Traveling is such an adventure and even more so when you travel with kids. Showing them the world exposes them to new experiences and instills values of curiosity and exploration. If you’re already one of the millions of Americans traveling as a family, then you also understand how stressful it can be to go on vacation with babies. Totts founder and mom, Alejandra Tejada doesn’t think it needs to be that way though. Here are her tips on how to make traveling with kids feel less like work and more like a vacation.
Location, Location, Location: When you’re considering your first trip with your child you may think beach vacations are the only ones that work— don’t limit yourself! Look for locations that have the mix of activities you want (e.g., site seeing, beach, restaurants) that are all central to where you’re staying. Cartagena worked for us because we wanted a mix of culture, picture-perfect sites, a pool, and delicious food (with plenty of ice cream breaks). We had access to all of this within a quarter-mile walking radius. It’s worth splurging to get the location you need especially if you are traveling with a little one. My son was 3 months old and feeding every 1.5 hours at the time, so it was key to be able to go back to the hotel when I needed to take care of him but still feel like I wasn’t a slave to the room or hotel.
Hotel vs Airbnb: You’ll hear a lot of parents going only the Airbnb route, but for us it depends. For our first trip we chose a hotel that had a living room and kitchenette. We enjoyed the comfort of a buffet breakfast every morning, cleaning service and concierge help while also having a place to set up a changing station, heat bottles and wash equipment. There are a lot of benefits to both and if you can find something in between that works for you the better, especially for your first vacation. We now know what works for us in each travel situation, which is generally a mix of both. After all, it’s a vacation!
Prepare for a Very Bad First Day: This was a lesson learned for us. And if it’s not a bad day, you have luck on your side! We found that the first day adjusting from any trip is difficult. Whether it’s the time change, sleeping arrangements or just getting used to a new location it’s important not to expect too much from the first day. Don’t set an itinerary, go with the flow and try to enjoy your first day adjusting together. Starting a trip with these expectations helps set the tone for the fact that your first trip with your baby is not like what you’re used to. You have to operate in baby steps (excuse the pun), and when they are that cute, it makes up for not operating at regular speed.
Don’t Be Afraid to Overpack: I’m not a fan of over-packing, and that’s why I started Totts. However, I will say this: Being prepared for the unexpected helped me ease my initial fears of traveling with my baby. You really don’t know what to expect that first time so if you need to pay for extra luggage, bring more supplies or back-ups (I even brought a back-up pump in case my failed), then do it. While this may discourage you from taking the trip in the first place, don’t let it! If I needed to bring my whole home on this vacation, I would have done so in a heartbeat to have the memories that I now have of this first trip. When I’m feeling blue or realizing how fast my baby has grown, I find comfort in the memories we made when he was 3 months old in Cartagena. And a small baby that sits calmly on top of your legs while you sip a cold drink isn’t bad either!
The good news is that the earlier you start traveling with your baby, they will learn travel skills right along with you and vacations will once again be something the whole family will look forward to taking.
Alejandra Tejada is the founder and CEO of Enlingos and Totts. After spending four years in product innovation and digital consumer research, she left a startup incubator at a Fortune 100 company to pursue her passion for sharing travel, culture and learning with children by creating products serving young parents.
Once when I was traveling with my mother, we met a woman from Australia and discovered that, despite the fact that we all spoke English, we still had cultural differences. My mother told her about this wonderful vest I had with all the pockets so I could keep my money, passport, photo equipment, maps, bus schedules, brochures, snacks, and other gear handy. (It was from Banana Republic.) Slowly I realized that to the Australian woman, “vest” meant “undershirt,” and she was getting a very odd idea of how I carried around my travel supplies.
She also said that she couldn’t understand how there could be a different speed limit in every state, especially since we had 50 of them. (Australia has six.)
“That’s nothing,” I said. “You should see the liquor laws. Those can vary by county or even city or township – when and where you can buy beer, wine, and liquor, if they allow it at all; what days and times liquor stores can be open; and so on.”
That’s not unlike how the education system in the United States works. “Local control” of education is held sacred in many schools and districts, even if it means that students in one state learn about evolution while others don’t, or that school boards have control of curriculum instead of states, or that children in certain states use textbooks the content of which is dictated by people in other states.
It’s a patchwork and a hodge-podge, and a big mess. Attempts to make school funding more fair, to eliminate de facto segregation, and to standardize curriculum are loudly and effectively resisted.
Betsy DeVos, the new U.S. Secretary of Education, is at best a loose cannon. Her nomination was confirmed by only the slimmest of margins – hardly a ringing endorsement for her agenda. And what is that agenda likely to contain?
More patchwork, more hodge-podge, more mess. In addition to waving the banner of local control, Ms. DeVos is a proponent of private and charter schools, which suck students and money away from the public schools. And she promotes the practice of home-schooling, which can be beneficial or not, depending on the skill and oversight of the home-schoolers, and what they teach their children.
Fortunately or unfortunately, we may not have to deal with whatever changes Ms. DeVos would like to make, since shortly after her confirmation it was announced that the entire Department of Education was slated for destruction.
