Save 70% on Nursing Clothing and Bras
October 23, 2006 | Leave a Comment
I thought you might be interested in taking a look at Motherwear’s huge 70% off clearance sale with free shipping!
Now is the time to stock up on nursing tops, camis, PJs and more: Motherwear Clearance
You can find other cute nursing clothing items and pretty nursing bras here.
Do you need to take back your time?
October 23, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Did you know that October 24 is Take Back Your Time Day?
According to their website, TAKE BACK YOUR TIME is a major U.S./Canadian initiative to challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and relationships, our communities and our environment.
Did you know that Americans work an average of 9 weeks more than our European counterparts? While being industrious and hardworking are good things, we’ve gotten to the point of ridiculousness, jeopardizing our health, families and spiritual lives.
One thing the organizers recommend is to make a special effort to have dinner with your family tonight. They even have a coupon for free salad with your pizza at Panera bread! Check it out: http://www.timeday.org/
And for inspiration for taking back the dinner hour, take a look at this video about the importance of breaking bread with family: Dinner Video
Save $10 on food, over and over
October 22, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Right now until November 30th, you can save $10 off of your grocery order at Amazon.com. Just enter the code GROCERY3 at checkout. You also get free shipping when you spend $25! You can even use the coupon as many times as you want.
Here is a yummy place to start: Cascadian Farms Organic Chewy Granola Bar, Chocolate Chip, 6-Count Boxes (Pack of 6)
Natural Moms Podcast #28
October 20, 2006 | Leave a Comment
This week’s show, is a rebroadcast of a March interview with Nicole MacKenzie, parenting coach and author of Mom Has Fun and creator of the Responsive Parenting Online parenting course.
Download the Mp3 or read the transcript below.
Carrie Lauth: With me today all the way from Switzerland, is Nicole McKenzie of the Mom Has Fun Method of Responsive Parenting. Nicole is the mother of six children and if that were not enough, she is also an accomplished businesswoman, an author, a speaker, and her passion is helping parents to have more fun while raising kids. That sounds very appealing!
Nicole McKenzie: I think it is such an important point. Many of us take quite good care of our lives and have fun when we are single, but then we get married and all of a sudden if there is a child in our lives it changes everything, and when you hold your child for the first time, I am sure many of the parents who listen can agree that it is the biggest gift you can receive and it also has a huge impact on your life.
Now, a lot of the moms try to then forget to look out for their own happiness and fun and yet I think our children are learning a lot from our behavior. Therefore, it is important to see what is really fun for me, too, that is probably why I choose that title for my book and also for my parenting method. I think it is vitally important.
Carrie Lauth: The title of your book is Parenting Rule #1: Mom Has Fun! So, tell us why that title?
Nicole McKenzie: Really, when I had my first child I was thinking how can I do that? The only thing I really wanted for that child is for her to be happy and have a fulfilled life. I knew through my experience before I had children, when I was exploring Maslow’s theory on self-actualization, I learned a lot about the emotional world and how I personally got engaged in my life. In my adult life, in responding very often out of emotion and made life hard, so I knew I wanted to raise my child differently. I also knew that it was important for me to have fun with it because if the fun gets lost for you, then almost in any case the fun gets lost for your environment, too.
I have a story from when I was growing up. My mom was a painter and here in Switzerland you go to school and you break for lunch. When we came home, it would happen sometimes that my mom was painting down in the basement and she had the music on and she was full of paint and we came in, my sister and I, and said, “Hello, we’re back home,” and she looked at us for a few seconds like who are you? She did not even recognize her children anymore. She was so much in her element, so much in her passion.
It took her a few moments to recognize us. The next thing she did was to start looking at her watch and say, “<Gasp> It can’t be already lunch, you know, I just started!” But she was so much in function, so much in her passion; it was a joy to be with her. Those words were like the highlights of my childhood being with my mom. Then we had other moments where she was waiting with the homemade meat pie and we were five minutes late and she was kind of the victim of having children.
So, I saw both sides of being a parent and I knew just from her showing me that you actually can keep a passion and have a life still while having children, integrating those children completely into your life. She did it when she painted and it was so much fun that I said somehow I have to find that for myself.
I have to find something that is my passion, that gets me off every morning, gets me going, and I have to show the kids that you can grow up and live a happy life. This is one side why I picked the title. The other side is that a lot us as parents try to look out for the child constantly. It is give, give, give. Getting a gift, it gets almost lost. The children do not know how to give you anymore and they love the giving, they love to make a good day for you. As long as you give them instruction and tell them exactly how they can do that, you know? What can they do in order for you to have more fun?
By the way, it is not just for moms, it is also for dads, or whoever is in charge of the child. The important thing is to teach them also how they can do something for you. It is almost more difficult for a parent to stay in a place of fun and be a parent than to give up and become like the victim of parenthood.
