The Mommy Blues

7 Steps to Banishing Feelings of Helplessness in Mothers

2010-12-12T21:03:00.001-05:00

You can reduce feelings of helplessness

We all experience helplessness at times. YUK! And double YUK!

Helplessness is one of the most painful emotions human beings can feel. Helplessness is a state of acute powerlessness that is almost unbearable. So unbearable that people will do and tell themselves almost anything to get rid of the feeling.

When helplessness is severe

Suicidal feelings are often a result of helplessness. When we are so helpless and out of control of our lives, it can make us feel empowered to think that we have a solution at hand, and that solution (suicide) is something within our control.

Anger and rage are also feelings that stem from helplessness. Murderous feelings and actions can stem from feeling helpless. Again, we so desperately need to feel like there is a solution because nobody likes to feel helpless.

Is helplessness a normal feeling?

While suicidal feelings are severe symptoms of postpartum depression (requiring immediate help and attention from an expert who is experienced in working with PPD), feelings of helplessness are also normal in new mothers.

Why do new moms feel so helpless?

Anne Pleshette Murphy, author of the book, “The Seven Stages of Motherhood” describes this beautifully:
“One of the reasons we’re so acutely aware of our newborns’ helplessness is that we feel so helpless ourselves. But unlike the preceding nine months, during which you were often fussed over and pampered, treated as though you were a helpless baby, now you’re expected to act like a grown-up, to be a mom!

..Some part of our unconscious self identifies intensely with our babies; we experience a kind of fierce neediness, a feeling of vulnerability athat runs counter to everyone’s expectations of how we should behave. Yes, we’re allowed to be exhausted, weepy, even unwashed, but to curl into a ball in bed jut won’t fly in most Western households.

Of course, if you happen to live in the Japanese islands of the Goto Archipelago, you’re expected to take to your bed. There, new mothers spend at least one month wrapped almost cocoonlike with their newborns while their own mothers feed and serve them. The doting grandmothers even use a kind of singsong “motherese,” underscoring their recognition of a new mother’s vulnerability and helplessness.”

What can we do about feeling helpless?

1. Recognize

When a new mom is feeling helpless, one of the most comforting things she can hear is that somebody understands she is feeling utterly helpless and (if suicidal or depressed or anxious) she may see no way out of her helplessness. Before helping her find a constructive solution, she first needs to know that her feelings of helplessness are recognized, understood and accepted.

2. Identify

Next is to figure out the actual issue that she is feeling most helpless about. What is she trying to do that she cannot do? For some moms it has to do with getting the baby to nurse, to grow or to sleep. For other moms it’s about being able to find time and energy for other things – work, housework, other children etc.

3. List

Next, begin to actually write down a list of the things that are causing the feelings of helplessness. Keep going until the list is exhausted.

4. What cannot be changed?

Next divide the list up into things that cannot be changed. These are the things that must be accepted. Place an “A” for “Accept” next to those list items. For example here are some things that my clients talk about that cannot be changed.
-I am a single mom and I have to work. I wish I could be a stay-at-home mom.
-I want to be a perfect mom so my child grows up without any problems.

Both of these things require acceptance. The single mom has to work and nobody can mother perfectly! Not one of us!

5. What can be changed?

Next, write a “C” for “Change” next to the list items that can be changed. For example, here are some things my clients talk about that can be changed or modified.

-I am neglecting my own needs.
-I am exhausted.
-I can’t get my baby to sleep long enough for me to rest.

6. Create a plan of change.

Once these changeable things have been identified, you can brainstorm and problem-solve ways to begin modifying them. Talk to friends, other moms, your partner or a new mother coach like Kim Richardson.

7. Take action

Choose one item to tackle first and decide what steps you can put in place that will create the change and the results you want, and then TAKE ACTION.

When you take action, you reduce your feelings of helplessness!

This blogpost was written by Kim Richardson, founder of the website: “The Mommy Blues – where Mothers Feelings Matter (and sharing helps)“. Kim Richardson is an advocate for mother’s mental health, a postpartum counselor and a mother’s coach.

If YOU are curious about how a Mother’s Coach can enhance your life in all areas, please contact Kim Richardson to schedule a session.
Visit website: www.themommyblues.com

Email Kim at: KimARichardson@aol.com
Subscribe to newsletter: Mothering the Mom
Request a consultation with Kim Richardson

7 Steps to Banishing Feelings of Helplessness in Mothers

2010-12-12T21:02:00.000-05:00

If YOU are curious about how a Mother’s Coach can enhance your life in all areas, please contact Kim Richardson to schedule a session.
Visit website: www.themommyblues.com

Email Kim at: KimARichardson@aol.com
Subscribe to newsletter: Mothering the Mom
Request a consultation with Kim Richardson

7 Steps to Banishing Feelings of Helplessness in Mothers

2010-12-12T20:59:00.000-05:00

We all experience helplessness at times. YUK! And double YUK!
Helplessness is one of the most painful emotions human beings can feel. Helplessness is a state of acute powerlessness that is almost unbearable. So unbearable that people will do and tell themselves almost anything to get rid of the feeling.
When helplessness is severe
Suicidal feelings are often a result of helplessness. When we are so helpless and out of control of our lives, it can make us feel empowered to think that we have a solution at hand, and that solution (suicide) is something within our control.
Anger and rage are also feelings that stem from helplessness. Murderous feelings and actions can stem from feeling helpless. Again, we so desperately need to feel like there is a solution because nobody likes to feel helpless.
Is helplessness a normal feeling?
While suicidal feelings are severe symptoms of postpartum depression (requiring immediate help and attention from an expert who is experienced in working with PPD), feelings of helplessness are also normal in new mothers.
Why do new moms feel so helpless?
Anne Pleshette Murphy, author of the book, “The Seven Stages of Motherhood” describes this beautifully:
“One of the reasons we’re so acutely aware of our newborns’ helplessness is that we feel so helpless ourselves. But unlike the preceding nine months, during which you were often fussed over and pampered, treated as though you were a helpless baby, now you’re expected to act like a grown-up, to be a mom!
..Some part of our unconscious self identifies intensely with our babies; we experience a kind of fierce neediness, a feeling of vulnerability athat runs counter to everyone’s expectations of how we should behave. Yes, we’re allowed to be exhausted, weepy, even unwashed, but to curl into a ball in bed jut won’t fly in most Western households.
Of course, if you happen to live in the Japanese islands of the Goto Archipelago, you’re expected to take to your bed. There, new mothers spend at least one month wrapped almost cocoonlike with their newborns while their own mothers feed and serve them. The doting grandmothers even use a kind of singsong “motherese,” underscoring their recognition of a new mother’s vulnerability and helplessness.”
What can we do about feeling helpless?
1. Recognize
When a new mom is feeling helpless, one of the most comforting things she can hear is that somebody understands she is feeling utterly helpless and (if suicidal or depressed or anxious) she may see no way out of her helplessness. Before helping her find a constructive solution, she first needs to know that her feelings of helplessness are recognized, understood and accepted.
2. Identify
Next is to figure out the actual issue that she is feeling most helpless about. What is she trying to do that she cannot do? For some moms it has to do with getting the baby to nurse, to grow or to sleep. For other moms it’s about being able to find time and energy for other things – work, housework, other children etc.
3. List
Next, begin to actually write down a list of the things that are causing the feelings of helplessness. Keep going until the list is exhausted.
4. What cannot be changed?
Next divide the list up into things that cannot be changed. These are the things that must be accepted. Place an “A” for “Accept” next to those list items. For example here are some things that my clients talk about that cannot be changed.
-I am a single mom and I have to work. I wish I could be a stay-at-home mom.
-I want to be a perfect mom so my child grows up without any problems.
Both of these things require acceptance. The single mom has to work and nobody can mother perfectly! Not one of us!
5. What can be changed?
Next, write a “C” for “Change” next to the list items that can be changed. For example, here are some things my clients talk about that can be changed or modified.
-I am neglecting my own needs.
-I am exhausted.
-I can’t get my baby to sleep long enough for me to rest.
6. Create a plan of change.
Once these changeable things have been identified, you can brainstorm and problem-solve ways to begin modifying them. Talk to friends, other moms, your partner or a new mother coach like Kim Richardson.
7. Take action
Choose one item to tackle first and decide what steps you can put in place that will create the change and the results you want, and then TAKE ACTION.
When you take action, you reduce your feelings of helplessness!

If YOU are curious about how a Mother’s Coach can enhance your life in all areas, please contact Kim Richardson to schedule a session.
Visit website: www.themommyblues.com

Email Kim at: KimARichardson@aol.com
Subscribe to newsletter: Mothering the Mom
Request a consultation with Kim Richardson

Six Things That Affect How Long It Takes to Recover From Postpartum Depression & Anxiety

2010-11-08T08:11:00.000-05:00

Here is a gem from Katherine Stone, founder of Postpartum Progress - the most widely-read blog in the United States on perinatal mood and anxiety disorders:

"There is probably no question I am asked more often by moms suffering from perinatal mood or anxiety disorders than "How long will it take for me to get better?" Suffering moms are seeking the exact date when the box will be delivered to their door with their old self inside of it.

"Is it 4 months? 6 months? I heard so-and-so got better by 5 months postpartum, and I'm 10 months postpartum and I'm still miserable, so does this mean I'm a lost cause?"
I actually looked this up in my library of PPD books, and searched online, and couldn't find a single citation of the exact amount of time it takes to recover from postpartum depression and related illnesses. That's because there isn't one! There are many different variables affecting how long it takes each person to get better.
This installment of the Postpartum Progress Six Things series will address six things that can affect your length of recovery from postpartum depression and other mental illnesses related to childbirth. I am hopeful that, armed with this information, you will be able to have a smoother road to recovery.

1. How long did you suffer from PPD before you reached out for treatment?
Most moms with postpartum depression will fully recover, especially if the illness is diagnosed and treated early. It stands to reason that the longer you wait to get help, the longer it may take for you to get better. Recent research found that the rapid remission of depressive symptoms is the most important predictor for the favorable long-term outcome of a depressive episode. (Scadoczky et al, Journal of Affective Disorders, 2004) In simpler words, the quicker you are treated, and the more effective the treatment is, the better result. Why wait to reach out for help when it may only prolong your misery?

2. How severe is your illness?
The more severe your symptoms, the longer it may take for you to get better. A 2002 study found that more severe depression was associated with a decreased likelihood of early recovery. (Meyers et al, Archives of General Psychiatry, 2002) NOTICE, that doesn't say decreased likelihood of recovery, just decreased likelihood of early recovery.

3. How effective is the treatment you have been using?
Some women receive treatment that isn't particularly effective, so their illness doesn't resolve. There are a variety of reasons why this might be the case. There are different kinds of therapies (cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, interpersonal therapy, group therapy, etc.), and different kinds of medications (serotonin reuptake inhibitors, serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, tricyclics, antipsychotics, etc.), different kinds of alternative methods (light therapy, exercise, etc.) and even different kinds of support groups (new mom groups, PPD groups that allow moms to bring their babies, PPD groups that don't allow babies, freewheeling groups and groups with specific agendas at each meeting). It has been proved time and time again that, in the arena of mental health, what works for one person does not always work for another.
In the book "This Isn't What I Expected", Karen Kleiman writes "If you haven't met your goals or if you are actually getting worse instead of better, it is time to consider a change in treatment or a consultation ..." If what you've been doing isn't working, work with your healthcare professional to try something different. Don't give up.
By the way, some people actually have treatment-resistant depression. According to the Mayo Clinic, you may have treatment-depression if standard treatments don't help much or don't help at all. It can be caused by significant emotional stress, not taking medications exactly as prescribed, or other underlying health problems you may have like thyroid disorder, heart problems or substance abuse. Another possibility, if you happen to be on meds, is that your body metabolizes medication more quickly or more slowly than most people. The Mayo Clinic states that you should make sure you're being treated by a mental health professional (not just your regular doctor), be patient and be willing to try different methods of treatment. This may include different types of therapy, different medications, trying a sleep and exercise program, or newer treatments like vagus nerve stimulation or trans-cranial magnetic stimulation.

