Leading Mama

Good Nite, Sleep Well

As you may know if you've been following this blog for a while, Little Mama is a champion sleeper. Scratch that: WAS a champion sleeper....

 

Until I ruined her.

 

From early on, she slept soundly through the night, soothing herself back to sleep quickly by sucking on her two favorite fingers.

 

Then, in January, it all went south. Well, actually it went west. But that's confusing, right?

We went to visit family in California and she started waking in the night. Probably it was due to some combination of factors: time change, portable crib, too much light, too cold in our room, not enough quiet. Who knows exactly.

 

What did I do? I rewarded her. (Bad psychologist. Bad, bad psychologist!)

 

That's right? I nursed her back to calm composure, then popped her back in bed. The consequence? (It doesn't take a behaviorist to figure this out, right?!) She got hooked on "boppy." That's her new word for breastmilk "Boppy."

 

The vicious cycle set in. She cries; I nurse her. She goes to sleep. I toss and turn. Often for two hours of more. Before I go back to sleep...

 

She wakes again. I want to let her cry. But I. am. so. freaking. tired. And so I nurse her, again.

 

Before long, she's up every two hours all night long, nursing like a 3 week-old baby.

 

Nice.

 

In a recent effort to turn things around (and find the energy for my plan to achieve total world domination higher-level writing goals), I've redoubled my resolve. And so it was just in the nick of time that sleep journalist and Parenting Squad expert Malia Jacobson asked me if I'd review a final draft of her new e-book "Ready, Set, SLEEP: 50 Ways to Help Your Child Sleep, So You Can Sleep Too."

 

I'm happy to say that within a week, I'd recaptured some of that earlier baby magic. Turns out I didn't ruin Little Mama completely, and -- surprise! -- she's still just as capable of self-soothing as she ever was. Last night she slept from 7 p.m. to 7:20 a.m. (BLISS!) I just had to get out of her way. And stay out.

 

What I liked best about Malia's book was it didn't teach one specific strategy for sleep training (like Ferber and friends). Instead, Ready, Set, Sleep debunks several misperceptions parents have about sleep and helps you study your child's sleep "system" and tweak it until it works. For them. And for you.

If a one-size-fits-all approach is what you're looking for, don't read Malia's book. If you want to learn the ingredients of good sleep and build your own bedtime (and nighttime) routine, buy it NOW. Her wise advice will help you rethink your beliefs and behavior. Plus, she provides tools to study (and change) your situation.

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Disclosure: I received a free review copy of Malia's book "Ready, Set, SLEEP" but all opinions are my own.

 Photo Credit: NEWBORN SLEEPING © Denys Dolnikov | Dreamstime.com

 

Post-It Note Tuesday: 6 Questions I Love

"Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

- Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903, in "Letters to a Young Poet"

 

Usually, I love a book that offers wise answers.

 

Today, I'm loving a book that asks wise questions instead.

 

Here are 6 Questions I Love from Robin Fisher Roffer's book Make a Name for Yourself: Eight Steps Every Woman Needs to Create a Personal Brand Strategy for Success I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in their own brand identity for business or blogging. Robin rocks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sit with these questions. Let them soak in. Then, if you dare, share your answer to one of these questions in the comments. Or -- better yet -- share one of your own favorite questions.

 

Love the questions. The answers will come.

 

Post-It Note Tuesday: 4 Thoughts about Change

I've been interviewing experts and reading up on change lately. What I've learned is that many changes that seem easy are actually relatively difficult. The reasons are many. The solutions are few. Here are some take-away lessons about change. I hope they'll inspire and guide you in your own self-development efforts.

  Miller encourages people to be a little afraid everyday. Big rewards require big risks.

Get more insights in her book Creating Your Best Life: The Ultimate Life List Guide.

By fearless, Barthmare means we have to confront our own reality.

That means understanding how the changes we seek fit (or don't fit) with our real life circumstances. Change attempts must be both revolutionary and realistic.

Realistic small actions add up over time.

*No* I don't like being called an elephant any more than you do.

The truth isn't always glamorous.

 

Find ways to renew your energy or change simply won't happen.

Emotional energy -- not just rational self-control -- fuels change.

 

What are you trying to change?

 

Post-It Note Tuesday: The Kaizen Way

Want to learn how small steps can change your life? Read One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way It's good food for thought and action.

 

Want to do a small, random act of goodness right now? Send a card, please. Not to me, silly. Read details in the next post. Two posts in one day? I must be inspired!