Why do we even have a Department of Education? It was broken off as a separate Cabinet-level department from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (now called Health and Human Services). For over 35 years, its function has been to “establish policy for, administer and coordinate most federal assistance to education, collect data on U.S. schools, and to enforce federal educational laws regarding privacy and civil rights.” It had almost no influence on curriculum or standards until 2001’s No Child Left Behind Act. It has been opposed since its inception as being unconstitutional because education is not mentioned in that document.
Most of the Department of Education’s mission has been related to ensuring equal access to education, promoting legislation that particularly addresses access to education for children with disabilities. Under the Department’s aegis, these children have been determined to be entitled to a “free, appropriate, public education.”
Ms. DeVos has expressed opinions at odds with the laws that guarantee these rights for disabled students, especially IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Parents of children with disabilities and educators who work with those populations were particularly vocal opponents of her confirmation.
What this all means for education is a profoundly unsettled question. What will Ms. DeVos be able to accomplish before the Department disappears out from under her? Will the laws regarding access to education be weakened or even repealed? It’s almost certain that more and more matters will revert to local control, with all the confusion and inequities that system fosters. Will parents who want specific educational outcomes for their children be forced out of public schools and into home-schooling or private schools (if they can afford them)? Will families have to relocate to districts or even states with compatible educational programs and goals?
Increasingly, it’s going to be difficult to call the U.S. system of education a system at all.
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Hi! I'm a freelance writer and editor who writes about education, books, cats and other pets, bipolar disorder, and anything else that interests me. I live in Ohio with my husband and a varying number of cats.
Claire is a working mom. Despite having a supportive partner, she feels she isn’t doing as much as she could at home. And despite making weekly business trips away from her family, she feels she isn’t doing enough at work. She brings in the highest sales revenue in her office but feels too busy and unworthy to ask for a promotion.
“I feel like the biggest disservice women have done is not articulating how hard it is to be a mom. I didn’t get it before having kids. I was like, ‘How hard can it really be?’” — Claire
Claire cautiously admits that before she had children, she didn’t quite sympathize with her mom coworkers. But now, here she is, a mother herself who has undergone a radical transformation. Her values and priorities have shifted, and, most importantly, she now has a family that depends on her. She’s exhausted, overwhelmed, and at her limits but feels compelled to act as if nothing has changed at work.
We interviewed 13 working moms, and Claire’s tension was echoed by all of them: Working moms are doing invisible work at home and making invisible sacrifices for work that inadvertently prevent them from self-advocating for career growth.
When we re-entered the workforce after having children, we found living parallel lives of mom and employee emotionally turbulent and guilt-ridden. We constantly doubted ourselves and our careers. We both took an extreme measure and quit jobs we were passionate about at a company we loved.
But the researchers in us couldn’t shake the question: Why is it so hard to be a working mom?
We decided to interview moms with children under age five who work in a range of professions — spanning technology, education, and government — and for companies that include Google, Uber, Apple, and Airbnb. All the women in our study were white-collar workers in committed relationships living across the U.S. (We realize single parents and parents with lower incomes have it even harder, especially with the increasing costs of childcare, as Elizabeth Warren has addressed. We recognize we are in a privileged position, and we hope to advocate for parents across all socioeconomic backgrounds through future studies and work.)
We conducted interviews during our participants’ pump breaks, lunch breaks, commutes, evenings, and during our own children’s nap times. We attempted to synthesize during playdates and car trips, which gave new meaning to the term “multitasking.”
This isn’t another self-help piece for moms on “how to survive the workplace” or a “top five hacks for getting dinner on the table faster.”It’s an attempt to listen, empathize, and highlight the invisible work, sacrifices, and challenges moms face that ultimately add to the gender gaps in female leadership roles and salaries. While our most obvious reader will probably be a mom, we hope our findings help a caring manager, human resource employee, or company leader better understand and advocate for making the invisible more visible.
Doing Double Duty Between Work and Home
Even with the best of partners, moms take on a disproportionate amount of invisible work at home. It’s not surprising that becoming a parent is a life-altering event that comes with a hefty to-do list and shifting priorities. But even in households with extremely involved, well-intentioned fathers, moms are still doing more of the work while simultaneously assuming their partners are doing as much as they can.
According to a 2017 study by LeanIn.org and McKinsey & Company, “women with a partner and children are 5.5 times more likely than their male counterparts to do all or most of the household work.” Moms we interviewed disproportionately performed tasks such as childcare drop-off and pickup, scheduling and attending medical appointments, researching enrichment activities, and purchasing supplies and clothes. To their partners, much of this work is invisible. To their employers, this work is irrelevant.