4. How effective is the doctor or therapist you are working with?
We sometimes make the mistake of assuming the people in the "white coats" know more than we do, so we go along and don't speak up for ourselves when we know we aren't getting better despite following the treatment recommendations. It could be that the doctor you're working with has limited knowledge and experience in the area of perinatal mental health, and has already tried whatever method they know how to use. If you're in therapy, perhaps the method they are using just doesn't work for you or fit your personality. If you're on medication, perhaps they've given you a sub-therapeutic dose, or something that has side effects that are hindering you, or something that flat out doesn't work for you. This may be because they aren't psychiatric specialists, or because they don't know enough about the medications. Or, perhaps you are in a support group that just doesn't make you feel comfortable or supported.

You MUST speak up about how you're feeling and how the treatment plan you are on is, or is not, affecting your symptoms. You must talk about how you feel in the doctor's or therapist's office and whether you feel you are being heard and understood. If the healthcare professional you're working with isn't willing to try something else or isn't willing to listen to you, there is another out there who will. Again, Kleiman writes "Treatment failure is not necessarily the fault of the therapist [or doctor]. 'Good' therapists often need to change treatment modalities or consider new options when [the treatment] doesn't have the desired outcome."
Sometimes, though, you may have just gone to the wrong person. That's okay. You have every right to make a change. If you are looking for specialists in the treatment of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, you can click here, here and here.

5. What is your current life situation and how may it be affecting your recovery?
Getting professional help is crucial, but your doctor or therapist can't come home with you and ensure that your environment is the right one for recovery. If you are in a situation where the people around you are not supportive this may well slow down your process. If your partner, for instance, doesn't believe postpartum depression or anxiety or psychosis are real, or isn't willing to help you get the right amount of sleep or give you help around the house, the resulting stress of that can make it harder for you to get better. A study on the role of support from family and friends in recovery from major depression found that emotional support is significantly associated with depression outcome. (Nasser, Acta Scandinavia Psyciatrica, 2004)
As much as you can, reach out to those who are supportive when you need to talk. Ask your most reliable and encouraging family members or friends to pitch in, or maybe reach out to a local moms group or PPD support group for help. If you can't find local help, you can at least find virtual emotional support from people who know what you're going through here at Postpartum Progress or at places like the Online PPD Support Group or Postpartum Support International.

6. What have you been doing to follow your treatment plan and take care of yourself?
In the end, no doctor can make you show up for appointments. Therapy will fail if you don't open up to your therapist and aren't willing to try some of the coping techniques your counselor suggests you try. No medication will work if you don't take it. No support group will help if you don't attend. Poor sleep and lack of nutrition can prevent anybody from being healthy. Remember that you need to take a key role in your recovery process. I know it's hard. I know you feel like crap. I also know that you can dig deep down and do this. Taking care of yourself and making your health a priority is the best gift you can give to both you and your baby.
One final note: Once you start to feel better, and you will, the Mayo Clinic suggests that "It's important to continue treatment after you begin to feel better ... Stopping treatment too early may only lead to a relapse.""

This article was written by Katherine Stone, founder of Postpartum Progress - the most widely-read blog in the United States on perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, including postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, postpartum psychosis and depression and anxiety during pregnancy. For more information about mental illnesses related to childbirth, please visit Postpartum Progress at http://postpartumprogress.typepad.com or follow us on Twitter at @postpartumprogr.

Mothering our daughters into adolescence

2010-11-03T12:17:00.001-04:00

My oldest daughter turns ten this month! I am faced with many new moods, likes and dislikes and a new tone that has crept into her voice. Luckily a good friend recommended a great book to me. I would like to share this with you no matter where you are in your mothering journey.

The book is entitled:

The Mother-Daughter Project: How mothers and daughters can band together, beat the odds, and thrive through adolescence. The authors are SuEllen Hamkins and Renee Schultz.

Here is what they say:

“Welcome to the Mother-Daughter Project

Today's world offers unprecedented opportunities and dangers for adolescent girls, but limited support for the tough work of mothering teens and few models of close, loving mother-daughter relationships. In the Mother-Daughter Project, our intention is to help create communities that simultaneously nurture girls, mothers, and mother-daughter relationships.

‘We want to join with other women in exploring how we can continue to nurture our daughters through pre-adolescence, adolescence and into adulthood. We want to find ways to support each other as mothers and support our daughters as they are challenged by the restrictions placed on them by our culture. We want to explore ways that we can welcome our daughters into the powerful community of women. (from our original mission statement)’

The core principles of the Mother-Daughter Project

1. Mothers can continue close and loving relationships with their daughters right through their teen years.

Girls need - and want - a close connection with their mothers - as long as they are respected for their growing maturity and can be cool in front of their peers.

Girls best discover who they are in the context of loving relationships. Maturity means getting better at both autonomy and connection - including with mom.

When girls say they want "space," they don't mean distance. What they want is for us to make space for them in our hearts and in our lives to develop in their own ways. When they go in a new direction, especially one new to us - whether giving up classical violin to play bass for a garage band or dropping basketball to join the math team - our daughters want us right there, supporting and cheering them. Girls want to confide in their mothers, and with their mother's interest and support, it's easier for them to make it through minefield of adolescence.

2. Girls thrive when mothers thrive.

To be able to raise daughters who can flourish, mothers need ongoing support and tangible resources. Our project is not about doing more as mothers - it's about mothers getting what we need to do one of the hardest jobs in the world.

Mothering in today's world is incredibly stressful - even more so for mothering adolescents. When young girls are bombarded daily with internet images of skeletal celebrities partying without underwear, it's an uphill battle to teach our daughters to love their bodies, respect their minds, and have healthy relationships. Individual mothers need the help of other adults who care about girls to be able to raise daughters who can thrive.

Our daughters are watching us to learn what it means to be a woman. Impossible expectations of being a 'perfect mother' are damaging to girls and mothers alike. Girls' self-image is enhanced when they see their mothers thriving. Our project promotes the win-win approach women have been waiting for, in which the needs and hopes and dreams of mothers are as important as the needs and hopes and dreams of their daughters.

3. Mothers and daughters need the support of other mothers and daughters.

Fostering communities that nurture mothers and daughters is the heart of the Mother-Daughter Project.

As teens grow up through adolescence, they look beyond their immediate families to discover who they are and how the world works. That's why it's much easier for mothers to forge close relationships with teen daughters in conjunction with other mothers and girls who value the same thing. Your thirteen-year-old might not go to the movies with just you, but she'll go with a friend, her friend's mother and you.

Teen girls need other adults who can give them a positive vision of themselves and their future and who can open doors for our daughters that we can't.

It's excruciating to parent in isolation. Other mothers are one of our most important sources of wisdom and support. Now as the Internet changes every day and dangerous trends spring up overnight, other parents of teens are a lifeline.

Some of us already have the support we need from loving, helpful extended families or caring communities of parents, adults and children. For those of us who don't, joining together with small groups of other mothers and daughters is a simple yet revolutionary model that works. Any mother can create a fun, supportive mother-daughter group that meets her needs and fits her life. Go to Start your own mother-daughter group for practical information.

4. Each mother and daughter has a unique vision of what thriving means to her.

As mothers, we share common hopes and dreams for our daughters and ourselves, and we have hopes and dreams that are unique. Our different cultures, family traditions and experiences inform our different priorities as parents. We don't need to accept one-size-fits-all mothering - we each get to decide our own parenting values. We can support one another in clarifying our values and preferences and in creating our own vision of what it means for our daughters, for us, and for our relationships to thrive.

5. It's gotta be fun - or we won't come.

Fun for girls and for moms. We promote a mother-daughter movement full of laughter, joy and play. We want us all to do more of what we love - and what we love changes as we change, no matter what our age.”

For more info and to find out how you can start your own mother-daughter group, visit their website at: The Mother-Daughter Project

If YOU are curious about how a Mother’s Coach can enhance your life in all areas, please contact Kim Richardson to schedule a session.
Visit website: www.themommyblues.com

Email Kim at: KimARichardson@aol.com
Subscribe to newsletter: Mothering the Mom
Request a consultation with Kim Richardson

Why does my child do this? Using motivation to understand our children’s actions

2010-10-26T15:11:00.002-04:00

When working with parents of young children, I often find myself puzzling along with the mother - trying to work out why her child behaves the way he does. My clients often find it helpful to use the following ideas to help them figure out the confusing or offensive behavior and why the child is doing it.

"Disobeying instructions, or simply exploring?"

Take 5-year-old Jack for example. Jack is into everything, his mom tells me. Especially his father’s electronic gadgets. Jack simply cannot keep his hands off them and inevitably ends up “breaking them”. Dad gets angry with Jack and labels Jack as naughty, disobedient and destructive. Mom has tried time outs and removal of privileges and even yelling. Nothing seems to stop Jack from touching his father’s camera, cell phone etc. It’s as if he cannot help himself.

During our talks I explained the following to Jack’s mom:

Let’s assume (based on psychoanalytic research) that everything we do represents an action we take in response to some basic need we have. Let’s assume also that we can classify our basic needs into 5 very separate areas. In addition let’s accept that we cannot just turn off our needs, because they are always present in the background or the foreground. They are always motivating us to meet them through some kind of action.

Psychoanalyst Joseph D. Lichtenberg believes we can divide our needs into groups of five systems. They are:

(1) The need to fulfill physiological requirements (e.g. eating, sleeping, exercising);

(2) The need for attachment and affiliation (e.g. calling a friend, falling in love, spending time with another);

(3) The need for assertion and exploration (e.g. stating your opinion, building something, discovering and being curious about the world around you);

(4) The need to react aversively through antagonism and/or withdrawal (e.g. fighting, arguing, hitting, stone-walling, ignoring, retreating into aloneness);

(5) The need for sensual and sexual pleasure (e.g. affection, massage, sexual activities).

In each of us, at any moment during our day, one (or more) of these motivational systems assumes dominance or is in the foreground. They are there to alert us to what we need both for our physical survival and also for our psychological and emotional well-being. When these needs are met we feel a sense of vitality and aliveness. When they are not met we feel frustrated and eventually, over time we can feel misunderstood, helpless, empty and depressed.

When your child’s behavior is puzzling or simply not what you would like, it can be helpful to figure out what their need is at the time. For example, if you have a child who is clinging to you when take her to a birthday party, you might tell yourself that your child’s clinging behavior is motivated by her need for attachment. You are the person she feels attached to. Thus, in order for her to move into her exploratory motivational system, she will first need to have her need for attachment satisfied. Thus staying with her longer than you expected, until she feels able to attach or affiliate with someone else at the birthday will help her to move this need into the background. Once secure, she will go out and explore the situation as you want her to. And you may well be able to leave her there until you pick her up.

Going back to our first example – it is easy now to see that Jack has an overwhelming need to explore. He is not necessarily touching the electronics because he is naughty and disobedient, but rather because he is curious about how they work and how they are put together. Instead of focusing on frustrating his need to explore, his parents could provide him with other, older electronics that he could take apart at will. He will therefore be more inclined to leave dad’s stuff alone!

If YOU are curious about how a Mother’s Coach can enhance your life in all areas, please contact Kim Richardson to schedule a session.
Visit website: www.themommyblues.com

Email Kim at: KimARichardson@aol.com
Subscribe to newsletter: Mothering the Mom
Request a consultation with Kim Richardson

Why does my child do this? Using motivation to understand our children’s actions

2010-10-26T15:09:00.000-04:00

"Disobeying instructions, or simply exploring?"

