Grandparents in Lagos, Florida are fighting to keep their 6 year-old grand daughter Kimberly from being evicted from their retirement community.

They have been caring for Kimberly for five years, since her drug-addicted mother was forced to give up custody. Her grandparents, Jimmie and Judy Stottler, have been trying to sell their home in the retirement community (reducing the price from $225,000 to $129,000) but there are still no takers. There is now a very real possibility that if a judge decides Kimberly can’t stay that she will be placed in a foster home and lose the only parents she’s ever really known.

Millions of grandparents are raising their grandkids across North America. It’s hard for me to understand the lack of compassion this retirement community is showing the Stottler’s. I’m sure they have their reasons, but…really? They’d rather force a child into foster care than give these people a break?

Where do you stand on this issue? Should Kimberly be evicted, or should the judge rule in favor of the Stottler’s?

A Nielsen Co. reports kids are watching more television than ever and television viewing for children ages 2-11 is the highest since 1995.  Kids ages 6-11 watch 28 hours a week with about 4.5 hours on DVD.  And worse, kids age 2-5 are watching 32 hours—yes, that’s even more than the 6-11 year-olds, presumably because they’re not in school.

I’m not surprised about the Nielsen numbers.

About a decade ago, there was a big push for educational television that could capture the infant and toddler population. Yes, really. Videos used the colors black, white and red since research showed those colors caught the attention of infant brains. Yes, TV for babies! I guess the thought was that if kids were watching more TV then they should be watching better quality TV.

I admit it is much more work to engage my kids in a board game or a walk to the park than it is to turn on the tube. I don’t initiate interactive time at home unless it involves helping me keep the house running.  This seems to be a “Momism”—we aren’t so hot at playing, but we are great at organizing and correcting! I cite lots of excuses for my kids TV viewing habits like:

• My kids time is already too structured and they need down time.

• My classic educational excuse of only watching public television or shows that are respectful of adults and language.

• I honestly would wrestle someone for the rights to alleviate my parental sleep deprivation with an hour of mindless television when the kids wake me at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning.

So where are the statistics on TV watching with a parent?  Dad loves racing our oldest daughter to the remote. The stress of his job and I guess the stress of her growing up job allows him to define TV watching as an activity affording the necessary together time for dad and daughter—who have so little time together—to explore interests and opinions of each other as they talk about the show.

Given the rise of childhood obesity, declining educational standards and the rates of health problems linked to an inactive lifestyle,  I can see why the media jumps on statistics like the 30 odd hours of couch potato madness. But, until TVs are powered by a family of viewers walking uphill on treadmills,  I think we are going to have some sedentary TV watching going on for a long time across America.

But there is hope, and I think we just have to be willing to listen. In fact, this “frontline report” from my three kids is a great example: We went out to dinner and then drove to the theatre (yes, sort of like inconvenient and expensive television) only find that the movie we wanted to see had started a half hour earlier than we thought.  As we drove away the kids spotted the local bowling alley and shouted out, “Lets go bowling!”

Dad and I looked at each other and made no argument. The kids chose something active and they were all in agreement.  No sibling rivalry! Everyone was happy! Non-violent, brain engaging, physical stress relief for parents and kids! And I got out of doing the laundry!

I got a call from my son’s teacher last week. Apparently, he used an inappropriate word and perhaps a hand gesture to accompany it to another child. That child’s parent had called the principal. The principal asked my son Builder’s teacher to handle it. She did. Builder denied it ever happened.

I know better.

I am sure it is true. The teacher asked my husband and me to speak to him about the incident and remind him of the appropriate ways to handle his anger. Oh, if it were only that simple. That might work for some children, but not this one. The eldest child of the family, he can tell you all the rules and expectations. He can police his little brother for the slightest of infractions. He is the first one to call us out for the rare verbal slip-up.

