iPad. That confirms one thing for me, that we women might as well say whatever the hell we want on the internet, because men really aren't listening to us.

I mean seriously, you get four women around a table, suggest the name iPad, and they will shoot it down in three seconds flat, possibly falling out of their chairs laughing at the suggestion. Jezebel.com has an awesome list of period-related jokes that was posted within hours of the release. My favorites were from Begorrah: "Are you there, God? It's me, Marketing," and Mary McCarthyite, "Everyone, just try to Stay(free) calm and Poise(d). It's Always nice to see a new product on the market. I Depend on Apple to come up with great ideas. Maybe we're taking this out of Kotex."

MadTV had a parody of a potential iPad years ago (the sound cuts out near the end but this was the best video quality I could find):

So to both alpha male and senstitive-New-Age-guy Apple developers: you can have your Mac and Phone and Tunes, but we women own the word Pad. If you insist on calling your new "magic slate" an iPad, we will make fun of you until you come out with a new version that doesn't have such a dumb name.

Seriously, what were they thinking? It really shows that they are not thinking, not listening to women. Do they have women on their team? Do they talk to women? How much did Apple pay for this magical piece of Silicon Valley marketing genius?

And how, oh how, can this happen the week that the awesome Sarah Haskins steps down from her Current TV feature, Target Women? She HAS to come back for a special edition to take down the iPad.

Somehow the Target Women about "How to Get Hot Chicks" seems appropriate here...spoiler alert, it boils down to convincing men that hot chicks will drool over...stuff that guys like anyway. Hmmmm, like the iPad?

Suze Orman Show on what happens to overindulged kids when they grow up. (Hint: It's not pretty.)

2010-01-26T09:23:00.034-05:00

Suze Orman provides a lot of great resources for women and money, including her book by that name, just out in paperback, which I recommend. Even though Suze does not have kids herself, she is usually right on target when it comes to the psychology of women, money, and parenting.

Last Saturday's show, January 23 2010, has one of the most striking examples I've ever seen of what happens to helicopter parents and their overindulged kids in the long run. I dare say it makes the case for both of my books, Courageous Parenting and Mojo Mom, in stark terms.

The Suze Orman Show is now available as a free, full-episode podcast, so you can check it our for yourself. Here's a link to the show's podcast list, and it is also available free through the iTunes podcast directory.

Suze's first segment on her show with the theme, "People First, Then Money, Then Things," clarifies that when Suze says "People First," she means taking care of yourself first, not taking care of everybody else, as some people misinterpret it. Suze's first guest is a woman named Donna, who is 43 years old and in conflict with her 24-year-old son. Her son is taking complete advantage of her, and as the details come out, the story just keeps getting worse. Her son is living in Donna's home, rent-free. He got into credit card debt, and made a "settlement" with the credit card company, but guess who paid off the settlement? Mom and Dad. And now her son has stopped paying Donna back, and is telling HER that "he doesn't like her attitude" when she ask him to pay her.

And there's more....Donna earns $1600 a month. Her son makes $3500 a month. He's just asked his girlfriend to marry him. He bought her a $5000 engagement ring...paying with a credit card.

Suze tells Donna that she has to kick her disrespectful son out of house to make it on his own. Donna has given her whole life away to her son, she's subsidizing her high-earning yet irresponsible adult son to the point where has no savings and no retirement account for herself. Suze believes that the rest of Donna's life cannot turn around until Donna stands up for herself and gains back some power, self-respect, and respect from others.

Donna admits that she's spoiled her three kids rotten all their lives. She stayed home with her kids and she's struggling to learn how to "take care of Mama now." I intuit that she is not sure who she is anymore without her mothering role. She seems unable to make the switch between a mother's role to care for her child, to an adult-adult relationship, holding her adult son accountable for himself, and holding herself accountable for her own well-being.

Suze says, "It's not about saying yes. It's not about giving always. It's about taking care of yourself first....You, like every woman out there, you really think the definition of a good mother is to make sure that the kids have everything...even if that means it renders you powerless. They're not bad kids. You weren't a bad mother. You just didn't think you mattered."

That's a powerful statement. Let's remember that we matter, and build the structure of our lives around that fact. I had already been thinking a lot about the fact that self-care is not indulgence, it looks a lot more like discipline. If taking a candle-lit bubble bath once in a while would solve our problems, they would have been solved a long time ago. I'll be writing more about this in my next blog post so stay tuned.

Mojo Mom Podcast with Linda Criddle and Internet Safety

2010-01-23T11:19:00.014-05:00

The Mojo Mom Podcast is back with new shows for 2010! We had a longer hiatus than I expected because of the intensity of editing Courageous Parenting. We're almost done with that now and ready to ramp back up on my blog, podcast, and a renovation of MojoMom.com. More on that to come, but for now, let's take a look at this week's new podcast.

Mojo Mom Podcast's Courageous Parenting series: Mojo Mom and Internet Safety Expert Linda Criddle

Listen to the podcast now:

I am starting our the podcast season by continuing my series of interviews with contributors to the new Courageous Parenting anthology that I am editing. I will interweave interviews with anthology contributors some weeks, mixed in with other authors, newsmakers, and kindred spirits on other shows.

This week on the podcast, I talk with internet safety expert Linda Criddle, founder of the site iLookBothWays.com. I talk about a number of situations that feel difficult or helpless for me as a parent. Linda shares practical safety strategies and fosters a sense of empowerment in the way that parents think about the internet.

Special pre-publication offer: Get more of Linda Criddle's advice by signing up on MojoMom.com to receive a free electronic download of "Courageous Parenting" when it is released this spring.

Kidpower founder on How to Respond to Verbal Put-Downs

2010-01-20T19:43:00.009-05:00

Kidpower founder Irene van der Zande shared ideas of how kids can respond safely to verbal put-downs, standing up for themselves while de-escalating the situation. Another great segment on The View from the Bay.

Irene is a chapter contributor for my forthcoming anthology, Courageous Parenting. You can sign up on MojoMom.com to receive a free electronic download of the new book when it comes out.

Beyond "pushbutton philanthropy:" Helping Haiti in the long run

2010-01-18T20:56:00.037-05:00

Haiti is in all of our thoughts right now. The most moving coverage that I have heard was through today's episode of The Story with Dick Gordon, sharing first-person accounts of "The Rescue Effort."

What makes me really sad is knowing that the most powerful prevention of so many deaths would have been better building codes, to put up buildings that would not pancake in 15 seconds. On The Story, one man talked about how fragile the cinder blocks were, that you could kick them and they would crumble. And there was not nearly enough rebar reinforcement in the buildings. The San Francisco Bay Area Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 was about the same magnitude and resulted in only 63 deaths, 42 of which happened due to one incident in which a double-decker freeway in Oakland collapsed.

I have had my doubts about our government lately, but this tragedy reminds me to be grateful for our secure infrastructure, and mindful that we need to work to keep it that way.

I am torn by the myriad of fund-raising efforts that are cropping up. If First Lady Michelle Obama says to text to donate money to the Red Cross, then I guess I can get on board with that. But I feel like this is such a huge relief job that our government itself should come up with a relief plan and contribution on behalf of the American people, and make sure that the money goes where it needs to go, and logistics are handled by people who know what they are doing, such as the United Nations. Maybe we should all still chip in some money in the meantime, the New York Times has an article about how to give safely and efficiently, but I worry about our reflex for push-button philanthropy. Will we still be interested and engaged six months from now? And how much does that matter, if our immediate giving does help? I guess my question is, how much more effective could our giving be if we put more thought into it?

I encourage everybody to do something substantial to learn about Haiti, in addition to participating in immediate relief giving. I plan to read the well-regarded book about Dr. Paul Farmer, Mountains Beyond Mountains. Dr. Farmer co-founded Partners in Health (PIH) in Haiti, which is apparently one of the only health care operations that is functioning now--it certainly sounds like a valuable organization to support.

Here is Dr. Farmer's January 17th piece about how to really help Haiti in the wake of this disaster.

This tragedy has provoked a response in me that may sound counter-intuitive. I had the opportunity to hear the director of our local Interfaith Council for Social Services speak at our church on Sunday. I had been wanting to learn more about their work here in Orange County North Carolina, and after his talk I said I'd like to come by his office and meet with him again in the near future. His organization is taking a comprehensive approach to work to mitigate poverty and homelessness here in my home town. I can be honest and acknowledge that Haiti is probably not going to become my number one cause in the long run, but I hope that I can help there in some small way by donating to Partners in Health and One Great Hour of Sharing (to support my church's effort), and also take my own advice to delve deeper into all the philanthropy I need to engage in, starting at home.

Close encounters with Carol Brady, Mom-in-Chief, Mojo Mom and a Literary Mama

2010-01-14T16:44:00.024-05:00

After I left Berkeley last week and headed down to Santa Cruz for the rest of my trip to California, I had very poor internet access, so I am sorry I was not able to blog sooner about what happened backstage at The View from the Bay.

If you remember, Jamie Woolf and I were there to talk about our upcoming anthology Courageous Parenting, but behind the scenes we were also trying to meet pop-culture icon Florence Henderson, Carol Brady herself, who was also on the show that day.

Jamie got up close and personal with her! Don't they both look great?

Florence was being whisked by while I was in the chair getting my makeup put on, and I just couldn't jump up to go meet her. But I could see her and Jamie in the mirror. Jamie was nice and bold and gave Florence a copy of her book Mom-in-Chief, which Ms. Henderson accepted with enthusiasm. She really seemed nice and embraced her lifelong role as Gen X's Mom.

But even though I missed out on that, not only am I proud of Jamie for getting right out there, but we also had the treat of running into Caroline Grant backstage. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the wonderful Literary Mama website, and she was on the show to talk about a reading list of recommended books for kids ages 3-12. There was some drama about a mistake in the schedule and whether she'd get on, which she wrote about with good humor in her blog. But we had a nice chat backstage and I have to say Caroline took it all in stride, and she did get on and was very poised in her segment.

So there we are, three writers in our own right. I felt like I was in an alternate universe, since I used to live in the Bay Area, and here Jamie and Caroline were talking about writing groups and other cool events, and I thought that if I still lived there I would love to spend more time hanging out with them, and Joan Blades, co-founder of MomsRising.org, who was gracious enough to host me while I was in town.

All in all it was a really fun day, and I hope you'll check out the video of our Courageous Parenting segment.

Courageous Parenting on The View from the Bay

2010-01-08T10:55:00.027-05:00

I just have time to post the video of Jamie Woolf and myself talking about Courageous Parenting and "Four Easy Steps to Stop Over-Parenting" on The View from the Bay.

It was great to come to San Francisco and get to be on the show with Jamie, and talk to hosts Spencer Christian and Janelle Wang.

More details to come....

Mojo Mom, Mom-in-Chief, and Mrs. Brady on The View from the Bay today

2010-01-06T10:14:00.025-05:00

I was already really excited to appear with my friend Jamie Woolf on the TV show The View from the Bay today at 3 pm in San Francisco. We'll be talking about our forthcoming book Courageous Parenting and sharing practical ways that real-life moms and dads can break overparenting habits. I believe that as parents think about taking a new path it's important to talk about the vision of where to go, as well as steps that lay out how to get there. We cover both in depth in the new book, coming out in March.

I hope a whole bunch of View from the Bay viewers will stop by and sign up for our Courageous Parenting free e-book offer.

And as if that wasn't already enough fun, having Mojo Mom and Mom-in-Chief together on this show, I just found out that Florence Henderson will be on as well -- Carol Brady herself! If that's not a divinely aligned motherhood event, I don't know what is. As many fellow Gen Xers will appreciate, I was addicted to the Brady Bunch for my whole childhood and used to be able to pretty much quote the whole thing.

My goal is to get a photo with her. We're on different segments but I hope to bump into her in the Green Room. Check back tomorrow to find out whether I succeeded!

Dr. Phil show today -- Parenting Styles, from overparenting to Free-Range Kids

2010-01-05T08:06:00.007-05:00

Just a quick blog post this morning to let you know that today Dr. Phil has a show about parenting styles hat I am very interested in because it speaks to my new anthology Courageous Parenting.

And, Mojo Mom blog reader Lori, whom I got to know through Free-Range Kids, is on the show! Lori made the news when her ten year old son was picked up by police while walking to soccer practice on his own. I hope she'll write in and tell us more about her experience with Dr. Phil.

Here's the show blurb. Unfortunately I won't be able to watch it live because I'll be headed to the airport for a trip to California...more on that shortly!

Tuesday - January 5, 2010 Dr. Phil Show

New Parenting Styles

Are you a parent who is over- or under-involved in your child's life? Dr. Phil talks with a self-proclaimed overprotective mother, a Free-Range mother and two experts to help you find a happy balance while raising your kids. First up, you won't believe what happened to Lori when she let her 10-year-old son walk to soccer practice by himself. Next, meet two moms with opposite parenting approaches: Kristen lets her kids walk to friends' houses on their own and make their own mistakes, while Beckie says she can't imagine letting her kids walk around the neighborhood or even to the school playground unattended. Find out what Dr. Phil has to say about these parenting styles. Then, Linda Murray, editor-in-chief of BabyCenter.com and Dr. Michele Borba, a parenting educator and author, weigh in with the pros and cons of different parenting styles. And, Dr. Phil checks in with Teresa, who became known as America's Most Over-Protective Mom. Find out if she and her daughter, Ashlee, who's now 18, are getting along better.

Mojo Mom's thoughts on the 2000's--learning that we're all in this together.

2010-01-02T10:22:00.000-05:00

Right now I am consumed by the whirlwind that always accompanies the final stages of editing of a new book. I can't wait to share the new anthology Courageous Parenting with you, but the one temporary downside is that during this final push I don't have a lot of time for blogging. But I did want to share a few end-of-decade thoughts about what I learned in the 2000s.

Amy as a proud, tired, happy new Mom with her cute little schmoo in fall 1999.
It's interesting to see my personal journey as a mother develop together with my professional development. When I became a new Mom in late 1999 I looked at the world through a thoroughly individualistic perspective. I really thought that I needed to show how I could "do it all" myself. Even as I learned to embrace the participation of family and friends, I still thought that motherhood was mostly about me and my personal life choices as one woman. I felt that I chose to leave my teaching career, and without even realizing it, I was constructing a life story that put me firmly in the driver's seat. This was actually a pretty functional way of thinking that worked for me in the short term, but as I lived through all of the challenges of motherhood, and thought about what other women faced, I realized that I was missing the big picture.

When the original "Opt-Out Revolution" narrative first came along, saying that educated mothers were choosing to leave the workforce, it made sense to me, if I looked at my life as a rugged individualist. My teaching career just "didn't work" any more so I chose to leave. My personal situation was complicated by a cross-country move, that made it seem even more natural that I didn't return to my job, and I was fortunate that my family could afford to live on my husband's salary.

But even as I started to write Mojo Mom all on my own way back in 2003, not really knowing any other writers, and without the benefit of blogging, which had not exploded yet, I started to see that motherhood wasn't just all about me as one person.

I started to think about what it meant that work "didn't work" for me as a mother of a young child. How much of this was my individual choice, versus larger social structures that ranged from my family, to employers' attitudes and policies, to public policy, most notably the fact that American women don't even have paid maternity leave?

My husband's job was all-encompassing at the time, which did not leave a lot of room for me to work any kind of traditional schedule. And the idea of truly-flexible, valuable part time jobs didn't seem plausible. I craved a new professional, creative outlet, and I had a renewed interest in writing, so I reinvented myself as an author.

