Today in our parenting group one mother brought up the fact that her two year old was going to learn about Diwali today at pre-school – but she knew nothing about the holiday herself! She was worried that she wouldn’t be able to provide any meaningful context for him when he came home.
I admitted that I knew almost nothing about Diwali myself – but we talked about how important it is for children to be able to enjoy and understand one another’s traditions.
And then another mother in the group came to the rescue and explained the holiday to us. She and her family celebrate Diwali and she told us about what they were going to do this year.
But she also told us that growing up in a Hindu family, she always heard the story of the holiday told from the male point of view and that she had decided a couple of years ago to write the story from the feminine point of view. She wanted her children – as well as others – to learn the story in a new way.
And then she told us the story: she explained that the holiday celebrates Sita, the daughter of earth and an incarnation of the Goddess Lakshmi and her return to freedom after being kidnapped by the evil Ravan. And she went on to say that this story is about Sita’s courage both quiet and loud, never to be mistaken for meekness.
At this time of year there are a LOT of holidays – and it may be confusing for young children, especially those in preschool and kindergarten.
Help them out!
You can begin to explain about religion to them if you have not already done so. And while a complicated topic, you can start by telling them that religion is something that helps people to know what to believe. You can go on to say that people who are one religion believe certain things while people that are a different religion believe different things. You can tell them about what you believe and which holidays you prefer to celebrate – but you can also help them to understand about all the different holidays they will see celebrated at school and in their communities.
And if you or your children (ages 7 and over) want to know more about the first Diwali, you can read about it through the eyes of Sita, and learn how she won the battle of good over evil in the book written by our group member!
A recent New Yorker article starts with the following:
“At the end of the summer, the U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, issued an advisory on the mental health of the nation’s parents. Too many families, Murthy wrote, are beset by economic factors beyond their control, including the costs of health care, child care, elder care, housing, and groceries. Murthy cited alarming results from a survey by the American Psychological Association, conducted in 2023, in which forty-one per cent of parents said that “most days they are so stressed they cannot function,” forty-eight per cent said that “most days their stress is completely overwhelming,” and fifty per cent said that “when they are stressed, they can’t bring themselves to do anything.” 1
This is outrageous!
So many parents are so stressed!
We have to talk about this.
And it is also time to fully acknowledge how little support there is for families in this country.
Unlike other developed nations, we have little to no governmental support for the care of our young children. Parents are not subsidized to stay home to care for infants and young pre-school aged children – and at the very same time, the survival of most families AND the survival of our economy require both parents to work in most families.
But, as the article says, “insufficient or erratic child care is a major disruptor of parents’ work schedules”1 and “In eleven states and the District of Columbia, child care costs at least twice as much as typical monthly rent or mortgage payments, and two-thirds of parents nationwide report spending twenty per cent or more of their take-home pay on child care. For sole parents, this share rises to thirty-five per cent.”1
The Build Back Better bill, proposed by President Biden included funding for child care and early childhood education.
And yet, even knowing how important childcare is to family well being, the Build Back Better agenda did NOT receive widespread bipartisan support, and the provisions for daycare were completely cut from the final bill which was passed, called The Inflation Reduction Act. 2
The Democrats’ plans included universal pre-kindergarten, lower child care costs, paid family and sick leave and the enhanced child tax credit, among other provisions, but all of these were ultimately eliminated during negotiations between Democrats and Republicans. Those cuts became the ninth time in just two and a half years where proposed legislation aimed at helping women and families have been removed, according to a CNN analysis of data from the Congressional Budget Office and Congressional Research Reports.
Paid family leave alone has been trimmed down or dropped five different times since March 2020, and universal pre-kindergarten, paid family leave and an expanded child tax credit were all left out of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Now we have a presidential candidate who is introducing a six-thousand-dollar tax credit for parents of newborns, and a cap on child-care expenditures at seven per cent of a family’s income. She has also signalled her commitment to pro-family economic policy in choosing Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, as her running mate. As Governor, Walz has made school breakfast and lunch free in Minnesota and has made public higher education free for low-income students, he has added more than two billion dollars to Minnesota’s K-12 school budget, expanded the state’s child tax credit, and enshrined paid family and medical leave.
If instituted on a nationwide basis, these policies would do a LOT to decrease family stress –
and yet the presidential race is still neck in neck.
Obviously, many fathers and mothers are not putting help for families at the top of their priority list when choosing who to vote for.
It’s obviously time that we name the problem loud and clear: children and families are not considered important in our country.
To many, “it’s the economy, stupid” which is important.
But let’s connect the dots: the workers of today, parents, need to be less stressed to do their jobs. And the workers of tomorrow, children, need to be well cared for in order to be the healthy community members and the creative and productive workers the economy needs.
If this is the only argument that will get through to some people, let’s make it!
As Winter suggests in her New Yorker article, a coherent, constructive debate about how to help working parents—about how our politics and institutions can foster a care economy that exists, in one form or another, in virtually every other developed nation on Earth—is needed.
This is an updated version of a post written for the election two cycles ago.
