HUM MUMS Zine July/August 2010
Posted by Jen in Newsletters on July 1st, 2010
Download July/August 2010 Issue
Midwives: Guardians of Normal Births
By Olympia Franklin, LM, CPM
Throughout history in each society and community, it is midwives who have attended the births of babies. These women were called upon to watch over new mothers and assist them in the personal and cultural rituals that helped them to give birth.
Midwife means with woman and is influenced by the word to mediate. In many communities, the midwife has maintained a role as traditional healer. Now, the range of choices that midwives in regard to how they develop their role and where they practice has created a variety of paths for those in the practice. In California, as in many other states, there are several types of midwives who practice in a variety of settings- homes, birth centers and hospitals. While most midwives are women, there are also a handful of male midwives. Sorting out what the varying acronyms and midwifery credentials mean can be confusing so here is a quick guide:
HUM MUMS Zine April 2010
Posted by Jen in Newsletters on April 1st, 2010
Download the complete April 2010 Issue
Getting Organized
On some mornings, kids dawdle, eggs intended for the pan break on the floor instead, and the clean outfit gets covered in mud before your child even gets to the car. Meanwhile, Mom or Dad’s deep breathing through the predictable chaos might be getting shallower as the hands of the clock push them closer to tardiness at school and work. It’s in these kinds of moments that being able to find what you need before heading out the door can prevent a parental meltdown.
Being able to find things when we need them can be one of the pillars of parental sanity when times get tough. For parents, getting and staying organized becomes more than the aesthetic endeavor it might have been pre-children; with kids, it’s a survival tool. Given this, it seems a little unfair that getting organized while parenting can seem like a daunting and impossible task. Some days, it’s hard enough just to get a shower.
With small steps, a few basic guidelines, and a commitment to the goal, getting organized can happen even in the heart of the messiest parenting jungle. It helps to remember that even a little time invested in the project of organizing can yield worthwhile results. If one little corner of the house gets tamed, it creates one place of calm, orderly and intentional ease that can carry throughout the household.
If that’s not persuasive, the added benefit of teaching our kids to get and stay organized should be. Play your clean up cards right, and your child will be doing more and more of the organizing with you. In the process, they develop healthy, lifelong habits that will serve them well in their future academic, work, social and inner lives.
Spring is in the air. It’s a natural time to tackle the clutter and throw open those closet doors to bring new order to the looming messes that lurk behind them. Let’s get started with some basics from our local guru, Claire Josefine, author of The Spiritual Art of Being Organized. Josefine begins her book by stating her organizing belief, which is “Being organized is a spiritual process Chaos is conquered as much by awareness, gratitude, grounding, and breath as by a well-labeled filing system.” Ahh… doesn’t it feel good to think about it this way instead of some losing battle to be fought in vain?
Josefine’s Zen approach is shaped by the following 12 principles:
HUM MUMS Zine March 2010
Posted by Jen in Newsletters on March 1st, 2010
Positive Discipline
Download the Full March 2010 Issue of Hum Mums
by Jen Briar-Bonpane
Discipline. What a loaded word. What comes to mind when you think of that word? Orderly rows in the classroom? Kids in time out? Losing privileges? ‘Logical’ consequences? Removing toys? Getting grounded? Yelling? Spanking? As with everything we do as parents, we carry the experience of how we were parented alongside our own approach. Sometimes, these two are identical. Many times, they are not.
In her book, Positive Discipline, Jane Nelson explores the traditional approaches to discipline that most of us were raised by. While punishment in various forms seems to be the crux of most discipline, Nelson argues that though it can be very effective in the moment, punishment does not serve children well in the long run.
“Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, first we have to make them feel worse?” Nelson asks. Punishment generally results in kids feeling embarrassed, in trouble, rejected, ashamed, mad, inadequate, or sad. Punishing a child will likely stop the misbehavior for the time being, but as Nelson warns, “beware of what works when the long-term results are negative.” As a long-term result of routine punishment for misbehavior, most children take on one of what Nelson calls the “4 R’s” punishment. They are:
1. Resentment
2. Revenge
3. Rebellion
4. Retreat
What is the alternative to punishment? Nelson is adamant that permissive parenting is not a solution and carries negative outcomes of its own. Instead, she recommends an approach called Positive Discipline which involves “mutual respect, cooperation, and focusing on solutions.”
There are 5 criteria for effective discipline that respects children’s need for connection and belonging. Read the rest of this entry »
HUM MUMS Zine February 2010
Posted by Jen in Newsletters on February 1st, 2010
Making Your Partnership a Priority
by Jen Briar-Bonpane
Even without children, long-term partnership can be a bumpy road at times. When we add children to the mix, it indelibly changes our relationship with our partner.
This change is full of amazing, joyful, miraculous aspects. Of course, there are the more challenging shifts as well. With the responsibilities that come with parenting, the upkeep of our relationship with our partner generally gets bumped to the end of a long list of more pressing priorities.
There is less focused time together, less intimacy, more things to negotiate, and less individual time to refill the well to make us patient partners. When we enter the realm of parenthood, we’re no longer only our partner’s spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, or partner – suddenly we’re someone’s mother or father, too. Our bodies are now clung to, climbed on, and not entirely our own. This can really change our interest in and energy for intimacy with a partner. Then there are the pressures of planning for our children’s health care, childcare, schooling, and development….we are loaded with hefty decisions to make.