I was fortunate to be able to do so, but even though this worked for me, the dangers and fallacies of the Opt-Out storyline started to come to into focus for me. First of all, most women and mothers need to work for basic financial reasons. So the idea that motherhood = not employed is a worrisome one, because the workforce truly needs to figure out how to retain us and stop punishing us for being parents--specifically, mothers, because fathers are more respected in the workforce and are often assumed to have a wife who can do the majority of the caregiving. As Opting Out? author and sociologist Pamela Stone has pointed out, too often, parenthood means that fathers step on the accelerator of their careers and mothers step on the brakes. For women of Gen X and Y this can create a major fork in the road that has lifelong consequences.

Also, taking an off-ramp from paid work can leave women in career limbo and financial jeopardy. I hope that in the 2010s we'll find better solutions for building more on-ramps. Life is long, and women in particular should expect to have several careers interwoven with seasons of caregiving.

So as these challenges accumulated it became incredibly clear to me that no one is truly a "rugged individualist," and we are all in this together. As I was completing the first edition of Mojo Mom I started to think, "What we need is a social movement. Damn, am I going to have to try to start one?" Fortunately for all of us, MomsRising.org burst onto the scene. I could instantly see that founders Joan Blades and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner were well positioned to launch an activist revolution, and I've done my best to support their work because it is spot-on, working to end job discrimination against mothers, to get health care coverage for all children, and other key advocacy goals.

Joan and Kristin also started their work together by writing a book, The Motherhood Manifesto, which I highly recommend.

So from being one aspiring writer, working in near-secret on my own, to getting the updated 2009 edition of Mojo Mom published, working with other writers, and participating in MomsRising's grassroots movement with a million members, I have come a long way in the 2000s.

And as my appreciation of cooperation of mothers has grown, my next book is, voila, an anthology, with chapters written by fourteen talented experts! I had spent years getting to know other writers, reading their books, appreciating their work, and doing Mojo Mom Podcast interviews--now the circle of experts who I have come to think of as a special group in my mind are really collaborating on the new book, Courageous Parenting, which will be a comprehensive guide exploring how to end overparenting, and carve out a new, healthier path to independence for our kids and ourselves.

The power of collaboration is truly amazing. I have spent several years cultivating these connections, but once I had the idea for the anthology and recruited my contributors, we decided to launch the book in a fast and timely matter. The anthology will be current as of January 2010 and will launch in early spring. To me this is the best combination that takes advantage of the immediacy of blogging while preserving the substance of book writing.

As my blog readers you've been an important part of my entire journey as well. Books take a long time to writer, and my life as a writer improved greatly after blogging enabled me to connect with my readers. So to say thanks to you, I will be offering a free digital download of the new anthology "Courageous Parenting" to anyone who signs up on MojoMom.com before the book is published.

I hope you will sign up now, so that I can send you a free complete electronic copy of the new book when it's released this spring.

Mojo Mom on The Parent's Journal with Bobbi Conner

2009-12-21T16:20:00.009-05:00

I love good radio, and last spring when I did my radio tour for the new edition of Mojo Mom, the nationally-broadcast public radio show The Parent's Journal with Bobbi Conner became one of my favorites. Bobbi invited me back on the December 16th episode to talk about "Everyday Routines and Strategies for New Moms." And Dr. Michele Borba is on the same show too, so it should be a good one.

You can download the podcast from The Parent's Journal website.

The Parents Journal 120909-One Hour Show

The Parent's Journal Broadcast 12-09-09 One Hour Show

The Parent's Journal Topics & Guests (start times in parentheses)
Clever Ways to Get Toddlers and Preschoolers to Share – Dr. Borba (01:00)
Everyday Routines and Strategies for New Moms – Dr. Tiemann (06:00)
Parent’s Notes - A Practical Parenting Tip from a Mom or Dad (25:13)
Promoting Healthy Habits/Lifestyles – Joseph Califano (29:00)
What Expectant Moms Can Do to Help Prevent Premature Birth - Dr. Cole (51:15)

Practicing The Art of the Possible

2009-12-16T14:28:00.033-05:00

We're entering the final stages of Courageous Parenting manuscript editing, and I have to say that there are few things that will make you (ok, not you, I mean me) as crazy as book editing. You start to try to divine meaning in every comma, versus dash, versus parenthesis. For a really good illustration of how meticulous the process can be, look at this photo of my Mojo Mom manuscript from last December, as we went through the final edits. This was after many rounds of work, when you would think it was already done, but each post-it tab represented another change that still needed to be made.

But, as we've gone through this stressful process together, my 14 anthology contributors, my editor Lacey, my project manager Patty, and myself, I have hit upon a really useful concept. To fight back against perfectionism and stress I am telling everyone that we are practicing the art of the possible. What we already have is good and solid, and we only need to work on it to the best of our ability. We can get it as polished as we can in the amount of time we have to work with, and we can then sit back and be happy with what we've created, and not worry about whether we could have moved everything 1% closer to perfection.

Part of the fun of this book is that we are drawing from blogging experience--we're writing quickly and getting the book out there while the ideas are fresh on our minds. The book won't sit in pre-publication for a year or two as books often do! In March, you'll be reading ideas that we are still putting on paper today.

And as we know, blogging doesn't have to be perfect. It's value is that it is timely, fresh, original, and opinionated. It's a contribution to a dynamic conversation that keeps going online, and we hope to do that with Courageous Parenting as well. We know that a book captures a snapshot of opinion and events, but through online conversation, blogging, and podcasting, we can keep the dialogue fresh and evolving.

But the idea of practicing the art of the possible resonates with me as a mother as well as me as a writer. I think we tie ourselves up with unrealistic expectations of ourselves from day one. And believe me, those expectations can evolve for years and still manage to stay unrealistic! We Moms can be very hard on ourselves, focusing on the things that we aren't doing well and lose sight of our generally successful big picture. The problem sticking out like a sore thumb and capturing our attention can obscure the fact that we still have nine perfectly healthy and happy "fingers" that are doing just fine.

I was talking to PunditMom Joanne Bamberger yesterday about Courageous Parenting and we both grooved on this idea, The Art of the Possible. It was so soothing and reassuring. It felt like a soft place to fall, a reminder that if we give it our best shot will be great even if it's not perfect, and we should celebrate that.

So, I posted this note on my computer monitor. What's amazing is that even as I am finishing up this book, and thinking "why did I get myself into this?" (which, I am convinced, every author/editor says at some point during every book's creation!), I also started thinking, hmmmm, maybe there is another book idea in there....

See what becomes possible when writers collaborate when the new anthology "Courageous Parenting" comes out in March 2010. Sign up on MojoMom.com and we'll send you a free copy of the e-book version when it's released. A paperback edition will also be available from Amazon.com.

Mojo Mom Podcast will return in the New Year

2009-12-11T12:34:00.011-05:00

This week we are rocking and rolling with the final edits of the new Courageous Parenting anthology, and I am putting the finishing touches on the parts that I have to write.

So, I am not doing too much blogging right now...but I am writing behind the scenes!

I have also had to take a break from podcasting for a few weeks, but the plan is to come back with new shows on Fridays in the New Year.

You'll give me January 1 off, right? Look for a new episode of The Mojo Mom Podcast to post online on Friday, January 7th.

Thanks for reading and listening!

Find out what the fuss is all about by signing up now to receive the new book free when it comes out! Sign up now on the MojoMom.com home page to receive a free e-book of the new Courageous Parenting anthology when it is released in March 2010. You'll receive a PDF file that you can read on any computer, or print out. No dedicated e-reader is required.

The Happiest Mom interviews Mojo Mom about Work & Money

2009-12-08T13:54:00.015-05:00

I am in the editing zone this week as we put the finishing touches on the Courageous Parenting manuscript. It is a lot of work and we are trying to make sure we give everyone time off for the December holidays. So I am behind in my blogging. But--thankfully I have a great guest post for today. Meagan Francis of The Happiest Mom blog recently interviewed me on the topic of Moms, Work & Money. I think the interview turned out really well, if I do say so myself, and Megan has given me her blessing to repost it here.

Meagan is definitely an empathetic mojo sister, and I hope you'll check out all of her writing on The Happiest Mom.

Meagan Francis' interview with Amy Tiemann:

Since Amy’s an advocate of moms empowering themselves with financial and career security, I figured she’d be a great person to interview as a follow-up to my [Meagan's] post on moms and financial security. Here are Amy’s thoughts on work, money, and how moms can–and why they should–take steps to protect themselves.

Meagan: Moms and their career/financial security is something you’ve written about quite a bit. Why do you think it’s such an important topic?

Amy: Whatever our best-laid plans are, Moms always need a backup plan. The current economic crisis has highlighted this reality. Any of us could be called on to increase our earnings or become the primary breadwinner for our family, on short notice. And in the long run, women need to plan for long lives, and the safety nets in place do not give women credit for their caregiving years. For example, my mother was a stay-at-home Mom until she and my Dad divorced after about 20 years of marriage. That was 25 years ago, yet now that she has become a Senior, the echoes of that are coming back into play. Because of her pattern of employment and lower lifetime earnings, her monthly Social Security check is about half of what my Dad’s is. And that will continue for the rest of their lives.

Life is long and a lot can happen! None of us can afford not to think about our present and future security.

Meagan: I think sometimes it’s hard to think too much about our financial security as moms. We don’t want to seem as though we don’t trust our spouses to do right by us, or live as though we’re waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under us. Any words of advice for moms who are hesitant to advocate for their own needs and futures?

Amy: That’s a great question. We need to be full and active parters when it comes to financial planning. It’s the responsible thing to do and it’s good for the whole family. If a husband gets laid off, it’s good for him if his wife has a job to go to. If a father dies, of course he would want his family to be taken care of. We don’t like to think of the things that can go wrong but as parents we have to be adults who are willing to prepare for all situations.

Also, I have encountered sexism within the financial planning and estate planning industries. You cannot assume that lawyers or financial planners have your best interests at heart. You have to get in there and know what is going on, challenge assumptions, and advocate for yourself. I have had estate planners try to set up trusts that would have put our family’s assets totally under my husband’s control. I trust my husband, but it’s just not fair to set it up that way. The lawyers had been doing what seemed expedient and convenient, and it would have been a huge mistake for me to let that happen. I put the brakes on the process and made the lawyers create two trusts, one that we each controlled. And after that, we got new lawyers.

So make sure that all the advisors in your life see you as an active participant in the process. And if they don’t do so, find a new advisor or lawyer.

Meagan: Any practical tips to help at-home moms stay engaged and connected to the working world?

Amy: Keep networking in your public persona! I have gotten jobs that resulted from friendly schmoozing with people in the preschool parking lot because I was enthusiastic about my work. Moms are natural networkers but sometimes we forget to include our professional identity in our self-presentation. I recommend staying in touch with your professional contacts, and setting up lunch at least once a month where you show up dressed for work and ready to talk about your field. Of course, you should also keep up to date on any professional reading you need to do. The same strategy can apply if you are trying to break into a new field. Start studying, learning, and connecting. I am a big fan of continuing education programs offered by local colleges, which might meet once a week in person, or even online.

Meagan: What about working moms who feel the need to rein in their careers for a while–is it possible to still have the career you dreamed of, even if you take a year or three off or scale way back?

Amy: You have to be prepared to take your career into your own hand. We’re in a tough position because there is only so much we can do as individuals to ensure that enlightened employers will be willing to create a path back for us. We don’t have the social supports that would really help, starting with paid parental leave for Moms and Dads. So this is why I do two things: I support MomsRising.org, which advocates for the family-friendly policies I believe we need, and I also encourage all women to learn about entrepreneurship. If the traditional working world won’t accommodate you, how can you create a role for yourself? One of my friends is a mother of three young boys and a veterinarian. She created her own mobile veterinary practice that allows her total control of her schedule, reduces her overhead because she has a van and makes house calls, rather than running a traditional practice, and serves her clients extremely well. That’s the kind of creative solution we need to explore.

Meagan: What are some vital ways moms can take care of themselves financially, even if they aren’t currently earning an income?

Amy: Become involved in your family’s financial planning as I mentioned above. Research your own Social Security credits and know the long-term implications of taking time out of the workforce. Make sure your family is saving up for a six to eight month emergency fund. That is urgently important in this recession, especially as access to credit is being cut off.

Meagan: In your book MojoMom, you share advice on “creating a lifelong career path”. Can you share a little about your own lifelong career path, and the role motherhood has played in it?

Amy: I have been very fortunate to be able to take my skills and apply them to new areas. I used to do brain research, which might sound worlds away from being an author, but writing my Ph. D. thesis taught how to research a complex topic, and proved to myself that I could follow through on a very difficult project. I taught high school for three years, which was excellent experience in public speaking to a general audience. Now, when I talk to Moms’ groups, someone often asks, “Do you get nervous speaking to big groups?” and I can say, “Hey, my job used to be to convince sixteen-year olds that chemistry was interesting–at 8 am! You are here because you want to be, so this is fun!” For the record, I really liked teaching, too, but I chose not to keep up that schedule after my daughter was born and my family moved across the country. Women reinvent themselves all the time. So for the lifelong career path, don’t peg yourself too closely with one role of job title. Learn to value the skills you have and think about how to use those skills in a variety of job settings.

What the Party Crashers Can Teach Us About Personal Safety

2009-12-03T12:30:00.003-05:00

Everyone is abuzz about the White House Party Crashers Michaele and Tareq Salahi. Some of the media coverage has been way overblown--former FBI Profiler Clint van Zandt just about blew a gasket on The Today Show last week talking about the unlikely, extreme things that could have happened. But whether you write this off as a reality-show publicity stunt, or consider it to be a serious breach of security, this incident does provide a great example that we can learn from in order to prevent real-life wrongdoing "party crashers" from crossing our own personal boundaries.

You see, the Sahalis got in by acting and dressing and acting the part--dressing to the nines, in fact. Michaele looked gorgeous in her formal bright red sari. I think that the fact that she had on such a specific dress for the state dinner to welcome the Indian Prime Minister really helped them get in. Most Caucasian, American women would not have such an outfit already hanging in their closets, so she clearly looked like she belonged at this specific event. By dressing so appropriately and distinctively, she was hiding in plain sight!

What else helped them get in? Today Maureen Dowd's column says:

"The Washington Post reported the Secret Service guard waved in the Salahis, breaking the rules, because he 'was persuaded by the couple’s manner and insistence as well as the pressure of keeping lines moving on a rainy evening.'"

This is how gate crashers and boundary crossers operate. If someone means you harm, if they came running at you with a gun, you would see them coming from a mile away and get out of there.

But if they follow a cultural script, they can not only get close to you, they can also get you to commit to the early stages of interaction. Once you have committed to the interaction, it's harder to reject the person later. Think about the steps leading up to a date-rape scenario. If a woman accepts a man's invitation to go out on a date, has dinner and drinks, maybe he's even paying, when they get to her door at the end of the night and he wants to come in and she doesn't want him to, it's harder for her to say "No" to him if he's persistent about coming in, because through her actions she's already committed to being with him up to that point. It's more difficult to turn him away, but not impossible, and this is exactly why we each need personal safety training, because predators count on their ability to twist cultural scripts and use them against us. We have to be prepared to abandon the "polite" script and ditch our previous "commitments" to change course when someone wishes to harm us.

Irene van der Zande, founder of Kidpower, says “In our Kidpower personal safety workshops, we tell our students that they already know how to be nice and polite, but that they are safest if they make being nice a conscious decision rather than an automatic habit. We have them practice imagining that they are not sure a situation is safe even if the other person is very friendly, and then leaving or setting boundaries rather than getting involved with this person.”