During our talks I explained the following to Jack’s mom:

Psychoanalyst Joseph D. Lichtenberg believes we can divide our needs into groups of five systems. They are:

(1) The need to fulfill physiological requirements (e.g. eating, sleeping, exercising);

(2) The need for attachment and affiliation (e.g. calling a friend, falling in love, spending time with another);

(3) The need for assertion and exploration (e.g. stating your opinion, building something, discovering and being curious about the world around you);

(4) The need to react aversively through antagonism and/or withdrawal (e.g. fighting, arguing, hitting, stone-walling, ignoring, retreating into aloneness);

(5) The need for sensual and sexual pleasure (e.g. affection, massage, sexual activities).

Taking Action - Making a Goal a REAL Part of your Life.

2010-10-11T12:44:00.000-04:00

Last week I shared the concept of S.M.A.R.T. goals and how you can apply them in your mothering life (or any area of your life).

If you did not have a chance to read the newsletter or you are a new subscriber, you can still read it on the mommy blues blog by clicking here.

This week I want to help you turn your SMART goal into action.
First, let's do some PREPARATORY work:

We do this because we want this to be different to all the other times you have wanted to do something differently and then been unable to follow through. All the times you may have tried and given up after a while, or found yourself distracted.

Here are some questions that will help you decide if you are ready and serious about making this change. Even something as seemingly small as spending 30 minutes of quality time with your child per day requires preparation. Because the consequences of doing it, or not doing it are equally significant.

Here are your questions:

1. Is your goal in true alignment with your values? Does it support one of your deeply held values? If not, it will be hard for you to keep the momentum going.

2. Are you willing to learn from experts, and do what has been proven to work? I.E finding, accepting, and applying the help and guidance that is available, rather than reinventing the wheel or trying something that has not worked for you before!

3. Are you ready and willing to do whatever it takes, even if those things are outside your comfort zone, to move to where you want to be?

4. Are you willing to accept full responsibility for your actions? This means no blaming your partner, your schedule, your parents or the economy or anything else. Of course, it means taking credit for your success and acknowledging yourself for that!

5. Do you understand that no-one is coming to rescue you, or do it for you? You are the one that has to do the work.

Okay, so NOW that you are ready, let's take action by making an ACTION PLAN:

An action plan is like a to-do list but it focuses on the achievement of a single goal. You will list all the steps in order, and as such it allows you to track your progress.

An alternative way of devising and action plan is the Backward Planning Process. In this process you write down your ultimate goal and by what date you wish to achieve it.

You then work backwards, asking yourself what milestone you need to Asks accomplish just before that. You continue to work back, in the same way, until you get to the very first step you need to take to get your plan into action. This is where you begin.

Finally, you can think about structures you can put in place that will support your action. In our example from last week, Jennifer wanted to spend 30 minutes per day with her daughter. A structure she might use would be to set a daily reminder or alarm her cell phone alerting her 20 minutes before the time she will spend with her daughter.

Secondly she decided that she will make herself accountable to someone.
Both these structures give Jennifer a good chance at being consistent with her goal and her plan.

Best of luck!Kim

PS. Don't forget that one of the best ways of making yourself accountable is by hiring a coach.

This blogpost was written by Kim Richardson, founder of the website: “The Mommy Blues – where Mothers Feelings Matter (and sharing helps)". Kim Richardson is an advocate for mother’s mental health, a postpartum counselor and a mother’s coach.

If YOU are curious about how a Mother’s Coach can enhance your life in all areas, please contact Kim Richardson to schedule a session.
Visit website: www.themommyblues.com

Email Kim at: KimARichardson@aol.com
Subscribe to newsletter: Mothering the Mom
Request a consultation with Kim Richardson

Turn your vision into SMART goals

2010-10-05T13:28:00.000-04:00

Last week I posted an exercise called the Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow exercise.

I hope you took the time out for yourself to sit down and write about those three areas of your life (relationships, occupation and health).

If not, you can find it here:
Once you have completed this exercise, it's time to pick one goal and create a workable plan for achieving it. Before getting to the plan, however, let us look at identifying the GOAL itself.

Let's begin! Look at your answers for TODAY and TOMORROW and choose one thing that will make the biggest difference to your life right now.

For example, if your goal is in the area of relationships - and it is to spend more quality time with your child or children, you will now want to turn that into a S.M.A.R.T. goal. In other words, a goal that you can easily describe and quantify.

So think about your goal and WRITE IT DOWN in the following way:

Make it Specific (describe it clearly), Measurable (write how you will know when it is achieved), Attainable (it must be something that can be achieved), Realistic (it must be possible for YOU to achieve it), and Time-sensitive (write down the date you wish to start it and, if applicable, the date it will be completed. If ongoing, write down the time of day or week it will be done).

Thus, Jennifer's SMART goal (which came out of her VISION) might be written down as follows:

VISION: To be a great mom to Kerry.

GOAL: To spend more consistent quality time with my daughter, Kerry - age 10.

S.M.A.R.T. GOAL:

Specific: To spend 30 minutes of time each day with Kerry – this means doing what SHE wants to do FOR A FULL 30 MINUTES without distraction from my cell phone, computer, telephone or other family members and without doing household tasks or organizing her things at the same time.

Measurable: I will know when it is done when 30 minutes have passed and I have done the above. It also has to be done every day.

Attainable: yes

Realistic: yes, I have looked at my schedule and her schedule and I can devote 30 minutes of time to her each day

Time-Sensitive: It needs to be done every day without exception. Each Sunday I will put block off the 30 minutes for each day of the coming week in my diary.

Now that you have identified your goal, and described it clearly, we can begin to look at an ACTION PLAN next week.
For some of you, simply describing the goal will be enough to get you going.

Good luck for this week and let me know how it goes by emailing me at: KimARichardson@aol.com

If YOU are curious about how a Mother’s Coach can enhance your life in all areas, please contact Kim Richardson to schedule a session.
Visit website: www.themommyblues.com

Email Kim at: KimARichardson@aol.com
Subscribe to newsletter: Mothering the Mom
Request a consultation with Kim Richardson

Worried about the oversexualization of girls?

2010-09-30T14:20:00.000-04:00

Register now to join other girl activists and allies fighting oversexualization of girls in media.

What is SPARK?

SPARK: Sexualization Protest: Action, Resistance, Knowledge is a day to speak out, push back on the sexualization of girls, and have fun while igniting a movement for girls’ rights to healthy sexuality. SPARK Summit will jumpstart a movement for change.
SPARK Summit will launch an intergenerational movement to support and stand with girls. In response to the American Psychological Association’s Task Force Report on Sexualization of Girls, the most downloaded documented in the history of the APA’s website, the SPARK Summit will engage girls to be part of the solution rather than to protect them from the problem, to give them the tools they need to become activists, organizers, researchers, policy influencers, and media makers, pushing back against the increasingly sexualized images of girlhood in the media and creating room for whole girls. The Summit will jumpstart the community building that will continue on- and off-line that will challenge the belief that “it’s just the way things are” and demonstrate what the alternatives can be.

What is your vision for 2015?

2010-09-27T11:29:00.003-04:00

The beginning of a new school year!

If you live in America and have school age children, you will now be a few weeks or a month into the new school year.

I don’t know about you but I always enjoy the beginning of the school year. It brings back the structure and order that is missing from summer. I am not a highly structured person by nature (this might be an understatement) so I appreciate having the discipline of school imposed on me!

I also like to use this time of year to look at where I am in my life and where I am going.

Today I want to share an exercise with you that I first came across in Tony Robbin’s book, Awaken the Giant Within. I have simplified and modified it a little. If you want to be surprised by how powerful and motivating this deceptively simple exercise can be, then you MUST do it! Don’t just read it.

It won’t work if you simply read it.

So get out a pen and paper or use your computer and let’s begin!

A. Firstly, Let’s start with YESTERDAY.

Think back to September / October 2005. If you have children, how old were they. What were you doing? And where were you living?
Now think of three areas of your life and describe each of them as best you can in a paragraph or two. Here are the three areas:

1. Your relationships (with your significant other, your family of origin, your friends and with your children).
2. Your occupation and finance (your job, career, studies, hobbies, passions, calling etc). Even if you were not working or earning, think about where you were in this aspect of your life.
3. Your Health (emotional, physical and spiritual). Think about diet, exercise, relaxation, sleep, physical health, happiness-sadness, stress-anxiety, any chronic or acute illnesses or injuries. Think of your relationship with something spiritual. Describe where you were 5 years ago.

B. Secondly, let’s look at TODAY.

Once again describe each of the above areas as they are now, today as fully as you can. Where are you right now in each of these areas.

C. Thirdly, let’s look at TOMORROW.

Write down the date 5 years from today. How old will your children be? Where will you be? Do you know? Where do you want to be? What are your dreams and hopes and plans and goals? What is your vision?

Look at each of the three areas of your life and describe how you would like them to be. Dare to dream and be as bold and courageous as you can be. Be as detailed as you can be. Describe the state of your relationships, your finance, your health! Don’t limit yourself. Paint a picture of yourself in five years time that is inspiring and motivating and somewhat possible!
Next time we will look at what we can do next with our vision.

Enjoy yourself and send me your comments. I love to hear from you!

Very Warmly,
Kim

If YOU are curious about how a Mother’s Coach can enhance your life in all areas, please contact Kim Richardson to schedule a session.
Visit website: www.themommyblues.com

Email Kim at: KimARichardson@aol.com
Subscribe to newsletter: Mothering the Mom
Request a consultation with Kim Richardson

2010-09-27T11:28:00.000-04:00

The beginning of a new school year!

If you live in America and have school age children, you will now be a few weeks or a month into the new school year.

I also like to use this time of year to look at where I am in my life and where I am going.

It won’t work if you simply read it.

So get out a pen and paper or use your computer and let’s begin!

A. Firstly, Let’s start with YESTERDAY.

B. Secondly, let’s look at TODAY.

Once again describe each of the above areas as they are now, today as fully as you can. Where are you right now in each of these areas.

C. Thirdly, let’s look at TOMORROW.

Enjoy yourself and send me your comments. I love to hear from you!

Very Warmly,
Kim

If YOU are curious about how a Mother’s Coach can enhance your life in all areas, please contact Kim Richardson to schedule a session.
Visit website: www.themommyblues.com

Email Kim at: KimARichardson@aol.com
Subscribe to newsletter: Mothering the Mom
Request a consultation with Kim Richardson

How to take care of yourself

2010-09-23T11:11:00.000-04:00

Following Monday's newsletter and blog, I received wonderful feedback from mothers who agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment of taking care of ourselves so that our loved ones are not responsible for our care.

However, the question reamins - HOW?

How do we find the time? How do we value ourselves enough to make this a priority? How do we ensure consistency? Many readers talk about starting with great intentions. Perhaps these new behaviors last a few days, weeks or even months and then fall by the wayside. Why bother to start something new when you know it's going to end this way? Worse, we always feel guilty when we cannot keep our commitments to ourselves.

Here are a few tips:
1. Don't start anything new in a panic. In other words, don't let anxiety or guilt or fear drive a new venture. If you start trying to eat less or exercise more out of guilt or fear, it will usually end badly!
2. Take an inventory of where you are at the moment. Sit down and take a good look at what your life is about today. A good way to do this is to use a balance wheel. This is a tool that divides your life up into various areas - such as health, finance, relationships, mothering, career, diet etc. You then give yourself a score for each area. On my website I offer a free balance wheel that you can fill out yourselves. Please go to: www.themommyblues.com and find it on the top left corner.
3. Once you are clear about what is working and what is not working, pick NO MORE than one area to begin with. Tackle the easiest area first. I ask you to it like this because you are more likely to be successful with an easier task. Success raises your self-esteem and your trust in yourself. If you keep going with small successes, you will get there and have the resources to deal with the larger, more difficult challenges in your life.
4. Get a buddy or a coach or a therapist or counselor - someone you can be accountable to. You could pick a friend and meet once a month to work on your balance wheels. Or you could hire a coach. If the areas are particularly tricky or painful or challenging, hire a therapist. I offer ecounseling, telephone counseling, skype counseling and f2f (face-to-face counseling).