 

Swoops and Poops

You’ve seen them at the park. They gather near the parking lot. They sit on the benches, preening. They walk in aimless circles while the kids play on the jungle gym. They’re not really watching the kids, but they’re poised to take flight if someone gets in their space. And they’ll swoop in fast if someone drops something edible.

 

Photo from slack12 at flickr.com

All is calm on the playground until the kid in the too-short sweatpants rips a green plastic shovel from the hands of the toddler in the glittery cupcake t-shirt. The little girl cries out. ‘Mooooom! Dat mine!’

 

Coffee and smart phone forgotten, she’s off the bench, wheeling and swooping toward the children. Screaming and chastising.  Gesturing wildly. Seagull mom flies into the sandbox, makes a lot of noise about the hostile takeover of the green shovel, steals it back from too-short-sweatpants, and returns it to her little cupcake.

 

She tells cupcake to stop crying. It’s over. She got back the shovel. She screams at too-short-sweatpants about playing with his own toys and shoos him away.

 

Then she turns and flies back to her bench, where she’ll pass time waiting for another opportunity to swoop into action.

 

She’s no helicopter parent. She's more like a seagull.

She leaves the kids to their own devices.

She’s in her own world.

Until something happens.

Then she flies in,

makes a lot of noise,

dumps on everyone,

and flies away.

 

 

 

Photo from Dave Harkin at Melbourne LightPainters

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Seagull parenting is an adaptation of Ken Blanchard’s seagull management concept. Learn more about it in his leadership best-seller, The One Minute Manager .

Scary Business

In this week’s Prosperous Writer E-zine, Christina Katz relates her experiences at the recent Associated Writers and Writing Programs Conference in Washington, DC. She asked the participants in a social networking session whether they see themselves or their writing as a business. The result? Only 20% of the attendees raised their hands. She was shocked.

 

I am a freelance writer. Writing is my business. And if I had been in Christina’s audience, I would have raised my hand. But I understand why so few people did.

Claiming an identity as a business person is scary.

Doing it in public is even scarier.

Here’s why:

1) Claiming an identity is a commitment. It demands action.

You cannot say you are a writer if you don’t write. And no matter how good a writer – or cook, coach, crafter, singer, stylist, designer, or widget-maker – you are, you cannot say you are in business unless you market and (hopefully) sell your work.

 

2) Selling your work feels a lot like selling yourself. Especially for artists, and especially for women.

Putting a price on your work makes a statement about the value of your ideas, your time, and your creations. And negotiating the value of your work can be off-putting, not to mention downright frightening. Why? We don’t want to confront our own assessment of our value and we don’t want to open ourselves up to scrutiny. As long as your work is a hobby, you don’t have to find out what it, and, by extension, you, are worth. Safety first, right?

 

3) Business has a certain connotation. It is cold and detached. Impersonal. It can be ruthless. Business is dirty and corrupt.

I know these are stereotypes, but these qualities spring to mind without warning when we think about business, and there’s the rub. Claiming we are in business means getting past all that emotional baggage. We want to believe we are thoughtful, creative, and socially aware. These traits are hard to reconcile with our knee-jerk beliefs about business.

 

4) Businesses pay workers for performance, and motivate increases in production by offering larger and larger incentives. Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us calls this Motivation 2.0

Unfortunately, lots of studies in psychology show that paying people to do tasks they find inherently meaningful and intrinsically motivating is apt to backfire. Athletes paid top dollar for their performance fall out of love with the game. Kids paid to color pictures stop coloring because coloring isn’t fun anymore. Writers worry that being paid to write will mean they no longer find it gratifying, energizing, and expressive. We don’t want money to mess with our mojo. We – incorrectly, I think – equate selling our work with selling out.

 

5) Being in business ups the ante. As long as we don’t claim we’re worth too much, no one will call us out. We can dabble, bumble, and fail at a hobby. The stakes are low. Giving ourselves permission to dabble, bumble and (possibly) fail at our work takes a lot more courage. But risk-taking is vital to any enterprise, including writing.

 

I am proud to say I am a freelance writer. I recognize my work has value and ask others to recognize it, too. That doesn’t make what I do less gratifying, less energizing, or less noble.

 

I am an enterprising mama. As Merriam-Webster defines it, that means I am marked by an independent energetic spirit and a readiness to act. My enterprise is writing. It is difficult, complicated, and risky. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

How about you? What's your enterprise? Be bold and claim it. I double-dog dare you.