Then there is what I think of as the moment of confusion, which the Salahis created by showing up looking so good and insisting that they belonged, all while there were many other people waiting in line behind them. So the Secret Service waved them in. When we are busy, distracted, emotionally triggered, inconvenienced, or not sure what to do, that moment of confusion can leave us vulnerable to doing things we ordinarily wouldn't do. Most of the time, when we aren't sure what to do, it serves us well to do the nice and polite thing and go along with what everyone else is doing. But this convenient mental shortcut can be used against us, as predators deliberately create the moment of confusion to create an opportunity to hurt a victim.

If I asked you whether you'd go to a private location with a stranger who approached you in a parking lot, what would you say you would do? You wouldn't go, right? Not in a million years, you might think. But what if a man came up to you, frantic, pleading, "Help me! My baby isn't breathing!" and ushered you to his car in a remote area? This is a powerful lure. In the moment of confusion, you respond to the idea of an emergency and the emotional trigger of a baby in distress, and if you don't stop to think about it, you might immediately follow him, especially if he emphatically and convincingly rushes you into it.

Now I am NOT saying that you should not ever help a person in distress, but I am saying that you should be aware of your surroundings and never lose sight of the context of what you are doing. In a moment of confusion, think about hitting a "pause" button in your mind. It can be a brief pause, but it can allow you to collect yourself, analyze the whole situation, and think about your response. You have choices: Can you call 911, or go to a populated store for help, or get mall security, rather than blindly rushing into a potentially dangerous, isolated situation? You can assess the environment: is this day, night, near other people or sources of help? What are your potential vulnerabilities and options? For young kids, by the way, I stand by the idea that adults should not ask kids for help. If this parking lot situation happened to a kid they should go find safety, such as a store, and tell the store employees what has happened. Then those adults can follow up and call 911 either because a baby really needs help, or there is a man luring people with a false story.

The moment of confusion does not always look so dramatic. It can be simple and fast. When I traveled to France this fall, I kept my awareness about me, especially when visiting major tourist sites that are known pickpocketing venues. We were in Notre Dame Cathedral one day, a crowded environment full of people milling around, and a situation where I knew to keep a firm hold on my purse, when a French woman approached me and asked me in French whether people had to pay to tour the church. I answered her quickly and kept moving to make sure I didn't get separated from my family. Later, I realized this could very likely have been a pickpocket set-up, with her working to divert my attention while someone else went after my purse, or my husband's wallet as he was distracted, too, making sure we did not get separated in the crowd.

Why do I think this was a deliberately staged moment of confusion? Because why would a French person ask an American tourist what to do in this situation. I was the one who should have been "lost." Also, everyone else in Paris took one look at me and immediately addressed me in English (even though I was trying to speak French!). In Notre Dame we were not in a situation where there was a ticket taker visible, and we weren't even near the entrance; we were well inside looking up at the stained glass windows. I'll never know for sure what this nice-seeming woman's intentions were, but I do know that her actions evoked that moment of confusion feeling in me. Fortunately, I did not allow myself to get too sidetracked, and I stayed with my family and we all held on to our belongings, too.

Personal safety expert and author Gavin de Becker talks about developing one's intuition and the key is to not only listen to your intuition, but to also ACT ON IT. If you don't have a good feeling about your date, the time to draw the line is early on, before you get in a private, more vulnerable setting. Gavin de Becker's books talk about early warning signs of trouble to watch out for. For example, if your date fails to hear the word "No" in any situation, that person is trying to control you. Knowing that, if your date pressures you to accept a drink you said you don't want, you can see that not only should you refuse the drink, but you can take that as a sign to end the date early.

As parents, the action part is incredibly important. If you have a bad feeling about a babysitter, coach, or any person who has a major and controlling role in your child's life, it is really important to take those intuitions seriously and follow up on them by getting more information about what is going on, if possible, and removing your child from that situation if necessary, even if it's embarrassing or inconvenient for you.

Most people are good and most of the time acting nice and polite serves us well and keeps us on the right track. But the White House party crashers remind us that just because someone looks the part, acts nice, and insists that they belong, that does not automatically mean that they deserve an open door into our lives.

Sign up now on the MojoMom.com home page to receive a free e-book of the new Courageous Parenting anthology, edited by Amy Tiemann and featuring a chapter written by Kidpower founder Irene van der Zande, when the book comes out in March 2010!

I feel like Forrest Gump walking through the history of Overparenting

2009-12-02T09:25:00.062-05:00

Remember how Forrest Gump walked through famous scenes in history, perhaps not even realizing it at the time? That's how I feel after reading Nancy Gibb's Time Magazine cover story about The Case Against Over-Parenting.

I was happy to see the article since I am hard at work editing the forthcoming anthology Courageous Parenting that aims to give parents the background and skills they need to reverse the tide of overparenting. I agree with some of Nancy Gibbs' analysis, but disagree with other significant aspects of it. Since I have a lot to say on this topic I'll write a series of blog posts. But I want to start by considering my relationship to the recent history of overparenting.

A theme that has defined and will continue to define my life is that I am on the leading edge of Gen X. Born in 1968, I have come to accept my fate playing Jan Brady to the Baby Boomers' position as Marcia: the Boomers are older, more popular, and certainly more powerful. They get there first and set the trends, and we Gen X often get caught in their wake. Overparenting may look largely like a current Gen X phenomenon but I think it has roots in Boomer parents due to their incredible power as a market. When Boomers were teenagers, being a teenager became not only cool, but the lucrative youth market was born. When Boomers started having kids, the market for new baby products and parenting advice took off as well.

Pamela Paul's book Parenting Inc. does a great job of shining a light on the billion-dollar baby-industrial complex, but you only have to walk the aisles of any baby store to see how many gadgets and safety devices there are.

Hard to believe that thirty of forty years ago we didn't even have car seats!

My encounters with modern parenting started even before I had my daughter. From 1996 to 1999, I taught high school in San Francisco, and many of the kids were children of high-achieving Boomers. Teaching was a fantastic experience, but there were definitely signs that parents expected the best for their kids. I was pretty surprised to see that seniors were applying to a dozen or more colleges, when ten years earlier, we typically applied to a handful. The goal went from getting in somewhere good to having a huge array of options to choose from. Some parents were also clearly overinvolved with being their kids' friend and didn't always know how to set the necessary limits for their teens.

Even before then, I had a near-brush with one of the burgeoning trends in parenting. As a Stanford neuroscience graduate student, I was doing research into brain development and I was very interested in critical periods of learning. This became popularized in "zero to three" interventions. Around 1995 I even considered creating a video series that would have predated Baby Einstein. Inspired by the very cool work of neuroscientist Patricia Kuhl, who investigates early language acquisition, I thought about trying to create a video series that would teach babies and kids languages that were very different from their own, such as Japanese for English speakers or vice versa.

On the one hand, maybe I missed out on a multi-gazillion dollar industry, but considering the fact that the Baby Einstein videos didn't actually work, I am not too sorry about taking a different path. I will say though, that being a scientist I would have tested the results to make sure that the products worked! In the meantime, if you want your baby to learn another language I'd recommend hiring a babysitter who is a native speaker.

So, I do believe that marketing is an underlying root cause of overparenting. As our lives were actually getting safer, we were being sold new "problems" in order to sell us new "solutions." By the time we were being sold the BabyPlus Prenatal Education System, I started to pull my hair out, as I wrote about on my CNET blog, (Parent.Thesis) This marketing of overparenting is not only ridiculous, it's offensive to me. There are so many true problems facing families that it is a shameful waste of time, money and attention to try to give your kid a "head start" in the womb. Hopefully one good outcome of the current recession is we can let the most ridiculous stuff go.

In addition to overt marketing messages, this decade's rise of 24-hour news media on cable and online meant a rise in selling fear. CNN.com is one of the worst major news offenders in my experience, in that they sometimes post a story in a headline position which is not new news at all, but rather a scary story from the archives that they are revisiting. I am talking about stories along the lines of this CNN.com post from yesterday, with Nancy Grace talking about a cold case from 1989, Cold case: Toddlers vanish from park. But sometimes CNN.com posts this type of story in a headline position on the home page without clearly labeling it as a cold case. Doing so is irresponsible. Child abductions are fearful occurrences of mythic proportions. They can't help but pus the anxiety buttons and get any concerned parent's adrenaline flowing. But the truth is that THANKFULLY, these incidents are much rarer than you would think based on how heavily they are reported. With genuine new tragedies such as Shaniya Davis' recent rape and murder shining a light on human trafficking, I really wish the news media would stop dredging up decades' old cases for sensational purposes. When I think about web site clicks I can't help but think of lab rats conditioned to push a lever, and I will admit that I am as conditioned as anyone!

So we have consumerism and the marketing of problems and solutions, news sensationalism, and what else...oh yes, the Decade from Hell. Let's face it, the past ten years have been scary and anxious. Terrorist attacks, resulting wars, the economic meltdown...we haven't had much of a break from fear and anxiety. And for eight years, the Bush administration manipulated our fear as consciously as any marketer or news producer.

We're only now waking up from that nightmare, if we're lucky, and as parents it's crucial that we wake up. We need to become conscious of the effect that we have on our children. If we are fearful people, our parenting is going to get out of whack. I believe we're seeing that already, as we limit our kids' exploration of the world to the point where they are missing out on important developmental experiences. I want my kid to be able to walk the neighborhood, to go to a slumber party and summer camp, to spend time with other families and get to know other people. [For ongoing conversation on this topic, check out Lenore Skenazy's Free-Range Kids blog.]

Now in order to do so, she'll need skills, and I need the skills to teach her, and that's what we're addressing in Courageous Parenting. In the meantime you can check out the websites of Kidpower for real-world safety training and resources and iLookBothWays.com for online safety training that I highly recommend.

As far as waking up and being conscious of our effect on our children, I have been blessed with a daughter who has been my greatest teacher from day one. When she was a baby I swore she was a Yoda-like Zen master (but much cuter). Then, she taught me how to be in the moment. Now that she's older, she has an almost psychic sensitivity to what is going on in my mind, what I am thinking about and worrying about. When I am stressed and worried, it is mirrored in our relationship and her behavior. It amazes me that she will often voice worries that are currently on my mind even if she and I haven't talked about them yet. So my personal experience has shaped my world view on parenting. There are challenges to face and things to be fearful about. True fear requires attention and action, as author Gavin de Becker has taught so well. But unfocused worry is toxic static that pervades our lives.

It's time we start thinking about the costs of overindulging ourselves and our kids even as we overprotect them, and adopting worry as a destructive habit. My hope is that in our new decade we can turn a fresh page in parenting. I'll be doing that both metaphorically and literally and I invite you to join me.

Sign up now on the MojoMom.com home page to receive a free e-book of the new Courageous Parenting anthology when it comes out in March 2010!

Caregiving is not a choice for any of us!

2009-11-23T08:05:00.036-05:00

Lynn Harris wrote a thoughtful, detailed feature on Salon.com, Everybody Hates Mommy. And unfortunately, yet predictably, the haters are coming out on the comments. The second commenter wrote in to vote in FAVOR of Harris' synopsis of anti-parent sentiment:

"I am sick and tired of young mothers' sense of entitlement. It was your choice to get pregnant. Deal with it. You do not get a pat on the back or a seat from me because you decided to reproduce."

So first of all, I hope you'll read Lynn's piece and post a supportive comment to show that we are out there in the public dialogue, too.

The "choice" narrative has really been stuck in my craw lately. It's a version of "rugged American individualism" run rampant, and it shows up in so many places. Unfortunately, as "choice" has become our guiding metaphor, the concept has become weakened by the ubiquity of consumer choice. It's been devalued to the point of "What's your choice? Chocolate or vanilla ice cream?" I am not going to go to bat for a choice as trivial as that one, and I worry that motherhood has been trivialized in that manner.

It may be a choice on some level for individual women to have children, but it's not a choice for children to have mothers. And it's not a choice for society to bring new citizens on board! The way we treat families in this country shows that we do not truly value our children, which is truly a tragedy. Just go into any school that is lacking basic supplies and see how valued those children feel by society.

And devaluing parents devalues children and interferes with caregiving. As I have written before, in the United States we don't have basic job protection for parents, health care, which we are working on now, and other social benefits that are standard in every other wealthy country. At international conferences, women from Canada to New Zealand to India have come up to tell me that the mothers in the United States are putting up with a terrible deal, and we barely even know how bad we have it. That's a real downside to American exceptionalism--we just assume that the way we do it here is the best way, perhaps the only way to do things, and we are unwilling to learn from the rest of the world.

We need to come to grips with the fact that caregiving is NOT optional. Every powerful man was once a screaming baby with a woman feeding him, wiping his butt, and tucking him in at night. Perhaps it was his mother, perhaps a nanny who was a woman of another race. A few years back I heard Professor Jane Brown talk about why people are so squeamish about seeing mothers breastfeeding, and she said it is because it reminds us of our "creaturliness," which ultimately reminds us of our mortality. I think the same might be said about caregiving in general. Powerful, wealthy men can cling to the illusion of "choice" to eventually move beyond the world of caregiving, leaving that to the women and minorities to take care of. When Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona recently said during the health care debate, "I don't need maternity care, so requiring that on my insurance policy is something that I don't need and will make the policy more expensive," I was so thankful that Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan was there to retort, "I think your mom probably did."

Jon Kyl may want to live with the illusion that he never needed care, and will never need it again, but the fact is that ALL OF US needed intense caregiving in our early years, and many of us will need it again in our elder years.

This is why even the most rugged, healthy young individualists need to worry about caregiving. People can "choose" to be selfish bastards if they wish, but what happens when their parents get old and need care? What happens when they can't manage to juggle their job and their Mom and Dad's care, or can't afford to pay for professional elder care? Then they'll find out what it means not to have a "choice." And I can tell them, it will happen sooner than they think, perhaps as they themselves are hitting their early forties and their own careers are starting to reach the stratosphere.

I've gotten a preview of this myself, especially since my parents are divorced and therefore they don't have each other to lean on. I love each of them dearly and I know that I am privileged to have personal savings and a flexible work schedule that allows me to be with them when necessary. I literally do not know how I would be able to juggle a strict 8 to 5 job like the one I used to have, with the family caregiving needs I am responsible for on both ends of the generational spectrum.

As a country, we need to get a handle on this, now. We are in serious denial about what the aging of the Baby Boomers is going to mean to our country. Especially now, with many seniors' retirement accounts diminished by the financial meltdown, and adult children under financial stress as well, we need to find ways to value caregiving in all its forms, and create support systems that allow families to provide care and remain economically sound.

In my optimistic moments I hope that if we're willing to move beyond denial, caregiving can become an issue that brings many people together. When Gloria Steinem spoke in Raleigh a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised but pleased to see that the first issue she talked about was valuing the economic contribution of family caregiving.

This issue is eternal but for too long it has been invisible and marginalized: at best, sentimentalized, at worst, scorned. Our the modern generational twist makes this truly a lifelong issue. As challenging and intense as parenting is, we need to face the fact that we may be caring for aging parents for more years than we raise our children. Did I mention that my 93 and 91 year old grandparents are still alive, one on each side of the family? So even as I worry about my parents, they are each concerned about one of theirs, as well.

We need to value all of our citizens and family members, from young to old. So don't tell me to deal with the fact that I am choosing to care for my child any more than you are choosing to have parents.

Correction: post updated to reflect the fact that Lynn Harris' piece is a feature on Salon.com, not a post to Salon's Broadsheet blog.