However, when it has to do with him and his world, Builder will simply make up stories or continue to deny the behavior. I can’t obtain the truth from him. I can’t even get his side of the story. He has Asperger’s and ADHD. It is not like dealing with the average nine-year-old bear. Nope, not so much, is there a sense of the right way to behave or speak in a group setting. Therefore, we get socially awkward plus impulsive from him. It is a lethal combination during unstructured school time.

After I hung up with the teacher, so many thoughts ran through my head. What did Builder do and say? To whom? When and where? Who is the parent that called? Do I know them? Is their child OK? As the parent of the offender, I would like the chance to have Builder offer an apology or to counsel him on how to handle the situation. I count on the school to help me help my child. It makes a difference as to what we say and do with Builder depending on the circumstances of the incident.

So, I called the school to get more details. None were available. Really? I realize it is a fourth through eighth grade building and there are quite a few “incidents” at this age. But too many to keep straight?

I think there should be a record kept of this type of behavior. Technically, it is bullying. I know other school districts have very detailed forms specifically to record discipline events. As an elementary and middle schoolteacher, I think those forms are a wonderful way to track children who need extra help navigating the social nuances and personalities found in all schools.

At my next meeting with the school, I am going to ask if there are any more incidents, I would like “the who, what, when, where, and how”. It determines the how, when, where, and who I talk to about my child.

I have often quipped that middle-aged women and their twenty-something year-old kids don’t belong under the same roof, but the reality of this statement hit home this summer when our son moved back home temporarily.

The key word here is “temporary” but frankly, anything longer than a long weekend starts to wear thin, and when days turned into weeks, and then morphed into months, the tension in our relationship was directly proportional to the number of days our home was his home.

It all started innocently enough, but often that is the case, and before you know it you may have a tenant the likes of whom you would never rent to because there would not be a security deposit reasonable enough to cover the wear and tear to your home.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my son. I just didn’t love him living under my roof for a stretch that became longer than we both anticipated.  Two job orientations and a hunt for an affordable and dependable used car which could safely transport him to the West Coast (his desired location), delayed his departure three times.

So how do you handle this situation? The line between compassion and enabling sometimes is pretty thin.
He had a couple of odd jobs, but twice had airplane reservations to the West Coast for job training sessions which were postponed or canceled, delaying his departure from early August to early October, making it difficult to commit to long term steady employment in our home town. So we set a date by which he needed to leave. (A poor choice on his part, he ended up moving up the date by a few days, leaving the goodbyes a bit more bittersweet than I would have liked, but this was truly a launch for him to what will hopefully be independence.)

As our last financial hurrah and graduation kudos we bought him a reliable but not nicer than anything we were driving used car. In fact, we would have preferred a model with a few more miles at a bit lower cost than what we settled for, but cash for clunkers had eliminated any remaining vehicles that would have qualified. How long this car lasts will be up to him and how faithful he is in routine maintenance and care. We carefully calculated how much gas for a cross-country trip would cost, a reasonable amount for food (think ramen noodles and the 99 cent menu at Burger King) and the first month’s rent and security deposit.

Period. No more. End of story.

Now the rest is up to him.

We didn’t hear from him for a couple of weeks. He didn’t answer his phone when I called to wish him a happy birthday. Yet I still knew this was healthier than having him under our roof, hoagie wrappers strewn on the floor along with laundry and piles of objects, some identifiable — others not.

But then the phone did ring, and he called to announce he had landed a job and would start the following Monday.

He commented that he would only get paid once a month on this job. I told him what a great opportunity to budget that would be, praying silently that he had travel money left over, but assuming he did not.  We chatted some more and I was thankful about how calm I felt with him being three thousand miles away rather than downstairs. It isn’t easy, but it is best.

I could ask myself a thousand questions…what happens if his landlord won’t wait till he gets paid for the next month’s rent? What happens if he can’t buy food? What happens if he can’t produce the two required forms of ID within the first few days at his new job? What happens if he loses this job? But I don’t.