As we approach the presidential election, it’s a good time to talk to your kids about winning and losing.
The subjects of sportsmanship, humility and grace come to mind – as well as braggadocio, sore losing and bitterness.
Whatever side of the electoral battle you are on, you and your children will be having strong feelings.
So what do we say to our children? And at what age are they ready to have this conversation?
Well, really children of any age, starting around 3 know about winning and losing – and they can talk about the feelings that come when they experience each. Of course, depending on your child’s age, you will speak about this differently.
But the place to start is to remind your child – whatever age they are – that how your family feels at this moment about who you want for President is not the way that everyone feels. Some people are for one candidate and some people are for the other. This is a time to talk about values and WHY you prefer the candidate you prefer, what values and policies they represent, and why you are in favor of these.
This is the time to talk about the history of our country and what democracy is all about – and this includes the fact that in our country we allow the people (represented by the electoral college) to choose the president and that we are honor bound to stick with this decision.
HOWEVER – and this is where the more nuanced part of the discussion comes in – it is important, whatever you or your child feel, to help your child to be aware that when other people feel differently than we do, that it is important to treat them and their feelings with respect.
Good sportsmanship is something that kids who play on teams should be learning. You can provide this as an example: after a game, your team shakes hands with the other team to indicate that you both played a good game and that there are no hard feelings left over from the competition.
The losers can feel upset but still lose graciously. This is a concept that can be introduced to a 3 year old and also to a 16 year old.
And the winners can feel happy and joyous – but they can also behave graciously by telling their competitors that they played well. Children can be reminded that bragging about winning is not the way to go, even though inside it feels so good to win.
You can tell your children the story of “burying the hatchet”: when Native American tribes had disputes or wars with each other, when they were over, the two formerly opposing sides literally buried a hatchet in the ground to symbolize the end of the disagreement.
This is a way to handle winning and losing an election too. After someone has won or lost, it is time to bury the hatchet, to accept the defeat or the victory and to move back to getting along.
It is also time to continue to cling to the values you hold dear and to not give up on them.
I fervently hope that both we and our children can do this both before and after the upcoming election.
For many men, finding out that their partner is pregnant is the beginning of a roller coaster of feelings and an enormous amount of internal change. For those who welcome the pregnancy, first time fatherhood can represent the real marker of adulthood. And over the months of their partners’ pregnancies, these men often reevaluate their sense of self, their expectations of themselves, their values, their lifestyle and their priorities – and it’s not easy. (1)
They are in the process of a psychological overhaul.
Some men meet the news of the pregnancy with elation, some with mixed feelings and some with dread – but whatever their initial reactions, many men experience the perinatal period as the most stressful time of all in their transition to fatherhood. (2)
First of all, they often feel a bit disconnected from the reality of the pregnancy. Some take a number of weeks to really accept that the pregnancy exists. Many feel cut off, being able to experience the pregnancy only by proxy. While their partners have the embodied experience of the physical changes of pregnancy, they must rely on second hand accounts. (3)
And in one study, performed by Jan Draper, many of the men found that the reality of their partner’s pregnancies was different than their expectations. Some felt that the reality of the pregnancy alternated with periods during which they went about their lives as usual without an ongoing awareness of the pregnancy: “Some men suggested that their lack of continuous physical experience meant that they were able almost to opt in and opt out of their involvement of the pregnancy; they had an element of choice that their partners did not. These men remained focussed on everyday life, frequently their paid work, rather than on the minutia of the progress of the pregnancy. The sometimes part-time nature of men’s involvement was a theme…James, for example… was committed to the concept of involved fatherhood and apologetically contrasted his choice of part-time involvement with the continuous involvement of his partner. Steve, a novice father, described how the pregnancy kept `drifting away’ and how he felt guilty about `forgetting’ he was a father” (4).
Some also felt surprised by their reactions to their partners’ changing bodies. Some felt put off by the size of their partner’s bellies and some felt that the pregnant belly was actually a barrier between themselves and their partners.
Some just could not connect the pregnancy to the reality of a baby. One said, “I can see Julie pregnant and I can see her with a baby and the two don’t seem to go together and that’s a really odd feeling and I don’t know how to describe that. You see a pregnant lady and then you see someone with a baby and…. it seems two separate type things” (5)
But getting to see the scans of the fetus as they were happening or feeling the fetus move inside their partners bellies helped many of these men to connect more directly to the pregnancy. One father-to-be said, “It feels nice (feeling the baby’s movements). It does. I think it’s harder for me because I get frustrated that I can’t experience any of it physically at the moment, other than putting my hand on the outside and feeling the movement”. (6)
And all the men in Draper’s study valued and enjoyed the accounts given to them by their partners about the pregnancy and the fetus’s development.
During their partner’s pregnancies, some men feel the need to take on new responsibilities – to take care of their partner and prepare for the baby’s arrival. Some feel more protective of their partner and worried about the wellbeing of their unborn child.