“Even with a supportive partner, the biggest gotcha surprise was that as a mom, you are the manager of the household. Clothes, baby fed, nanny paid, dog walked, fridge stocked. Every day.”— Allison, a small business owner
“He’s the best dad, but there are so many things he has no idea I do. He just thinks there’s magically always diapers and perfectly fitted, seasonal clothes.”— Lexi, a vice president of operations
The responsibilities that fall on moms are time-consuming, emotionally expensive, and draw from a seemingly infinite yet always depleting energy bank. Even the simple event of getting out the door in the morning can become task-heavy and emotional. One participant, Michelle, a social worker, detailed some of the pressure she’s under:
Our morning routine: getting myself ready for work, getting them ready for school, making sure the lunches are packed, their teeth are brushed, they learn how to bring their own plate to the sink, and Robbie gets to practice putting on his own shoes, and we remember to go to the potty all in an hour and a half without snapping at them because I don’t want to be late and they don’t understand the concept of lateness. Those types of little parenting issues take a big toll on me. It’s trying to do all that while working.
Moms’ Invisible Sacrifices for Work
Family needs and work needs are often directly at odds. Fearing real or perceived setbacks at work, moms often discreetly put work above their own wishes for their families. Michelle, mentioned above, desperately wants to make it home for family dinners but is unable to because her responsibilities restrict her from leaving until after early evening hours. She wants to bring her administrative work home and complete it once her children are asleep but fears asking to do so will make her look less serious and committed and will ultimately harm her career growth.
Moms just like Michelle often make sacrifices to accommodate work in daily situations: reluctantly skipping a pumping session to attend a meeting, not being able to leave to care for an unpredictably sick child, and fulfilling extra work demands like traveling. Managers may not even realize the personal sacrifices moms are making because these decisions happen invisibly, gracefully, and quietly.
“My milk production went down pretty drastically, and that was really stressful for me… There are moments in the workday where I actually choose between what’s good for my body and my child and what’s good for my job.”— Lisa, a deputy chief of staff
“One of the hardest things about working is not having the flexibility to immediately react to do what’s best for my family… Here’s an example: Right now, she’s sick, she looks terrible, she has a slight fever. The best thing for her would be to stay home with me today, but that’s not feasible. This morning, I did what all of the parents in my office talk about doing. I gave her Tylenol to hopefully keep the fever down long enough for her to go to school today. If it’s over 101, she can’t go to school for 24 hours. I can’t miss that much time off work this week.”— Cary, a customer experience manager
“The trip was four days, so I didn’t have enough milk for the baby. I flew my mom in. It was so hard.”— Rae, a senior analyst
Reluctance to Advocate for Career Growth
Most of the moms we talked with were not vying for a promotion at the time. In objective terms, this was baffling. These were the same moms we heard share stories of incredible sacrifice, devotion, and effort to their jobs. They gave up breastfeeding before they were ready because of work, they missed dinners with their children, and they came to work every day after giving emotional goodbyes and highly logistical drop-offs. These were also the same moms who noted that the financial compensation from work was more important than ever to support their families. But the act of explicitly “caring” to be promoted was seen as a burden.
Specifically, moms said they were uninterested in being promoted because they no longer had the patience for office politics, they lacked the time to advocate for themselves, they didn’t feel they deserved it because of their commitments outside of work, and the priorities they derived from work had changed. Once motivated by title and their place in the corporate hierarchy, they placed more importance on the work’s meaning.
“My objective isn’t to get promoted. At this point, it’s to do a good job in my role. I want to spend time with family and kids.”— Jennifer, a director of strategy and operations
“I feel like I’m not as worthy as other people who don’t need to leave at 5:30.” —Claire, director of branding
At face value, managers may interpret their direct reports’ lack of self-advocacy as opting out of greater career opportunities or selecting the so-called “mommy track.” But considering the behind-the-scenes effort and priority moms place on their jobs, these moms’ intentions may be grossly misunderstood.
“Even though I need to put limits in place, I still want to achieve and will work hard… I’m still ambitious even though I’m not in the office 12 hours a day.”— Stephanie, a data scientist
How Companies Could Benefit More from Moms
When women are overloaded with invisible work at home and making invisible sacrifices for work, they deprioritize advocating for career growth. As a result, they may be passed up for opportunities that would bring more fulfillment, challenge, and eventually leadership positions. At a glance, this could be interpreted as an issue that affects individuals: Claire should feel worthy of fighting for a promotion since she brings in the highest sales revenue on her team. But in taking a step back, Claire is part of a systemic problem. Women are disproportionately represented in leadership positions. Four in five C-suite leaders are men, and women are underrepresented in line roles at every level of the corporate pipeline. And women earn 4% less with each child they have.
By keeping moms employed and growing into leadership positions, companies benefit from attracting a more diverse workforce, which leads to greater innovation and creativity, lower turnover, easier recruitment, and capturing more of the market. Working moms have many superpowers that benefit their employers: Our participants said that after becoming a mom, they were more efficient, outspoken, and better able to prioritize. They had more perspective and were no longer sweating the small stuff.
There is no magic bullet that will adequately address all moms in all companies, but here are some guiding principles to make the invisible more visible:
Acknowledge and understand how hard it is for moms to show up at work every day.Learning about a mom’s family and her daily routines can help managers get a better picture of their whole self, not just their work self.
Create an environment where these topics are encouraged and discussed without penalty or judgment: What’s particularly challenging? What tradeoffs are moms making to do their jobs? How can you help them find fulfillment in their jobs and advance their careers at a pace that feels right to them?