Instead, I choose to reflect on the fact that as a young adult he needs to learn to stand on his own two feet, and perhaps the only way to allow that to happen is to pull the rug of financial support out from underneath him.

I will always love him; I just won’t bail him out financially any more.

Is this a familiar story to you? Have you lived this journey? What did or didn’t work for you? What if anything would you do differently? I believe there are many parents eager to hear your thoughts.

There isn’t any better time than Halloween to pay tribute to the ghosts of our childhood past.  Becoming a parent provides the unique opportunity to revisit these ghosts and see them in a whole new way. What do I mean by this? Many of us struggle with images from our childhood of parents or relatives who were very strict, very permissive, or just plain ill-equipped to parent. For some of us, our ghost may take the form a strict disciplinarian. We might struggle with setting limits in our own families for this reason, in our attempts to not be the same way.  Or maybe you come from a family of certified yellers, and it’s difficult for you to keep calm and in control while you parent.

I talk to quite a few parents on the Support Line who struggle to be in charge of some of their own ghosts instead of letting the ghosts run the show. Even before I became pregnant, I tried to picture what my ghosts would look like and if I would be okay when they came to visit.  Inherently, becoming a parent invites you to hold the mirror up to yourself. Part of what reflects back is how you were parented.  In the midst of all those images, experiences, and feelings that get conjured up, you begin to form ideas about what things you want to replicate in your own relationship with your children — and vow to not do the things that bothered you as a kid.  (The “I’ll never do what my mom/dad did!” moment.)

Of course, we all find ourselves doing exactly what our parents did (and we vowed we wouldn’t do) from time to time. The beauty of it is, we don’t have to be stuck in the past. We can change, even though it’s one of the hardest things we might ever tackle. James Lehman says that sometimes as parents we find ourselves trying to push past what comes naturally (and that isn’t working any longer) in order to try something different that will be uncomfortable.  I’m not one that particularly enjoys being uncomfortable in any sense of the word, but being a parent has forced me to step out of my comfort zone.  I have found that when those moments of discomfort pass, and they can be so tough, you’re able to see that you have the power to reshape yourself into a more loving and giving parent.

What I’ve realized is that while the ghosts of our childhoods might cause us to mourn what we didn’t have at times, they can also move us to celebrate what we have gained.

What ghosts are you struggling with? Which ones have you already conquered?

Tina Wakefield is a Parental Support Line Advisor for the Total Transformation Program.

I have just come from our therapist’s office and am feeling much calmer.  You read that right:  Dr. Joan is in therapy.

It all started when my husband and I began struggling, badly, with one of our kids who was displaying signs of Attention Deficit Disorder:  lack of focus at school, outbursts at home, blaming others for his problems, lying about homework.  My husband and I knew that this was an ongoing problem, but it all came to a head as our 10 year-old child entered a grade at school where everything gets moved up a notch and he began to struggle.  Being a psychologist, you’d think I would have gotten everything under control immediately, right?

Wrong.

What I got instead was pain in my neck (literally), grinding teeth at night, feelings of hopelessness, and fighting with my mild-mannered husband.  One of my best friends gave me sage advice on the phone the other day:  “Maybe it’s time to cry uncle and get some help.” After 3 sessions as a couple with a licensed therapist, an evaluation for ADD by a trained professional for our child, following the Total Focus techniques from Dr. Bob Myers (who happens to be Empowering Parents’ own ADD/ADHD specialist), a good massage therapist and a mouth guard for my teeth, I feel like we are on our way.

Do I have all the answers yet?  No.  Do we know what is going to happen next week with our wonderful, creative, sometimes annoying child?  Absolutely not.  Have I stopped grinding my teeth?  Almost.  The point is, my family is coming out of a crisis with a child whom we love, but don’t always know how to handle.