Our "Courageous Parenting" team of experts, ready to help you move beyond "helicopter parenting"

2009-11-20T12:00:00.049-05:00

I had already been planning to announce our final roster of Courageous Parenting anthology contributors, and today turns out to be the perfect day to do so, as this week's new Time Magazine cover story by Nancy Gibbs puts an exclamation point on the idea that it's time to end the age of over-parenting. Authors including Lenore Skenazy of Free-Range Kids have been pioneers advancing this trend. Our goal with Courageous Parenting is to expand the conversation by not only providing inspiration to raise independent kids, but also the skills and strategies that parents need in order to do so.

The new Courageous Parenting anthology will be published in March 2010 in paperback and e-book form. If you sign up on MojoMom.com now, we will send you a free copy of the e-book as soon as it is released. How's that for a deal?

My highest vision for this book is that it will improve families' lives. In Courageous Parenting, we show you ways that you can become prepared for your children's growing independence, both by investing in your own personal development, as well as learning parenting tools and strategies that help you reach your parenting goals. This is parenting in the big picture: your kids will not wake up on their 18th birthdays magically transformed into capable, competent young adults. Their development is an ongoing journey! We parents need to learn how to lay that groundwork in small steps that promote increasing capability, responsibility and independence along the way.

It is such a privilege for me to work with these authors. Here is what we will be talking about in Courageous Parenting:

Introduction by me, Amy Tiemann, Ph. D., author of Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family and creator of MojoMom.com

I. The Courage to Invest in Your Own Development

The Transformative Power of Self-Care by Renee Peterson Trudeau, author of The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal: How to Reclaim, Rejuvenate and Re-Balance Your Life, creator of Personal Renewal Groups for Moms and writer for The Journey.

Tools for Career Reinvention, Kella Hatcher and Maryanne Perrin, co-founders of Balancing Professionals consulting.

II. Developing Your Courageous Parenting Style

The Courage to Let our Kids Solve Their Own Problems by Maya Frost, author of The New Global Student, creator of Smart Education Design.

The Courage to Become Your Own Parenting “Expert” by Melissa Stanton, author of The Stay-at-Home Survival Guide, writing online at StayatHomeSurvivalGuide.com and Real Life Support for Moms.

The Power of Personal Significance for Kids of All Ages by Amy McCready, founder of Positive Parenting Solutions, offering local and online parent training.

I’m Worried I Worry Too Much But How Do I Stop? by Jamie Woolf, author of Mom-in-Chief, creator of Mom-in-Chief.com

III. Real World Safety Skills for All

Kidpower: Skills for Safety, Skills for Independence by Irene van der Zande, founder of Kidpower, Teenpower, Fullpower International.

How to Say “Yes” to Your Kids’ Online Activities, by Linda Criddle, internet safety expert, author of Look Both Ways, Help Protect Your Family on the Internet, and the founder of iLookBothWays.com

IV. Finding your voice and raising it for the community

PunditMom on Mom Bloggers Raising Their Political Voices by Joanne Bamberger, author of the PunditMom blog.

Activist Parents: Challenge and Progress Through the Eyes of MomsRising.org by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, co-founder of MomsRising.org

It Takes a Motherhood by Cooper Munroe and Emily McKhann, founders of TheMotherhood.com

I have spent years developing relationships with these talented experts. Each and every one of them has changed my life in a significant way, and they have the potential to so for you, too!

Sign up now on the MojoMom.com home page to receive a free e-book of the new Courageous Parenting anthology when it comes out in March 2010!

Mojo Mom Podcast with Melissa Stanton

2009-11-13T16:00:00.007-05:00

I hope you'll listen in to this week's new episode of The Mojo Mom Podcast with my guest Melissa Stanton:

Mojo Mom continues her series of interviews with contributors to the upcoming new anthology she's editing, "Courageous Parenting." This week Amy Tiemann talks to Melissa Stanton, author of "The Stay-at-Home Survival Guide" about The Courage to Become Your Own Parenting "Expert."

You can learn even more about Melissa's work by visiting her websites, StayAtHomeSurvivalGuide.com and the Real Life Support for Moms blog.

...and, I hope you will sign up on the www.MojoMom.com home page to receive a free e-book of the new Courageous Parenting anthology when it comes out in early 2010!

I've been in the hive not in a cave... And, here is why we need Courageous Parenting

2009-11-13T14:16:00.023-05:00

It's Friday, again, already? Hard to believe. I know my blogging has suffered from infrequent-itis lately, but I wanted to tell you it's because I've been as busy as a bee in a hive, not hibernating like a bear in a cave.

What's been keeping me so busy behind the scenes? The new Courageous Parenting anthology, of course. I am working with 14 talented contributors, and now we've brought on board our intrepid editor Lacey, working with me and my loyal project manager Patty, to pull this whole thing together.

I am so grateful that I don't have to do any of this alone! Lacey and I are really getting into the heart of the book, working on individual chapters as well as creating a coherent whole.

I'll reveal the whole roster of contributors on Monday, but today I keep thinking about why we need Courageous Parenting. We live in a disproportionately fearful time, although our children and families are actually growing up in quite a safe era. We live in an overly child-centric society, yet our kids eventually need to grow up and become independent. They aren't just going to wake up as capable and competent young adults on their 18th birthdays: we need to give them skills and life experience to be prepared to be independent.

Courageous Parenting aims to give parents those skills and strategies they need to grow up independent kids, and also the courage to work on our own development. Because for our kids to feel good about leaving the nest, it helps to know that we have our own lives and are not totally dependent on motherhoood to create our identities and happiness.

I am a big fan of Sarah Haskins and her Current TV show Target Women. This week's parody is not only funny, it's a brilliant dissection of the way we are sold fear on a daily basis.

In Mojo Mom, I wrote about unpacking our guilt and examining it, looking for the true signals that indicate there is something we need to change, and discarding the rest as unhelpful baggage. It's time we do the same for worry and fear. True fear signals are vital signs to listen to, but our society has become overrun with a constant static blast of worry, much of it broadcast in the style of those Broadview Security ads in the Target Women video.

In Courageous Parenting, we aim to give you solid information, inspiration, and skills that will increase your family's capacity for joy and exploration, without so much worry getting in the way.

Sign up on the www.MojoMom.com home page to receive a free e-book of the new Courageous Parenting anthology when it comes out in early 2010!

Mojo Mom Podcast, Positive Parenting Solutions and Courageous Parenting

2009-11-06T09:00:00.005-05:00

It's been a very busy week so I haven't blogged, but I did get a new Mojo Mom Podcast ready for you. It's a good one -- Positive Parenting Solutions founder Amy McCready and I had a lot to talk about, and we really got into the heart of several key positive discipline strategies.

I hope you'll listen in:

This week Amy Tiemann continues her series of conversations with "Courageous Parenting" anthology contributors, talking to Amy McCready, founder of Positive Parenting Solutions.

Amy McCready's training gives parents valuable tools that prevent behavior problems from arising in the first place, as well as teaching parents strategies to respond constructively and effectively when problems do arise.

Today Amy and Amy delve into the substance behind the recent headline, "For Some Parents, Shouting is the New Spanking," and talk about the themes of personal belonging and significance, why this is important to kids, and how to develop these qualities within your family.

Sign up on MojoMom.com to receive a free e-book edition of "Courageous Parenting" when it is released in March 2010.

Mojo Mom Podcast, TheMotherhood.com and Courageous Parenting

2009-10-30T09:00:00.013-04:00

This week I am kicking off a series of Mojo Mom Podcast interviews with my Courageous Parenting anthology contributors. The goal of this book is to give parents the skills and strategies they need to raise independent kids, with courage and confidence rather than worry and fear.

On the podcast we can have further conversations about Courageous Parenting. The angles explored by each author are so different that there is plenty to say! Check in next week for the announcement of the final list of contributing authors.

So listen in to this week's Mojo Mom Podcast with Cooper Munroe and Emily McKhann, founders of TheMotherhood.com, the most intelligent, creative and friendly social networking site for Moms:

On The Mojo Mom Podcast, this week Mojo Mom is joined by the founders of the social networking site for Moms, TheMotherhood.com, Cooper Munroe and Emily McKhann. This dynamic duo returns to the podcast to talk about how community support can empower us all to be more courageous, and how they plan to transform a chat we had about Courageous Parnting at TheMotherhood into a chapter for the new book.

You can register to receive a free e-book copy of "Courageous Parenting" by signing up to receive the MojoMom.com newsletter and Party Kit, so stop by and sign up today!

What Paris taught me about American health care

2009-10-26T16:12:00.047-04:00

Earlier this month my family traveled to Paris together. It was the first time I had been there in thirteen years. So last time I was a newlywed, and this time I saw the city through the eyes of a Mom of a ten-year old. I am sharing this not as a travelogue, but because the experience of spending time in a country that has universal health care really struck me at this moment as we, here in the United States, are debating the future of our current flawed health care system.

Today as the Senate is taking action on their bill, I want to tell you what I learned on my recent trip, but first I want to mention that today I heard a fantastic interview on The Story With Dick Gordon [listen through their website or by iTunes podcast] about a French woman who lived in America for many years, and became an American citizen. She was married to a doctor and and worked as an administrator in his medical practice, but even so they could not afford health insurance for themselves or their employees. So when she became seriously ill, she ended up returning to France for hospitalization and stabilization. Then she came back to America, and was able to get insurance and continued her treatment here. She sees the good in the American system but also the gaping holes in coverage that can leave people untreated, which she says just would not happen in France.

On our recent trip to Paris, I was immediately struck by how family-friendly the city seemed. Our first full day there we happened upon a massive Family Sport Fun Fair, designed to promote healthy living. It was a huge festival taking place in the field next to the Eiffel Tower. The FREE festival featured dozens of activities, from a little Circus School, to boxing lessons from the police, to Aikido demonstrations, a rock climbing wall, badminton courts, wheelchair sports for all to try, and a cool obstacle course. There was even a scuba-diving tank trucked in, which you had to see to believe.

We passed on the scuba diving lessons but did just about everything else we could fit in. I was really proud of Mojo Girl as she scaled the rock-climbing wall and careened down on the huge zip line attached to the top. Here she was in a brand-new city, and she doesn't speak French, so it took all the courage she had to try out these adventurous activities. (At the rock climbing wall we waited in line for an hour and saw about 50 kids do it ahead of us, so we helped translate the instructions for her as we all observed.)

Being in Paris and doing family activities for a whole week I really felt that there is a French esprit de corps that we are lacking here, at least in American suburbia. I don't know if I am capturing the exact term the French would use, and if anyone can direct me to a more accurate term I am all ears. But I felt like the Parisians are really used to being together, in public. Instead of being in a car, for the whole week we walked, or took the Metro subway or bus. The city is crowded and we were surrounded by lots of other people the whole time. But with the exception of one jam-packed subway ride with suitcases, it wasn't uncomfortable. People didn't feel like "strangers," they felt like people. They were generally not overtly friendly but they were not intimidating either, and any time we needed assistance we were able to find it.

So when it came to Parisian kids, I got the sense that they are used to crowds. Take a look at the playground on a Wednesday afternoon when there was no school:

That is public spirit!

We spent a lot of time on the playground (roughly one park visit for every musuem or church visit) and it really and truly struck me to the the core of my heart as I looked at the diverse, playful crowd: every one of these kids has health care. And it felt different. It didn't feel like us versus them, my group versus your group, rich versus poor. It was just KIDS at the park and they all had health care.

American kids deserve no less and we need to keep pushing our leaders as they take tentative steps in the direction of providing options that will make health care for all a possibility.

How to get there is still a matter of great debate and one piece of good news is that there is more than one way to do it! I recommend the Fresh Air interview with author T. R. Reid talking about different health care strategies around the globe, also detailed in his book The Healing of America, and the Frontline special Sick Around the World.

We HAVE to figure out a better way to provide health care in the United States and ensure that everybody has basic coverage. I am afraid that our great American Individualism has become our great flaw: we assume that what we have do it here is the BEST when it's not necessarily so. When it comes to health care and related social/family issues like maternity leave, we can no longer afford to stick out like a sore thumb as the big, rich industrialized nation that has failed to provide the basic protection that we need.

Do you have experience with health care around the world that allows you to see the American system in a different light? Please tell us about it in the comment section.

Three chats on TheMotherhood.com--Join me tomorrow!

2009-10-20T09:16:00.034-04:00

I'm one of the co-hosts for a live chat on TheMotherhood.com tomorrow from 1 to 2 pm ET to discuss our new Courageous Parenting anthology. TheMotherhood.com founders Cooper Munroe and Emily McKhann are going to use this chat as the basis for their chapter and we would love to hear your thoughts about what Courageous Parenting means to you.

Their three talks this week are so great I wanted to share them all. I love Rosalind Wiseman's work. She is a colleague of my recent podcast guest Rachel Simmons on issues affecting adolescent girls.

And on Thursday, the chat about Growing Up Online will feature none other than my former Mojo Mom Podcast co-host Sheryl Grant in her new role as a Director of Social Networking for the Digital Media & Learning Competition, supported by the MacArthur Foundation.

So I encourage you to consider participating in one or more of these chats. Just sign up as a member on TheMotherhood.com and then follow the links at the chat time to join in.

TheMotherhood Talks this week!

TODAY at 1 pm ET: Rosalind Wiseman - author Queen Bees & Wannabes
We're talking about mean behavior, in our lives and our daughters' and how hurtful it can be. Join the conversation here.

Wednesday at 1 pm ET: We're writing the chapter of a book together, live.
Be a part of Amy Tiemann's anthology on Courageous Parenting! Share your life experiences, thoughts and tips! The book comes out in March 2010, and contributors receive a copy. We're talking here.

Thursday at 1 pm ET: Social Media and Our Kids
Join the MacArthur Foundation and The Online Mom to talk about our kids growing up online - your approaches, experiences and fears. We'll all take away great information and ideas on how to deal with our kids online. Join us all here.

We look forward to some GREAT conversations. See you there!

Emily and Cooper

The chats are also archived, so if you can't stop by during the live event, you can come back later to follow the links, see how the conversation unfolded, and add your comments.

Sign up for my e-newsletter on www.MojoMom.com to receive a free e-book of the new Courageous Parenting anthology when it comes out in early 2010!

What's next for Mojo Mom? A new anthology and free e-book giveaway!

2009-10-16T15:43:00.042-04:00

Mojo Mom sets her sights on new horizons....

The time has come for me to ask "What's next?" Now that Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family, has been released in its revised second edition, that book really and truly feels complete. So what's next for me?

As my daughter grows up through her tween years, I myself am moving beyond the questions of new motherhood to the next phase of discovery for my life, and my parenting questions have become more focused on her growing independence.

So I wanted you to be the first to hear that my next big project is a new anthology written on the theme of Courageous Parenting, to be released in paperback and e-book form next March. We'll explore from many angles how we can live our lives with courage rather than fear. To enable our to kids grow up and away from us, rather than hovering too closely as "helicopter parents," we may need to develop some new knowledge and skills to approach our kids' growing independence.

I am the editor of the project and I had the pleasure of inviting the anthology contributors who will serve as our expert guides along the way.

This is a really cool opportunity to bring together many of my favorite authors into one book. You've heard them as guests on The Mojo Mom Podcast: Maya Frost of The New Global Student, Melissa Stanton of The Stay-at-Home Mom Survival Guide, personal safety expert Irene van der Zande of Kidpower, and Jamie Woolf of Mom-in-Chief, to name just a few.

Next week I will announce the complete list of anthology contributors here on the Mojo Mom blog.

But in the meantime I wanted to let you know that we'll be kicking off the book announcement with a live online chat next Wednesday, October 21, from 1 to 2 pm ET on TheMotherhood.com

Cooper Munroe and Emily McKhann are the co-founders of TheMotherhood.com and they'll be writing a Courageous Parenting chapter based on this chat, which will bring in their community members and I hope, YOU.