Over the next few weeks, I will visit this topic again! I believe it is critical and fundamental!

Good luck with your balance wheels!

Kim

If YOU are curious about how a Mother’s Coach can enhance your life in all areas,
please contact Kim Richardson to schedule a session.
Visit website: www.themommyblues.comEmail Kim at: KimARichardson@aol.com
Subscribe to newsletter: Mothering the Mom
Request a consultation with Kim Richardson

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If we don't take care of ourselves..

2010-09-20T14:13:00.000-04:00

I heard a very powerful thing the other day. A friend of mine said to me: “Well, if we don’t take care of ourselves, someone else is going to end up doing it.”

It got me thinking because when I usually hear people talking about taking care of themselves – it sounds something like: “Well, if I don’t take care of myself, no-one else is going to!” But that is not true actually, when we don’t take care of our emotional and physical needs we end up placing the burden of our care on someone else. Often it is our partner, spouse, or children who end up taking on our care.

Take Joanne for example. She suffers from chronic depression and anxiety. However she will not go and see a therapist or get medication for it. She thinks that medication is bad for her and will not subject her body to it. She also knows that in the absence of medication, exercise can help; going outside in the sunlight can help; and eliminating some foods like sugar can also help.

But Joanne is too depressed to tackle these things or keep them up for any consistent and effective length of time. She ends up feeling guilty and bad about herself. She cannot function effectively at home and to make herself feel better she takes headache pills and eats sugar to numb herself out. In this state, she finds it very hard to get things done around the house and also at work. Her husband, Jim, ends up taking on most of her share of the parenting and housework. If this goes on, Joanne’s children will end up having to take care of her and in effect raising themselves. As her situation continues to deteriorate she will need care from outside the family. At some point she might imagine that she is too much of a burden to everyone and think of ending her life.

If she does that, her family will almost surely never get over the loss. And the cycle of depression will continue.

As mother’s we owe it to ourselves to put our emotional and physical health first. Yes! First! Even before our family because being a mom takes enormous amounts of patience, tolerance, flexibility, consistency, commitment and energy.

And to manage all this, we need to be well. Very well.

If you are a mother, answer these three questions:

What was the last thing you did for your emotional or physical health?
What have you been putting off doing for your health that needs doing?
Write down when you will get it done – date and time. Make a commitment to yourself and do it.

Take great care of you.

There is only one you - and you are irreplaceable to your children.

All the best,
Kim

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Chores for kids? Yes, but how?

2010-09-16T09:50:00.000-04:00

In my work with parents, the question of chores often comes up. I find so many parents (myself included) struggle with consistency and follow through when it comes to chores. It’s easier and quicker to do it ourselves and sometimes we just don’t feel like the battle that precedes chores.

I have also been enjoying the writings and ideas of Kerry Kelly Novick a child, adolescent and adult psychoanalyst and founder of Allen Creek Preschool in Ann Arbor, MI. In this week’s newsletter I am going to share her response to the question of chores. I hope you find it useful.

Too tired to clean? Prioritize tasks, then try 'chore time' for the little ones

Posted: Aug 21, 2010 at 5:30 AM [Aug 21, 2010]

Dear Kerry,
I have two very young children (3 ½ and 18 months). My husband and I spend a whole lot of time in the evening after their bedtime, when we’re really tired, or on the weekends, doing household cleaning and chores. It’s impossible to get anything done when they are awake, but I’m beginning to feel pretty overwhelmed. Any ideas?
AH, Canton

Dear AH,
I’m not surprised you are tired at the end of the day and don’t feel much like putting up curtains, waxing floors, sorting papers and so forth. Two young children are 24/7 in themselves, on top of all the other responsibilities of modern parents.

The first thing may be to consider which household tasks really matter to you. Maybe the floors only have to be waxed once every month or two, not every week, for instance. Your children won’t be this little forever, and you can return to different standards when they are older, if those still feel important. A sparkly-clean house is lovely, but may not be worth extra fatigue and resentment at this point.
Sharing the load with your partner is the next priority. Make your list of necessary tasks together - you may find that you care about different things and it will help to clarify with each other which things are super-important and which things you can live with according to the other’s standard. I’m sure you will want to try to meet both your priority needs. But that also means both people pitching in.

Next is to make a plan or timetable for how often tasks need to be accomplished and think through when is the best time to do them. This is where the kids come in. Of course it’s easier to do work when they are asleep, but, as you pointed out, that’s when you’re most tired. Here you can think creatively about how to meet your needs and simultaneously build skills and character for your children. It’s not too early to start. A young mother wrote to me about what she came up with and I think her ideas really fit the bill for your situation.

She developed the idea of “chore time” every weekend. She and her husband decided what tasks they wanted to accomplish and figured out which ones they could safely do with the kids around. Then they included their children in the family’s activity by devising chores for them. Each child is expected to do as many chores as they are years old.

For instance, her 3-year-old had 3 chores one Saturday. They were: Sort through her accumulated art work from school from the past month with her mom, tape up the ones she chose to save and display on the wall in her room, and help her daddy replace the car registration tab on the license plate. The 1-year-old’s chore was to empty the laundry hampers and hand the clothes to his daddy to put into the washing machine.

While doing these chores with the children, mom and dad were also getting the laundry done, sweeping the kitchen floor, and wiping down the baseboards in the 3-year-old’s room. Another week, the 3-year-old dusted her shelves, while her mom changed the light bulb in her ceiling fixture and installed a new rod in her closet. The possibilities to mix and match tasks are endless.
This plan won’t keep you from having to do some chores later, but it creates the possibility of fun family time that might otherwise be filled with drudgery for you. Your kids will acquire the habit of enjoying contributing to the work of maintaining a family household. You will be laying the groundwork for a lifelong set of skills in your kids.

Working collaboratively, persisting to finish tasks, planning and executing - these are all crucial skills for school and work. Research has demonstrated that these emotional muscles are needed for kids and grownups to be successful in later life. They are more important than particular academic content or achievement levels. They represent positive character traits, interpersonal skills of teamwork, and dependability as a person.

Try “chore time” and watch your kids grow in pride and competence, while you enjoy their new capacities and defuse your own tiredness and resentment. Please let us know how it goes!

Kerry Kelly Novick is a local child, adolescent and adult psychoanalyst, affiliated with the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute and the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council, and is a founder of Allen Creek Preschool.

About Kim: I am a Licensed Professional Counselor and Certified Professional Coach specializing in working with mothers, supporting you and helping you implement strategies and structures that make YOUR mothering days and years calmer, saner and more joyful!

I also offer consultation to families struggling with postpartum depression and health practitioners treating them.

My weekly newsletter is read by mothers all over the world - please sign up at: http://www.themotherscoach.com/sq

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Finally, If YOU are curious about how a Mother's Coach can enhance your life in all areas, please contact me to schedule a session:
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CONTACT INFO:
Email: Kim@themommyblues.com
Tel: 312-882-5067
Post: PO BOX 322, Douglas, MI 49406 USA

Reasonable Goals this Year

2010-01-06T10:52:00.001-05:00

"Don't try and build the Taj Mahal with ice-cream sticks", says Merci Miglino, one of my International Coach Academy Learning Leaders. Watch her on Fox 23 Daybreak Program, talking about making better and more reasonable resolutions.

"Most people are not motivated by negative things." We do better when we are working TOWARDS something positive... Keep watching below.

Trying to do it all without help..

2010-01-02T12:52:00.001-05:00

Today's blog is a repost of a story by Lisa Freedman that caught my eye.

MSNBC Anchor: It Took A Serious Fall With My Baby To Change My Life

by Lisa Freedman Jan 1st 2010 8:00AM

It's been said before, motherhood is a balancing act. Unfortunately, MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski found that out the hard way.

Working the night shift, back in the 1990s when she was with CBS news, Brzezinski would return home in the late mornings, relieve her babysitter and try to raise her two young kids on little to no sleep, and didn't stop to prioritize her life until she took a tragic fall down a flight of stairs -- while holding her four-month old baby.

Now, her two daughters are 11 and 13 years old, and Brzezinski's had time to reflect back on motherhood, jotting down her cautionary tale in her debut book "All Things at Once."

ParentDish spoke with the busy news anchor, via telephone, about the lowest moment in life and not always being a good mom.

ParentDish: Your book is about some of the mistakes you made early on in parenthood. What was your biggest mistake?
Mika Brzezinski: Not admitting that I can't do it all and that I need help at times. And not realizing that even my children need to be put on the back burner sometimes in order to get through the workday. When I was younger, I tried to be supermom, superwife and superworker. But I had a job that challenged my sleep -- working all night from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. -- and I didn't recognize that there were times when I couldn't be all things to all people. As a result, I had a terrible accident with my infant daughter.

PD: Was that when you fell down the stairs?
MB: Yes. And, to this day, I blame myself for that. I can't blame my job for being too hard; I can't blame my baby for keeping me up at night; I can't blame anyone but myself for trying to do too much.

PD: What exactly happened?
MB: I had worked all week on the night shift, like I did every week. It was a lot, plus trying to raise a toddler and a newborn, and trying to keep great relations with my husband. It started to build on me and I stopped sleeping -- even if I took sleeping medicine I couldn't sleep. I was too nerved up, my body was out of whack, I was breast-feeding, I was emotional and I think I had postpartum depression. I kept trying to make everyone happy. That day, I came home from work and I tried to sleep but couldn't so I decided to let the babysitter go home early. I picked up the baby and I was talking 100 miles an hour. I walked right off the top of the stairs. We landed at the bottom with me on top of her.

PD: Do you remember what was going through your mind as you were falling?
MB: It was a horrific moment. I just knew that something really bad was happening. It was like being in a very bad car accident and knowing that you weren't going to get out of it okay. I knew I had hurt her and I knew it was bad.

PD: What'd you do when you finally landed?
MB: I scooped her up. I looked at her and she wasn't crying, which I knew was a very bad sign. I rushed her to the hospital but they couldn't find anything wrong with her. I kept telling them I thought I hurt her head or broke her neck. I was so focused on her head that they gave her an MRI but they found nothing wrong and sent me home. The doctors said she was okay but I knew in my heart she wasn't. I called my husband who told me to call the pediatrician. The doctor told me to put her on the bed and he walked me through an exam. On the phone with him I got this chill throughout my body and I realized she wasn't moving. He said to get back to the hospital and he'd call to let them know I was coming. I rushed back to the ER and they weren't ready for me. They told me to sit down but I explained to this guy that I was just there and that my baby was in really bad shape. He gave me papers and told me to take a seat. That's when I completely lost it; I grabbed the guy by his neck and I shoved him against the wall and I said, "You better f*****g understand what I have to say right now, this baby needs to get in the x-ray right now. And if you don't put her in, I'm going to kill you."

PD: That's what any mother would do!
MB: The staff rushed around us and started to wonder if I should be tranquillized. I was shaking from head to toe. They put the baby on the table and realized she wasn't moving. Then they started considering the fact that she might have spinal cord damage. They were poking her with needles and trying to make her respond. Long story short, it was hours and hours of waiting and people rushing around. I finally got the news that it was just a broken thighbone and she had probably gone into shock from the pain, which explained why she wasn't moving. I had lived this window of time thinking I had paralyzed her. It was the lowest moment of my life.

PD: Was that when you realized you were doing too much?
MB: Absolutely. I wish it didn't take that to get me to that point. My advice to women is to listen to your body and to make it work for yourself. And sometimes that means not being the perfect mom and not being there for your kids every second of the day. If you've got a career that you need to nurture, there are going to be times when you need to transfer your authority to others. I will forever regret that I didn't get help sooner so I could get through that rough patch in my career.

PD: Did you ever think about leaving your job and staying home?
MB: My husband didn't want me to quit that way. He wanted me to leave on my own terms -- not because of an accident. And I still wanted to nurture my career.

