It is for this confession and for this willingness to try to change, that we have something to learn from Chua’s journey. Her experiences illustrate that in parenting, there is little good that comes from excessive measures. But is this really a lesson we need to learn? The answer is yes! Unfortunately, far too many American moms (of course not all, but still, far too many) also exist in a realm of extreme behavior, but it goes in the OTHER direction. Many moms here are “under-doing” what Chua was guilty of “over-doing”. As detrimental as it was for Chua to “reject” a handmade birthday card from her daughter on the basis of its inferiority, it is equally as undermining for a mom to “accept” any half-hearted effort her child puts forth towards something when she knows he can do better. As emotionally crippling as it must have been for Chua to make her children feel as if nothing they do is good enough, it is equally as damaging for a mom to allow her children to go through life believing everything they do is perfect. And the list of negative consequences in either direction goes on and on. The unfortunate truth is that this “comfort-extreme” we lean towards is quickly becoming an acceptable model for parenting in our country. While it seems harmless enough, make no mistake, it is an extreme all the same. We have to be brutally honest that too many parents in our society tend to over-indulge, over-placate, and over-adulate children as a general rule of thumb these days. To make matters worse, we all know how quickly a dirty look is given to any parent who doesn’t embrace these same drastic measures in child-rearing. Disapproving eyes that say, “How dare that mom tell her child to try harder, doesn’t she know that she will irreversibly ruin his self-esteem if she does not praise his every attempt?” seem to be pervasive. And thus, a peer-pressuring effect to sway to that extreme breaks down even the most moderate of parents.

We want to believe that because this appeasement and applaud driven parenting style is the polar-opposite to that of the Tiger Mom that it can’t possibly be doing harm, or even a disservice, to our kids. This just isn’t true. Studies from various fields of science, ranging from neurology to psychology, have already proven it. Our intentions are good. Our problem is not in loving our children too much or wanting to see them immensely happy…all the time…our problem is in failing to realize that too much of anything, even a good thing, is unhealthy. Perhaps the Tiger Mom still has a way to go before she can be considered moderate, but so far she actually seems to be a step ahead of us on this one. Unlike many parents in our society, she has at least opened her eyes to the realization that she was operating in the realm of the far extreme. Have we?

I’d like to take a minute to reflect on the lessons to be learned from the recent mining disaster and subsequent miracle in Chile.

Chile is an example of not only the birth and breeding of a miracle, but also a manufacturing of it. The formulation of which was organic and innate (the spirit and resiliency of the rescued men) but also designed and engineered by human ingenuity.

There are elements of this miracle that we as Americans could stand to learn, study, and hope to emulate in the face of our next disaster: Solidarity, commitment, faith, patience, humility, preparation, diligence, and a sense of responsibility.

In America, we tend to embrace a stance of being arrogantly nationalistic and anti-nationalistic at the same time and both to a fault. The arrogance leads us to think we have all the answers to all things right here within our borders, and in the midst of our most devastating national crises we often fail to seek knowledge from outside of our boundaries. The day we wise up to the fact that there is always something to be learned, is the day we will learn to be greater. Chilean authorities were humble and swift in their pursuit of knowledge and assistance and welcomed expertise from all stretches of the human race. We have lacked such humility in our responses to crises.

And yet, as arrogant we are about being citizens of the greatest nation, we greatly exhibit this air of anti-nationalism. The complaining that can be heard coast to coast from the right-wing extremists who “hope our country fails” and angry Tea-Party people who encourage treason, to left-wing extremists and the whining “professional left” who just seem to never be satiated. We’ve become a nation that does nothing but complains about who we are as a nation. Disgruntled is our default national posture. Chile’s greatest act of success in the face of the mine crisis was their solidarity. When emotionally weakened, they sang with pride and hope their National Anthem, the song that each of them has in common, despite all they may have in contrast. I’m sure the left and right extremists of their societies will, as they surely have before under different circumstances, fail to be as united, but in the face of national crisis, they acted as a national unit, in solidarity. In contrast, we began each of our nations most recent crises with divisiveness and more complaints. Since leaders can only lead, then at some point we will have to own up to the fact that our success as Americans only manifests when unify ourselves in the ranks behind them.

Chile is an example of how good leadership and good “followership” yielded a country of people who were well prepared, highly diligent, fully committed, and assumed responsibility. Faith and patience are personal ideals that each individual needs to strive for in the face of crisis, but are easier to achieve when held up on the pillars of the other principles that only exist where there is a sense of unity.