My guess is that everyone reading this has had — or will have — a similar experience at some point as a parent.  The whole point of  baring my soul here is to let you know that you are not alone.  Every day, thousands of parents struggle to just make it through the day with their kids and this is probably the most difficult thing you will go through.  But I will share some other news with you:  having a plan has made all the difference in the world to my own mental health, my marriage, and my teeth.  We still don’t know exactly what we’re going to do with my son (Do we try medication or do we continue on with our cognitive-behavioral strategies and see how they go?) but at least now we know what our options are.

If you are struggling with your child, I strongly recommend that you develop a plan today.  This can be as simple as calling your pediatrician and making an appointment to meet with him or her to talk about what issues your family is facing.  Start there, and discover what is available to you and your child.  You will be amazed at how much lighter you feel by simply unloading your sadness, anger, frustration and hopelessness.  If I can do this, trust me, you can too.  There is nothing more humbling than being a psychologist and realizing that you don’t have ANY of the answers to help your child.  And there is nothing more empowering than asking for help and realizing that you are not alone.

Life is too short and children are too precious of a commodity to not get them the help they need.  There is no reason to suffer in silence any longer.  Pick up your phone today and discover the world of help that is waiting for you.

I’ll admit it — I yell at my son more than I’d like. Take yesterday, for example. We were on our way out the door (it always seems to happen when we’re in a hurry) trying to make it to Alex’s first Parent-Teacher conference of the year. Getting out of the house is challenging for us, but it all started out well, with me laying down the ground rules: “OK, I need your cooperation so we’re not late today.” This swiftly devolved into shouting at the top of my lungs, “Come on! I said we needed to hurry. I’m starting to get angry now!”  In fact, I went from the Calm Mother voice to the Crazed Mother voice in, oh, about 30 seconds.

Ugh. I’m not proud of it, and I always feel bad afterward.  I apologized to my son on the way to school, and said (again) “I’ll try harder not to yell.” But boy, that trying harder thing is really…hard!!

As it so happens, an article came out in the New York Times on this very subject this week. In the article, it’s pointed out that while many people don’t spank anymore, they have taken up yelling as a substitute. Not surprisingly, this is not good.  As James Lehman once told me, “If yelling worked, I’d just sit your child down in my office and yell at him for an hour and then he’d behave appropriately.” Of course he’s right — it doesn’t work, and it just makes your child tune you out eventually — but when your child pushes the exact button that makes you lose it, it’s hard to remember to keep calm! For me, that trigger is trying to get out the door and be on time. For my husband Joe, it’s meal time.  Joe comes from a big Italian family, where sitting down to eat is nearly a sacred act. Meal time is fun, but his cardinal rule is that everyone has to “respect the food.” (If you’ve ever eaten with a young child, you know that respecting food isn’t always on their agenda.)

OK, here’s the deal: in my heart of hearts, I know there are more effective ways to parent than to yell.  So today, I sat down and came up with a new game plan. I hope these ideas might be helpful for other parents out there, too!

Know your Temper Trigger: Is it being late, homework time, right after school? In our case, I think by preparing ahead a little more, I can probably avoid losing my temper by having everything ready before we head out the door.

Leave the Room: When you’re feeling like you’re about to yell, take a deep breath and leave the room if necessary. This one really does work if you can remember to do it!

Talk in a Soft Voice: I just got this one from my son. He said, and I quote, “When you’re about to talk in the big-mean-voice, just talk in a nice-soft-normal voice.” Easier said than done, but I have noticed that sometimes when you use whispering instead of yelling, you get more attention from your kids! (And you feel better afterward, too.)

Think about How You Want Your Child to Remember You: OK, this is a hard one. I did some soul-searching on this and realized that I really don’t want my son to remember me as a crazed mother who was always yelling and rushing him from place to place. This will probably take a superhuman effort on my part, but I think I can do it. I’m going to keep in mind how I want our departures and transitions to go, and try to live up to that image. No more frantic struggling to get out the door — I want to be relaxed and in control. (Yeah, right! But as my mom always says, it never hurts to try.)