PD: So you got help raising the kids?
MB: We got a ton of help and almost went broke paying for childcare. We literally had nothing left at the end of the week. For about a year, I worked like hell on the night shift and worked to get a job that made more sense for everybody. It sorted itself out and I eventually got another job at MSNBC during the day.

PD: During that year, did you do anything to make the little time you had with your kids more special?
MB: No, and stop trying to make me say I was the perfect mom.

PD: Oh, sorry. That's not what I meant.
MB: There were days I had five minutes with them. I'd hug and kiss and love them but then I'd have to go to sleep because I was exhausted. There were days where I was not a very good mom at all. There were days I was not present. But that's reality.

PD: What about your relationship with your husband? How did you keep that going strong?
MB: That was one of the reasons we got into this mess. I was trying to be perfect for everybody. On Fridays, I'd come home, try to sleep, go running, shower, get pretty for him, get the kids ready and be the perfect wife at the door with candles and dinner on the table. He told me to stop and that he didn't need that stuff. We've since grown together and gotten a lot more comfortable working together to get things done.

PD: Now that your kids are older, what do you tell them when you can't make it to watch one of their activities?
MB: I tell them the truth. There are many things that I cannot attend because of my job. I just told my daughter today that I'd make it to her chorus event but I'd be arriving late and I'd be in the very back row. So far they don't complain.

PD: Just to be sure -- your youngest daughter's okay now?
MB: She's great. She's a spunky, smart kid who constantly reminds me that I broke her leg in attempts to get me to buy her stuff.

Brzezinski's book "All Things at Once" comes out on January 5.

Identify your Top 5 Values and Watch your TRUE Self Emerge!

2009-12-30T16:25:00.001-05:00

Yesterday (12/29/09) in my post “5 Steps to Smarter New Year’s Resolutions” I talked about making sure the goals you choose for next year are based on your values.

However, values are not always easy to determine because:

They are so much a part of who we are, that unless we have completed some kind of values-clarification exercise, we may struggle to articulate our values.
Values-labels are bandied about so often that they lose their meaning – “love”, “peace”, “kindness” etc. What do we even mean by these words?
We tend to choose the values we “should” have rather than those we truly do have – especially when presented with a list of values.

In this article, I will help you clarify and describe your top 5 values. I hope to leave you surprised and enlightened!

But first, what are values? Let’s be sure we are all on the same page.

lenses through which we view ourselves and the world
the basis for our thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
the basis by which we evaluate (judge) ourselves and others
standards we hold, and thus we experience them as “shoulds” and “oughts”
highly influential in the way we make decisions
satisfying when we take part in activities that express our values
varied, and so we must participate in many roles to satisfy all our values
potentially conflicting – if the demands of one of your valued roles (e.g. work) prevents you from participating fully in another valued role (e.g. creativity), you will experience conflict and dissatisfaction
motivating, when you are engaged in something related to them
important characteristic of success and leadership, when you know who you are, what you believe in and what you stand for.

Okay, by now you are convinced that clarifying your values is a very productive exercise!

There are many ways to do it. Here is one way that is both simple and very effective:

Write down the 3-5 people you have consistently admired most in the world (famous or not).

Next, spend some time writing down the actual qualities they have that is responsible for your admiration of each of these people.
Circle the qualities that you believe YOU also have
Define and elaborate what you mean by these qualities. Don’t be glib! These are your values.
Describe them in your life and how and when they are present or absent.
Now pick your top 5-7 values.

When picking your top 5-7 values, don’t worry about order. Just pick the ones that are most important to you. A good way to do this is to list all the values gleaned from the above exercise and then begin eliminating the ones you feel you could live without. Keep eliminating until you get left with 5 or 7.

Those are your top values.

To live a satisfying and fulfilling life you should find ways to express every one of them daily. If altruism and generosity are important, start giving every day. If creativity is important, start expressing yourself. If money and financial security are important, then get focused on accumulating money. If fun and laughter are important, why are you not having fun in your life? If children and family are important, how can you spend more time with yours and create the family you long for?

Bottom line, stop wasting time on activities that you do not value! Or perusing goals that are not based on your values.

I leave you with a quote by Mildred Newman:

“If you know what your values are –
If you know what your standards are –
If you know what is important to you –
If you have a point of view –
Then you have a sense of direction.
Then you know where you are going.”

If YOU are curious about how a Mother’s Coach can enhance your life in all areas,
please contact Kim Richardson to schedule a session.
Visit website: www.themommyblues.com
Email Kim at: KimARichardson@aol.com
Subscribe to newsletter: Mothering the Mom
Request a consultation with Kim Richardson

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5 steps to SMARTER New Year's Resolutions

2009-12-30T16:24:00.003-05:00

New Year’s Eve is upon us – a magical time for setting new goals and making changes. Would you like to harness some of that magic for yourself?

Following these five steps will increase your chances of reaching your goals next year, and being successful at what you desire.

Traditionally, the end of the year is a time for making resolutions. Very often these are things we have struggled with all year, and not been able to achieve. And so, we think that by re-invoking them on New Year’s Eve they will be imbued with some kind of magic – and they will happen!

Now, I do think there is a bit of truth to that belief. There IS some mystery and magic in ritual and symbol that we don’t always fully understand. So choosing a special day when millions of other people are also deciding to make some kind of change is a good idea! But it’s not enough.

Here are 5 tips for more successful resolutions – resolutions that have a very good chance of being followed through.

1. Choose your New Year’s Resolutions Consciously and Seriously

Setting goals is part of all of our lives, but often it is done unconsciously and with very little purpose and direction. Many of us make choices by default. Today, right now, choose a goal consciously and purposefully. Give it due consideration.

Think about your understanding of goals. A goal is well-defined. Like a target, it gives you clarity, motivation and focus. Having goals gives you a better chance of being successful.

Do you want your goal to be about making a change, forming a new habit, developing a skill, learning something new, stopping something old? What is your goal? For mothers, does your goal have to do with better parenting, better self-care?

2. Align your Goal with your Values

When you goal is aligned with your values, it has a better chance of being realized. Your values are what you esteem and give worth to. They determine where you spend your money, time and energy. So before, settling on a goal, spend a few moments deciding whether it is, in fact, part of YOUR value set. If it isn’t, it’s going to be very difficult to be consistent with it.

What are your top 5 values? Write them down..

3. Be SMART about your Resolution or Goal.

You need to write it down. Clearly. Use the SMART method. In other words, make sure that it is specific (S), measurable (M), attainable (A), realistic (R) and has a time-frame (T). The more defined and specific, the better. Then you will know for certain whether you are achieving it or not. Most goal experts advise you to read it morning and night, so write it down and keep it where you can see it daily.

4. Make a PLAN of Action.

If you don’t plan, you plan to fail. It’s really as simple as that. Not creating an action plan is defaulting to not following through. So step 4 is to create the action plan. All you need to do is write down the steps required to achieve the goal. You can start from the end (the final product) and work backwards or you can start from the present, and write down the very next step. Keep going and keep asking yourself, “What is my next step?” Write down each tiny step – that will be your action plan.

5. Create a BACKUP Plan

In the final step, you are going to think through all the obstacles that could get in the way of following through on your resolution. Think of what you have tried in the past and what has stopped you. List them all, and then write down in advance what you will do to overcome them this time. How youwill not let them become excuses for abandoning your goal. Be proactive and prepared. We’re all human, after all, and prone to distraction and fatigue and inconsistency!

So what structure could you create to help you stay on track? Be creative and serious about it. This is your life you are planning – not just a goal!

My very best wishes to you for a wonderful New Year full of realized goals and dreams!

Kim Richardson

TINY URL for this post: http://tinyurl.com/yfzm34b

If YOU are curious about how a Mother’s Coach can enhance your life in all areas,
please contact Kim Richardson to schedule a session.
Visit website: www.themommyblues.com
Email Kim at: KimARichardson@aol.com
Subscribe to newsletter: Mothering the Mom
Request a consultation with Kim Richardson

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A Lesson in Self-love - Lindy Bruce

2009-12-30T16:24:00.001-05:00

Today, I will share a blog post by Lindy Bruce, author of Motherhood and Me. It was originally posted on her website on July 20th, 2009:

Lindy Bruce – A Lesson in Self Love:

“Yesterday, I had one of those “overwhelmed” mother moments!I was having a great morning until my husband mentioned that he thought the vegetable potjie I was serving to some friends for supper was not going to be enough… and that perhaps we should do some meat too!!!! It is always the smallest piece of straw that seems to break the camel’s back… and for me it was the MEAT!!!!

I was immediately engulfed by a thousand thoughts:

The house is in a mess.

I have so much work to catch up on.

I need to walk and feed the dogs!

I haven’t done photographs for five years.

I have no winter clothes to wear and when will I ever get to the shops.

The kids need new school shoes.

Damn… I need to pay the school fees.

Oh no… the meat!!!!!!!!!!!

I was in a downward spiral! There was a little voice in my head that said, “choose something different Lindy, you don’t need to spiral, just walk away from it all for a while”.

With that I stood up, announced I was going to shower and asked that Cam motivate the kids to make their beds and clean-up. I gave myself an extra long shower (sorry, to the environment); washed my hair; pondered over creams and smellies for a while; dried my hair and then got dressed. I was feeling a little better.

As I was walking out of my bedroom my eye caught a glimpse of a picture of me on our wall, age two. I took the picture off the wall and gazed at this beautiful little girl. I immediately saw traces of my own mother, and parts of me that resembled each one of my children. I became intimately aware of the strength of my blood and genetic connection to all these people that I love. I looked at myself a little longer and allowed the memory or association to my family to fade a little and all of a sudden I saw the face of me… just ME.

An unexpected thing happened… my heart filled to the size of the universe. I was floating in the most mesmerizing sensation of love. For whom? For ME!

My mind was flooded with new thoughts:

I love you.

You are doing a wonderful job with your children.

You have created a warm and happy home. Well done.

I am so proud of you for all the painful experiences you have come through and all the valuable lessons you have learned.

I admire the way you have embraced change.

You have grown up into a wonderful woman.

I love you.

I felt incredible, no longer over-whelmed, but just… incredible. I realized in that moment that there is nothing more powerful than the love and approval of one’s self.

In the modern world we can confuse this with arrogance. It is not arrogance. Self-love has the ability to celebrate all of you that deserves celebrating, but it also has the wisdom and humility to acknowledge where change and growth needs to happen, but even in this observation, love is present.

The problem is that we do not separate from our responsibilities as mothers and wives long enough, to see and experience ourselves simply as women: as that little girl who grew into a teenager and then into a young women with dreams and passions. We are still that person, but she so easily becomes lost and forgotten.

My wish for all mothers is that in the midst of the love and thanks and approval your loved ones will shower on you, you take the time to gaze at your own face and allow your heart to swell with love and approval for yourself and the amazing woman you are!”

Lindy Bruce, originally posted on her websiteon July 20th, 2009.

This blogpost was inserted by Kim Richardson, founder of the website: “The Mommy Blues – where Mothers Feelings Matter (and sharing helps)“. Kim Richardson is an advocate for mother’s mental health, a postpartum counselor and a mother’s coach.

If YOU are curious about how a Mother’s Coach can enhance your life in all areas,
please contact Kim Richardson to schedule a session.
Visit website: www.themommyblues.com
Email Kim at: KimARichardson@aol.com
Subscribe to newsletter: Mothering the Mom
Request a consultation with Kim Richardson

Follow The Mommy Blues on Twitter
Join The Mommy Blues on Facebook

Follow the Mommy Blues on Facebook

2009-12-30T16:23:00.000-05:00

For a daily dose of support for your mothering self – please consider joining The Mommy Blues, now new on Facebook.
The Mommy Blues on Facebook

Here are a couple of dailies:

December 11, 2009: LIVE A LIFE OF EXTREME SELF-CARE – We treat ourselves the way we want others to treat us. Our children learn how to care for themselves by watching the way we care for ourselves. If we abuse ourselves – rushing, overeating, drinking, being in toxic relationships – our children will mirror these behaviors in their own lack of self-care (Carey Sipp).”