All you have to do to participate is to sign up as a user on TheMotherhood.com and then click on this link at the chat time to join in:

Courageous Parenting: We're Writing the Book Chapter Here!

You can drop by any time between 1 to 2 pm ET to add your voice to this conversation and tell us, what does Courageous Parenting mean to you?

There is one more really exciting thing to tell you about the anthology: thanks to the gift of modern technology, I can offer every member of the MojoMom.com community a free copy of the e-book version of Courageous Parenting. By signing up to receive the free Mojo Mom Party Kit and Quiz on MojoMom.com, you'll also receive an invitation to claim a copy of the e-book when it comes out. New people who sign up to join the MojoMom.com community before the book is released will also be eligible. This is my way of saying thank you for your interest in my work. Your support has meant a lot over the years as I have grown into a writer!

Mojo Mom Podcast and Remodeling Motherhood

2009-10-16T09:00:00.010-04:00

We're experimenting with a new show format on The Mojo Mom Podcast, focusing on one segment to give us more time for our expert guest interviews.

I am excited about this week's show. My guest Kristin Maschka has written an important new book that explains the big picture of motherhood in our current society, illuminating the structural level, as well as the ways we can improve our lives on an individual level.

Listen to the podcast now:

This week's Mojo Mom Podcast guest Kristin Maschka is a great person to help kick off this new format, because Mojo Mom and Kristin sure have a lot to talk about. Kristin is a past president of the national advocacy group Mothers & More, a successful businessperson, and the author of the new book "This Is Not How I Thought It Would Be: Remodeling Motherhood to Get the Lives We Want Today."

So tune in to learn how you can put more energy into all the facets of your identity, and find out how Mothers & More helped Amy Tiemann take a step forward on the path that eventually led her to write "Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family."

You can learn more about Kristin Maschka's work and sign up to receive her free "remodeling tools" at RemodelingMotherhood.com

Is savoir faire the French version of mojo?

2009-10-14T11:43:00.018-04:00

Lightbulb moment today: savoir faire just might be the French version of mojo.

I am going to check out Women, Work & the Art of Savoir Faire: Business Sense & Sensibility, the new book by Mireille Guiliano, who is a successful businessperson--the former President and CEO of Cliquot, Inc.--in addition to being famous for writing French Women Don't Get Fat.

Here is her interview discussing "How to Savor Your Life" on The Today Show:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Jim & Pam's adorable "Plan C"

2009-10-09T13:24:00.029-04:00

I am a huge fan of The Office, so I watched Jim & Pam's wedding episode with great anticipation last night. They did a brilliant job with it, and I was surprised to even find a Mojo Mom connection.

[Spoiler alert, show details to follow. You can watch it online here.]

I've talked for a long time about how in motherhood we set ourselves up for disappointment by making such a big deal about pregnancy and birth, while not planning much for what happens next after we actually become parents. As new mothers, we can get caught up in the "big day" just like brides focusing on a magical wedding, rather than the rest of their lives as a married couple.

Fanfare, parties, how can the day after, when real life begins, and goes on and on, live up to that?

Of course, the tension between expectation and reality also shows up on the Big Day itself. We see Pam break down into tears as her wonderfully nutty family and friends turned her wedding day spiral out of control into something less than the perfect fantasy she imagined. Heck, even her perfect fiancee Jim spilled the beans about Pam's pregnancy, much to grandma Meemaw's disapproval.

So as Jim comforts Pam in the Sunday School room before the ceremony, he pulls out his "Plan C," and they run away. Just as the guests wonder whether they've called it off, Pam and Jim return to the church to go through with the ceremony, which gets further hijacked when the wedding party springs the YouTube "boogie down the aisle" procession dance on them. Rather than getting mad, Pam and Jim take it in stride, smiling at each other and making classic "Office faces" across the church. Pam looks truly happy and relaxed for a change, even as the procession gets sillier, with Kevin knocking over the candles with his Kleenex-box shoes, Andy using a walker to support his splits-bruised scrotum, and Dwight getting carried away and accidentally kick-box kicking bridesmaid Isabel in the face.

Through intercutting scenes, we see why Pam is able to laugh it off: Turns out that Jim had "Maid of the Mist" boat tickets in his pocket in case they needed to escape. They went off by themselves to get married, had their perfect moment alone by the waterfalls, then came back to go through with the ceremony their family wanted.

The wedding weekend was totally crazy, but they made it work. The wedding scenes by Niagra Falls were truly gorgeous and romantic. Pam and Jim looked like they were in perfect bliss together, even soaking wet! The church ceremony started out ridiculously but ended well. I think the tears in the actors' eyes were real (especially Steve Carell's proud papa look) as this beloved couple finally got the happy ending they deserved.

As Jim said, the boat was Plan C, the church was plan B, and plan A was, "marrying her a long long time ago, pretty much the day I met her." It took five years, but his patience finally paid off.

Throughout our lives, we have to make compromises to keep our family and friends happy. Real life is crazy, and things don't go as planned, but if we can let go of our perfect fantasies, and accept a reality that includes Plan B, Plan C, and a lot of laughter, we can write our own happy endings.

Mojo Mom Podcast will return next Friday with Remodeling Motherhood

2009-10-09T10:00:00.014-04:00

I'm back from my two-week break, which I truly needed. And yes, I did recharge my mental and physical batteries.

Just wanted to let you know that The Mojo Mom Podcast will return next Friday, and we have a great guest lined up. I know I'll have a lot to talk about with Kristin Maschka, past president of Mothers & More, and author of the brand-new book This is Not How I Thought It Would Be: Remodeling Motherhood to Get the Lives We Want Today.

So I'll be talking with Kristin next week. In the meantime I encourage you to visit Kristin's Remodeling Motherhood site. She has a lot of great free tools to share with you.

Mojo Mom Podcast with The Curse of the Good Girl

2009-09-25T17:00:00.004-04:00

This week I had the pleasure of welcoming Rachel Simmons to The Mojo Mom Podcast. You've probably heard about Rachel's work with girls and her previous book, Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, and now she has a brand-new book, The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence. I highly recommend her work, especially if you have a daughter; but even if you don't, Rachel's insights shed interesting light on adult female interactions. And if you have sons, it can be helpful to understand what is going on behind the scenes in girl culture, too.

Listen to the podcast now:

Amy and Patty talk about upcoming developments in Amy's work as Mojo Mom, which will be more fully announced in October.

Then Mojo Mom interviews Rachel Simmons, a respected author, educator and coach who helps girls develop their authentic selves. Rachel's new book is "The Curse of the Good Girl," which fascinated Amy as a guide to helping young women develop, and a reminder that grown-up women may still have some relationship skills to learn, especially when it comes to dealing with conflict.

Two weeks to be Amy rather than Mojo Mom

2009-09-23T09:48:00.018-04:00

I am writing today to declare that I am taking a two-week break from blogging, to regroup as Amy as well as Mojo Mom.

I am carving out some time to focus on my family (yay!) and I need to unplug from the internet and get back in touch with the here and now. Blogging takes time to write, of course, and also involves extensive immersion in online news, which to be honest is starting to melt my brain. I feel like I've become porous and vulnerable to being really upset about the news stories such as Jaycee Dugard and Annie Le. This is genuinely important news but I feel myself becoming too porous, taking in too much, and taking it personally.

As a writer there is a fine line between thinking and brooding, and it's clear to me that I need some time to shake off my brooding mood, have some fun in the here and now, and be ready to redirect and get ready to launch a new Mojo Mom project in two weeks.

You can expect me to be back full-strength on the blog on Wednesday, October 5th, and you'll be hearing a little bit from me before then, as I will have a new podcast with author and educator Rachel Simmons this Friday. We'll discuss her new book The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence, which I highly recommend to you as a parenting and personal resource. As I was reading her book, I found that the skills Rachel talks about for girls apply to us, too.

It feels like a relief to unplug for a bit. I encourage you to think about creating an opportunity for you to reclaim your mind space and recharge your batteries, too.

HOW to raise a Free-Range Kid

2009-09-18T12:00:00.026-04:00

Last Sunday The New York Times explored the question "Why Can't She Walk to School?" looking at the modern trends that have resulted in many kids leading highly-supervised, sheltered lives. The article tells one story about a well-meaning neighbor who drove a 7-year-old girl home from a playdate only five houses down the block, on the same side of the street. We are starting to talk about these issues and how we might change, thanks in large part to the Free-Range Kids movement started by writer Lenore Skenazy. I appreciate Lenore's work and the feeling that it's time to turn things around, empowering our children to explore the world. After all, that is the work of growing up, isn't it?

However, there is an incredibly important piece to this puzzle that calls for more attention: the information and skills that parents and kids need to develop, in order to let kids experience more freedom.

I asked my mentor, Kidpower International Executive Director Irene van der Zande, to co-author a response to the NY Times piece with me. Kidpower has just celebrated its 20th anniversary, and has provided personal safety training to over a million people worldwide. I am very proud to play my part in bringing Kidpower training to my home state of North Carolina. Here are our thoughts about the vital skills component needed to raise a Free-Range Kid:

How to Raise a Free-Range Kid

The Free-Range Kids movement is making an impact, leading parents to realize that most important question they should be asking is not whether or not to allow their children to walk to school, but how to prepare their children to do so safely and successfully.

If we lock our children up too tightly in a misguided attempt to protect them, they lose out on the chance to develop the capabilities they need to grow into competent, independent young adults. However, just letting children go on their own in the hopes that they will know how to protect themselves from potential dangers puts them at unnecessary risk.

The reason that parents feel so unsafe that they are driving children home from play dates down the block is because they need better information about how to teach their kids to navigate the world independently. This is why Kidpower International has worked tirelessly for twenty years to teach personal safety skills to over one million people worldwide. Our approach is skills-based, success-based, and never uses fear as a motivation. Instead, we practice role-playing the safest choices in a wide variety of situations.

Parents tend to focus on fears of kidnapping, but there are many more common child protection issues that are related to the scenario of walking home from school: crossing guards, safe sidewalks and roads, and the significant yet often ignored issues facing millions of children who return to empty houses, where they are left unsupervised until their parents come home from work.

It is too easy to forget the downside of not letting our kids develop independent skills. Kids may be so protected from situations in which they have to say “no” to bad things that they do not have many opportunities to say “yes” to good things. What they need is plenty of opportunity to practice, little steps at a time, in situations that are safe to explore.

Sleepovers, summer camp, kid-organized sports games, experiences with babysitters, visiting family, and community service outings can all be steps to independence if we give our kids the skills to handle these activities without hovering over them.

When we keep our eyes on the future, the path toward independence becomes clearer. When you look at a ten-year old girl, you can picture her in six years, getting into a car to go on a date with a classmate whom her parents might not know well. This is actually a high-stakes situation, one in which she will need to be able to assertively state what she wants, be prepared to take care of herself, and even be ready to ask for help if things go awry.

We want her to be ready for dating when that day comes, and the practice steps along the way don’t have to be scary. Independence may not look just like it did when we were kids. The days of Mom shooing kids outside to let them roam, saying, “Come home when you hear the dinner bell ring” are probably over.

But that makes it all the more important for parents to look for opportunities to practice. Parents of younger kids can teach children how to state what they want by ordering their own ice cream cone or slice of pizza. We can consciously make a plan to teach our kids how to walk to a friend’s house or school, rather than being complacent in our habit of driving everywhere. We can preview the route, walk with them at first, and talk about ways they could get help if they needed it. Then we can take the brave and conscious step of letting them do it on their own.

We will never eliminate uncertainty from life, but there is an answer to that worried parent’s question, “How can you argue against ‘just in case’?”

We can tell children and ourselves, “We are going to practice until you are ready to do this on your own!”

Irene van der Zande is the Executive Director of Kidpower International. Amy Tiemann, Ph.D., is the author of "Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family" and Center Director of Kidpower North Carolina.

Mojo Mom Podcast with Neat Freak Professional Organizer Perri Kersh

2009-09-18T09:00:00.012-04:00

The Mojo Mom Podcast welcomes friend-of-the-show expert guest Perri Kersh to share her her professional organizing tips that are especially useful during this month of Back to School transition.

Here's the podcast:

It's time for fall cleaning. Amy and this week's co-host Patty Ayers talk about letting go of clutter, as Patty has done in a major way by moving to Mexico and embracing a life rich in experiences that is not weighed down by possessions.

Then Mojo Mom turns to "Neat Freak" professional organizer Perri Kersh for her tips for creating a landing pad for your family's belongings. As school gets into full swing it's a good time of year to look at the flow of informaiton and "stuff" into your household, and the small step of creating a landing pad can help with that process.

Listen to the podcast now:

Kim Clijsters, Comeback Mom of the Decade!

2009-09-14T08:52:00.015-04:00

I am so inspired by Kim Clijsters and her remarkable comeback run to win her second U. S. Open tennis title. After retiring two and a half years ago, she's not only bounced back from injuries and burnout, she's the mother of an adorable toddler. She's the first Mom to claim a major tennis title since Evonne Goolagong won at Wimbeldon way back in 1980. During the tournament's rain delays, they replayed parts of Clijsters' 1999 match with Serena Williams, and it was evident that with her comeback, Clijsters is now playing better than ever.

I had to post this photo, because it's amazing, and also because it was taken by one of my former high school students, Josh Haner, who now works for The New York Times. I am proud of his stellar career...and more than a little jealous that he got to cover the tennis finals. But thanks to him we now have this indelible image to mark Kim Clijsters' victory.

Whether you are a tennis player or not, it's worth thinking about how Kim Clijsters' unconventional and highly successful comeback can inspire us all.

Mojo Mom Podcast with Michele Borba's Big Book of Parenting Solutions

2009-09-11T09:00:00.020-04:00

This week I am excited to welcome Dr. Michele Borba to The Mojo Mom Podcast to discuss a wide range of parenting issues, as she introduces her latest parenting resource, The Big Book of Parenting Solutions. You've probably seen Dr. Borba on one of her many Today Show segments. I really appreciate her thoughtful, experienced, research-based approach to child-rearing and developing parent leadership. My favorite book of her previous works is 12 Simple Secrets Real Moms Know.

Listen to the podcast now:

Amy has been writing on her Mojo Mom Blog about the range of experiences students should have before they get to college. She and Patty Ayers talk about the important balance between exploration and knowing where you are going.

Then Mojo Mom welcomes leading parenting expert Dr. Michele Borba to the podcast. Michele Borba is the author of 23 books and a regular contributor to The Today Show. Her latest release is "The Big Book of Parenting Solutions: 101 Answers to Your Everyday Challenges and Wildest Worries." This encylopedic guide is organized by topic to give parents the specific solutions they need to address a wide range of issues for kids ages 3 to 13.

Illegal school strip searches in Iowa

2009-09-09T13:26:00.014-04:00

This is the first week of school for millions of students across the country. I wish I had a happy Back to School blog post, but something timely, important and disturbing has just come up. Lynn Harris' Broadsheet post alerted me to an illegal strip search by school officials at Atlantic High School in Iowa. This blatantly illegal search was done on five high school girls in an effort to find $100 that went missing during gym class. You can read more about the case in The Des Moines Register's reporting (link via Pandagon before it got to Broadsheet).

For once I agree with parents bringing in lawyers. Even if someone had stolen $100, that is no reason to strip search one, much less five students. And the Supreme Court has already ruled against unreasonable school strip searches in a case earlier this year (see analyis on SCOTUS blog), so the school is truly beyond the pale. Even I knew that from reading the news, and I currently do not work for a school? How stupid and uninformed can a school be?