Wish me luck — and I’ll let you know how it goes!

Are you a yeller? Do you have any advice on how to stop yelling? Please leave your comments here.

As a parent of two children who have gone through a bullying episode, I can tell you that the emotional, mental and physical stress can be overwhelming for both children and parents. After all, as a parent your natural instincts tell you loud and clear to protect your children against the forces that cause them pain — whether it’s mental, emotional or physical.

In our case, it was verbal abuse by other students toward our two boys, who were 12 and 9 at the time. They were both subjected to name-calling (they were called things like “fatty” and “crybaby”) and false accusations by other students. Although not physically harmful, it was causing mental and emotional distress to our children. This was hard enough to prove, as they would have had to carry a recording device to record everything said during the course of the day in order to “catch” the bullies.

Our children had no trouble making friends, but because of the verbal bullying by some students, they found it very difficult to keep friends. This was mainly because their friends were afraid that they would be the next target for these bullies. They also refused to stick up for our children when asked by teachers or the principal if anything that was reported to them was true. The worst part was when the teachers and principal would defend the bullies to us. Pretty soon, they started to just ignore our complaints entirely.

It was then that we decided to ask our local school board to have our children transferred to a different school.  This was another battle all together. My daughter was going to attend junior high and we thought this would be the opportune time to have our two boys transferred to different schools at the same time. This, however was not as easy as it seemed. As the school year progressed, so did our battle with the school board. The school year was three quarters over by the time we were finally able to get our boys transferred to their new schools, but they only did it after my husband and I agreed to the conditions that the school board put forth. Because we wanted our two boys transferred, we had no choice but to agree.

The impact that this whole episode has had on our children has left them scarred, but as they say, time heals all wounds. It took a full year for our boys to recover somewhat from this experience. Our youngest boy was emotionally upset and had frequent episodes of crying. Our oldest boy would just shut down and do nothing for his teachers: no writing, no reading, no homework, nothing. Sometimes I resorted to doing his homework for him so he would not get into trouble with his new teachers, but he would do it most times, reluctantly and with help from me.

I thank God for both my boys’ new teachers and principals — they had the patience of Job when dealing with our boys. They were understanding and caring, and those two traits got our boys to open up somewhat and start to trust again. (We’re still working on that one!)

Since then, the school board has implemented the use of video surveillance cameras in our schools, which has become an even more controversial subject among many parents and students — but this is another topic for another blog!

Empowering Parents welcomes Anita Johnston to the EP Parent Blogger team. To read more about Anita and all our contributing bloggers, please click here.

I’ve been giving all my friends pop quizzes on technology issues since EP editor Elisabeth Wilkins wrote about the texting habits of teens and how it might have a long term affect on a teen’s ability to communicate and socialize.

I stuck a recent cover of The New Yorker magazine under their noses and asked what they could decipher in the cartoon that depicted a child teaching a roomful of gray haired grannies and middle-aged parents the commonly used abbreviations of texting and online communication.

My friends flunked and my husband fared no better.  What I did find out is the parents of tweens I know are already afraid of technology because they don’t understand it or see a practical application for it.

One friend with a ninth grader suggested that instead of banning social networking sites and text messaging, parents should be signing on instead of sheltering their teens from using it. She believes ignorant dismissal of technology also takes away another point of connection — ironically, a very personal connection — to her teenager.

OMGosh, I may not know all the texting abbreviations and I may not be as handy with my thumbs as teens are, but it doesn’t take much of a leap for me to see that ILY is pretty much the same as XOXO no matter how my kid gets that message.

Though I’ve been told email is obsolete for older teens who rely on social networking sites to communicate, tweens find email to be an exciting first step with technology.  Our school introduces email accounts and safety in fourth grade. Email gives me another place to connect with my daughter by doing something with her that she enjoys.