But some fathers-to-be may find themselves in conflict – on the one hand, feeling much of the above, and, on the other hand, resenting the new demands and responsibilities – whether the pressure to take these on comes from their partner, from what they perceive as societal expectation or whether it come from within themselves.
Contributing to these feelings may be the fact that in recent years, fathers have been expected to be more hands-on and more involved during the pregnancy and more intimate with their babies and children once they arrive than in previous generations. Fathers are generally expected to take at least an equal role in parenting – a job for which they may feel ill-prepared.
Many men have very little – if any – experience with babies and small children. They may never have held an infant before they hold their own – and they may know almost nothing about child care or child development.
And, of course, it is also confusing – because what constitutes fatherhood is ever-evolving. The wishes and needs of fathers and mothers and the societal norms around parenthood are alway in being reconfigured.
And then there are the physiological changes involved in impending fatherhood. For example, a study published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings demonstrated that men go through significant hormonal changes alongside their pregnant partners and that these changes are most likely initiated by their partner’s pregnancy. The evidence suggests that fathers have higher levels of estrogen, the well-known female sex hormone, than other men and that increase starts 30 days before birth and continues during at least the first 12 weeks after birth – and possibly much longer. Although estrogen is best known as a female sex hormone, it exists in small quantities in men, too. Animal studies show that estrogen can induce nurturing behavior in males. So, it seems increasingly clear that just as biology prepares women to be committed mothers, it prepares men to be dads as well (7).
Furthermore, the study showed that men’s cortisol levels rise in the week before their baby’s birth and their testosterone levels decrease in the week after birth.
And then there are historical considerations in preparing for fatherhood as well: many men reflect on how they themselves were fathered. Old feelings are often stirred up around childhood memories, whether these are fond or those which include deprivation, harsh parenting, and abuse. And for those men who had fathers who were excessively strict, depriving, or angry, there will be many questions about how to father differently than they were fathered. They may have to evaluate how to deal with their own anger in ways distinct from their fathers, how to be more emotionally available than their own fathers, how to be more open than their own fathers, how to be less judgemental than their own fathers and/or how to be more generous than their own fathers
Fathers-to-be have to consider what they want to take from their own experience of being parented and what they do not. They have to think about what kind of father they want to be and how to separate themselves from automatically fathering as they were fathered.
And these thoughts can lead to potent feelings of uncertainty. In a study done by Meleagrou-Hutchins, the fathers studied anticipated various profound changes to their personal and professional lives beyond the birth of their baby. And they worried about their ability to cope with the demands of fatherhood. They were all planning ahead and preparing, to varying degrees, so as to manage, or minimize, the disruption that fatherhood would cause in their lives.
They also felt invisible. Many felt their partners were getting more attention than they were in regard to the upcoming birth and that their health and wellbeing was being overlooked. Some felt sidelined, ignored during medical appointments – and at the same time many wondered whether they were really entitled to support. Some also felt that they lacked a concrete goal during the pregnancy leading to feelings of powerlessness and frustration (8).
Many of these fathers reported feeling insufficiently supported as they worked to prepare themselves for fatherhood. Many felt their partner was their main source of support and yet they regretted putting further burden on her by needing this from her (9).
Preparing for fatherhood is a complex physiological and psychological process and clearly, men require more support in understanding their own experience as well as more institutional and societal support as they do so.
Genesoni, L. and Talandini, M., (2009). Men’s Psychological Transition to Fatherhood: A Review of The Literature, Birth, Dec;36(4):305-18. doi: 10.1111/j.1523-536X.2009.00358.x.
Meleagrou-Hitchens, L., Carla Willig (2022). Mens’s experience of their transition to first time fatherhood…. Department of Psychology, School of Arts and Social Sciences, City University London, EC1V 0HB London, UKDOI:10.31083/jomh.2021.102 Vol.18,Issue 1,January 2022 pp.1-11.
There are many reasons that we – or our children – may procrastinate. We might fear that we cannot do the thing we are procrastinating about doing. Or we may feel that the job is just too hard and will take too much work. We might feel conflicted about whether we deserve to succeed and as a result we might procrastinate rather than allowing ourselves to move forward and be successful.
Any and all of these things may be true, and it is important to think about what lies behind our procrastination, or the procrastination that we watch our children engage in. But short of a long analysis, the answer may not be forthcoming.
So, here I am going to offer a few tips.
Daniel Willingham, a cognitive scientist and author of How To Outsmart Your Brain and Why Don’t Students Like School? has some ideas.
I am going to summarize them here — and add a few of my own — because we all procrastinate sometimes, and some people, including some of our children, procrastinate a lot:
1. Think up a reward for after the studying or the job is done. It can be a fun activity, time on a video game, or a treat.
Instead of doing this, many procrastinators put the fun first. They say, “Oh just let me play this video game for a while before I study…” But then they find that they play the video game for longer than they intended and don’t have enough — or any — time left to study. Do the hard thing first. Then do the fun thing.