I’m sure Chilean citizens are feeling a healthy and well deserved sense of national pride and unity right now, probably just the opposite of the frustration, helplessness, anger and embarrassment we felt after our recent crises. The important lesson to be learned is that that pride and unity they feel is not just the result of the miracle, but largely a reason for the miracle.

Fortunately the gaining of a child’s self-sufficiency need not be as contentious an event as the Revolutionary War. In fact, with a little patience, perspective, and opportunity-creation, you can actually enjoy nudging your little one into the world of “I can do it by myself”.

PATIENCE first…. Whether or not an independent spirit is intrinsic to your child, your ability and willingness to patiently guide him will make the difference in his confidence, and that confidence makes all the difference in his desire to be independent. If scolded each time his curiosity is explored, a child will train himself to stifle that innate human urge to learn by doing. In the midst of those stages where it seems like he only wants to destroy things and vandalize, resist the urge to tell him it’s wrong, and instead guide him to an acceptable outlet of expression. If your child is a “wall artist” and you catch him in the act of creating a masterpiece on your living room wall, use that opportunity to put together a “studio” that he can access all by himself. Set up a low art-drawer with some paper and crayons, and show him that he can get to those things himself. Each time you catch him in the act of wall-drawing, remind him that “we only draw on paper”. Then ask him to show you where the paper is. This simple set-up guides him towards independence as he figures out that not only is it acceptable and even great to make art (promotes creativity), but that there are appropriate and inappropriate mediums (teaches boundary respect), and he can exercise the freedom to act on those art urges all by himself, whenever he chooses (encourages independence!).

A little PERSPECTIVE….One example I use often to help give parents some perspective on fostering independence is that of cup-drinking. The art and science of cup-drinking is something we as adults totally take for granted. When you scale it down to a toddler’s eye-view, it’s a rather involved task. We’ve tipped cups to our lips hundreds of thousands of times in our many years, but consider how few times a toddler has had that experience. When she picks up a cup and tips it to her lips, she has to, in her own crude way, calculate how far to go, and she’ll likely spill it to find out how far that is or was. We parents clean up that spill and somehow think that she should know better next time and therefore shouldn’t spill it again. But what we often take for granted is that the next time she picks up a cup to drink, it may be only half full, while the first time it was completely full, and the third time, it may only be a quarter of the way full. Perhaps the forth and fifth times she’ll pick up a bigger, and then a smaller cup, and thus the weights are slightly different. Every single time she picks up a cup to drink, it will be a completely new experience, a new “calculation”, and likely a new spill, at least for some time. Eventually she’ll find a formula that allows her to predict a tipping point, and then independence cometh! Don’t be surprised by her urge to pour liquid from one cup, repeatedly, to another, or even to the floor or table. All of this pouring is part of discovering that formula. Call up your patience from the earlier paragraph, give her a proper receptacle like a big mixing bowl, fill that cup with water (as not to stain your furniture in case she gets off target of that bowl), and let her tip to her heart’s content.

Create and allow OPPORTUNITY….Speaking of filling up that cup to allow a child to explore the his/her tipping point, brings me to the next thing we as parents can do to promote independence. We need to create, or just sometimes allow, the opportunity to be independent. Filling that cup is an example of creating opportunity. Good for you if you have the heart to do it, your child will learn more quickly for it. But in the absence of such commitment, at least resolve to allow the natural opportunities for independence to run their course. This is often quite easy, but can sometimes be a challenge in that it can take a whole bunch of patience (see why I discussed that first?) Easy example: instead of picking up your child’s toys after playtime, encourage him to do it by himself. The challenge: waiting for your child to pick up all those toys, one by one, often stopping to play with them again, when it’s his bedtime and you’re in a hurry to get him to sleep. Often, the difficulty in this area comes from our impatience to slow down to our child’s pace or effectively motivate them to speed up. Then there are things that just can’t be sped up, such as a toddling toddler gaining the ability to climb stairs. This one takes the mastery of balance, depth perception, foot-eye-hand coordination, etc. How many times have you started to let your toddler maneuver down or up the stairs only to cut the experience short by picking him up because the whole thing was just taking too long? How will he learn to climb the stairs if his sweet little feet never touch them? Fight the urge to rush him or pick him up, find a nice melody to hum to kill the time while you wait for him to figure it out, or better yet, climb slowly along with him to give him a model to emulate, all the while praising his effort with lots of affirmations and “ata-boys!” And of course there are those moments when independence is hindered by the best of intentions and our natural instincts to protect our children from… well, everything. That play structure at the park doesn’t look so threatening until your precious little one is dangling from it. You go to help him despite the fact that he probably was going to do it fine by himself. To this I can only respond with the sage wisdom of the unforgettable fish Dory in Finding Nemo: “Well, you can’t never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him,” and that includes independence.