Make parenthood more visible so moms can show up as their true selves. Encourage all parents, especially those in leadership positions, to talk about how their family affects their work. Create or connect moms to venues for parents to talk about their children — and also inquire about their children and their lives outside of work as appropriate.
Thank you to all the moms who shared their stories with us. You are an inspiration to us all.
For our next study, we want to focus on actionable solutions and partner with a company that cares about supporting moms. If you’d like to work with us or share your thoughts, you can reach us at shifttheworkplace.com
This post originally appeared on medium.com. All illustrations by Anne Kenny and Natalie Tulsiani.
Anne Kenny and Natalie Tulsiani are user researchers and designers who co-founded Shift the Workplace, a research consultancy that helps companies identify opportunities to support caregivers. With 30 years of combined experience at Huge, Microsoft and Airbnb, we offer tangible, practical recommendations tailored to the company's culture.
When learning to drive a car, one of the most important things they teach you is to always be aware of the blind spots, (you know, the areas around the car that you aren’t able to see). But, did you know our brains and eyes also have blind spots? And, as it turns out, these blind spots can have a big impact on our perception of the world around us, including how we think about race.
Before we can begin understanding the complex and overlapping interplay of how race impacts a person’s life, we must first understand how our brain processes information and how hidden biases influence unconscious decisions. This is arguably some of the most important work we can do in raising kids who understand and actively work against racism.
How Our Brains Process Information
Did you know that even the way our eyes relay information to the brain includes blind spots? We all have fields of vision where we can’t see but our brains fill in the missing information for us. If you’d like to see how this works, this test will show you. Take a moment to check it out and then rejoin us.
So what does this have to do with racism, or any -ism for that matter? Well, not only does your brain fill in visual blanks, but it also fills in unknown information about people we meet without us even being aware that it’s happening.
Along with the physical blind spot in our eyes, humans also have psychological blind spots called hidden biases which factor into every decision we make. These channels include automatic, unconscious, and unintentional thoughts presented in a nice bundle that we perceive as our own intentional thought even though our brains filled in some of the information for us.
What Is a Hidden Bias?
Hidden biases are actually bits of information we’ve accumulated over the years about various social groups we’ve encountered or heard about from parents, friends, family, observations, TV, games, etc. Remember, more information is “caught than taught” in the form of observations and unintentional “lessons” learned by watching how people interact with one another. All of this is to say, we’ve formed some of our biases unconsciously and it takes conscious work to become aware of how these influence our thoughts. The field of psychology now generally accepts that some human behavior is driven unconsciously and that we can be influenced by hidden biases.
So What Can We Do about All of This?
So how do you change these unconscious thoughts about people you’ve never even met? Below is a list of things you can do which will begin rewiring your brain and help minimize hidden biases.
1. Find Out What Your Biases Are: Two psychologists, Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald, have spent their careers studying ways to assess hidden biases. They developed the Implicit Association Test (IAT) which is able to pull back our own curtain and peek into our “unconscious” mind. Be prepared though, because the results may surprise you. Click here to take a test or two.
3. Actively Seek Out Making Friends of a Different Race: Think about your 3 best friends. Studies have predicted they are all the same race as you. (Of course, there are always outliers). Hanging out with friends of the same race isn’t bad. However, limiting your exposure to people outside of your “in-group” (a term used in psychology to describe people who share certain characteristics) is said to perpetuate both positive and negative stereotypes about “others” and are maintained by a lack of connection to people outside of said “group.” So, make some new friends. Start a local “Meet-Up” group in your neighborhood and model for your children how to reach out and connect to others.
4. Expose Yourself to Counter-stereotyping Imagery: To change the narrative, you must change the imagery and associations. One way to do this is as simple as switching up your screensaver. Have positive pictures of people of all colors and cultures rotate across the screen. Watch shows starring people of color in leading and heroic roles. Make sure the shows and cartoons your children watch offer a variety of ethnicity and culture which is accurately depicted. If a show you are watching starts playing into negative stereotypes shut it off. Seek out new friends on your social media accounts that share common interests as you but come from a different culture.
5. Learn about People You Admire from Underrepresented Groups: Researchers have proven that by simply admiring someone who is different from you can undo hidden biases. So order a book or two about someone you’ve always wanted to learn more about and start reading.
It’s not easy facing our hidden biases. Personally, I was quite surprised at some of my results on the IAT test and have already ordered a bunch of books and am reaching out to make new friends in my neighborhood. For long-term positive changes in our society against racism, the change needs to begin at home, with you.
And, if we want our children to grow up and embrace all the diversity the world has to offer, we must model the behaviors we wish to see. That means reading books, watching different shows, going out of your way to invite a family over for dinner and talking about tough issues like race and society.
Our kids need to see us taking steps toward understanding. By becoming aware of our hidden biases we are able to work on changing our thoughts and actions towards those who are different from us.
I am a 42-year-old biological mother of two young children in a same-sex relationship, a clinical psychologist with a specialty in neuropsychological assessment, a music therapist, a trainer of therapy dogs and ex-communicated Mormon from Indiana with a wicked sense of humor.
