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

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.

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

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!

Police pick up ten-year old boy for walking to soccer practice alone

Last week I had just interviewed Kidpower founder Irene van der Zande for The Mojo Mom Podcast, talking about teaching kids skills that enable them to navigate the world independently. The next thing I knew, one of my neighbors told me that her ten-year old grandson who lives in Mississippi had been stopped and picked up by the police because he was walking to soccer practice alone.

The soccer field was at the elementary school about a half mile from his home!

Here's an excerpt from the Columbus, Mississippi local news coverage:

William made it as far as Seventh Street North, near what used to be Barnhill’s Buffet, when a Columbus Police Department cruiser stopped the boy. The officer was responding to several 911 calls made by people who had seen William walking the sidewalks alone.

The officer drove William the rest of the way to soccer practice, and then went about the business of tracking down [William's mother] Lori Pierce.

He caught up with her at her son’s soccer practice and proceeded to read her the riot act regarding the safety of her child and potential criminal liability she could have faced had anything horrible happened.

“He told me I could have been charged with child endangerment,” she said. “I was so shocked.”

Although Pierce is quick to point out she never felt anger toward the officer nor the police department, the stern warning given to her by the policeman concerned her deeply.

I feel for today's parents, I really do. I have these questions myself--how much freedom can my child handle? How much leeway do I give her? And importantly, I think we need to consider the cost of letting them grow up without life experience.

William's case seems like a slam dunk to me: of course a mother can analyze the situation and decide that her ten-year old can walk a half mile alone. William wasn't in distress. He had a plan and a cell phone. His Mom was going to meet him at practice in a few minutes. But what do we do when well-meaning neighbors start calling 911?

It's no surprise that William's story was reported on Lenore Skenazy's Free Range Kids blog. Last year Skenazy caused a stir by allowing her nine-year old son to ride home alone on the New York subway.

I am not going to tell you how you should feel about the Skenazy family's experiment, but the media firestorm that ended up labeling her America's Worst Mom was an overreaction if I've ever heard one!

At the time, Skenazy wrote about the conflicting feelings of today's parents:

Even as the stations (and Web sites and Web logs) were having a field day with the story, people kept pulling me aside to say that they had been allowed to get around by themselves as kids, and boy were they glad.

They relished those memories — and thanked their parents! — and then in the next breath they admitted: They would never let their kids do the same.

Why not? Has the world really become so much more dangerous in just one generation

The world hasn't gotten so much more dangerous, but we have evolved a keener sense of awareness and stricter standards of child safety and supervision. I generally think that this is a good thing. But the problem is that we have few clear societal guidelines or consensus about how to implement safe judgment about when to let our children operate independently. By "locking them up," metaphorically speaking, we may feel that they are safer, but by doing so we may deprive them of essential life experience that can only be gained by doing.

Remember the story of Sleeping Beauty? After it was said that Aurora would die on her 16th birthday after pricking her finger on a spindle, her well-meaning father had all spinning wheels destroyed. So when the witch showed up on Aurora's birthday with the spinnning wheel, what did Aurora do? She was immediately drawn to the spindle and pricked her finger. (Magical intervention allowed her to fall asleep rather than die.)

I am NOT saying that we should let our kids experiment with dangerous things (such as drugs or alcohol), but I am saying they need life skills and chances to operate independently and exercise judgment, within generally safe parameters.

We're confronted with what I call "The Paradox of Parenting," which can be summed up by the classic quote: "Good decisions come from experience...experience comes from bad decisions."

That's why I am so proud to be working with Kidpower, which teaches parents how to give those skills to their kids, so that kids can get experience by exploring the world with safety and confidence.

So what do we teach in Kidpower? Just today I was sent this excellent graphic that illustrates our Kidpower Tools to Live By (follow link for full-size text!). Check it out and think about what the world would be like if all children and adults had the training that empowered them to call on these skills. You can find more information and free resources at www.Kidpower.org

Mojo Mom Podcast and Kidpower

I am pleased to welcome my friend, teacher and mentor Irene van der Zande as my guest on this week's Mojo Mom Podcast episode, Mojo Mom and Kidpower.
Twenty years ago, Irene founded Kidpower, a grassroots organization that has grown to teach personal safety and self defense skills to over 1.2 million people worldwide.

Listen to the podcast now:



I believe so strongly in Irene's work, that I have become an instructor and brought the Kidpower program here to North Carolina. What I love about Kidpower is that it gives people of all ages the skills they need in order to navigate the world with safety and confidence. I don't blame parents for being confused about how to teach their kids these skills--most of us parents have not been taught this vital information. Kidpower steps in to fill that knowledge gap with high-quality training. To me, Kidpower is a much-needed antidote to "helicopter parenting."

Kidpower has training centers across the U. S., Canada, and around the globe. The Kipower website is also chock-full of quality resources for you to explore, including articles and their own People Safety Podcast.

Her is a photo of me demonstrating a high-elbow strike at Kidpower instructor training in Santa Cruz last January. Most of Kidpower skills are everyday life skills, such as identifying trouble and maintaining a safe distance from unsafe people or situations. We do also teach physical self-defense skills that allow escape from an emergency. It is empowering and satisfying to realize that you have that capability! (Further proof that mojo comes in many forms!)

Camp as a cure for overinvolved parenting

I read with interest this article about "Kid-sick parents" who are sadly missing their children who are away at camp. It used to be the kids who missed their parents, but now the roles are reversed as parents face "an empty house."

I believe that overinvolved parenting is a real phenomenon, one that has affected me to some extent. We're so focused on creating a close bond with our kids that we may remain attached to the point where we are depriving them from independent exploration.

So when I signed up my daughter for a three-day beginner camp this year, I was consciously choosing this opportunity for her to operate "on her own" within the boundaries of a safe community.

She is definitely ready to give it a try, and I really hope she likes it. I look back at my own childhood, and I realize that even as I am seeking out opportunities for my daughter to grow into independence, she still has so much less autonomy than I did at her age. By fourth grade I had the run of the neighborhood on my bike.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that on many levels, increased supervision is a good thing. But it looks like a quality summer camp is becoming one of the best opportunities to give our kids some growing room, as we step away from our helicopter parent tendencies and allow them to navigate camp culture on their own.