2. Don’t rely on willpower to get the job done, rely on habit. Set up a time to do work — whether it’s homework or studying or a household project and do this each day. In other words, put aside dedicated time to do what you need to do. And do it either at a certain time of day or as part of a sequence of activities each day. And by “a sequence of activities”, I mean that if , for example, rather than saying you will have your child study at 4PM each day, you say that your child needs to start studying after their afternoon snack or, for a college student, they will study after their daily workout even if that’s not at the exact same time each day.
It takes as long as 60 tries for something to truly become a habit, but Willingham says that by doing the same thing over and over, it WILL become a habit.
And he also says that it takes much less energy to engage in a habit than it does to have yourself (or your child) make a choice to do what they need to do each time they need to do it. Willingham says that establishing work or study as a daily habit is better because you remove the need to choose to do the work. You just do it. You don’t have to decide to do it each time.
3. If you or your child are overwhelmed by how much you have to do, make a to-do list before you start doing anything else.
4. As part of the to do list, break down each of the jobs into manageable tasks. And then give your child or yourself permission to just do one task at a time. Do not look at the whole list. Do not think about all that has to be done. It’s down on paper. You won’t forget. And you also won’t feel as overwhelmed if you just go one task at a time.
Also – expecting yourself just to do a small amount at a time makes the job more approachable. When I was in grad school I did this with running. I didn’t want to run; I was often just too tired or too busy. But if I told myself I only had to go a mile, I would usually start jogging and end up doing the whole 3 miles — or even more — because once I got going it felt better and easier than expected!
5. When it’s time to work, just start. As Nike says…just do it. Willingham reminds us that things we don’t want to do seem worse to us before we do them. Once we start we often find they aren’t as bad as we predicted.
6. Tell others what you are going to be doing — or have your child do this. This makes you — or your child — accountable. People are more likely to do things that others know they are going to do.
7. Plan breaks. Tell yourself — or tell your child — you only have to work for 10 or 20 minutes and then you can take a break. Often giving yourself or your child permission to take a break after a limited amount of work makes starting the task easier and leads to doing it for longer than the 10 or 20 minutes you allotted initially.
7. Be aware of what you — or your child — say in your own mind about the task and your ability to do it. As I said at the start, often procrastinators think something like, “This is too hard” or “I’m not smart enough anyway, so why even start?” These are self-defeating thoughts and they are often incorrect. Be aware that these might get in the way of starting!
Thank you, Daniel Willingham! We all need help with procrastination!
References
Daniel Willingham, Outsmart Your Brain
Daniel Willingham, Why Don’t Students Like School?
Daniel Willingham is a cognitive scientist, by which I mean, he is an academic researcher who extracts information from psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, and anthropology in an effort to understand the mind and apply the findings to education.1
In his book, Outsmart Your Brain, Willingham says something revolutionary: he says that most children are asked to learn without ever being taught study skills, without ever being taught how to organize themselves for studying, without ever having been taught to prioritize what to study, and without ever having been taught what to do when they procrastinate about studying.
And we all know this is true because we were once those children.
Unless your kids go to a very unusual school, this will be true for them as well.
When I went to school, I remember being told that I just wasn’t “trying hard enough”. But Willingham says that wanting to learn has no direct impact on learning.
He says that we often remember things we didn’t intend to learn and we often do not remember things we did want to learn.
He also says that repetition doesn’t guarantee learning.
From junior high onward, Willingham says that school is made up mostly of three basic tasks: listening, reading and taking tests — and these are the three areas of learning he covers in his book.
He talks about so many important things. For example, he describes how to extract the important information from a lecture, a lab or a demonstration. And he goes into detail about how to take notes, and how to organize materials.
Interestingly, he also talks about the dangers of having a computer open in the classroom — even if the student is taking notes on it — and I think we all know what he means: it is tempting to look at other things and do other things while the laptop is open. Willingham suggests that students who are allowed to have laptops open in class put the laptop on airplane mode so they do not do other activities during class
Willingham even gives advice for instructors about how to present material so that it will be clearer and more easily learned. And he gives more such advice in another of his books, Why Students Don’t Like School.
Whether all of his ideas are backed up by research on the particular methods he is recommending is unclear to me. But his books are heavily referenced, he has clearly studied the existing literature on learning, and his own background in cognitive science is extensive.
You may want to read these books. You may even want to donate a couple of Willingham’s books to the principal of your child’s school and ask if they can incorporate some of what he has to say into in-service training for teachers. Furthermore, you may want to ask the principal of your child’s school to institute some new curriculum for the students on how to study and learn effectively, or even suggest that a course be offered in this subject – especially in seventh or ninth grades when learning becomes more complex. I say this because teaching kids how to learn is not a job parents should feel they have to take on entirely by themselves.
In fact, I think it would be hard to impart Willingham’s ideas to your own children. Kids often resist parents’ efforts to help them learn. But if done at school, as part of the curriculum, it seems to me that teaching strategies for studying and learning – including many of Willingham’s ideas – could be extremely helpful.
Teachers receive a lot of information about pedagogy. They go to college to learn how to teach, they go to conferences to learn more and they are often provided with materials during seminars at the schools where they work. But kids, as Willingham says, are rarely taught how to learn.