Growing up in an Italian household I was taught to eat everything on my plate at a very young age. My mom made homemade meals everyday. In fact, all meals were always eaten at the table with my entire family, it was our family bonding time. My mom didn’t believe in restrictions; however, the only thing we were not able to eat was sugar. Sugar was a staple product in our pantry however it was only used for special occasions.
I never believed in cutting sugar or food completely out of my diet. I enjoy food too much to enforce restrictions. In fact, the more I feel restricted the more I rebel and its the same when it comes to food.
As a health coach, the first thing I teach my clients is to create a healthy lifestyle. That’s right, I said a lifestyle, not diet. I think what we need to do is stop telling ourselves that we are “going on a diet” but rather help ourselves understand the importance of creating a long last healthy relationship with food.
Secondly, I work with clients to understand how stress affects them. We are all affected by stress differently. I realized after all my hardships that I am an emotional eater and when under extreme amounts of stress, I seek comfort in food. Once I became aware that I was actually doing this I was able to change and develop tools to cope.
If you are an emotional eater, then you need to go within yourself and take time to become aware of and understand your triggers, only then you can learn how to control them. Once you do, you will be able to still enjoy your favorite treats in moderation. If you don’t feel you can do this on your own, work with a certified health coach could make a world of a difference.
The key is portion control, not restriction or elimination. It’s about eating foods that nourish your body—which in fact will help you crave less sugar. A craving towards sugar is your body telling you its missing something maybe you are lacking certain vitamins. From an emotional standpoint, we are searching for a quick fix, but often after we have it, we end up feeling guilty or not well.
Today I look at my meals in a mindful way, I called it mindful eating. Each person’s body is unique, we all react differently to foods and so our lifestyle should focus on eating foods that give us energy rather than take it away. Having excessive” amounts of sugar can cause negative effects on our bodies such as Type 2 diabetes, obesity, hypertension, cholesterol, allergies, tooth decay, and cardiovascular disease.
This is why it’s important to understand how sugar reacts in our bodies and become aware and mindful of eating foods that nourish and provide us energy in healthy ways.
Understanding the difference between simple and complex carbohydrates’ can go a long way in mindful eating. For instance, simple carbohydrates are digested and absorbed quickly and they provide a quick burst of energy followed by a crash.
Complex carbohydrates, on the other hand, are sugars that take the body longer to breakdown and are packed with vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Some examples of complex carbohydrates are millet, quinoa, brown rice, and veggies. These are great because they do not spike your blood sugar levels quite so drastically as simple carbohydrates and help provide you the energy to sustain throughout the day.
Here are 3 quick tips for eating sugar in a healthier way:
1. Eat more fruits and vegetables containing natural sugar throughout the day this will help control your sugar cravings. Fruits that are naturally lower in sugar are raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, kiwi, grapefruit, watermelon, oranges, peaches, and cantaloupe.
2. Switch soda for filtered water—get a little crazy, add raspberries, lemon or any fruit if you desire this will help you boost your metabolism. Tip: Try drinking a cup of lemon water on an empty stomach in the morning help flush toxins and boost your metabolism.
3. Switch from processed sugar to natural sugars and use organic honey, organic maple syrup brown sugar or coconut sugar. If this change is too drastic, I recommend cutting down first, so if you use usually use two sugars then move to use only one at first to slowly ween yourself away from it. And you should stay away from any artificial sweeteners.
If you want a fun and easy way to explain sugar to your children considering purchasing my book called “Mommy, Can I Eat This?” I wrote it to help parents and children understand the importance of watching your daily intake of sugar.
Maria Sofia’s life mission—inspired by her personal struggles with weight loss —is to educate parents and teachers on the importance of teaching nutrition to young children. Maria is a certified Health, Life and Trauma Coach. She is currently working toward her PhD in holistic health and lives in Toronto.
Conflict in marriage can start in many ways, but unhappy compromises can be the most damaging. The ones that occur when one person needs something, and they don’t get it. What’s interesting is that, in marriage, I have found that many spouses avoid asking for what they need and then they are left unmet and unfulfilled.
A lot of us are scared of pressing our partners for something we need if we think they will fail to grant it, or worse, will make us feel bad for needing it in the first place. Sometimes we fear this because what we need means they have to do something different; they have to give something for us to get something. So, we take our need and pack it up in a neat little box and tuck it somewhere deep inside. It stays hidden, but without fail, it creates resentment. And it hurts. Even if we ignore it for a while, it pokes and scrapes at us from time to time. We hoped it would go away, dissolve into nothing so it would stop scratching at the door of our hearts, begging for attention we can’t give. But it doesn’t. We deal with the discomfort out of fear that setting it free and diving into it like a swimming pool on a hot summer day will drive an even larger wedge into our relationship.
My husband quotes something I said during our second year of marriage over a disagreement I don’t remember now. But he brings it up as a truth that sank deep inside him that day. “I will not be a passenger in my own life.” It probably had to do with which blinds to order for the kitchen or what color car to buy. I can be dramatic like that. But the truth in the statement displays how easily we can begin to feel like we have to take a backseat to our partner’s wants and needs.
