Tag: making choices as parents

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Financial consciousness

It’s spring-cleaning time!  Hooray!  Out with the old and in with the new.  Flowers are blooming, trees are budding and leafing out, and my husband and I are taking a good hard look at our finances.  Ouch.

I don’t know about you, but becoming aware of exactly what is happening in my financial life is challenging for me.  Recording my spending and then analyzing it is frightening.  Creating and sticking to a budget feels foreign, and planning our financial future feels like sitting at the bottom of a very deep well and inching my way up brick by brick.  And then there’s the issue of increasing our income and decreasing our bottom line.  So now I’m hyperventilating.  Well, not really, but you get my point. read more

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Guest Blog: Top 10 tips to deal with me now that I’m a grandparent

This week’s blog is from my stepdad Jim:

I realize I’m working against my own interests here but, as someone who’s been a parent, I’ve got some advice for you on how to deal with grandparents now that you’ve just made me one.

1. You’re in charge: You think I’ve been overbearing in the past and maybe a little too free with unsolicited “advice?” Just wait! So remember, it’s your kid and until he starts making decisions for himself you – not me – get to make the decisions for him. That means you should feel free to tell me, “That’s not how we do things,” and to donate inappropriate (or extremely loud) gifts to Goodwill. read more

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Guest Blog: Conscious parenting: A stepparent’s perspective

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This week’s guest blog is from my stepdad Jim:

As a person “of a certain age,” I have to admit to an occasional bit of amusement at Shelly’s parenting tips. Some seem a little odd (as I suppose my ideas about parenting seemed to my parents) and some just seem like old ideas dressed up in new words. But the basic theme of this blog, Conscious Parenting, isn’t a concept I ‘d encountered before and it’s one that has a lot of meaning for me as both a stepparent and a biological one. read more

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Guest Blog: How to intervene when other adults disrespect your child

eye childThis week’s guest blog is from Jill:

I’m happy to be back at AwakeParent.com as a guest blogger today. I wanted to share with you some thoughts on dealing with other adults in your life who interact with your children. As parents striving for greater consciousness, I have found it can sometimes be painful when other adults interact with our precious children in ways that don’t support the experience we’re trying so hard to create.

At times, I have both asked and been asked by other adults to treat a child differently.  This hasn’t gone very well!  The time I was asked not to interact with a child in the way I wanted to I felt a sense of shame, even though intellectually I agreed with the parent’s boundary. What happened? I touched a child’s hair without permission. Not a big deal, in the grand scheme of things, perhaps, but really, how would I feel if someone I didn’t know reach out and started fondling my tresses, rather than ask? I could see in the parent’s eyes that that was exactly what he was tuned into. I got it; still, I felt small. read more

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Guest Blog: So, Who’s Calling the Shots? And How?

brar01_kazdinThis week’s guest blog is by Kheyala:

I was a kid – a very good kid – who knew what it was like to be raised on a very short leash.  For this reason, when I had my own little one, I was more than committed to allowing her the freedom which I had been denied.  The trouble was, by the time she’d reached a year and a half, I found myself with a little tyrant running my house.  Or should I say her house!

I thought to myself, “Oh my gosh.  I cannot imagine what the ‘terrible twos’ will bring, let alone the teenage years, when this is what I’ve got to reckon with now!”  That was the moment this insight came to me; a beautiful, timeless insight that remains true to this day (she’s 12 now) and has proved since to be just as extraordinarily effective and beneficial for every other child who as fallen under my care. read more

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