It is about time that we helped kids learn how to learn, that we helped teachers teach kids how to learn, and that we helped teachers teach in a way that makes it easier for kids to learn.
PS
This book isn’t just for parents and teachers – it can be helpful to anyone still engaged in the learning process – including at work. Check out, especially, the chapter on procrastination!
This is an excerpt from my new book, How Children Grieve: What Adults Miss and What They Can Do to Help (2024) Alcove Press.
While it is the normal order of things for a grandparent to die during the life of a child, such an event can be a salient moment: The loss of a grandparent may be your child’s first experience with death. It can bring up all sorts of feelings, questions, worries, and concerns.
But please, don’t be afraid to talk about any and all of this with your child. You don’t need special training or professional advice to do this. Just try to talk with your child simply and honestly.
If your child and their grandparent were close, it is, of course, an extremely sad and painful experience when the grandparent dies. A grandparent can be a unique source of love, comfort, and support for a child. Often grandparents indulge the child’s wants and needs more lavishly than the parents do, and as a result, your child may feel particularly sad when she loses her grandparent.
For this reason, as much love, comfort and reassurance as you can provide will be welcomed by your child. But at the same time, your child may have concerns that they are not easily reassured about.
This is OK.
Death is scary for all of us – –
but it is also part of life.
When a grandparent dies, your child can have new fears about death, and it may occur to them that you could die or even that they themselves could die.
This can raise existential issues for the child: What is death? What does it mean to die? What happens after you die?
These questions are difficult, and you may struggle to answer them.
But after the death of a grandparent, you can not only explain about death and what it is, if necessary, but you can also talk about what it means to lead a long and productive life. It can be comforting for the child to know that the grandparent was older and got to have many years of life.
However, the death of a grandparent is complicated because it often involves a double loss. Not only does your child feel her own feelings of sadness and loss, but she must also deal with the grief you and/or your partner feel. It may be a new and troubling experience for your child to see you cry or be sad for an extended period of time—and you may be less available for a while, both emotionally and in terms of doing all the things you usually do for your child.
Your child may need more from you than you feel you can provide for a little while.
You will do your best, but it is also important for you to get all the help you need with your own grief process. You may need some time to yourself, you may need to reach out to friends to talk or you may even seek some psychotherapy to help process your loss.
But eventually, your child will have feelings and thoughts that will require your attention.
For example, Kyra was 6 when her grandmother died. She and her grandma had not had a particularly close relationship as her grandmother had lived in another city and also because her grandmother was rather aloof as a person. But still, Kyra had questions. She asked her mother what happens after death. When her mother answered, “Nothing,” Kyra became preoccupied by the idea of “nothing.” What could it be like to be dead and be “nothing”? Where was her grandmother and what was it like for her? And what would happen when Kyra herself became “nothing”? Kyra didn’t speak to anyone about her worries, but she found herself thinking about being “nothing” every night while trying to fall asleep.
Or, for another example, Jacob was 12 when his grandfather died. Jacob loved his grandfather dearly and had seen him often during his first 11 years of life. He did all he could to help in the last months of his grandfather’s life, visiting often, cleaning up his grandfather’s yard, and bringing him his favorite treats.
Jacob was alarmed as his grandfather’s appearance began to change. His grandfather had married and had children late in life and he was quite old, even for a grandfather. After his 89th birthday, he started to become weaker. He became pale, and he did not feel much like eating. He was thinner each time Jacob saw him. After visits with his grandfather, Jacob would go to his room and take a nap. Clearly, being with his grandfather was something he wanted, but it was also disturbing and depleting for him. Rather than facing his disturbing feelings, he preferred to sleep.
Jacob’s parents were worried about him and asked a friend who was a therapist whether or not Jacob should continue to visit his grandfather as frequently. The friend suggested that Jacob come to see him, and he took the time to sit down with Jacob to talk with him about his grandfather. Knowing that Jacob was interested in science, the friend thought that it might help to explain what was happening inside his grandfather’s body. They talked about aging and why certain organs begin to break down. Jacob’s grandfather was very old and he had lived a long, productive life. They talked about this and they also talked about how hard it is to watch as someone you love get closer to dying.
Jacob left the friend’s house in a lighter mood. Because he was a boy who used his intellect to help him understand and process things, he had benefited from learning more about why his grandfather was losing weight and what the future might look like.
Jacob continued to visit his grandfather often, and while very sad after each visit, he seemed more able to manage his sadness than he had been previously. He got a lot of satisfaction out of helping his grandfather, bringing him his favorite ice cream, and doing chores around his grandfather’s house and yard. Eventually, Jacob also brought his homework over to his grandfather’s house and sat in the living room doing his work while his grandfather rested on the couch.
When his grandfather died at age 90, Jacob was very sad. But he wanted to go to the funeral and the graveside service and he wanted to help out at the reception afterwards. He wanted to make his grandfather’s last party nice and he worked hard to help his parents to prepare for all the visitors ahead of time.