Breastfeeding Is Automatic (and Other Rookie-Mom Beliefs)

this post was inspired by a prompt from

 

The mystique of motherhood is powerful.

During pregnancy, I envisioned a sweet, milky-smelling baby with buttery-soft skin. I welcomed the cozy nighttime feedings that would allow me dream of the baby’s future while he drifted off to sleep in my arms. I wanted to be soft, warm, and comforting: the archetypal mother figure.

I’d educated myself about breastfeeding benefits and mechanics, and I (naively) believed it would all come naturally. Perhaps it was the propaganda educational video I saw in lactation class that made me think so. You know the one. The video with the genius baby who crawls up his mother’s bare bosom to nurse only minutes after birth, latches on snugly, and eats like there is no tomorrow.

In case you haven’t been appropriately brainwashed educated, you can watch it on YouTube. Lactation experts call this the breast crawl. Leading Mama takes issue with that.

I say the term “breast crawl” should be reserved for the thirsty breastfeeding mom who has barely enough energy to drag herself into the bathroom for a drink of water after the 3 a.m. feeding.

Let’s debunk the propaganda, shall we? My baby didn’t crawl to the breast and nurse. He bobbled at my side as I tried to figure out the best way to support his tiny body and wiggly head with one hand while supporting the weight of my too-ample bosom in the other. No perfect pillow made this easy-breezy. (sorry, Boppy, I wanted to love you!) And even when I figured out how to get his head at the right angle and his mouth in the right place, he didn’t latch on like a pro.

They took him to the nursery because he was breathing a bit too fast. I spent my nights cuddled up with a hospital-grade breast pump. Pumping didn’t lead me to dream about the baby’s future at all. Instead, I worried he’d fall in love with formula and reject my nurturing altogether. Worrying is, after all, the hallmark of motherhood.

Breastfeeding – in Leading Mama’s experience – is anything but automatic. I can recall going to the park with a friend about 3 weeks after my son was born. My friend – a seasoned mother of three – watched me nursing my son on a park bench and said (with audible pity) “Oh. You still have to use two hands .”

That’s how I knew I was a rookie mom.

Today I will tell you I believe breastfeeding is beautiful and healthy. I nursed my son until after his second birthday. I am nursing my daughter now.

Well, not right *NOW*. But I could.   

You see, after years of practice, I can nurse a baby while I blog or cook dinner or pay bills or paint my toenails. Well, maybe that last one is a stretch, but you get my point. 

Breastfeeding no longer requires me to use both hands and all my mental and emotional energy. It has become automatic. It feels natural. And that’s how I know I’m not a rookie anymore.

Buried Treasure: Great Books for Kids

I am always on the lookout for books my son will like -- and that I won't mind reading OVER and OVER and OVER. Don't get me wrong, I think learning the names of obscure construction equipment is an important little boy right of passage. He should know the difference between a backhoe and a roller and a cherry picker, right?

Call me crazy -- I'd like him to know up and down, big and little, duck and cow and horse, too. I want him to dream about pirates, and shout "Aaarrrrr" as he uncovers buried treasure in his toybox. But shopping for books with a toddler in tow is not particularly productive. As I pull a book from the shelf and scan the pages checking out the language and illustrations, he pulls books from the shelf just to pull them down. He does so with abandon. Books fly from the shelf. In less than a minute there are so many books on the floor we'd need a Caterpillar D-11R Carrydozer Track Type Loader to scoop them all up. Really.

If you, like me, want to find excellent books for your kids but have book shopping challenges, fret not.

Visit Ethan's Bookshelf (www.ethansbookshelf.com) for reviews of wonderful children's books. Editor Jenny Rich (a reading specialist, teacher, and mom) writes thorough, vivid descriptions of each title she includes, and categorizes by age and by theme to make book shopping easy and fun. This isn't Amazon -- Ethan's Bookshelf includes only the best books for kids. You can purchase individual books directly from the site or select a whole set of books by theme and buy them all with a single mouse click.  I'm loving it.

Need to see it to believe it? Try out www.lookybook.com to preview picture books page by page. Once you decide you've found a keeper, you can purchase online or head to the local library to check it out.

To Err is Human, To Admit It Is Leadership

I'm reading a book by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson entitled Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. Both giants in the field of social psychology, Tavris and Aronson review 50 years of research on cognitive dissonance and self-justification, explaining how we tend to rationalize, justify, ignore, and evade evidence suggesting we’ve erred. 