How can you take GREAT care of yourself tomorrow?

December 12, 2009 DAILY THOUGHT: Can you define your parenting philosophy, and even your ultimate goals for parenting? Parenting can be so REACTIVE! New parents are dropped into a slew of problems to solve and choices to make, with no shortage of books and opinions on how to do it. As kids grow there are questions, unexpected discoveries, BIG surprises and lots of second-guessing of ourselves.

SO what is YOUR big picture? What do you want ultimately for your motherself and your kids?
Can you describe it in words?

December 12, 2009

Join the conversation (or just read quietly) by clicking here: The Mommy Blues on Facebook

This blogpost was written by Kim Richardson, founder of the website: “The Mommy Blues – where Mothers Feelings Matter“. Kim Richardson is an advocate for mother’s mental health, a postpartum counselor and a mother’s coach.

If YOU you are curious about how a Mother’s Coach can enhance your life in all areas,
please contact Kim Richardson to schedule a session.
Visit website: www.themommyblues.com
Email Kim at: KimARichardson@aol.com
Subscribe to newsletter: Mothering the Mom
Request a consultation with Kim Richardson

Follow The Mommy Blues on Twitter
Join The Mommy Blues on Facebook

The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting

2009-12-30T16:22:00.001-05:00

From TIME CNN – Friday, Nov. 20, 2009

By Nancy Gibbs

The insanity crept up on us slowly; we just wanted what was best for our kids. We bought macrobiotic cupcakes and hypoallergenic socks, hired tutors to correct a 5-year-old’s “pencil-holding deficiency,” hooked up broadband connections in the treehouse but took down the swing set after the second skinned knee. We hovered over every school, playground and practice field — “helicopter parents,” teachers christened us, a phenomenon that spread to parents of all ages, races and regions. Stores began marketing stove-knob covers and “Kinderkords” (also known as leashes; they allow “three full feet of freedom for both you and your child”) and Baby Kneepads (as if babies don’t come prepadded). The mayor of a Connecticut town agreed to chop down three hickory trees on one block after a woman worried that a stray nut might drop into her new swimming pool, where her nut-allergic grandson occasionally swam. A Texas school required parents wanting to help with the second-grade holiday party to have a background check first. Schools auctioned off the right to cut the carpool line and drop a child directly in front of the building — a spot that in other settings is known as handicapped parking.

We were so obsessed with our kids’ success that parenting turned into a form of product development. Parents demanded that nursery schools offer Mandarin, since it’s never too soon to prepare for the competition of a global economy. High school teachers received irate text messages from parents protesting an exam grade before class was even over; college deans described freshmen as “crispies,” who arrived at college already burned out, and “teacups,” who seemed ready to break at the tiniest stress. (See pictures of the college dorm’s evolution.)

This is what parenting had come to look like at the dawn of the 21st century — just one more extravagance, the Bubble Wrap waiting to burst.

All great rebellions are born of private acts of civil disobedience that inspire rebel bands to plot together. And so there is now a new revolution under way, one aimed at rolling back the almost comical overprotectiveness and overinvestment of moms and dads. The insurgency goes by many names — slow parenting, simplicity parenting, free-range parenting — but the message is the same: Less is more; hovering is dangerous; failure is fruitful. You really want your children to succeed? Learn when to leave them alone. When you lighten up, they’ll fly higher. We’re often the ones who hold them down.

A backlash against overparenting had been building for years, but now it reflects a new reality. Since the onset of the Great Recession, according to a CBS News poll, a third of parents have cut their kids’ extracurricular activities. They downsized, downshifted and simplified because they had to — and often found, much to their surprise, that they liked it. When a TIME poll last spring asked how the recession had affected people’s relationships with their kids, nearly four times as many people said relationships had gotten better as said they’d gotten worse. “This is one of those moments when everything is on the table, up for grabs,” says Carl Honoré, whose book Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting is a gospel of the slow-parenting movement. He likens the sudden awareness to the feeling you get when you wake up after a long night carousing, the lights go on, and you realize you’re a mess. “That horrible moment of self-recognition is where we are culturally. I wanted parents to realize they are not alone in thinking this is insanity, and show there’s another way.” (See the 25 best back-to-school gadgets.)

How We Got Here
Overparenting had been around long before Douglas MacArthur’s mom Pinky moved with him to West Point in 1899 and took an apartment near the campus, supposedly so she could watch him with a telescope to be sure he was studying. But in the 1990s something dramatic happened, and the needle went way past the red line. From peace and prosperity, there arose fear and anxiety; crime went down, yet parents stopped letting kids out of their sight; the percentage of kids walking or biking to school dropped from 41% in 1969 to 13% in 2001. Death by injury has dropped more than 50% since 1980, yet parents lobbied to take the jungle gyms out of playgrounds, and strollers suddenly needed the warning label “Remove Child Before Folding.” Among 6-to-8-year-olds, free playtime dropped 25% from 1981 to ‘97, and homework more than doubled. Bookstores offered Brain Foods for Kids: Over 100 Recipes to Boost Your Child’s Intelligence. The state of Georgia sent every newborn home with the CD Build Your Baby’s Brain Through the Power of Music, after researchers claimed to have discovered that listening to Mozart could temporarily help raise IQ scores by as many as 9 points. By the time the frenzy had reached its peak, colleges were installing “Hi, Mom!” webcams in common areas, and employers like Ernst & Young were creating “parent packs” for recruits to give Mom and Dad, since they were involved in negotiating salary and benefits.

Once obsessing about kids’ safety and success became the norm, a kind of orthodoxy took hold, and heaven help the heretics — the ones who were brave enough to let their kids venture outside without Secret Service protection. Just ask Lenore Skenazy, who to this day, when you Google “America’s Worst Mom,” fills the first few pages of results — all because one day last year she let her 9-year-old son ride the New York City subway alone. A newspaper column she wrote about it somehow ignited a global firestorm over what constitutes reasonable risk. She had reporters calling from China, Israel, Australia, Malta. (“Malta! An island!” she marvels. “Who’s stalking the kids there? Pirates?”) Skenazy decided to fight back, arguing that we have lost our ability to assess risk. By worrying about the wrong things, we do actual damage to our children, raising them to be anxious and unadventurous or, as she puts it, “hothouse, mama-tied, danger-hallucinating joy extinguishers.”

Skenazy, a Yale-educated mom who with her husband is raising two boys in New York City, had ingested all the same messages as the rest of us. Her sons’ school once held a pre-field-trip assembly explaining exactly how close to a hospital the children would be at all times. She confesses to being “at least part Sikorsky,” hiring a football coach for a son’s birthday and handing out mouth guards as party favors. But when the Today show had her on the air to discuss her subway decision, interviewer Ann Curry turned to the camera and asked, “Is she an enlightened mom or a really bad one?” (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.)

From that day and the food fight that followed, she launched her Free Range Kids blog, which eventually turned into her own Dangerous Book for Parents: Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry. There is no rational reason, she argues, that a generation of parents who grew up walking alone to school, riding mass transit, trick-or-treating, teeter-tottering and selling Girl Scout cookies door to door should be forbidding their kids to do the same. But somehow, she says, “10 is the new 2. We’re infantilizing our kids into incompetence.” She celebrates seat belts and car seats and bike helmets and all the rational advances in child safety. It’s the irrational responses that make her crazy, like when Dear Abby endorses the idea, as she did in August, that each morning before their kids leave the house, parents take a picture of them. That way, if they are kidnapped, the police will have a fresh photo showing what clothes they were wearing. Once the kids make it home safe and sound, you can delete the picture and take a new one the next morning.

That advice may seem perfectly sensible to parents bombarded by heartbreaking news stories about missing little girls and the predator next door. But too many parents, says Skenazy, have the math all wrong. Refusing to vaccinate your children, as millions now threaten to do in the case of the swine flu, is statistically reckless; on the other hand, there are no reports of a child ever being poisoned by a stranger handing out tainted Halloween candy, and the odds of being kidnapped and killed by a stranger are about 1 in 1.5 million. When parents confront you with “How can you let him go to the store alone?,” she suggests countering with “How can you let him visit your relatives?” (Some 80% of kids who are molested are victims of friends or relatives.) Or ride in the car with you? (More than 430,000 kids were injured in motor vehicles last year.) “I’m not saying that there is no danger in the world or that we shouldn’t be prepared,” she says. “But there is good and bad luck and fate and things beyond our ability to change. The way kids learn to be resourceful is by having to use their resources.” Besides, she says with a smile, “a 100%-safe world is not only impossible. It’s nowhere you’d want to be.” (See pictures of eighth-graders being recruited for college basketball.)

Dispatches from the Front Lines
Eleven parents are sitting in a circle in an airy, glass-walled living room in south Austin, Texas, eating organic, gluten-free, nondairy coconut ice cream. This is a Slow Family Living class, taught by perinatal psychologist Carrie Contey and Bernadette Noll. “Our whole culture,” says Contey, 38, “is geared around ‘Is your kid making the benchmarks?’ There’s this fear of ‘Is my kid’s head the right size?’ People think there’s some mythical Good Mother out there that they aren’t living up to and that it’s hurting their child. I just want to pull the plug on that.”

The parents seem relieved to hear it. Matt, a textbook editor, reports that he and his wife quit a book club because it caused too much stress on book-club nights, and stopped fussing about how the house looks, which brings nods all around the room: let go of perfectionism in all its tyranny. Margaret, a publishing executive, tells her own near-miss story of how she stepped back from the brink of insanity. On her son’s fourth birthday, she says, “I’m like ‘Oh, my God, he’s eligible for Suzuki!’ I literally got on the phone and called 12 Suzuki teachers,” she says, before realizing the nightmare she was creating for herself and her child. Shutting down your inner helicopter isn’t easy. “This is not a shift in perspective that occurs overnight,” Matt admits after class. “And it’s not every day that I consciously sit down and ask myself hard questions about how I want family life to be slower or better.”

Fear is a kind of parenting fungus: invisible, insidious, perfectly designed to decompose your peace of mind. Fear of physical danger is at least subject to rational argument; fear of failure is harder to hose down. What could be more natural than worrying that your child might be trampled by the great, scary, globally competitive world into which she will one day be launched? It is this fear that inspires parents to demand homework in preschool, produce the snazzy bilingual campaign video for the third-grader’s race for class rep, continue to provide the morning wake-up call long after he’s headed off to college.

Some of the hovering is driven by memory and demography. This generation of parents, born after 1964, waited longer to marry and had fewer children. Families are among the smallest in history, which means our genetic eggs are in fewer baskets and we guard them all the more zealously. Helicopter parents can be found across all income levels, all races and ethnicities, says Patricia Somers of the University of Texas at Austin, who spent more than a year studying the species at the college level. “There are even helicopter grandparents,” she notes, who turn up with their elementary-school grandchildren for college-information sessions aimed at juniors and seniors. (See pictures of Barack Obama’s college years.)

Nor is this phenomenon limited to ZIP codes where every Volvo wagon just has to have a University of Chicago sticker on it. “I’m having exactly the same conversations with coaches, teachers, parents, counselors, whether I’m in Wichita or northern Canada or South America,” says Honoré. His own revelation came while listening to the feedback about his son in kindergarten. It was fine, but nothing stellar — until he got to the art room and the teacher began raving about how creative his son was, pointing out his sketches that she’d displayed as models for other students. Then, Honoré recalls, “she dropped the G-bomb: ‘He’s a gifted artist,’ she told us, and it was one of those moments when you don’t hear anything else. I just saw the word gifted in neon with my son’s name …” So he hurried home and Googled the names of art tutors and eagerly told his son all about the special person who would help him draw even better. “He looks at me like I’m from outer space,” Honoré says. “‘I just wanna draw,’ he tells me. ‘Why do grownups have to take over everything?’ “

“That was a searing epiphany,” Honoré concludes. “I didn’t like what I saw.” He now writes and lectures about the many fruits of slowing down, citing research that suggests the brain in its relaxed state is more creative, makes more nuanced connections and is ripe for eureka moments. “With children,” he argues, “they need that space not to be entertained or distracted. What boredom does is take away the noise … and leave them with space to think deeply, invent their own game, create their own distraction. It’s a useful trampoline for children to learn how to get by.” (See pictures of college mascots.)