When we fail to make our needs a priority, we become a servant to theirs. Sometimes our needs align, but most of the time, they fall on opposite ends of the spectrum, and we are in a continual state of give-and-take. The tricky thing, though, is that give-and-take can often turn into a tug-of-war, and then no one gets what they need.
For example, when our two oldest kids were two and four years old, I was a stay-at-home mom, who also worked part-time, and I was drowning. Growing up, vacations at my friends’ cabin were some of my favorite memories. Those hot summer days by the lake and nights at the campfire sunk into my bones. I wanted that again. I needed a break with my family to rejuvenate and catch my breath. I brought up renting a cabin and getting away for a week to my husband several times, thinking the more I talked about it, the more he would understand how important it was to me. My repetitive comments became a nagging annoyance to him, making him wonder why I couldn’t respect the fact he didn’t want to do it. I became so frustrated that I made a decision; I would not be a passenger in my own life. Being respectful of a budget, I booked three days at a cabin and told him that I hoped he would join us. If he didn’t, I wouldn’t be mad, but this was very important to me.
Of course, I hoped my husband would come, but I was prepared to go alone. In the end, we all drove out to a little resort in Brainerd. We fished and swam and played. The kids ran in the rain, and we bought souvenirs in a quaint little town. We nibbled fresh-fried donuts every morning at the general store across the street. We had the best time. When we got home, my husband said, “So I think next year we can stay somewhere a little nicer. I’ll start looking around.” I smiled at the lovely surprise. For the next few years we spent summers renting cabins, and just recently was able to purchase our own. My husband proved as giddy as a schoolchild the day we closed, a joy sparked by a trip he never wanted to take. I wonder how our life would be different if I had never made my need known and insisted on meeting it, and if he had never come along for the ride.
That was the first of many times we have had to weigh our own needs alongside the other persons. It doesn’t always work out perfectly. I have put myself aside to be there for him, as often as he has done the same for me. We do our best.
In marriage, just like in life, we can’t always get what we want. And just because we want something doesn’t mean it’s what we need. But when we need something, it is essential to make sure our needs are met. If our needs are not actualized or even acknowledged, it creates a lot of other conflicts that eventually will erode the relationship. The important thing is to uncover your needs and see how they can be met, separately or together.
Krissy Dieruf is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She lives in Minnesota with her husband and three children, loves to sing and dance around the house and has a soft spot for rebels and crazy hair.
Every day kids experience events that are new to them. They learn new words, which helps build their vocabulary. In doing so, these new experiences help them to develop a creative and curious mind. These new experiences could be the beginning of ideas which the child could develop into stories or creative writing. By encouraging them to write from a young age, numerous benefits can be seen.
Writing can help develop numerous physical skills. Not only does it help to improve hand-eye coordination, but it also strengthens muscles that can be used for everyday tasks. By holding the pen or pencil to write, the child learns to improve their fine motor skills which can be used for other tasks in their life.
Creative writing can also develop emotional skills. By creating a story, a child can channel their emotions and develop how to manage in a situation. For example, they may be able to show empathy with a character, express different emotions experienced by characters or manage a difficult situation that a character is feeling. This may help a child to express how they feel and understand how others feel. Self-discovery and self-expression can be demonstrated throughout the child’s words and storytelling abilities.
Creative writing will also help to improve intellectual skills. Their sentence structure, vocabulary, and use of punctuation will be notably more advanced than others of the same age who do not practice creative writing. In a world where text speak and emojis are so common, creative writing helps to develop writing skills that are being forgotten about. If a child can not communicate effectively as a child, the problem may become worse as they grow older. Sharing ideas with others allows the child to develop their storyline and collaborate with others. Encouraging creative writing can help a child to communicate effectively in the technology world.
When a child begins to write their ideas down, completing the story develops a range of important life long skills. Using writing as a way for your child to demonstrate their creative side helps their ability to focus, improves their dedication and commitment. These are all skills which employers look for in a candidate. Creative writing also develops creative thoughts, using their imaginations, suggest alternatives, broaden their thought process and problem-solving abilities. It also allows the child to show their opinions and develop their voice. It also improves their logical skills. These skills, once developed, can help the child in other subjects, such as Maths, Science and Languages. By developing these fundamental skills, the child can apply these in other areas of learning and success, helping to strengthen their self-confidence.
Writing also helps to improve organization from a young age. By plotting out a storyline, a child can develop organization and create drama or surprises in their story. This can then be applied to everyday tasks, helping them to improve their own organization and be prepared for the day ahead.
Inspiring your child to be creative develops a wide range of skills while building confidence. This helps them to develop into powerful adults, who can communicate their points of view, thoughts, and feelings very clearly. Creative writing has the opportunity to create an incredibly positive impact on our children, and while the occasion is becoming more limited in the classroom, taking steps to encourage our children to write can help develop a range of benefits. By finding their way of writing, the children can turn it into a superpower, allowing the child to be creative while having fun and doing something they enjoy.