I also signed up for Facebook and I am getting an eyeful!  Kids post everything on Facebook without reservation and with the very normal but immature assumption that these will not come back to haunt them. Yet, one college niece, soon to be a full-fledged teacher, had warnings from her professors to not open an account and to work hard to keep her online reputation stellar so that no students or parents could find anything on the web that would detract from her command of a classroom.

And she listened. Despite the peer pressure to be on social networking sites, she knew that the bigger responsibility of starting her career and being a good role model to students was worth foregoing this technology.  She did not isolate herself from all technology, but embraced texting and computer skills to allow her to stay one step ahead of the students she will influence.

The benchmark for how much technology is too much is established in the traditional way.  An article on building moral intelligence discusses how character development gets its start at home, and concludes that our children use technology with the same moral code instilled in them by their parents and family.

Elisabeth’s concern about social skills doesn’t worry me.  From what I can see, my technology-using nieces and nephews are incredible conversationalists. In person and online, they are fun and funny socially capable young adults. Somehow they manage to balance a large amount of athletic and computer activity and stay healthy emotionally and physically. They are more outgoing and active than I ever was as a teen and unlike me, instead of sitting on a phone indoors — connected to the wall by a spaghetti cord — the teens in my extended family are out there going, doing, being. They volunteer, they get involved, they invite friends, they are a large crowd and they take a lot of pictures, giving me a glimpse into what they are up to!

I credit the balancing act to the examples they have in their lives.

Grandma never turns down a reason to throw a party.  Aunt Jane works, volunteers in school and makes time to man the booth at the community fair. Big brothers willingly scoop up the younger cousins and take them on fishing trips. None would miss a family birthday celebration. And every one of them will proclaim how much fun they are having and how much they love family right there, out loud, online.

The school year is in full swing now, and we are back to three hours of homework every night, various physical and mental antics done in order to avoid homework, and the kids calling each other names.  That encompasses the majority of what “back to school” means for this mom.

What?  That’s not normal?  What is “normal”, anyway?  The only “normal” that I know of is a setting on a dryer.  That’s about as much familiarity as I have with “normal”.  And when it comes to kids and homework, I feel like I’m the clothes tumbling in a dryer.

I have two sons:  a 1st- and a 4th-grader.  Both boys are rambunctious and both sometimes find focusing a challenge.  I am a female and the eldest of two girls.  Now I am no saint, but I don’t recall needing to have a parent hover over me to do my homework or feel a sporadic need to wallop my sister on the back for no apparent reason.  Yet this is my lot in life — my job in dealing with it is just one big growth opportunity.

Battle-weary from last year’s homework wars, I have resolved to try something different this school year.  I am currently working out a homework schedule for both kids — a schedule that is based on expectations, rewards, and consequences.  This is new territory for me.  I do not remember being on any “homework schedule” growing up.  And rewards?  Hmf.  My “rewards” as a child were avoiding the negative consequences of not doing it — usually in the form of removing certain privileges such as, say … breathing.  (Okay, that’s not really true.)  But the consequences — called “punishment” back then — were still quite palpable.  Mind you, this was before computers and cell phones governed our lives — they simply were not available or were so big and slow that using them was a painfully arduous endeavor.

And the name-calling issue?  Less than two weeks back into the school year and my 9 year-old is already being called a “scaredy cat”.  Precisely what he’s supposed to be afraid of remains a mystery — my son could not come up with a reason why he was being called a “scaredy cat”.  Either he doesn’t know why, doesn’t remember why, or simply doesn’t want to tell me. So, there you have it: a great example of fantastic parent-child communication to start off the new school year.

I hope that our new homework schedule will increase my sons’ ability to focus on the emotional and tangible rewards of scholastic achievement as opposed to say … playing “whomp-my-brother-on-the-back-and-run-to-avoid-doing-homework” game.  Wish me luck.

Empowering Parents welcomes Susan Engel to the EP Parent Blogger team. To read more about Susan and all our contributing bloggers, please click here.