Other studies reinforce the importance of play as an essential protein in a child’s emotional diet; were it not, argue some scientists, it would not have persisted across species and millenniums, perhaps as a way to practice for adulthood, to build leadership, sociability, flexibility, resilience — even as a means of literally shaping the brain and its pathways. Dr. Stuart Brown, a psychiatrist and the founder of the National Institute for Play — who has a treehouse above his office — recalls in a recent book how managers at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) noticed the younger engineers lacked problem-solving skills, though they had top grades and test scores. Realizing the older engineers had more play experience as kids — they’d taken apart clocks, built stereos, made models — JPL eventually incorporated questions about job applicants’ play backgrounds into interviews. “If you look at what produces learning and memory and well-being” in life, Brown has argued, “play is as fundamental as any other aspect.” The American Academy of Pediatrics warns that the decrease in free playtime could carry health risks: “For some children, this hurried lifestyle is a source of stress and anxiety and may even contribute to depression.” Not to mention the epidemic of childhood obesity in a generation of kids who never just go out and play.

Remember, Mistakes Are Good
Many educators have been searching for ways to tell parents when to back off. It’s a tricky line to walk, since studies link parents’ engagement in a child’s education to better grades, higher test scores, less substance abuse and better college outcomes. Given a choice, teachers say, overinvolved parents are preferable to invisible ones. The challenge is helping parents know when they are crossing a line.

Every teacher can tell the story of a student who needed to fail in order to be reassured that the world wouldn’t come to an end. Yet teachers now face a climate in which parents ghostwrite students’ homework, airbrush their lab reports — then lobby like a K Street hired gun for their child to be assigned to certain classes. Principal Karen Faucher instituted a “no rescue” policy at Belinder Elementary in Prairie Village, Kans., when she noticed the front-office table covered each day with forgotten lunch boxes and notebooks, all brought in by parents. The tipping point was the day a mom rushed in with a necklace meant to complete her daughter’s coordinated outfit. “I’m lucky — I deal with intelligent parents here,” Faucher says. “But you saw very intelligent parents doing very stupid things. It was almost like a virus. The parents knew that was not what they intended to do, but they couldn’t help themselves.” A guidance counselor at a Washington prep school urges parents to find a mentor of a certain disposition. “Make friends with parents,” she advises, “who don’t think their kids are perfect.” Or with parents who are willing to exert some peer pressure of their own: when schools debate whether to drop recess to free up more test-prep time, parents need to let a school know if they think that’s a trade-off worth making.

Read “To Help the Kids, Parents Go Back to School.”

See pictures of teens and how they would vote.

A certain amount of hovering is understandable when it comes to young children, but many educators are concerned when it persists through middle school and high school. Some teachers talk of “Stealth Fighter Parents,” who no longer hover constantly but can be counted on for a surgical strike just when the high school musical is being cast or the starting lineup chosen. And senior year is the witching hour: “I think for a lot of parents, college admissions is like their grade report on how they did as a parent,” observes Madeleine Rhyneer, dean of students at Willamette University in Oregon. Many colleges have had to invent a “director of parent programs” to run regional groups so moms and dads can meet fellow college parents or attend special classes where they can learn all the school cheers. The Ithaca College website offers a checklist of advice: “Visit (but not too often)”; “Communicate (but not too often)”; “Don’t worry (too much)”; “Expect change”; “Trust them.”

Teresa Meyer, a former PTA president at Hickman High in Columbia, Mo., has just sent the youngest of her three daughters to college. “They made it very clear: You are not invited to the registration part where they’re requesting classes. That’s their job.” She’s come to appreciate the please-back-off vibe she’s encountered. “I hope that we’re getting away from the helicopter parenting,” Meyer says. “Our philosophy is ‘Give ‘em the morals, give ‘em the right start, but you’ve got to let them go.’ They deserve to live their own lives.” (See the 10 best iPhone apps for dads.)

What You Can Do
Among the most powerful weapons in the war against the helicopter brigade is the explosion of websites where parents can confide, confess and affirm their sense that lowering expectations is not the same as letting your children down. So you gave up trying to keep your 2-year-old from eating the dog’s food? You banged your son’s head on the doorway while giving him a piggyback ride? Your daughter hates school and is so scared of failure she won’t even try to ride a bike? “I just want to throw in the towel and give up on her,” one mom posts on Truuconfessions.com. “This is NOT what I thought I was signing up for.” Honestbaby.com sells baby T-shirts that say “I’ll walk when I’m good and ready.” Given how many books and websites drove a generation of parents mad with anxiety, a certain balance is restored to the universe when it becomes conventional for people to brag about what bad parents they are.

The revolutionary leaders are careful about offering too much advice. Parents have gotten plenty of that, and one of the goals of this new movement is to give parents permission to disagree or at least follow different roads. “People feel there’s somehow a secret formula for parenting, and if we just read enough books and spend enough money and drive ourselves hard enough, we’ll find it, and all will be O.K.,” Honoré observes. “Can you think of anything more sinister, since every child is so different, every family is different? Parents need to block out the sound and fury from the media and other parents, find that formula that fits your family best.”

Kim John Payne, author of Simplicity Parenting, teaches seminars on how to peel back the layers of cultural pressure that weigh down families. He and his coaches will even go into your home, weed out your kids’ stuff, sort out their schedule, turn off the screens and help your family find space you didn’t know you had, like a master closet reorganizer for the soul. But any parent can do it just as well. “We need to quit bombarding them with choices way before their ability to handle them,” Payne says. The average child has 150 toys. “When you cut the toys and clothes back … the kids really like it.” He aims for a cut of roughly 75%: he tosses out the broken toys and gives away the outgrown ones and the busy, noisy, blinking ones that do the playing for you. Pare down to the classics that leave the most to the child’s imagination and create a kind of toy library kids can visit and swap from. Then build breaks of calm into their schedule so they can actually enjoy the toys. (See how to plan for retirement at any age.)

Finally, there is the gift of humility, which parents need to offer one another. We can fuss and fret and shuttle and shelter, but in the end, what we do may not matter as much as we think. Freakonomics authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt analyzed a Department of Education study tracking the progress of kids through fifth grade and found that things like how much parents read to their kids, how much TV kids watch and whether Mom works make little difference. “Frequent museum visits would seem to be no more productive than trips to the grocery store,” they argued in USA Today. “By the time most parents pick up a book on parenting technique, it’s too late. Many of the things that matter most were decided long ago — what kind of education a parent got, what kind of spouse he wound up with and how long they waited to have children.”

If you embrace this rather humbling reality, it will be easier to follow the advice D.H. Lawrence offered back in 1918: “How to begin to educate a child. First rule: leave him alone. Second rule: leave him alone. Third rule: leave him alone. That is the whole beginning.”

Of course, that was easy for him to say. He had no kids.

— With reporting by Karen Ball / Kansas City, Mo.; Alexandra Silver / New York City; and Elizabeth Dias and Sophia Yan / Washington

Find this article at: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1940395,00.html

IF you are curious about how a Mother’s Coach can enhance your life in all areas, please contact Kim Richardson to schedule a free trial session. Visit her websites: www.themommyblues.com or www.kimarichardson.comorEmail:KimARichardson@aol.com to contact her.

This article appeared on Time CNN on Nov 20, 2009. It has been reposted by Kim Richardson, Certified Professional Mother’s Coach and experienced Clinical Psychologist and Counselor. She offers life coaching to Mothers by telephone and Skype, and training, workshops and seminars to mental health professionals and consultants who wish to add coaching to their professional repertoire.

30 holiday cookie recipes in one!

2009-12-30T16:20:00.000-05:00

It’s not like me at all to get excited over baking or cooking. I am incredibly fortunate (as are my children) to be married to someone who loves cooking. In fact, truth be told, preparing food is the thing that I least like doing in the world. But this caught my eye and I thought I would put it on the blog!

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the USA. I, for one, am grateful for my inkling of interest in a food recipe. And I’m going to bake them with my young children and take them to my step-daughter’s Thanksgiving – for her adorable children.

Enjoy!!! I know your children will!
(PS. We need a gluten free option here too! Anyone?)

One basic cookies dough makes the building blocks for 30 different kinds of cookies — just in time for the holidays. Grab the kids and get rolling.

by Sandy Gluck / Photo by Getty RF

Inspired to bake? Make cookies for a cause. Visitglad.com/gladtogive to see how some lovin’ from your oven can help out Cookies for Kids’ Cancer.

Basic Cookie Dough
Makes about 3 1/2 dozen cookies

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
1-cup sugar
1 large egg
3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, with an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla until well combined.

2. With the mixer on low speed, beat in the flour mixture until just combined. Tear off 2 sheets of waxed paper, each about 12-inches. Spoon half the dough lengthwise down the center of each sheet of paper forming a strip about 8 inches long. With your hands, roll each strip into a log about 2 inches wide, and 1 inch thick. Wrap the logs up in the paper.

3. Freeze several hours until firm or freeze up to 3 months

4. To bake: preheat oven to 400. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Unwrap frozen dough and with a sharp knife, slice 1/4-inch thick. Bake until golden around the edges, rotating baking sheets from top to bottom and front to back. With a wide, thin metal spatula, remove from baking sheets to wire rack to cool completely.

1. Ginger Cookies: Add 3/4 teaspoon ground ginger and 1/8 teaspoon dry mustard powder to flour mixture. Beat 2 tablespoons finely chopped crystallized ginger in to mixture when adding egg.

2. Peanut Cookies: Grind enough peanuts to make 1/3 cup finely ground. Reduce flour to 1 1/3 cups and stir ground peanuts into remaining flour mixture. Add 2 tablespoons finely chopped peanuts when adding egg.

3. Espresso-Almond Cookies: Add 2 teaspoons instant espresso powder to flour mixture. Reduce sugar to 2/3 cup and add 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar. Add 1/8 teaspoon almond extract when adding vanilla. Fold in 1/3 cup sliced almonds after adding flour.

4. Molasses Cookies: Increase flour to 1 3/4 cups, swap in 1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar for 1/4 cup granulated, and add 3 tablespoons molasses when beating butter and sugar.

5. Citrus Cookies: Beat 2 tablespoons grated lemon, lime or a combo into mixture when adding egg.

6. Malted Milk Cookies: Add 2 tablespoons malted milk powder to flour mixture. Add 1/4 cup crushed malted milk balls when adding egg.

7. Cornmeal-Currant Cookies: Replace 1/3 cup of flour with 1/3 cup finely ground cornmeal. Stir 2 teaspoons grated lemon zest and 1/3 cup currants into mixture after adding flour.

8. Red-Hot Cookies: Finely crush 1/3 cup of red-hot candies and fold in when adding flour mixture.

9. Spice Cookies: Add 1 teaspoon ground cardamom, 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, and 1/8 teaspoon allspice to flour mixture.

10. Peanut Butter Chips: Reduce butter to 6 tablespoons. Add 2 tablespoons peanut butter. Fold in 3 tablespoons peanut butter chips when adding flour mixture.

11. Brown Butter: Melt butter over low heat until lightly browned and fragrant (do this in a pan that isn’t dark so you can see the change in color). Chill butter until firm then proceed with recipe as directed.

12. Toasted Coconut: Toast 1 cup of angel-flake coconut (the sweetened kind you get in the supermarket in bags) until golden brown. Grind a little more than half to get 1/3 cup ground and replace 1/3 cup of the flour with the ground coconut. Fold the remaining coconut in when adding the egg.