I am preparing my daughter for many contingencies in life, but I absolutely hate to think that it's necessary to teach her how to resist an unlawful strip search by school officials. I don't think that would happen at our school but it's absolutely unacceptable for it to happen anywhere.

The quote that disturbed me most: "The older sister of one of the girls said the teen took off her bra and underwear after specifically asking if she had to do so. She complied because she did not want to cause a scene, the sister said."

Schools have such inherent authority authority over students that when they misuse their power, it's very hard for students to resist complying with an unreasonable request. I really hate to think that we need to train our kids to say, "I'm not doing anything until my parent are here and I've spoken to a laywer," but in these cases it's necessary, in order to get schools in line with the laws and precedents that are already on the books.

I have been planning to write about Kidpower, the personal safety organization I am affiliated with, and I really need to fast-track that post. This case shows that we need to teach young people individual personal safety skills, but also to get all of society on the same page--a safe page--when it comes to these issues.

Should college be more than an exploratory playground?

2009-09-08T18:42:00.028-04:00

This week's Yoder & Son column "Is It Too Soon to Think about a Career?" struck a nerve with me. In this weekly Wall Street Journal column, Steve Yoder and his son Isaac have intergenerational dialogues about financial issues. As Isaac heads off to college, he wonders whether he should already be thinking about a potential career path. His father balks as he wonders:

Have I been giving Isaac bum guidance? I've never pressured him to think of college as vocational training. If anything, I've encouraged Isaac not to fixate on a career goal too early. "Study broadly," I told him as autumn approached. "That's the great gift of a liberal-arts campus."

Even as Steve contemplates the fun of choosing among classes such as "The City in Europe, 1100-1789" and "Masculinity in Modern Japanese Fiction and Film," he also begins to wonder:

Am I setting Isaac up for unrealistic expectations about what life holds after graduation? Karen and I will be spending well over $100,000 to send him to school in the midst of a high national unemployment rate. Should we expect Isaac to identify some plan for how he will recoup that investment in the job world?

Personally, I think we need to move beyond the era that viewed college as a liberal arts educational playground. I don't necessarily think that first-year students need to have a fixed career goal in mind, or even know for sure what they will major in, they should have a clue why they are there. Why pay $20,000 to $50,000 a year to grow up? Why not travel or work for a year or two before heading to college, earning money and perhaps even accumulating some academic credits along the way? These days it seems utterly crazy to go into debt to pay for a college education before you have a solid idea of what your educational goals are.

I was as green as they came my first year of college. My roommate had graduated from a Catholic girls' school in Providence, but she spent a year in India before starting college. As a result, she had much more of a clue about the world than I did. Back in the late 80's, though, you could graduate with any major and most likely find a job. But these days, a job is no longer a given. Grads need to have solid, practical skills and experience that will make them stand out as potential new hires.

I turned out just fine, finding a true interest in Neuroscience my sophomore year that led me to a grad-school scholarship. It does seem ironic now that here I am, living a writer's life, something many a liberal arts major could relate to. It turns out that there was no academic roadmap or ladder to predict the path I ultimately carved out for myself. Each step I made the best decision I could, and learned something valuable along the way. Importantly, I was also willing to make significant detours from a laid-out plan when necessary. I completed my Ph. D. in Neuroscience, followed my love for education to teach high school for three years, then channeled my teaching mojo into writing after my daughter arrived. I also discovered my entrepreneurial spirit so that I could create my own job, something I wish all undergrads would learn about, especially women. You could be a layer, a vet, or a farmer: you never know when you'll need to take your career into your own hands.

But even though I've seen for myself many different ways that life can work out just fine, I still worry about today's new college students, many of whom seem even more sheltered and inexperienced than I was. When the time comes, I am going to encourage my daughter to question the typical "4X4" academic ladder of 4 years of high school straight into 4 years of college. I've been truly inspired by Maya Frost's excellent new book, The New Global Student, that shows just how much you can accomplish (and how much money you can save) by exploring a whole variety of educational options, with an emphasis on international education.

She's been blogging on these issues, including "Grad School Won’t Turn Clueless Kids Into Self-Directed Adults" which takes a look at what happens after college graduation if students don't become internally motivated, directed and self-reliant. I am not saying that the Yoders are headed for this situation (Isaac sounds like a pretty smart guy) but I bet they'd be interested in reading what she has to say.

I know there is a lot of room for debate on these issues, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

The Mojo Mom Podcast returns with NurtureShock

2009-09-04T09:00:00.015-04:00

It's hard to believe that we're kicking off the fifth season of The Mojo Mom Podcast. It's been such a rewarding project and I am happy it's time to start the new season. This fall we have some big changes and a great guest lineup developing.

Listen to the podcast now:

On this week's show:

We wish a fond farewell to co-host Sheryl Grant who is starting grad school full time. Amy welcomes her new co-host Patty Ayers. Amy and Patty have worked together behind the scenes for many years and are excited to talk about current issues together on the podcast. In this episode they talk about Patty's empty-nester move to Mexico (you can see photos on Patty's blog) and then discuss the controversy that erupted this week about a breastfeeding mother who was fired by the Totes/Isotoner corporation for taking "unauthorized" breaks to pump her milk.

Then Mojo Mom talks to Po Bronson, co-author of NurtureShock: New Thinking about Children. In this important new book, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman bring to light new scientific findings that can change the way we view child development.

I am really excited about NurtureShock. You can read my full review. The book has reactivated the curious scientist in me. As Po Bronson says on his NurtureShock website, "The central premise of this book is that many of modern society’s strategies for nurturing children are in fact backfiring – because key twists in the science have been overlooked." It's this new lens that interests me most, beyond any specific findings, which will of course keep evolving. I want to see us sharpen our ability to pick parenting strategies that work, based on a willingness to question conventional wisdom and take new findings into account--as well as relying on our own parental common sense and confidence that we know our children. I look forward to the ongoing conversation that will be sparked by NurtureShock.

Email response from Totes/Isotoner

2009-09-01T10:16:00.009-04:00

Here's the response email I received from Totes/Isotoner's customer affairs department. I am not satisfied. They have a customer relations nightmare on their hands here and I hope they are more proactive and convincing in their defense. The Ohio court rulings seemed shaky at best, full of twisted logic. I wish we knew more of the facts of the case because now it sounds like she said/they said.

Dear Amy,

Thank you for your note and concerns regarding the Ohio Supreme Court Ruling regarding the termination of a temporary employee.

As a matter of policy, totes»ISOTONER is not able to provide specific
information surrounding the employment circumstances of any employee. What we can share is that based on the circumstances involved with this specific temporary employee, the totes»ISOTONER employment decision has been supported by the Butler County Court of Common Pleas, the Ohio Court of Appeals for the 12th District and the Ohio Supreme Court. And while we cannot specifically address the Ohio Supreme Court Ruling, we can share several of our workplace practices:

· totes»ISOTONER absolutely supports employees, whether full-time, part-time, or temporary, who are also nursing mothers.

· totes»ISOTONER does provide time for nursing mothers to pump their breast milk and many employees have taken advantage of this accommodation. In the case presented to the Supreme Court, we did provide this accommodation.

· totes»ISOTONER is a company committed to supporting our employees. Because females account for approximately 70% of our work force, we are very attuned to and supportive of the needs of working mothers.

Again, thank you for your note and expressing your views on this issue. We take great pride in our culture of being a family oriented company, and can only indicate there were other factors involved in this particular situation which led to the company’s decision in this case. We appreciate your having been a customer in the past and hope you will reconsider your decision in this regard going forward.

Sincerely,

Vickie Fightmaster
Human Resources Manager
totes»ISOTONER

My complaint email to Totes/Isotoner customer affairs

2009-08-31T13:51:00.001-04:00

Here is what I wrote to complain to Totes/Isotoner. It's not Shakespeare but I think
that any short email in each person's own words will help make an impression. I'll let you know what I hear back from them.

When I get the corporate address I plan to mail my favorite Isotoner
socks back to the CEO.

to: customeraffairs@totes.com

Dear Totes/Isotoner,

I have bought your products for as long as I can remember; gloves,
socks, slippers, umbrellas. I am sorry to tell you that I can no
longer buy your products now that I have learned about the Totes/
Isotoner firing of a breastfeeding employee. I know this happened
several years ago, but of course the news of the Ohio Supreme Court
decision has brought it to the attention of the blogosphere and
motherhood and anti-discrimination action groups. The discussion
boards I participate in have been absolutely on fire with outrage over
your action, and we are watching for your response.

Who do you think buys your products? I am sure it's women and mothers
buying for their whole families. You owe all of us an apology, you
owe LaNisa Allen a job, and you owe all your employees better
treatment. Wouldn't it be easier to make reasonable accommodations
for nursing mothers, rather than firing them? In addition to being
the right thing to do, of course!

Please send me the corporate contact information for your CEO, so that
I may register my concern directly and request a reply.

Signed, a former customer,

Amy Tiemann
[address]

And we wonder why more mothers don't breastfeed?

2009-08-31T11:03:00.018-04:00

I just have a few minutes to blog this morning, but wanted to make sure you had all seen the story that had people talking all weekend.

Lactate on your own time, lady is an important Broadsheet post that tells the news of a woman who was fired by Totes/Isotoner for taking "unauthorized work breaks" to pump her breastmilk.

!

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that Totes/Isotoner could legally fire breastfeeding mother LaNisa Allen [corrected a mistake that attributed a quote from the lower court decision to the Supreme Court] on the grounds that she was fired for insubordination rather than because she was breastfeeding. Overall, a complete head-scratcher. How did this come to firing in the first place? It seems crazy.

This situation bothers me on so many levels: 1. That an employer would be so adversarial and insist on the outmoded "unencumbered worker" model of business. How about accommodating breastfeeding rather than firing her? 2. That the laws as currently written don't protecting employees from this kind of discrimination and 3. That the court ruling didn't see this as breastfeeding discrimination.

This may need to change at the legislative level rather than through the courts, but it needs to change! We need to put the word out about this case. I will report on any activist opportunities that come up around this situation.

It also helps explains why nursing, employed Moms are satisfied to have any spartan accommodations set up for them, like the spartan closet in the women's bathroom at IBM where the mothers of The Milk Memos (a good book, by the way) turned into their "pumping palace." But isn't it time that we deserve better? If breastfeeding is not protected by employment law, then it's time to specifically write it in to Federal statues.

Update:

Journal News (Ohio) reporting, written before the Supreme Court decision was rendered, gives more details of LaNisa Allen's expereince, including her work schedule. I don't question her need to take breaks, but some letter writes on Salon.com wondered what her exact schedule was.

Totes customer affairs email: customeraffairs@totes.com

Updated to correct an earlier misattributed quote, 2:00 pm ET.

Triangle MomsRising calls on Senator Kay Hagan and Rep. Brad Miller

2009-08-28T12:08:00.029-04:00

This week, our Triangle MomsRising group made office visits to Senator Kay Hagan's staff and Representative Brad Miller in Raleigh. It was my first Senate office visit and I was blown away by the powerful health care stories that our members shared.

It definitely made an impression on Senator Hagan's staff that many of us brought our kids along to the meeting. Just getting in the door through security was quite a task, but worth it, to make the point that our kids are their constituents, too. They welcomed our kids, which I really appreciated.

Our large MomsRising group made an impression on Senator Kay Hagan's staff.

The members of our group, ranging from babies and kids, to moms of all ages, and a concerned male ally, told striking stories that underscored why we need health care for all families. We shared our own experiences: a premature baby whose life was saved by expensive medical care; a baby born with a condition that required a breadwinner to quit her job, lose her insurance, and sell her home to pay medical bills; Moms as small business owners wanting the independent contractors who work with us to be able to buy insurance; the mother of a 27-year-old college graduate who sees her son working two jobs yet not provided health insurance; concerns about public health, with many serious illnesses going untreated; spouses with pre-existing conditions that mean that we are at risk for losing our health insurance, which would be disastrous.

As we went around the room, telling our individual stories, tears welled up in my eyes, with sadness and anger that we are not meeting the goal of providing basic health care for all. I truly believe that one of the best things about becoming a parent is that you develop empathy--you realize how any family could be vulnerable to losing health care and encounter disastrous consequences under our current system, and even if it doesn't happen to me, as a mother I find it completely unacceptable that it could happen to another family.

Senator Hagan's staff listened attentively and talked to us for quite a while, saying that our leaders really need to hear from us about our strong and unwavering support for health care reform. They asked us to talk about facts with people in our daily lives, and to counter myths that are taking a lot of the politicians' time away from the core debate. They asked us to think carefully about the political process and what compromises we might find acceptable in order to get any kind of reform passed now--the ongoing strategic question of whether to accept half a loaf now and get the rest later, or to go for the whole enchilada with no compromises.

Nine MomsRising activists continued on to meet with Congressman Brad Miller

Five moms and four kids continued the day's activism by calling on Congressman Brad Miller. Beth Messersmith, one of the intrepid Triangle MomsRising leaders, said that "Congressman Miller was pleased to meet with us and our children and glad to hear our stories. He seemed truly happy that we had brought the kids. He answered all of our questions with detailed information, and assured us that he was committed to making this happen. He truly seems to understand that this is a personal and moral issue for America's families."

So thank you goes out to our Triagle MomsRising leaders who pulled together these important visits that inspired me to do more outreach to all my representatives in Washington D. C. I hope that we will call on Senator Richard Burr, who is "strongly opposed" to President Obama's plan. This visit made me realize that it's important to let all our elected leaders know how we feel, and demand accountability for their stances, whether or not their views agree with ours. I don't want any Congressperson to be able to say, "All the calls I have received are opposing health care reform."

I was heartened to learn in a recent Fresh Air interview with T. R. Reid, author of the new book The Healing of America, that in Taiwan, when the country recently decided to overhaul their health care system, the issue became so important to the citizenry that both the conservative and liberal parties wanted to take credit for making it happen. Thinking about that during our visits to Raleigh inspired me to keep spreading our message forward, to not give up until we have health care for all families in the United States.

Cross-posted to the MomsRising.org blog.

Back to school blast-off!

2009-08-24T14:30:00.014-04:00

It's Back to School day for my family, and I think we are all breathing a sigh of relief, including Mojo Girl. She is so active that she missed the daily interaction with lots of friends in her classroom.

I feel a renewed sense of appreciation for having six hours of work time that allows me some breadth and depth of effort, not just a total rush that requires me to squeeze things in two and a half hours of summer camp. In fact, it reminds me a lot of how I felt when my daughter first went off to preschool and I had about two hours to write, which felt like an incredible luxury compared to the mere minutes I'd have to steal before then.

I have the luxury of working around a variable childcare schedule. I feel for those parents who have to find a way to work 9 to 5 all summer long. In nearby Wake County, the school system is tweaking their weekly schedule to have kids get out an hour earlier on Wednesdays, and staying 10 minutes later on the other four days. What a nightmare for many parents to find a way to cover that one hour, once a week. It's an unwieldy gap: too long to leave unaddressed, but too short to really merit a new childcare solution.

This schedule change was done to give teachers an extra hour of planning time each week, but I think that the practical impact on families should be given much more consideration when these kinds of changes are made.

I'd be interested in reading your comments about other scheduling situations that might seem like a small adjustment, but create a big inconvenience for parents.

And speaking of schedules, *ding* my work time is just about up for today. On my way out the door I'll recommend Lisa Belkin's latest Motherlode Blog post on the NY Times, "How to Send Your Son Off to College." Almost guaranteed to bring a tear to your eye, no matter how young or old your kids are!