Continuing Connections
Continuing connections to those we’ve lost are important. There are so many ways that a child can feel a continued connection to a grandparent. Often they cherish memories of things they did together. Or they replay advice their grandparent gave them. Some love to hear funny or interesting stories about their grandparent, and some will want to have something that belonged to their grandparent. Some will benefit from making an album of photos they can keep or a video they can look at whenever they feel the desire.
But of course, not all grandparents and grandchildren are close and not all grandparents are kind. Depending on the type of relationship your child had with her grandparent, the amount of grief she feels and her desire for connection will vary.
Some children may want to go to the funeral, some may want to visit the cemetery where their grandparent is buried; some may want to bring flowers or a stone to put at the grave. Some may want to attend yearly religious remembrances, and some may want to do none of these things.
In all cases, even if the relationship with the grandparent was not entirely positive, it is important for the adults in the family to bring the grandparent up in conversation from time to time so that the child knows that when someone has died, they are not forgotten and that we can continue to think about our them and to process what they meant to us throughout our lives.
But one of the most difficult things is….getting dinner on the table.
So many parents are feeling guilty about giving their kids too many processed foods –
Or just not being able to figure out what to serve their kids when they get home at the end of the day.
Getting dinner on the table for your toddlers isn’t always easy. So many parents are irritated with themselves because they are having a hard time figuring how how to give their little ones a healthy dinner on top of everything else they have to do.
Recently I was talking to the mother of two small children, ages two and four and she lamented that she had started too late trying to get vegetables into their meals.
Too late at two and four?
Yes, she said, they were onto her already – if she tried to sneak some peas into the mac and cheese, they would just eat around them.
And the research supports her.
Early exposure to a variety of flavors including bitter tastes can help a child to tolerate them. A number of studies indicate that the introduction of vegetables and fruits into an infant’s diet as soon as they start to eat solid foods is extremely helpful in getting them used to these tastes and in choosing to eat these foods as they become toddlers and young children.
So, here’s the deal, parents: start early!
As soon as your baby starts on pureed foods, offer broccoli, spinach and other non-sweet vegetables. This goes against conventional wisdom – but it’s important. And as soon as toddlers are able to eat some pasta, add veges to the mix. Don’t make a big deal of it, just serve it that way.
And if they don’t eat the veges?
Don’t stress. Just keep serving it that way. Try different veges. Eat some while your kids are watching. And again, don’t make a big deal of it. Research has shown that it may take many exposures to a new food for children to accept it.
And also – don’t make life hard for yourselves – just keep a few bags of green beans, peas and corn in your freezer. And while you’re at it, a few bags of frozen raspberries, blueberries and strawberries too.
And keep the snacks in between meals to a minimum so your kids are hungry at meal time: one small snack between breakfast and lunch, and one small snack between lunch and dinner. Peel and cut up an apple. Make a little bag of raisins. Peel a mandarin orange and cut each section in half. Cut up some cucumbers or carrots or celery and have a little ranch dressing for dipping. Make a little bowl of cut up watermelon or blueberries or some fresh or frozen raspberries or strawberries. Always have a couple of cheese sticks on hand. Keep it simple and healthy.
Continual snacking?
That’s a no.
Continual pouches they can suck on?
No.
A big brownie or cookie from Starbucks?
Also a no. (At least most of the time)
Just provide two of the snack choices I listed above and you’ll be fine.
And here are the 10 good dinners. They won’t take more than 15 minutes to prepare. I promise. (Except maybe some Sunday prep for one or two of them.) And there are no processed foods involved!
1. The favorite: mac and cheese with peas or green beans thrown into the pasta water during the last two minutes of cooking your pasta.
2. The second favorite: big square raviolis stuffed with cheese, again with a frozen vege or fresh broccoli florets thrown into the water in the last two minutes of cooking the ravioli. Add a little butter and parmesan if your kids like that. Or a little red sauce.
3. Frozen pierogies stuffed with potatoes or cheese – and again add the veges when there’s two minutes left to boiling them.
4. Baked chicken. Yes. Kids will eat this. Roast a whole chicken or bake chicken breasts and thighs. Put salt and a little garlic powder on top and bake. That’s it. Do this on a Sunday and you will have dinner for two or three meals during the week. Or, just buy a rotisserie chicken when you go shopping. For younger toddlers, remove the skin when serving and shred the meat so it’s finger food. Provide catsup or ranch dressing or mild barbeque sauce for dipping. One frozen vege, a cup of applesauce or thin carrot strips are your sides.
5. Quesadillas. Put some munster cheese slices on a tortilla, add a few small chopped vegetables, fold and microwave or bake until the cheese melts. Serve with a side of black beans or pinto beans and mild salsa – and it’s Mexican night! If your child doesn’t eat the beans, no worries. Just keep offering them when you serve quesadillas.
6. Spaghetti – boil the pasta in chicken stock with a few frozen veges thrown in at the end – and you’ll be shocked how much your kids love it when you do it this way. Use the stock sold in cardboard boxes – or just serve spaghetti boiled in water with butter and parmesan on top. No child can resist this – as you probably know already. Serve with thin carrot and celery sticks or slices of cucumber with ranch dressing for dipping.