13. Chocolate-Chile Cookies: Remove 3 tablespoons of flour and replace with 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder. Add 3/4 teaspoon ancho or chipotle chile powder, and 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon to flour mixture.

14. Granola Cookies: Coarsely shop 1/2 cup of your favorite granola and stir in when adding flour mixture.

15. Orange-Cranberry: Fold 1 tablespoon finely grated orange zest and 1/4 cup finely chopped dried cranberries into dough after adding flour mixture.

16. Black Forest: Beat 2 ounces of melted and cooled semisweet chocolate into dough after adding egg. Fold in ¼ cup finely chopped dried cherries after adding flour mixture.

17. White and Dark Chocolate: Remove 3 tablespoons of flour and replace with 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder. Reduce granulated sugar to 3/4 cup and add 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar. Fold in 1/3 cup chopped white chocolate after adding flour.

18. Double Chocolate: Remove 3 tablespoons of flour and replace with 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder. Fold in 1/3-cup mini chocolate chips after folding in flour.

19. Rocky Road: Beat 1/3-cup marshmallow fluff when beating butter and sugar. Increase vanilla to 1 teaspoon. Fold in 3 tablespoons mini chocolate chips and 2 tablespoons finely chopped pecans after folding in flour.

20. Carrot Cookies: Beat 1/2 cup of finely grated carrot into the mixture when adding egg. Swap in 1/3 cup maple sugar for 1/3 cup of regular sugar.

21. Pine Nut Cookies: Fold 1/4 cup of pine nuts into dough after adding flour mixture. Add 1/8 teaspoon almond extract along with vanilla.

22. Crispy Rice Cookies: Stir 2/3 cup of crisp puffed rice cereal into mixture when beating in flour mixture.

23. Sesame Cookies: Beat 2 teaspoons dark sesame oil and 3 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds into mixture when adding egg.

24. Apricot-Anise Cookies: Fold in 1 1/2 teaspoons anise seed and 1/4 cup finely chopped dried apricots after adding flour.

25. Cashew Cookies: Reduce butter to 6 tablespoons and add 2 tablespoons cashew butter. Add 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg to flour mixture. Fold in 1/3 cup finely chopped salted cashews after adding flour.

26. Sunflower Seed Cookies: Reduce butter to 6 tablespoons and add 2 tablespoons sunflower seed butter. Fold 2 tablespoons toasted hulled sunflower seeds and 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest to mixture after adding flour mixture.

27. Whole-Wheat Cinnamon Sugar Cookies: Replace 2/3 cup of flour with 2/3-cup whole-wheat pastry flour. Add 1-teaspoon ground cinnamon to flour mixture. Add 2 tablespoons brown sugar to sugar and butter mixture.

28. Toasted Oatmeal Cookies: Toast 1 1/2 cups rolled or quick cooking oats until fragrant and golden brown. Grind 1 cup of the oats and once ground measure and substitute for an equal amount of flour. Reduce sugar to 3/4 cup and add 1/4 cup light brown sugar. Fold remaining 1/2 cup oats into dough after adding flour.

29. Butterscotch Cookies: Reduce sugar to 1/2 cup and add 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar. Fold in 1/2 cup butterscotch morsels after adding flour.

30. Tropical Cookies: Fold 1/3 cup finely chopped dried pineapple, 1/4 cup finely chopped dried banana chips, and 2 teaspoons grated lime zest after adding flour.

Sandy Gluck hosts Martha Stewart Radio’s Everyday Food weekdays at 11 a.m. EST on on Sirius XM.

Nov 22, 2009

This blog entry was posted by Kim Richardson, Certified Professional Mother’s Coach and experienced Clinical Psychologist and Counselor. She offers life coaching to Mothers by telephone and Skype, and training, workshops and seminars to mental health professionals and consultants who wish to add coaching to their professional repertoire.

What exactly is a mother's coach?

2009-12-30T16:19:00.000-05:00

By now most people have heard of life coaching. In fact, it seems that every other person has become a Life Coach. Life Coaches usually specialize in an area of life coaching – a niche. My niche is coaching mothers. I chose this area because, as a psychotherapist, my specialty is working with pregnancy, fertility, adoption, mothering (parenting) and postpartum issues.

Perhaps you are reading this blog because at some point you may have wondered what it’s like to have your own mother’s coach. What exactly is a mother’s coach, you may have asked yourself?

In this article, I am going to show you how useful and effective a mother’s coach can be by describing a scenario and showing you how it would be handled by a coach vs. a consultant, a mentor or a counselor / psychotherapist.

Can a Mother's Coach help me get my baby to sleep? "Yes!" says Kim Richardson founder of www.TheMommyBlues.com

SCENARIO : Kathy is a first-time mom who is having trouble getting her baby to fall asleep. She is exhausted from nursing him to sleep but cannot stand to put him down and listen to him crying, as she leaves the room.

Her first call for help is to a baby sleep consultant who assesses the situation and advises Kathy to use a technique in which she is to put the baby down and leave the room for progressively longer periods. The consultant reassures her that the baby will not suffer from this, and that he should be falling asleep easily after 3-7 nights.

Kathy tries this technique but is unable to follow through. Her baby’s cries upset her to the point of tears and she is unable to tolerate any crying. Even though the baby may not be suffering, Kathy is!

Next Kathy talks to her psychotherapist. Together they explore her feelings. She describes terrible guilt when he cries and says that she feels as if she is abandoning him when she does not respond to his cries. Talking about her feelings reminds her of the time her mother was hospitalized for 7 weeks when Kathy was 5 years old. She recalls crying herself to sleep at night, and missing her mother. She feared that her mother was gone forever. Kathy realizes that her son’s crying evokes this painful memory that was, until now, forgotten. This is a helpful insight for Kathy, though it does not immediately change her actions with her son.

A few days later, still exhausted, she makes a call to her birth instructor, Mary. A woman in her 40s with 5 children in adolescence and older, To Kathy, Mary appears to know everything there is to know about birth, babies and parenting. Mary seems to be the epitome of the kind of mother Kathy would like to become – calm, wise and clear about her ideas. She arranges for Mary to visit her the next week.

Kathy is excited to show Mary her baby and hopefully talk about her difficulties with sleep. She feels sure that wonderful Mary, with all her knowledge and experience can help her. Without thinking about it, Kathy has reached out to someone from whom she wants to learn about mothering, someone who will function as a mentor to her.

The following day, surfing the web, still looking for sleep solutions, Kathy stumbles upon the site of a Life Coach who specializes in working with mothers – a Mother’s Coach. The coach offers a free trial session and Kathy decides to give her a call and set up a session.

During this trial session the coach invites Kathy to talk about an important issue she would like to solve. Kathy says she would like to be able to get her son to fall asleep without having to nurse or rock him for 1-3 hours. The coach asks Kathy what she has tried so far and how it has worked for her. Kathy describes the last few months and the coach listens without interruption. After clarifying a few things and asking some more questions which get Kathy to really think deeply about her values, her strengths and her vision for herself as a mother, the coach asks Kathy what she feels would be the right thing for her and her son.

Kathy is quiet for a moment, and then reaching from somewhere inside her, she realizes very clearly what it is that she wants to do.
“I am prepared to decrease the time I spend nursing him to sleep, but I do not want to leave the room if he is crying for me, she says. It might work for others, but it’s just not for me. I can’t do it. I realize why I cannot from my psychotherapy, and maybe I could do this one day, but not now. Not with this baby. I am clear about that. So, perhaps, what I will do is..”

In the following sessions, the Mother’s Coach and Kathy put together a plan of action and some supportive structures that will help Kathy towards her goal of getting her son to sleep more easily. As they work together, they discover other areas in Kathy’s life that she is neglecting and would like to work on changing. They work as a team, helping Kathy fulfill her potential in all the different areas of her life.

Their work together does not interfere with Kathy’s work with her psychotherapist. Unlike psychotherapy, coaching is practical, future-looking, goal-based, and action-oriented.

As a result she feels less helpless and chaotic in her mothering and can set time aside for other areas that are important to her, such as friendships, her health and her marriage. She has a plan for going back to work and feels calmer and clearer about it.

Nov 4th, 2009

This post was written by Kim Richardson, Certified Professional Mother’s Coach and experienced Clinical Psychologist and Counselor. She offers life coaching to Mothers by telephone and Skype, and training, workshops and seminars to mental health professionals and consultants who wish to add coaching to their professional repertoire.

Telemedicine! The way of the future?

2009-12-30T16:18:00.001-05:00

Psychotherapists, counselors and psychoanalysts have used the telephone for psychotherapy treatment for many years. Talk therapy is certainly possible and effective using the telephone and made even more effective with the lowered costs of video equipment and Skype.

In my counseling practice I have offered telephone therapy to clients who move away from my location. And in most coaching practices in the USA, the use of the telephone is standard (less so in Australia and the Netherlands).

Video skype is a great option for new clients that I cannot see face-to-face. I have a colleague who uses Skype for couples therapy. On my website, clients can download a collection of writings about the effectiveness of telephone treatment

Here is a report on telemedicine and the increasing use of the internet in the medical field:

Healthcare reform needs better choices: report

Mon Jul 20, 2009 8:16pm EDT

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

a WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Telemedicine, workplace clinics and finding ways to help people stay healthier may be more important for reforming the U.S. healthcare system than insuring everyone, according to a report to be released on Tuesday.

Incentives will be needed to encourage people to change their ways before they develop heart disease, diabetes and other so-called lifestyle diseases that now eat up so many medical resources, consultant Pricewaterhouse Coopers said in the report.

“Cranking up supply to increase access is likely not the answer. The United States now spends more than any nation on healthcare and has a record number of clinicians in the workforce,” the company said in a statement.

“Instead, solutions will lie in new models of care and in using technology, incentives and behavior change to unclog the jammed access points.”

Congress is working on legislation that would set up a government-run health insurance plan to compete with private insurers, provide coverage to many of the 46 million uninsured and try to stem runaway medical costs.

President Barack Obama, trying to rally support for reform efforts, said on Monday lawmakers must overcome their differences and enact reform now because spiraling healthcare costs were weighing on American families.

The PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute team conducted 37 in-depth interviews with officials at healthcare providers, the Veterans’ Administration, community health centers and other groups, read other studies and commissioned an online survey in April of 1,000 consumers.

They found half of those surveyed would be likely to seek healthcare online. “In Hawaii, more than 1,000 health plan members have engaged in an online consultation with physicians since the service was launched in 2009,” the report reads.

The Veterans Health Administration has said it has reduced use of its system by 30 percent over six years using telemedicine — remote consultation, diagnosis and sometimes even treatment using video or online links.

HEALTHCARE AT WORK

“Ten percent of employers surveyed by PwC in 2009 said that they’re providing worksite clinics, up from 1 percent in 2008,” the report adds. “Of consumers surveyed by PwC, 37 percent said they’d be likely to use a worksite clinic, and 36 percent said they’d be likely to use a retail clinic.”

One frequently cited problem is the overuse of expensive emergency departments. Half of those surveyed said they had visited an emergency room for a need other than an emergency during the last 12 months. “Medicaid patients use hospital emergency departments twice as much as the uninsured,” the report reads.

The use of emergency departments rises with the ratio of people with insurance. States with the most people lacking health insurance had lower rates of emergency department use — a finding that challenges the common wisdom that uninsured people and illegal immigrants are clogging hospital emergency rooms.

Hospitals often encourage this behavior, the report found. “Many hospitals are marketing and expanding their EDs as a way to increase admissions,” the report reads. “About one-third of patients who go to EDs were admitted for an inpatient stay.”

“It’s clear that access to insurance coverage does not translate into access to care,” Dr. David Chin, leader of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute said in a statement.

The study also said people will have to be encouraged to lose weight, eat healthier foods and exercise more — behaviors linked to diabetes, heart disease and fully one-third of all cancers.