Story Wars is a platform where writers from all over with amazing ideas come to express their ideas. Different users can write a chapter to a story that they like and want to contribute to. The twist is that for your chapter to be in the official story, it has to be voted in. By going up against different authors, you have to try. Because of that, you slowly start to become better in both language and writing.
Our family has always had a lot of pets. At first, we had only one child and felt guilty about him not having anyone to play with. My son also seemed to really enjoy being around pets. We’ve had two rabbits, two guinea pigs, a bearded dragon, two dogs, plenty of fish, snails, two geckos, and four tortoises.
Over the years we really did not have to deal with death. We’ve have had fish die of course. (We’ve had “The Cosby Show” Rudy Huxtable funeral. Poor poor Lamont. Ha!). However, when one of the rabbits died, I was sure my eldest son Andre would be devastated, even though we really had not had it long. I called my parents over to help me explain the circle of life to him. When my Father finished his speech, my son took it in stride. My Dad took care of the body.
Yesterday, Andre didn’t lock the gate properly and one of our large tortoises got out of the fence. Upon returning home from taking my youngest to acting class, I turned into the driveway and heard a thump. I was confused because I didn’t see anything in the street. When I got out the car, I was horrified when I saw Pinky. I had run over her with my car. I didn’t see her—she was the same color of the street and a car was parked right close to my driveaway—the perfect condition for something like this to happen.
She was alive, but she was clearly very injured, and her shell had a big split in it. I picked her up, took her to the backyard and then googled what to do. She was still alive but couldn’t help but come to terms with what I knew was going to happen: I had killed Pinky! Meanwhile, inside the house, my son is losing it. Mad at me, like probably he has never been before. We’ve had her since she was a baby. My son was devastated by it all and blamed me. And I blamed myself.
My parents came over and got her. After watching videos of what to do, they tried to help her. My mother even told me that turtles are very resilient, but unfortunately, even though she fought for 24 hours, Pinky died from her injuries.
While I am heartbroken and keep wondering the “why’s,” this ordeal has taught me a very important lesson. Beforehand, I didn’t understand when a dog or cat died, friends and family spoke about how heartbroken they were on Facebook. I have more empathy now. When it comes to pets, even though some may not be able to show affection, we still care for it, considered its welfare, even spoke to, washed it, petted it. I also think when animals die by natural causes, it might be a little easier to handle.
Some immediate takeaways for me as a parent. I now understand how much pets play in our lives and I’ve had the privilege to love and care for them. Secondly, I’ve raised two kids who love nature and animals. They are thoughtful, loving kids. Pinky was always trying to explore and escape. It’s not the first time she’s gotten out, such an adventurer, such a hardheaded kid. RIP Pinky. You’ll be missed. :(
I'm a 53-year old single Mom living in Arizona. I enjoy reading, cooking, community involvement, watching Lifetime Movies, and uncovering amazing information and products to help my family live our best lives. I have two amazing sons an 18-year-old (elite basketball player) and a six-year-old who is the Great Entertainer.
If there’s one debate that refuses to die in my house, it’s the one on social media—is it a good or a bad thing?
Like most parents, I’m concerned that teens spend too much time on social media. It’s too distracting. Every time my teens are home, they seem to have their faces glued on their screens: swiping, typing, liking and commenting on their favorite social media sites. They seem oblivious to the world around them and I often find myself berating them for not being present in the moment. Additionally, I’m guilty of bemoaning the fact that most of their interactions happen via social media and not face to face with their friends.
Other than its addictive nature, I also fret about my teens’ safety on social media sites. I find myself worrying about them being approached by online predators or becoming victims of cyberbullying. I mean, who really knows who is behind those screens and what their intentions are?
Plus, it’s hard to ignore all those studies telling us how bad social media is for our mental health. Sure, we know that what is on social media is heavily curated but that doesn’t stop us from making unhealthy comparisons with the perfectly filtered lives we’re bombarded with. If we adults constantly fall into that trap, how much more vulnerable are our teens, considering how impressionable they are?
Different Sides of the Same Coin
Being a concerned parent, I brought up the issue with my teens and their response surprised me. They not only opened my eyes to the upside of social media but also gave me insight into just how differently adults and teens view it.
As you can tell from my concerns above, we adults mostly view social media with suspicion, especially where our teens are concerned.
However, teens see social media as an outlet of self-expression and it allows them to experiment and explore various ways of expressing themselves.
My teen son, for example, tells me that if it wasn’t for social media, he’d never have discovered his love for drawing. He shares his art with his friends and this gives him a sense of identity. He feels seen and he gets a sense of belonging by connecting with others who share his love for drawing and animation.
My teen daughter, on the other hand, is a selfie queen. What I see as narcissistic behavior is her own form of self-expression. As Taylor Fang, winner of the MIT youth essay contest on “What Adults are Missing about Technology” says, selfies aren’t just pictures, they are self-portraits that represent teens’ ideas of self. They’re important and meaningful modes of self-representation.
My teens also pointed out that using social media and communicating with people from different countries and backgrounds raises their awareness of the world around them. It helps them understand how the world works and gives them a chance to carve their niche.