7. Chicken or turkey tenders. Not the frozen, breaded, processed ones – just the plain ones that are sold raw in every grocery store. Saute in olive oil and add a little salt and garlic powder while sauteing. Brown them just a little bit. And let your kids eat them with their fingers with a cup of applesauce and a vege on the side. Again – catsup or ranch dressing or barbeque sauce for dipping.
8. Burgers with or without the bun. Using ground chicken, turkey or hamburger, make some small patties for your kids. Salt and garlic salt on top and saute in a little olive oil or butter until they’re done. Serve with steamed broccoli, carrot or celery strips and a dipping sauce.
9. Meatballs. Buy a good brand. Read the ingredients on the box and make sure that they only have a few in ingredients. Saute or microwave. Service with a cup of applesauce and a vegetable. IF your child likes red sauce or parmesan, put that on top.
10. Lasagna. Yes, most kids love this. Make on the weekend or buy a good brand. Serve a small amount to start and see if your child wants more.
Other hits with toddlers? Believe it or not, many love smoked salmon torn into small bits, tuna or salmon from the can, or other canned or fresh fish (although only serve once every other week because of the potential mercury content), halved cherry tomatoes, fresh raspberries, strawberries or almost any other fruit, dried cranberries or cherries, pickles. Chicken noodle soup is an old standby and many will also eat tomato soup or even pureed bean soup. Try any and all of these – and more. Expose them to the foods you love. If possible, eat what they eat and eat with them. If you don’t like the foods I’ve suggested, serve what you like and give your child some small portions of exactly what you’re eating.
And for dessert? Again – fresh fruit or frozen berries. And for some fun? Spray on whipped cream! This has very little fat and sugar. Buy a good brand without a lot of additives. And if you allow a real dessert in your house? Add a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a cookie to go with that fruit!
And most importantly? Again, sit with your children when they eat. Or better yet, eat with them.
It’s easy to fall into the habit of letting your children eat on their own while you look at your phone or do clean up.
But try not to. Sit together and talk. And make sure everyone stays at the table until they’re finished. These are good habits to get into – and to keep!
This post was written by Karen Libber Fishbein, LCSW. She is a therapist and mother who lives in Philadelphia with her husband and two daughters.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Surgeon General declared parental stress an urgent public health issue. He discussed the “dizzying pace” of the world as one of the main factors behind this stress.
As a mother of daughters ages eleven and almost nine, this statement certainly resonated with me. I find that I’m frequently feeling stressed, run down, and frazzled as I manage many of the components of day-to-day life.
I rarely felt this way before having children.
When I think back to my childhood, I don’t recall my parents being under this level of pressure. Though it was still stressful parenting at that time (the 1980’s), parents didn’t have to contend with the intricacies of the present-day digital world. Many of the strategies that worked well for parents decades ago in the analog world no longer work in the world we inhabit today. That leaves parents who are trying their best to stay afloat feeling confused, overwhelmed, and burned out!
When our daughters were two and five, the stress levels of modern parenthood were more than my husband and I could bear, and they began to negatively impact our marriage. We began couples therapy at that time (this was spring of 2018) in the hopes that our relationship struggles would improve. We ended our therapy in the spring of 2024, and what transpired over the course of the six years we were in treatment is truly miraculous.
Not only did the couples’ journey dramatically improve our marriage, it also trickled down to the kids. Once the marriage was stronger, the girls’ behavior, moods, and general well-being improved.
Children, particularly those who are sensitive and empathic like both of our daughters, can sponge off of their parents’ mental states. If the parents are in pain, the kids may take on this pain unknowingly.
The best way I can describe the process of couples therapy is that it’s a highly emotionally charged excavation of years of pent-up resentments and relational challenges. It is not easy work to do, but it is important work. For us, many sessions invoked painful feelings and realizations. My husband and I each had no idea how much unprocessed emotion had built up over the years. Unsurprisingly, many of these relational struggles predated our relationship with each other and were directly associated with childhood attachment patterns.
Couples therapy provided a safe space for us to explore all of these dynamics and it helped each of us to understand how they impact our present lives.
Today our family unit feels healthier and much more stable than it did prior to engaging in couples therapy. While an improved family system doesn’t take away the stress of modern parenthood, it certainly makes it easier to weather the storms. I’m a firm proponent of both individual and couples therapy and believe both can be vital resources during the trials and tribulations of parenthood. After receiving both forms of treatment myself, I can honestly say that the couples work has had a more profound, lasting impact on the family system than did the individual work alone.
One of my favorite seasoned therapists, Dr. Irvin Yalom, wrote an inspirational book called “The Gift of Therapy.” I read it a couple years ago and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the practice of psychotherapy. I titled this article “The Gift of Couples Therapy,” in the hopes that it may inspire anyone, particularly parents, who may be ambivalent about the idea of therapy to pursue couples therapy. The therapy that my husband and I received has truly been a gift, and I’m hopeful it will help our family going forward and for generations to come.