 

The fragile ego needs protection, after all.

 

Tavris and Aronson remark, “To err is human, but humans have a choice between covering up and fessing up.” And most often, when confronted with proof we’re wrong, become even more tenacious in our own self-deception and self-defense.

 

It’s easy to find public examples in politics and on Wall Street these days. Just last night as we watched 60 Minutes, I wondered how hedge fund managers who made MILLIONS of dollars on credit default swaps and derivatives could live with themselves as they watch the US economy crumble before their eyes. People are losing their homes, their retirement savings, their jobs. 

 

The answer, of course, is that bankers and hedge fund managers and legislators responsible for the credit crunch live with themselves “exactly the way the rest of us do.” Now I’m not saying you or I have made bad decisions that impacted millions and millions of people (and Tavris and Aronson didn’t say that either). 

 

What I am saying is the psychological process of self-justification that allows them to sleep at night is the same one that allows you or I to live with the knowledge we’ve screwed up and hurt those we love, perhaps deeply.

 

In the last 24 hours, I’ve had two opportunities to admit a mistake. I confess in the more emotional, personally meaningful situation, I responded just like social psychologists would predict (and their predictions are not usually very favorable). In the less emotional, more black-and-white business-related situation, I very quickly (though not without embarrassment) admitted my error, explained how it happened, expressed my sincerest apologies, and asked for a gracious response from the individual I wronged. (And I'm happy to say the situation was resolved positively.)

 

The difficult situation was an argument with my husband, who felt I was critical of his parenting behavior. I fairly quickly dug in my heels (“I did not criticize you”), justified my behavior (“You started it”), and walked away from additional confrontation (literally).  

 

In the minutes that followed, what flashed through my mind was all the evidence to support my position, and a host of unspoken arguments to counteract his. I won’t list them here, and I’m glad that – at least this time – I kept all those not-so-kind words to myself. Keeping my mouth shut certainly isn’t my nature. 

 

Without the prompting of Mistakes Were Made, I’m not sure I would have re-evaluated what happened yesterday. Actually, I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t have. 

 

While I easily find fault with my hair (it’s flat today), my thighs (not as thin as they should be), my housekeeping (not a high priority), it’s much harder to see mistakes in my own behavior. I think that’s true for most of us. Real life requires a little (well, maybe a lot) of self-deception. We all make bad decisions at times, and sometimes our behavior hurts others. In order to feel like good, honest, caring, capable people, we justify it. Then we remember it selectively, culling out the parts that aren’t so flattering like we cut bad boyfriends out of our college photo albums. 

 

While I still don’t believe I criticized him directly, I certainly see how my husband interpreted it that way. And I am truly sorry I hurt him. That seems like a step in the right direction. I admit I’ve got a ways to go.

 

Now if those hedge fund managers would fess up, we could all sleep better tonight.

Fall into Fall

Fall has arrived here in northern Virginia. The first bright red and yellow leaves adorn the maple trees and pumpkins peek from porches on our street. Our daily walk to the mailbox -- complete with squirrel chasing, acorn collecting, pumpkin spotting, and leaf inspection -- now takes more than 30 minutes each way (if I let it). There's simply too much for a toddler to take in any faster than that.

I encourage you to "fall into fall" and reclaim childhood for your kids (and yourself!)

In "Reclaiming Childhood: Letting Children Be Children in Our Achievement-Oriented Society," developmental psychologist and activist William Crain reviews research on children’s love of nature, affinity for artwork, penchant for drama, and naturally unfolding linguistic abilities. In each area, he reveals patterns of growth and development and questions whether it’s wise to redirect children to our learning goals rather than those that come naturally.

A devotee of the child-centered approach to learning advanced by Arnold Gesell and applied by Maria Montessori, Crain believes “children enter the world preeminently ‘wise’ about what they need and what they are ready and not ready to do.” Parents, then, ought to take their cues from children and create opportunities for them to explore what they find most fascinating.

If you’ve wondered how the standardized testing movement began and how it might conflict with child-centered approaches to education, Crain’s historical and sociological analyses in final chapters will engage your thinking (and make you angry).

If that’s more than you’d like to chew right now, his initial exploration of child as naturalist, artist, dramatist and linguist will motivate you to get out and play with your children in the dirt, pile up some fall leaves (and fall into them) or build a stage and star in your own family theater. Either way, both you and the kids will reclaim some childhood magic.