So muster your patience, adjust your perspective, and start creating and allowing some opportunities. Soon you’ll be celebrating your child’s own Independence, Day after day!

But what I REALLY like about it, is that it calls into question the way we, as a society, currently choose to manage our time. I understand that for some people the safety factor is not enough of a reason to give up their car/phone time. After all, most people consider themselves to be above-average drivers, and in their minds, the risks that texting/talking while driving poses is little compared to the risk of not being able to communicate at the blink-of-an-eye pace to which we’ve all become accustomed in the past few years.

In order to really adhere to such a pledge, you’d have to completely restructure your lifestyle! The “No Phone Zone” means you can no longer hop in the car, simultaneously dialing your bff to get directions to that restaurant for that dinner date you’re running late for…Bummer! It means, you can no longer text your hubby while driving back from the your son’s t-ball practice to ask him to pick up something for dinner, because it just dawned on you that supper’s in an hour, and you didn’t thaw the chicken….Dang! It means you have to actually wait until you get to where you’re going (and are parked) to check the oh-so-important-email that you just heard chirp through your Blackberry…Phewy! And for some really, REALLY important business people, it means really, REALLY important business will have to wait…ARRRGH!

How awful! But is it really? One of the most important skills that I teach parents is PREPARATION. Preparation is defined as “the action or process of making something ready or of getting ready for some occasion, test, or duty.” Preparation for parents means taking the time (despite the fact that time is hard to come by for many of us) to think something through and establish a plan of action. A plan is one of the most powerful tools in a parent’s toolbox. From dealing with the public temper tantrums to optimizing fun time, a plan makes the difference.

One module, in particular, that I teach is heavily dependent upon the ability to master the art of planning, and that is Time-Management. Our society today values the multi-tasking, constantly-moving, e-communicating archetype. It gives the allusion that much is getting accomplished, when quite often the reality is a great deal of inefficiency. A lot of those multi-tasks that we’re simultaneously completing, are actually other tasks that we have to “undo” and “redo”, because they weren’t done right in the first place, or at least not as well as they could have been if we had spent a little more time thinking them through before acting.

Learning to restructure our lives to include preparation and planning not only allows for more efficient outcomes, but also helps reduce stress and anxiety. And the best part, especially for parents, is that it changes our pace and allows us more opportunities to achieve that often hard-to-acquire feeling of living in the moment. Of course there’s a need, a time, and a place for spontaneity, but honestly, that impromptu text while driving, just ain’t it!  Managing time is most definitely worth it, but it can often be a challenge. Learning to prepare is something that comes by way of incremental progress. Little steps lead to bigger steps which lead to even bigger steps, and before you know it, you feel like you have more control over your life. Pledging to put your cell phone aside for the duration of a ride (and all the planning that’s required to do that one small task), could be your first step.

So I’ll rephrase my earlier questions:

Is it really such a bummer that your bff can no longer give you turn-by-turn directions to that restaurant, or is it nice to know that because you took the “No Phone Pledge” that you not only remembered to get directions before leaving the house but you slowed down enough to remember to check that the lock on the back door. Now instead of the anxiety of wondering “did I forget to do something?”, you’re enjoying a relaxing dinner with friends.   Is it really such a bad thing, that because you committed to not texting while driving that you decided to call your husband BEFORE you left for t-ball practice, and his “what’s for dinner?” question reminded you to take that chicken out the freezer? Not to mention the fact that he was so pleasantly surprised to receive your mid-day call that he said an extra “I love you” that kept you smiling for a half an hour or so.  And is it really so horrible that you didn’t check that email the very second it chirped into your inbox? Because after all, it was just another coupon from that company who’s listserve you’ve been meaning to unsubscibe from.

First and foremost, the “No Phone Zone” Pledge is a matter of life and death. But, don’t underestimate that for many of us, it could also be a matter of Time…Management!

Take the pledge now: www.nophonezone.com (It’s quicker than checking your email!)

From questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to separation of church and state, to attempting to replace the term “Slave Trade” with “Atlantic Triangular Trade” (though this latter revision was not approved), the Texas Board of Education wields the power to change the trajectory of our nation as we now know it by telling future generations a different story than the one we learned. But do they really?

Well, no…because that’s where we as parents come in, and frankly, that’s OUR power to wield. Despite what your own ideological views may be, and despite whether or not you’re in favor of these measures, it calls into question the accuracy and totality of any education our children receive from any institution. Inevitably there will be biases, omissions, and discrepancies in lessons our children are taught. But we need not feel despair, instead we should feel empowered.

This is a great opportunity to take ownership of our children’s education. We don’t necessarily need to sit in the class room with them and make sure each textbook includes a particular subject discussed in a particular way. But what we do need to do is to teach our children how be judicious and discerning, to instill in them the habit of self-seeking information, and to train them to distinguish fact from opinion for the sake of formulating their own opinions. These are life lessons that, if we successfully impart, will ensure that no textbook, teacher, or institution can limit or define their knowledge.

It’s quite unwise to assume any educational system is sufficient enough a pillar on which to place the weight of our children’s learning. History textbooks have and will continue to be rewritten time and time again, but knowledge can never be destroyed. Let’s teach our children how to seek, uncover, and accumulate it.

Why this blog? Well, as the title simply puts it, because parenting is the most important job in the world. It’s been said before, but can’t be said enough. Sure, there are other important jobs (doctors, rescue workers, airplane pilots, come to mind), but while those jobs are important to humanity, no other practitioner has the responsibility of MOLDING humanity like a parent. Parents are the root system to the forest of human-kind. Parents shape people, people shape society, and society shapes the world as we know it! It can’t get more profound than that.

The purpose of my blog is to celebrate and educate that most important profession and those that serve in it.  My intentions are to give guidance, support, and a voice to parents, andto  shed light on some aspects of the job. The articles will be informative and thought-provoking, enlightening and engaging, purposed and opinionated.  Often times entries may be playful while others will be quite serious and sober.  And, of course, you can expect to see the occasional rant, because what good is a blog if you don’t use it to vent your frustrations!

You’ll see a huge focus on teaching methods. Though parents wear many hats, our roles as teachers are the most significant because it is by teaching that we can achieve all of our other goals.  Thus, many articles will focus on effective ways to teach your child.  Also, while this blog may be geared towards parents, it’s actually a good read for you even if you don’t have children, as you may just get some insight into the mind of your loved one who does have kids or is a kid.

You’ll also see a strong focus on affirmation. As someone who is ecstatic about my career in parenting, I sincerely would love to see every parent experience that immense joy that only parenting can give.  The joy is there, but for some parents, real and perceived barriers stand in the way of happy parenting. These barriers can be overcome. Fears, insecurities, and ineptitude, don’t have to define parenting when laughter, confidence, and skill are there for the taking. It’s become a mission of mine to help parents in learn to love their jobs, because after all, it is the most important job in the world!

Welcome, enjoy, and visit often.

• getting hand-made Mother’s Day cards and crafts
• kisses and cuddles
• the darnedest things I get to hear them say
• watching them grow into happy, healthy, smart, caring young people, and knowing I influenced that growth
• those carefree moments when their bellies are full, cartoons are on, they feel safe and secure, all their needs are met, and they have not a care in the world.  One baby boy humming a goofy song and wiggling around the house; the other walking around with one arm raised and spinning in tiny circles to dizzy himself, it makes me think they have nothing but a circus tune in their heads, so I call these moments the “empty-headed dance”
• watching their eyes light up when they discover something new and interesting
• bubbles
• watching them with their daddy
• being the healer, protector, teacher, wrestling buddy, and best friend
• juice boxes
• clipping tiny toenails (yes, it is actually one of my favorite things because toes always tickle, and it’s never as simple as it should be)
• singing goofy songs in public and not caring who sees because my babies are happy and that’s all that matters
• wailing tears that I can make disappear with a simple game of Peek-a-Boo
• “If You’re Happy and You Know It” song
• my tandem-double stroller (greatest investment ever)
• the stillness of naptime, and the raucous of waking hours
• “cooking” together
• painting and sidewalk chalk
• rocking my babies in a rocking chair
• playing at the park, sand, grass, clouds, slides, swings, and bugs!
• that sage wisdom that only comes from the mouth of babes…

Happy Mother’s Day to all you women who give, sustain, and enrich lives!