Ahh… but, “What about us?” we might think in those fleeting moments when our parenting minds get to wander beyond the endless questions of snack, school, discipline, sleep, and potty. “Remember us?”… If you’ve fallen into the easily traveled path of relationship neglect after children, you’re not alone. It’s as if there is a gravitational pull toward the responsibilities and joys of parenting that in turn makes it more difficult to connect with our partners like we used to. Read the rest of this entry »
HUM MUM’S Zine January 2010
Posted by Jen in Newsletters on January 1st, 2010
Download January 2010 Issue PDF
Resolutions and Reflections
for Parenting in the New Year
The planet we call home has completed yet another trip around the sun and a new year is upon us. Since this time of year is replete with resolutions, declarations, and celebrations, we’ve dedicated this issue to offering exercises and questions to inspire reflection on the potent business of parenting. Nancy Samalin wisely said, “Our children give us the opportunity to become the parents we always wished we had.” As you read through this month’s issue of Hum Mums, we hope you’ll steal some quiet moments to consciously reflect on this ‘opportunity’ by exploring at least one of the activities or questions that fill these pages. Starting the New Year with some thoughtful intentions, goals, and hopes for your parenting is a gift not only to you but your little one as well.
The activities shared in this issue are taken from The Center for Nonviolent Parenting’s Parent Education Manual.
Heart Drawings
(From the Center for Nonviolent Education and Parenting’s Parent Education Curriculum)
Draw a heart. Imagine yourself as a newborn. Put words inside the heart that describe you when you were born. Outside the heart, write the messages you think you received from your family as you were growing up.
Now, think about your child. Turn your page over and draw a second heart. This is your child’s heart. Around the outside of the heart put the message you want your child to hear as she grows up. Inside the heart, imagine the feelings you would like your child to feel as she grows up. Inside the heart, imagine and write the feelings you would like your child to feel as she grows up.
HUM MUMS Zine December 2009
Posted by Jen in Newsletters on December 2nd, 2009
Download the complete December issue of Hum Mums
Creativity
Kids seem to be naturally creative. If we make space for them to mess around and create from their own well of imagination without criticism or evaluation, that creativity can flourish. Research suggests that encouraging kids to be creative engages and expands aspects of their intelligence that can bolster math, reading, and science skills. Creativity supports problem solving and can help kids become inventive and flexible thinkers. That’s right, playing with clay, banging on a drum, and doing science experiments with the contents of your refrigerator can actually make your child smarter.
In his book, Frames of Mind, Harvard professor Howard Gardner explained his theory of multiple intelligences and identifies seven types of intelligence (the 8th was identified by Gardner since publication of Frames of Mind):
1. Visual/spatial
2. Verbal/linguistic
3. Musical
4. Bodily/kinesthetic
5. Logical/mathematical
6. Interpersonal
7. Intrapersonal
8. Naturalist
Kids’ creativity can be nurtured in relation to these multiple intelligences. Think about what your kids love to do most or seem to do best in relation to these intelligences. Does your child love to build, draw, arrange furniture/flowers, do puzzles, or find faces in a crowd? These are all expressions of visual/spatial intelligence. Kids who are very aware of their own feelings, tend be self-motivated, and sensitive to values are demonstrating intrapersonal intelligence.
Hum Mum’s Zine November 2009
Posted by Jen in Newsletters on November 1st, 2009
Relationships
Download November 09 Issue pdf
What is the best “investment” you can make in your child’s life? Among the winning answers seems to be focusing on the quality of your relationship with your child. A highly responsive parenting style called attachment parenting centers around building a loving and secure relationship between parent and child. Research has shown that children who have at least one parent or caregiver who “responds appropriately, promptly and consistently to needs” (also called secure attachment), do better in nearly all areas of development and gain healthy traits that help them throughout their lifespan.
Here are some of the benefits of secure attachment by age as compared to children who did not experience secure attachment (from Attachment 101 By Willemsen and Marcel):
- 0-3 years: more independent and have an easier time separating from parent without anxiety, positive sense of self, increased self-awareness, enhanced sensorimotor skills
- Preschool years, Ages 3-5: better able to play in non-destructive and socially acceptable ways with peers, more readily able to learn from environment, advanced language development
- Middle Childhood: better relationships with teachers and peers, early reading skills, more socially competent, fewer behavior problems
- Adolescence: more likely to be socially well-adjusted, better able to regulate their own emotions, stronger internal sense of what behaviors are appropriate, more able to cope with stress
- Adulthood: higher relationship satisfaction with partners/spouses, more likely to form secure attachment with his/her own child, less likely to abuse his/her child, higher self-esteem, greater job satisfaction
Fostering attachment with your child can start at birth. Dr sears offers what he calls the 7 Baby B’s tools, for promoting healthy attachment in the earliest months in a child’s life:
Hum Mum’s Magazine October 2009
Posted by Jen in Newsletters on October 4th, 2009
Focus on Feelings
Download the October 09 Issue of Hum Mums
As you know, there’s much more to your child than reading, writing, and arithmetic. These are monumentally important areas in your child’s learning and development as are the observable milestones such as learning to sit up, crawl, walk, talk, etc. However, they aren’t the whole picture. While most parents stay on top of tracking junior’s motor skills, knowledge of the alphabet, and homework completion, there’s a critical and related part of the child that is constantly engaged, emerging, and evolving- often without much guidance. A child’s emotional life and development, though harder to observe with the naked eye or during a well-child check-up, underpins major components of their personality and can shape their functioning, social interactions, worldview, and behavior.
Hum Mum’s Magazine July 2009
Posted by Jen in Newsletters on July 1st, 2009
Nature
There is mounting evidence that connection with nature makes children healthier, happier, more likely to care about the environment, and less prone to problems such as obesity and ADD. Though the importance of nature may seem obvious to many of you, frequent interaction with nature is not a part of life for the majority of families in this country. Kids are spending less time playing outdoors and for many families, accessible green space is nowhere to be seen. When you add in the time crunch faced by hard working parents, tech-fed kids, and parental fears about letting their kids play outside, we see what author Richard Louv calls “nature-deficit disorder.”