And finally, a big shout-out to all the Moms who are going back to school themselves this fall. I wish you all well, including my friend Katherine who is starting law school today. You go, Mojo Moms!

What I want for my birthday....

2009-08-18T21:01:00.006-04:00

I have to get a copy of this poster! Hat tip to PunditMom, thanks for sharing!

(click image to expand)

What is your defining question?

2009-08-18T13:49:00.013-04:00

This summer I really had to take some time off to bounce back from the burnout I felt after the new Mojo Mom had been released. It had been such an intense year, when I had to push forward no matter what, to meet my book deadlines. Once I crossed the finish line, including dozens of interviews to launch the book, my mind and body went a little numb.

So this summer I slowed way down and gave myself the luxury of pondering the defining question, "What do I want?" At first I just wanted to rest! Then I allowed myself a good long time to consider different potential sources of inspiration.

Those thoughts are still with me, but they are now coalescing around a second defining question, "What am I willing to commit to?" That's a serious one, as I don't want to spread myself too thinly and I don't want to make promises I can't keep.

When I am ready to share big news this fall, I will announce it first through my e-newsletter, so I hope you will sign up on MojoMom.com to receive the newsletter and Mojo Mom Party Kit.

I am curious to find out what is your defining question right now. As you face transition, whether it is back to school, off to school for the first time, kids leaving for college, new job, new interest, or milestone birthday, is there one question that is helping point you toward your next step?

If you need a gentle nudge to take a step back and look at your life, I highly recommend Natalie Angier's article in today's New York Times, Brain Is a Co-Conspirator in a Vicious Stress Loop. It sounds scary, but it boils down to the necessity of giving yourself a chance to stop digging deeper when you find yourself in a rut!

T-minus-seven: Back to School countdown!

2009-08-17T15:10:00.024-04:00

So, is anyone else thoroughly sick of summer "break" yet? We've had our fair share of fun, but twelve weeks off from school is a real momentum killer for work-from-home parents, an expensive childcare challenge for work-outside-the-home parents, and possibly a special kind of craziness for fulltime caregivers.

My daughter even says she's ready for school to start. We've been to see friends...to see family...we've visited a lake...she joined swim team...she did camp...we've just about exhausted the library...we've played with friends who we could find at home.

We thrive on the school schedule and we're now floundering without that structure! And her mind is so active, such a wonderful sponge, that I have a real challenge helping her keep her time filled all by myself. Mentally and physically, if I have to run her around all day until she's tired, I will collapse first! I am in awe of the fact that I basically did this for her first three years as a stay-at-home Mom, something I was clearly not cut out for in the super-long run.

I know it's not my job to keep Mojo Girl entertained 24/7, but she would sure like me to try! Only once did I manage to guide her to "boredom Nirvana," when she decided to stop asking to watch TV in order to make a diorama to show how people live in Japan. That was pretty cool for one evening.

If I worked in an office, I would have had to arrange firmer childcare plans. We tried an experiment of having no summer camp in August, after the comedy camp that my daughter was signed up for was cancelled.

Big mistake. As much as we love each other, we are getting on each others' nerves and starting to drive each other nuts. As a college town, Chapel Hill is a particularly boring place to be in August.

The good news is that school starts next week--ridiculously early by some people's standards, but it works for me. And, thankfully, this week I managed to sign her up for clay camp in the afternoons, which provides structure to our day and guarantees that she'll spend time with other kids and one of her favorite teachers each day.

Do you love or hate summer vacation, and how are you keeping busy if your kids are home?

Ann Douglas' interview with Mojo Mom and more

2009-08-14T16:18:00.012-04:00

Warm thanks go out to parenting expert Ann Douglas for including me and Mojo Mom in her group interview on her Yahoo! Parenting blog, along with Jenna McCarthy, The Parent Trip, and Jen Singer, author of Stop Second-Guessing Yourself: The Toddler Years.

I loved the way Ann thoughtfully wove the conversation together on a wide range of topics, from how motherhood changes for each generation, to what policy makers don't understand about mothers.

Check it out for yourself:

Part 1: The Motherhood Manual(s): Motherhood, babies, and advice

Part 2: Motherhood convo: our moms, ourselves, and mothers of the future

Mojo Mom, back in the blogosphere

2009-08-04T12:39:00.014-04:00

A tranquil mind is a beautiful thing...

Hey Mojo Mom blog readers, I am back from an unexpectedly long break. It turned out that what I really needed this summer was a vacation, and a news holiday and that turned into a break from blogging. With the kind of blog I write, it's hard to post without reading or watching any news. If the President of France can take three weeks off, I figure the world can live without me posting for that long.

While I was away I went online a few times, but it didn't feel good. In just a few minutes I would inevitably come across the most horrendous stories, even sticking to the NY Times and Salon.com. So I allowed my break to extend one day more, then another....

I found that what my mind really wanted to do is read, for pure enjoyment. So I have written several new book reviews in the past few weeks.

I'll chime in with more details and insights shortly but just wanted to plug myself back in to the blogosphere.

A motherhood memoir that blew me away

2009-07-10T10:13:00.013-04:00

In my last blog post I spelled out my reservations about "female confessional journalism." I don't like writing that strikes me as oversharing without illumination, and it really bugs me when women are limited to sharing childish mommy stories.

But last night, while browsing Amazon.com, looking at new summer releases, I came across Alice Eve Cohen's memoir, What I Thought I Knew. I downloaded it to my Kindle, and once I started reading her story, I didn't want to put it down. She shares her experience of the chaos that took over her settled life at age 44 when, after experiencing health problems and told she was menopausal and infertile, she discovered that she was actually six months pregnant.

I don't want to reveal too much about what happens next, because a reader should experience the story unfolding page by page, as Alice is told new "certainties" that are dashed again and again. What I Thought I Knew is the perfect title for this memoir, and Alice writes out ever-evolving lists of her own feelings, what her doctors have told her about her condition, and her baby's prognosis.

Cohen breaks through any reservations I have about personal narrative. Once I started, I didn't want to put the book down, so I read it in one evening. What differentiates Cohen's writing for me is that she does not use distancing techniques of humor, irony, or snark. She is incredibly straightforward and pulls us into her experience, sharing her most intimate experiences in a way that illuminates the choice to enter motherhood, along with family dynamics, depression, the fallibility of the medical system, the value of community and professional support, and ultimately, the mystery of grace.

Women's confessional journalism is a problem for motherhood writers

2009-07-03T10:33:00.024-04:00

Broadsheet on Salon.com asks the question today whether "female confessional journalism" harms women. I feel that it is harmful at worst, extremely limiting at best, especially when it comes to motherhood. Unless you want to write about being a "Bad Mommy," your husband's affair, or peeing in a diaper, women's confessional journalism is a problem for motherhood writers! Read my Salon.com letter for more of my perspective.

Watch today's rerun of The Secret Lives of Moms on Oprah to see an example of why this oversharing-yet-not-very-thoughtful trend drives me nuts. [I blogged about that episode when it first aired in April.] It's a fine line, because I believe in honesty about motherhood, yet if you are going to share intimate details of your family life you'd better earn it by creating a true insight. I thought the Oprah episodes back in 2002 with Naomi Wolf really did earn it ("What Your Mother Never Told You About Motherhood and "What Mothers Honestly Think About Motherhood"). In fact, those episodes helped inspire me to write Mojo Mom, and at the time they created controversy about telling hard truths about motherhood. Now we spew all sorts of personal details yet it feels like blowing off steam with gallows humor that keeps us on a juvenile level and prevents us from looking deeply at what motherhood means to our lives.

Why are we surprised that politicians cheat? And why we should care.

2009-07-02T10:33:00.064-04:00

Cheating bothers me, a lot. But beyond the actual marital infidelity we've seen from politicians such as John Edwards, John Ensign, and Mark Sanford, what really bothers me is lying, hypocrisy, hubris, narcissism, privilege, and paternalism. In short, the idea that the rules that apply to the rest of us don't apply to them. This raises the "private" behavior of these elected public leaders (current, former, and aspirational) to the level of something that we should all care about. After all, these men are making the laws that govern our lives.

I believe that the behavior of these individual men reflects a larger belief system that underlies powerful political philosophies, namely the conservative movement. The neo-conservatives of the 1950's and beyond, including Bush-era leaders such as Paul Wolfowitz, followed the ideas of Leo Strauss, "a philosopher who believed that the elite should use deception, religious fervor and perpetual war to control the ignorant masses." Many of these leaders who profess a strong belief in conventional morality and religion actually believe it's an important way to control the masses, but once again, the rules do not apply to them, the elites. (And yes, among Democrats, we don't always do better. I am still mad at Bill Clinton for behaving like an undisciplined, privileged idiot, and for exponentially compounding his problems by lying.)

We can see this hypocrisy again in the recent reported instance in which anti-abortion politicians paid for an abortion when he caused a pregnancy. Wealthy, elite men have always found ways to procure illegal abortions when necessary in their own lives; it is women, especially poor women, who must be punished for living with the consequences of their actions under anti-abortion laws.

For a truly revealing example of this dynamic of selective morality in a larger context, which relates directly to Mark Sanford and John Ensign, listen to Jeff Sharlet's interview with Terry Gross on yesterday's episode of Fresh Air. (Well worth listening to, whether you download the podcast or sit in front of your computer to listen. It's the second segment in the show.) Sanford and Ensign have been involved with "The Family," a secretive, powerful fundamentalist Christian organization that explicitly believes that they can identify God's chosen ones, elite and powerful leaders whom God wants to rule. And if you are a chosen one, you can be a murderer or dictator (such as Siad Barre in Somalia and Suharto in Indonesia) and still do God's Work. Sharlet said The Family's philosophy/theology is linked to ideas of American power; paternalistic, dangerous, and away from law and regulation. After all, if God is in charge and the hand of God directs the free market and America's imperialist adventures, who needs laws to protect us?

Think this sounds esoteric? The Family's house on C Street currently houses at least five Congressmen. The Family started the national prayer breakfast back in the 1950's, a tradition that continues to this day, accompanied week of lobbying by foreign officials (lots of defense ministers).

So yes, John Edwards, John Ensign, and Mark Sanford, I care when you start acting like Scarlett O'Hara. As Rhett Butler said, "You're like the thief who isn't the least bit sorry he stole but is terribly terribly sorry he's going to jail." Because if your political philosophy and morality applies to me, but not to you, I want no part of it.

For more on this, and why it actually does relate back to our ideas about mothers and fathers, I recommend George Lakoff's work on the Strict Father (conservative) and Nurturant Parent (liberal) models of the world. The Strict Father is an authoritarian leader whose judgment cannot be questioned. "Because I said so" works in a Strict Father household, but a Nurturant Parent model requires more explanation---and more democratic rule--than that.

Lakoff's book Don't Think of an Elephant is pretty accessible, and I recommend it. I had the chance to hear him speak last year, and while he is incredibly professorial in his delivery, everything he said made sense to me. Interestingly, his model explains why such disparate conservative causes including low taxation, referring to our enemies as "evildoers," captial punishment, anti-abortion, and anti-gay-marriage aggregate under the same tent. All have to do with black and white morality, right and wrong, us and them, and living under the rule of a strong father...one who can pretty much do as he wishes behind the scenes. Lakoff is a linguist, and he makes the point that each of us has some elements of the Strict Father and Nurturant Parent models ingrained in our brains. Conservatives have been better than Liberals in finding ways to use this knowledge to get their message across. Fortunately, President Obama is a much more effective communicator than recent candidates were, such as the inscrutable and wooden John Kerry.

The Bush years showed us where the Strict Father model got us. I have grown much more cynical over the years but I do still hope that we can continue to move toward a model of government that is transparent, accountable, and egalitarian in the sense that the same rules do apply to all of us, and that we create laws that respect people's ability to live their lives without requiring a hypocritical, authoritarian thumb to keep us in place.

Turns out Disneyland is the real world....

2009-07-01T13:20:00.025-04:00

I am back from Los Angeles. It's taken me a few days to get my blogging mojo back. I had a fantastic time with Momma Zen author Karen Maezen Miller, both at our Sierra Madre Books event, and just hanging out with our families.

You see, it turns out that even Disneyland, even life in Los Angeles the day Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died, is more real life than sitting behind a computer all day, looking for material to blog about. For a week, I really was where I was, in the world, not in cyberspace. Here Karen and I were waiting in line for Pirates of the Caribbean (with our families, who are out of the frame). No mouse ears for us, just MojoMom.com caps!

This week away makes me realize that I need to carve out separate time for writing projects, and blogging. I still want to blog---I cherish this opportunity to reach out to readers on an instant basis. But I may begin to rely more on short-form communication like Twitter and Facebook to share links that I do not have time to write extensive posts on.

Too much web-surfing is really affecting my brain. I need to take my own advice about "Reclaiming my mind space" and really look at my mental environment. For example, I came across these idiotic new Microsoft ads. The first one is just gross and stupid. I am not going to post it here. You can see it on the link if you wish but I warn you, it involved internet porn and projectile vomiting. The second ad pretty much sums up how my brain feels after a day of surfing. This is what I am trying to avoid:

So here's my commitment to you: For quick communications and interesting links, I will share info through Twitter and Facebook. And when I have something more substantial intelligent to say, I will blog about it! If I am not blogging, I may just be offline, writing my next book!

Exclusive summer reading list from Mojo Mom and Rachel Pastan

2009-06-23T09:06:00.000-04:00

I love books, I adore books, I am crazy about books, and now that Mojo Mom is finished, it's more relaxing to read for fun again, not just on deadline as part of my work. Some of the new summer reading lists have failed to light my fire--my tastes run more literary and less "beachy" than the chick-lit lists that even the New York Times has produced (though I am going to check out a couple of those titles).

So I wanted to recommend a few of my favorite reads from the past couple of years, and share an exclusive list from novelist Rachel Pastan, author of Lady of the Snakes, which is one of my favorite novels of the past two years. I called up Rachel and asked, now that I've finished your book and loved it, what would you recommend next?

By the way, my picks are not necessarily "summery" in their content--there may be snowy landscapes or steaming radiators in these books, but no matter what time of year, I am on the lookout for literary page-turners with strong character development.

Mojo Mom's summer reading picks:

Lady of the Snakes by Rachel Pastan (read Mojo Mom's Amazon review)

Intuition by Allegra Goodman (Mojo Mom's Amazon review)

The Myth of You and Me by Leah Stewart (Mojo Mom's Amazon review)

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything by Janelle Brown (Mojo Mom's Amazon review)

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl (Mojo Mom's Amazon review--definitely my favorite review of all I've ever written. This book will make your head spin, in a good way!)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire (new release on July 28) by Steig Larsson (Mojo Mom's Amazon reviews, Dragon Tattoo, Girl Who Played With Fire)

On my to-read list: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, Perfection by Julie Metz, and Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad.

And thanks to Rachel Pastan for her exclusive summer reading recommendations for Mojo Mom blog readers:

Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz
A completely compulsive and very smart novel about a Princeton admissions officer. There’s lots about college admissions, but mostly it’s this particular woman’s life story—her secret past, her uncertain future. It’s a great combination: a grown-up, thoughtful novel with an obsessive quality.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
I had never read this classic till this year. Lively, original, breezily written, this portrait of a young woman determined to use her beauty and charm to get what she wants in lower Manhattan in the 1950s is a compulsively readable delight. Better than the movie.