So while we adults are busy highlighting the negatives of social media, our teens are using those platforms to discover and nurture their passions, build their identities and search for their creative selves. They have created communities based on common interests and have found countless ways of expressing themselves.
Finding the Middle Ground
Ever since my teens’ revelations on social media, I challenged myself to look at things differently and I encouraged them to use social media platforms more meaningfully. Instead of passively consuming what they come across on different sites, I challenged them to become active participants by initiating deep conversations online.
Nowadays they create their own content as well as share and invite discussions on social media. This makes their social media time more useful, engaging and productive.
As parents, maybe we can learn from our teenagers and acknowledge that there is so much more to social media than the negatives. Used productively, social media can be a powerful tool for connection, self-discovery, and self-expression
Tyler Jacobson is a happy husband, father of three, writer and outreach specialist with experience with organizations that help troubled teens and parents. His areas of focus include: parenting, social media, addiction, mental illness, and issues facing teenagers today.
I always knew Audrey was reserved. When I would take her to story time at the library, she loved to watch, but rarely wanted to join in. She struggled to talk with extended family, especially if we, heaven forbid, asked her to say, “thank you.” Greeting new friends? Forget it. I assumed it would resolve once she entered preschool. It wasn’t until the end of her first year of preschool that it even occurred to me that she had not spoken a word to her teacher or her peers. We had a nanny at the time and the preschool teacher was a bit spacy, so the feedback on her two days per week of class time was limited. So, I did what any concerned parent would do, and I signed her up for a million camps that summer to force her to socialize. Did it work? Big nope.
We started to struggle more as I viewed her lack of speech as defiant and became so frustrated with her. She never stopped talking at home, why couldn’t she just be the same kid out of the house? I made sure to sign her up for the four-day-a-week pre-K because I figured, she can’t possibly spend that much time with a teacher and classmates and not use her voice. Wrong again. I became so consumed with her speech because of how I thought it reflected on us that I would cry and sometimes, even yell out of frustration. Why was this so hard for her? Why couldn’t she just say something, anything, when I asked her?
The light bulb finally went off in a very bizarre way. Our nanny told me that one of the other moms at school had said, “Oh. She’s a selective mute.” I instantly became defensive. How dare she call my daughter a mute. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I found myself googling ‘selective mute.’ Oh my gosh. This was Audrey exactly. I felt horrible guilt for battling with her over this instead of trying to support her. You see, selective mutism is a product of anxiety. The child feels anxious in a moment or in a setting and the words simply will not come out. Parents or others feel so uncomfortable for the child that they ‘rescue’ them by answering for them or just moving on. The child feels relieved to not have to speak and therein begins the cycle of reinforcing the non-speech. I never thought of my daughter as anxious.
I walked into Audrey’s room that night and asked her, “Do you not want to talk, or can you not make yourself?” She said, “Mom, it feels like I have a pipe in my throat and the words are too big to fit through it.” The insightfulness of this statement coming from my five-year-old crushed me. I had been so concerned about how others viewed her not speaking, that I had completely overlooked trying to understand how she really felt in these situations. I started to research the condition and happened upon a speech pathologist in our area. Selective mutism (SM) is treated between a speech and psychology team collectively. Audrey was fairly quickly diagnosed with selective mutism and we were fortunate enough to take part in an eight-week group that started as Audrey entered kindergarten. This group helped Audrey immensely. It also taught my husband and me how to support her in these tough situations so that we could move away from the ‘rescuing’ and could help her to actually verbalize.
Audrey is now in first grade, and though she still struggles a bit in certain situations, she is leaps and bounds ahead of where she used to be. She will raise her hand in class, answer teacher questions, socialize with peers and even order for herself at restaurants. All things that were out of the question before. Though I still hold some animosity towards the mom who called my daughter a selective mute (why not actually reach out if you thought this was a concern?), I am so very glad she did. I am fairly confident we would have continued to battle it out thus increasing my daughter’s anxiety.
We learned so much through Audrey’s diagnosis. We watched a hundred people try and fail at getting Audrey to speak to them. For some reason, many people took it as some sort of challenge that they surely would be the one to win. We also had family and friends take it personally that she wouldn’t speak to them as if it was something they needed to fix with her. We learned that because Audrey is a happy and pleasant girl, many just don’t see her condition as a concern. Most people, myself included, initially thought that Audrey just needed to start kindergarten and she would get there. She would surely outgrow it. The problem is, the longer you wait to get help for SM the harder it can be to overcome. Particularly if a child has started school because once they are non-verbal in a setting for a period of time, it is much, much harder to get them to be verbal.
I never knew that SM was a thing and I wish I had. I could have been supportive of Audrey so much sooner. Of course, I could have been supportive of her regardless, and that’s on me. But I hope that if you have any of these concerns for your child or your friend’s child, that this is of some help to you. Anxiety can manifest in many different ways and selective mutism is only one of them.
Hi! I'm Shannon. I am a blessed wife and mama who gets to stay at home to care for three babes, 7, 4, and 7 months. I am always looking to learn and I love to write!