If you have just had a baby—or if you have had several—and you feel lonely, it is ironic to say, but you are not alone.
Mothering—or parenting if you are not a mother—can be very lonely.
When they are first on parental leave, and later, on holidays and weekends, parents often find themselves on their own for long stretches of the day with their babies. And as much as they love their babies, it can be hard.
The routine—feeding, changing, dressing, playing, putting down for a nap—can become tedious. A parent can long for a break or some adult companionship.
As Lucy Jones says in her book Matrescence, there is a reason you feel this way.
We are not meant to parent alone.
From the time we were non-human primates, and on through the millennia of human existence, parenting was a group activity. Aunts, uncles, cousins, older siblings, grandmothers, and others helped with parenting. They were there to take a baby, watch a child, discipline a teenager.
Parents did not stay alone in their caves or huts or houses while they were taking care of their babies and children.
We are not wired for parenting alone.
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, a cultural anthropologist, writes about this in her book Mothers and Others. She says that we are “heir to an ancient legacy endowing (us) with a penchant for cooperation” (p 65). Our primate ancestors, Homininae, were different from other primates in this way.
It is Hrdy’s hypothesis that Homininae grew up depending on a large range of caretakers.
Among current-day hunter-gatherer populations studied by the anthropologist Mel Konner, Hrdy says, babies are held at least 25 percent of the time by members of the community other than their mothers. When not hunting or gathering, Konner observed that babies were passed around from person to person, being kissed, sung to, bounced, entertained, encouraged, and addressed in conversational tones for long “conversations” (p. 76).
Among modern-day Central African peoples who forage for food, mothers share their babies with others in the community right after birth and during their infancy and toddlerhood. Among two such groups, the Efe and the Afa peoples, after babies are born and before the mother’s milk comes in, newborns are comforted by other women in the community by being allowed to suck on their nipples—whether the women are lactating or not. Similarly, babies are fed by lactating women until the mother’s own milk supply comes in.
In the Efe community, babies average 14 different caretakers in their first few days of life.
Similar patterns of shared caretaking of infants have been observed in traditional societies all over the globe.
Mothers in other societies, including our own, need this too—maybe not 14 people—but someone to hold and comfort her baby when she’s exhausted after childbirth, someone to nurse her baby while she waits for her milk to come in, someone to fill in if she’s having trouble with nursing. And what mother does not long for others to show her exactly how to nurse? Or someone to hold her baby close when she needs a break?
In our culture, babies are sent to the newborn nursery to lie in plastic isolettes while their mothers rest after delivery. Newborns may go hungry for hours while their mothers wait for their milk to come in. Some babies become dehydrated because their mothers want to nurse but don’t have sufficient milk supply. Many women suffer alone, wondering if they do have enough milk or if they are nursing correctly.
In our culture, despite the fact that there are doulas and lactation consultants, women are largely alone with their newborns and young infants. They are alone to figure out how to nurse and how often to nurse and when to wean and how to wean and well, just so many things. This is extremely hard—and unnatural!
So, what can expectant parents—and parents in general—do?
Here are some important steps to take:
Build community before your baby arrives. Identify family members who you get along with. Reach out to them and let them know that you think you will need their help after your baby is born. You may not know yet what kind of help you’ll need, but just start the conversation. No matter how you feel prior to your baby’s birth, you will need help afterward….and in the coming years. Once your baby arrives, ask those family members who seem open to it for help for the hours you need it – whether each day or each week or on an occasional basis.
Look for help outside your family: join childbirth classes and parenting classes, if not for other reasons, then to make some friends in your area who will have babies the same age as your own. Other parents are a valuable resource. Parents need to get together when their babies are little—not for the babies’ sake, but for their own. Having someone to break up the monotony of the day, or the weekend, to sit with or walk with, to exchange information with, or to complain to is absolutely necessary.
Starting when your baby is young, join whatever local community center is available, if you have the resources to do so. The local YMCA, church, synagogue, etc. will have classes you can join and they often also have daycare, where a baby can stay for an hour or more while you take a class. Having a break now and then – even if just for a one hour exercise class – is crucial.
Take your baby to the library story hour, the infant music class, a swim class, or a parenting group. Again, you need to get out of the house and meet other parents. As your baby grows, he/she will enjoy the stimulation—but you, as the parent, are the one who really needs it.
Advocate for better resources for parents in your community.
Keep reaching out to family members once your baby is a toddler. You still need help, even if it is a new kind of help, different from what you needed at the beginning.
Start some group activities for parents, babies, and children if you can’t find any. It isn’t hard to put together a little parenting group or to plan a daily or weekly meetup at a local playground – even if you just start with one other parent.
Even following all these suggestions will not replace the real 24/7 community every parent needs – but they are a beginning.
Because parenting is challenging in any circumstance, but it is excruciatingly challenging when you feel that you are left on your own to do it all.
References
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer. Mothers and Others: The evolutionary origins of mutual understanding
Thoughtful Parenting 