The Brambles by Eliza Minot.
One of the best depictions of being the mother of young children I’ve read. The manic, moment-to-moment, dazed life of the protagonist is amazingly well-rendered with energetic, syncopated prose. The story is about how three grown children deal with the final illness of their father, but the narrative is the least of what’s delightful here.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Hardly a classic beach book, but if you’re anything like me you won’t put it down. It’s hard to explain why a novel about a small town in Maine and the difficult, large, retired math teacher who lives there is so amazing. Marriage and motherhood are portrayed in all its complexity. Beautiful narrative prose is contrasted with colloquial Maine dialogue. You love Olive, even though (or because) she’s so prickly—you never want to be done with her. For once the Pulitzer committee agreed with me.

Rachel Pastan’s latest novel, Lady of the Snakes, just came out in paperback from Mariner. A literary mystery story about a young Russian literature professor with a small child and her struggle between her passion for her work and her love for her family, Lady of the Snakes was selected by Maureen Corrigan (of NPR’s Fresh Air) as her top summer reading pick.

A job-share success story

2009-06-19T11:53:00.015-04:00

I am so proud of Mojo Advisory Circle members Meghan Gosk and Anna Millar. They shared the story of their successful job-share position on The Story With Dick Gordon yesterday, which is broadcast nationally on about 100 stations.

Anna and Meghan worked hard from scratch to write the business plan to convince UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School to allow them to share the position of Associate Director of the MBA Program. As far as we know, they are the first job-share partners in the UNC system. They've shown how valuable a job share team can be to the university: it's key to think of it as a job share, not a job split. They are both empowered to make decisions, and UNC gets two smart people thinking about every challenge that comes their way. They generally split the time in the office, but can both come in together during busy seasons, such as orientation or special training and conferences.

Meghan and Anna embody the best of what Katty Kay and Claire Shipman write about in their new book Womenomics. It can be done by real people! I look forward to the day when job share, with proportional benefits, and ongoing opportunity for promotion, becomes a standard option for employers to consider as a smart way to utilize a smart talent pool.

Follow mojo_mom on Twitter

2009-06-18T11:09:00.010-04:00

Blogging, Facebook, Twitter....they are all valuable platforms. I am not sure whether they'll ultimately all converge into one outlet, but in the meantime I am digging the "short form" outlets these days, posting links to Twitter and the Mojo Mom page on Facebook.

I am working to get a Twitter feed in my blog sidebar, but I hope you'll also follow mojo_mom on Twitter.

Taking care of business

2009-06-17T10:25:00.008-04:00

My peeps, the Mojo Mom Advisory Circle!
For the last week I've been taking care of family business, and now I ready to dive back in to Mojo Mom business. This summer needs to be a combination of a break (as in vacation, woo-hoo!) and an exploration of what's next. I don't want to make any promises up front---I really need to give myself the freedom of having a couple of months "off" before making new commitments. I can tell you that I am thinking about how I can continue to bring the best information I possibly can to my Mojo Mom audience.

Today I am meeting with the Mojo Mom Advisory Circle, which is a great place to start. We always stir up a lot of energy. Right now I want to revel in a sea of possibilities, really giving that some time, and then channeling that mojo into a new direction.

This time off is also giving me a chance to spend time with my favorite people, to pay attention and take care of family details that were pushed by the wayside under book deadlines. The pendulum has swung and for the summer, I am feeling like a stay-at-home Mom again, which to be honest is both fun and a little uncomfortable. My exact words to my husband were, "Don't get used to it." I am enjoying my family time (a big swim team commitment has turned out to be really fun, for example) and I am also overwhelmed by the fact that family management tasks can literally fill up the whole day if I let it. I have to be careful to deliberately carve out time for writing; not just for blogging (which I also hope to resume on a more regular basis!) but for the kind of writing that will help me chart a direction for my next project.

Housework & bill paying could fill up a whole day, and so could surfing the web in the process of blogging. So can the tasks associated with any paid career, of course. We have to become fierce protectors of not only our personal lives, but time for our creative pursuits, if we hope to have any! I have recently read the book How to Write a Lot which is a slim little volume that gave me a kick in the pants to get on a writing schedule. It made me remember the days when I started writing seriously. My daughter was in toddler preschool Monday, Wedensday and Friday mornings from 9 to 11:30 am. I was hungry for the opportunity to write, and I protected that time. I'd like to get back to that place and mindset this summer. I am comforted by the knowledge that even six hours of focused, unplugged (from the internet) writing a week can take me anywhere I need to go.

So stay tuned...good things to come. Thanks for your encouragement along the way!

Last day of school....

2009-06-10T15:10:00.013-04:00

It's the last day of school and I am trying to be in the moment this summer.

But right now "trying" feels more like a wrestling match. All I can think about is how will I get any work done? I will have to focus my writing energy into fewer hours. Maybe that's a good thing because the effort will have to be more concentrated.

My daughter is old enough to entertain herself, but I am afraid that if I retreat into my office long enough to really write, she'll end up watching a ton of TV.

So I may be signing off until Monday, when day camp starts up and I can more easily carve out my writing time again.

I the meantime, check out my Mojo Mom page on Facebook for links and quick updates, or follow me on Twitter!

The doofus with the Blackberry

2009-06-06T13:07:00.001-04:00

This morning I got a close-up look at one of the worst examples of multitasking I've seen in a long time. I was volunteering as a timer at my first kids' swim meet, and in the lane next to me another timer was talking on his Blackberry during a race! He didn't have anyone in his lane at that moment, right at the beginning of the meet, but I wanted to say Seriously? You are talking on your freaking Blackberry [with earpiece and everything] in the middle of a swim race when you are a timer????

I would have said something if he had kept it up. Luckily he didn't. I guess he had just one really important call to get out of the way at 9 am on a Saturday morning.

Yikes. If you ever see me doing that, please smack me upside the head.

Mojo Mom Podcast with Ms. Mindbody

2009-06-05T15:00:00.019-04:00

It's a time of transition at The Mojo Mom Podcast. My co-host Sheryl Grant has decided it's time for her to move on, but The Mojo Mom Podcast will continue with a new co-host. Stay tuned for details...we may take a break over the summer but we'll be back.

Our co-host segment is a little longer than usual this week, as Sheryl and I wrapped up our time together. I hope you will listen in to this week's show with guest Kate Hanley, aka "Ms. Mindbody".

Listen to the podcast now:

Amy and Sheryl talk about radical self-care and the times it rises to the level of self-preservation. Sheryl has decided to take a break from almost all of her responsibilities outside of her family and her job. That means this week is Sheryl's final episode of The Mojo Mom Podcast. Amy sends out her appreciation for four seasons together, more than 60 shows.

Then Mojo Mom talks to Ms. Mindbody, Kate Hanley. Kate is a yoga instructor and author of "The Anywhere, Anytime Chill Guide: 77 Simple Strategies for Serenity." She shares stress reduction strategies on her website, MsMindBody.com, and talks about her own experience learning to care for herself in a new way, as a new Mom.

Los Angeles area, June 23, Mojo Mom & Momma Zen's Summer Reading Salon

2009-06-04T16:04:00.031-04:00

Mojo Mom and Momma Zen, together for the first time!
Hi Los Angeles-area fans, I hope you can join me for a Moms' Night Out on Tuesday June 23. I am teaming up with my friend Karen Maezen Miller, author of Momma Zen, for a Mother's Reading Salon at Sierra Madre Books, from 7 to 9 pm in Sierra Madre.

Karen and I have become great friends through our writing but we've never met in person! I told Karen I'd come all the way out to California if we could create an event together. We feel that putting together good books, Moms, and a summer night out is a can't miss combination. I imagine we'll have a dialogue among the group about motherhood, writing, creativity, and finding Zen in the midst of family life. And I have tons of book recommendations to share, after all the research I did while writing Mojo Mom.

It would be great if you could join us, invite friends, and help us spread the word. Here's the invitation as a Facebook event.

About ten years ago I attended a Japanese tea ceremony and was told that "each time is the only time." The leader pointed out that each ceremony is truly unique, because it would be the only time that this exact group of people ever gathered in this way. That's how I feel about this event, especially since it is the first event that Karen and I will ever do together!

Mojo Mom Podcast with The New Global Student

2009-05-29T13:00:00.004-04:00

I've really enjoyed getting to know Maya Frost, and I highly recommend her book The New Global Student for all parents, whether or not you are already thinking about giving your child an international educational experience.

Maya is my guest this week on The Mojo Mom Podcast, and I hope you'll listen in.

Listen to the podcast now:

The Mojo Mom Podcast goes global this week. First, Amy checks in with guest co-host Patty Ayers, about Patty's ongoing adventures as an empty-nest North Carolina Mom turned global citizen living in Mexico. Patty is a web designer who has untethered herself from her desk to create a business as a virtual assistant that will allow her to work anywhere in the world.

The Mojo Mom interviews Maya Frost, author of the book "The New Global Student: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition, and Get a Truly International Education." Maya addresses the WHYs and HOWs of creating an international opportunity for your children or whole family. Maya speaks from experience. She and her husband moved from Portland, Oregon to Mexico and then Argentina with their four teenage daughters.

First, get centered

2009-05-29T11:52:00.028-04:00

In Mojo Mom I have a chapter on Centering, Silence, and Reclaiming Your Mind Space, and this week it feels like all I have to do is take my own advice. It's easier said than done!

It is finally sinking in that I need to get centered before I can anything else. Even though I might imagine "centering" as a luxurious break, in reality my mind would just as soon charge straight ahead. But as I grapple with post-publication burnout (a common experience, but one authors rarely talk about), I have to slow down, to take things off my to-do list, to let other people down and even let myself down--I am bummed that I still don't have all my Mojo Mom chapter summaries posted yet as I had planned!

This Monday, when we had a day of family time for Memorial Day, my husband, daughter and I went to an artist friend's house for a pottery lesson. I loved getting my hands dirty, playing with the clay, and seeing what emerged. Pinch pots and coil pots took form. Then Sasha gave us a lesson on the pottery wheel. You literally cannot do anything until the clay is centered, because off-center clay is just a wobbly blob of goo that pushes you around! Centering the clay is an art all in itself, but with Sasha's help to get us going, we could each experience the wheel for ourselves. When the clay is centered, you have the fun of shaping it, growing a project up and out. The clay still feels like it is in charge to some extent (especially as a newbie) but it was really cool to coax it into a new, elegant form. Sort of like life, wouldn't you agree?

Check out our friend Sasha's ceramic gallery to see what an inspired artist can create.

So as Zen teacher Cheri Huber reminds us, "If you're too busy to mediate, you're too busy." This summer you may see me blogging a bit less--when the spirit moves me, but not every day. Not that I always manage to post every day now, but this summer I am giving myself permission to spend time on some of the restorative work I need to do in my own life.

I might be meditating, playing tennis, or watching my daughter swim, but I am just as likely to be doing the dishes. I need to clear out my mind, my schedule, and my garage so that I can make space to invite in the next phase of my life.

Friendship homework

2009-05-27T20:46:00.015-04:00

Here is some Mojo Mom friendship homework for this week:

Think of the friend who is always there for you, perhaps always there for everyone. She is the one who remembers birthdays, brings cakes, organizes parties. She might do this for the classroom, her neighbors and friends, as well as her family. She is extraordinarily responsible; she always seems to have it together, and she is always there to lend a hand, no matter how busy things get.

When she's giving to others, how many of those others think to give back to her; to wonder how she is doing, and what might else might be going on in her life?

So think of this friend, really hold her in your mind, and send her good wishes. Then pick up the phone and call her. You might say, "I know you have a lot going on right now and I was just wondering how you are doing." And see what happens from there.

I will admit that there are days that I just wish someone would say, "Amy, how are you? What can I do for you right now?" It happens sometimes, but I wish it happened more. I think even having that question asked would be wonderful. I may not need anything "done" but just to know that someone thought to ask would come as a nice surprise. The caregiving tide seems to flow outward on most days, as is the case with many women. This gift of attention, of noticing how other women are doing, and that they need support too, is something we can give each other.

Mojo Mom Podcast will return next week with The New Global Student

2009-05-22T14:54:00.027-04:00

My podcast co-host Sheryl and I decided to declare this to be our chill-out week. We needed a break: she has just graduated with her Masters' degree from UNC, and I have completed my book publication/publicity sprint. It's Memorial Day weekend and we're going to relax! But we do have next week's show lined up. The Mojo Mom Podcast will return Friday, May 29 with our guest Maya Frost, author of the terrific book The New Global Student.

Maya presents dozens of innovative ideas about international education: how to do it authentically, safely, effectively, and even save money in the process. I highly recommend her book. It's an important read for parents of younger students as well as those reaching high school. I am glad to be learning this several years before we have to make these decisions.

As someone who climbed the prescribed academic ladder all the way to my Ph. D., and then got in touch with my entrepreneurial spirit and sense of independence, I wish I had learned about these options years ago. I think every student would benefit from a step away from the traditional path, to get perspective about the world, and really think about the path they are crafting for themselves. Students should actively make choices rather than follow a default path to success--because in real life, we really do have to be prepared to make our own way and create opportunities, rather than waiting for someone else to present them to us.

One of my favorite quotes by Anna Quindlen reads:

I read and walked for miles at night along the beach . . . searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.

A global education and experience can help us reach the next level, to feel empowered and capable of taking charge of our lives.

Book release recovery, friends, Mom-in-Chief on The Huffington Post

2009-05-19T16:40:00.040-04:00

I've had a tough week. I am grateful that it's all working out, but it's been a tough eleven days. My daughter got sick the day before Mother's Day, and she was getting well but then started to go downhill again. All this started with poison ivy--on her face--which got infected and ended up being treated with two kinds of antibiotics and strong steroids. I was just glad that after three doctor's visits we got on the path that led to her getting better. It was nerve-wracking to see her wake up after five days on antibiotics with her face so blotchy and swollen that her eyelid was halfway shut. Any time antibiotics are involved, and especially when they don't work the first time, I get a little panicked. But we managed to get her better and even had a little bit of fun over the weekend. She was hyper and hungry from taking the steroids, so she baked two batches of cookies and made blueberry pancakes. (She's quite the cook for someone who is not quite ten yet!) She's finally back to herself again.

So I was very grateful when Jamie Woolf checked on me at just the moment when I needed a friend, and a writer friend at that. Jamie is the author of Mom-in-Chief, a terrific book about leadership and parenting which came out in February--I am sorry I didn't know about it in time to include it in the new Mojo Mom. Jamie and I had known each other slightly before, but we really connected when we spent time together in Berkeley in January, after each of our books had gone to press.

Jamie has a new piece out on The Huffington Post, "Female Bullying or Just Another Attack Against Successful Women," pushing back against recent "trend" pieces looking at women's workplace infighting. When we talked about it today, Jamie's perspective on this topic reminded me of how I feel about "the Mommy Wars," that these conflicts are more symptoms of our workplace challenges, rather than a direct cause. I can say from experience that working together with other women toward common goals is much more fun and effective than in-fighting, and it's sad that fighting is what gets the media's attention. (And yes, I was on The Today Show two years ago for a segment about "The Mommy Wars," but I stand by what I said when I got there.)

Since Jamie's book came out two months before mine, she's been a great sounding board about the emotional roller-coaster of the publishing process. I've observed that publishing a book can make one feel pretty neurotic. You work so hard, pour your heart out, and when you put your book out to the world it's like putting yourself out there. Your job then becomes getting the whole world to love you!

Yikes, time to recenter and remember why I wrote Mojo Mom, that it's about helping Moms one woman at a time and not just obsessing over Amazon.com rankings. The book release has been a fantastic experience, and I am trying to keep perspective. Tomorrow I am taking the whole day off and whisking away my friend and Mojo Mom Podcast co-host Sheryl for a rare and well-deserved spa day. I may blog again before then, but in any case, on Thursday I'll share any new insights that arise from our trip.