So that is why I picked that title.
Carrie Lauth: It’s interesting because I talk to a lot of parents of larger families and a lot of times their children will say, “Oh, I’m not having a bunch of kids, or I’m not having kids,” and it makes me wonder whether maybe mom and dad are not having fun and so they are seeing it (parenthood) as this drudgery. Maybe I am reading into that too much, but it could be. That could be part of it.
Nicole McKenzie: It could very well be. I think it all depends. The first step is to see how can I have fun and then the next step for me was okay, I want to have fun as a parent. I always wanted lots of kids. For me, it is like a life goal, but then also the next step was how do I do it?
Some people are natural at parenthood. I definitely was not a natural! It did not come naturally to me. I kind of had to go out and find all kinds of tools and work on it to see how can I bring out the best in the child? How can I still stay sane with traveling with four children in diapers from Houston to Switzerland and still arrive and not be in the nuthouse.
You need tools. You need things that really help you bringing out the brilliance in your child and stay in a space of having fun still with them. I think it is vitally important and I could not find it when I started looking into parenting methods, but what I found everywhere is all the books say do not engage emotionally and I know that was true, but none of the methods told you how not to get engaged.
I saw that as a big loop in the parenting methods that are out there that nobody covers. Are there any tools so you do not get engaged into power struggles, so you actually can stay in a place of fun where you can appreciate your child and hold them accountable from a kind of a neutral base?
Carrie Lauth: Tell us more about that: not being emotionally engaged. It sounds like you are saying that feelings are bad. .
Nicole McKenzie: Not at all. I think feelings are very important. They are like the spice of life. Emotions are vitally important for a child to learn. I have been now practicing with hundreds, if not thousands of children, and also my own and I have showed them two different operating systems.
One is the pristine operating system you are born with, which is full of wonder and adventure and excitement and it is what is underneath every being no matter what age. The little children operate mainly out of that operating system. Now at the age of about 2, they start to develop an ego, a picture of themselves, of who they are and they start to stand up for that. That is when you, you know, in English we call that the terrible 2′s start and they step into their own power and they create a character. The longer they build on that, the more they believe in the character.
Now, it is the emotions — the second system is the emotional operating system and it is kind of getting over imposed on to the pristine operating system. Now, the emotional system, it is a learned system, absolutely essential, a lot of business is in there, a lot of relationship is in there, so you have to know it, but a lot of us (especially me when I was about 30) I was responding or reacting a lot out of the emotional system.
I could not take a step back, look clearly at the situation, and then make a good decision. I reacted out of emotion and did something which was maybe inappropriate. It just brought on more suffering than needed.
So, what I saw for my children, what I wanted to show them is that they do have those two systems. They will learn the emotional system, but if they can be aware on how they reach the emotional system, they will have a huge advantage.
They will have a higher emotional intelligence and emotional intelligence is what studies have shown makes a person successful or gives them a better chance in success in later life, how you respond to the environment versus react out of emotions. Does that make sense?
Carrie Lauth: Yes, absolutely. I just re-read the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” I cannot remember which of the seven that applies to what you are talking about, but basically it means not being reactive but living in your circle of influence.
Nicole McKenzie: Yeah and being responsive, you know, things will happen in life.
And there is something that hist you and how you are going to respond to that will make all the difference. Is it going to destroy you and you are going to blame the rest of your life not working on that one event or are you taking it as a stepping stone, oops, did not work, next.
That is more the approach I want to see with the kids. How can I teach that emotional system, so they are aware of it, they can use it and nobody has to worry about them? They are still very good at using it, but how can they be more aware about it and then use it more appropriately and not fall into the system, be completely lost within there? It means building their emotional awareness and maturity. I think it is up to the parents to do that because the school systems do not really address that.
Now the neat side effect is when you start this method you have to look at your own emotional system or you have to see, okay how do I do it? First, take stock inventory. What gets to me? How do I respond? Where do I stand right now?
I actually have a 12-week online class for parents where they can sign up online and then each week they get a lesson and the most important part of the lesson, they will give you tools and everything. The most important is to build the awareness on how you respond or react. It is neither good nor bad. Each will have different results.
Carrie Lauth: Well, that sounds wonderful because it takes time to integrate new ways of doing things.
Nicole McKenzie: Yeah, that is what I experienced, too. I do one-day classes throughout a week‑long event, but the people who have the best results work with me over like a longer period of time because it is almost like a learning method. It gets deeper and deeper into your system and when I look into it, I said I just need more time with those people to build awareness so they can start doing things very differently with their children. It is actually quite a bit of fun to do it that way, too, because I can now go back and see okay, what do you exactly need to do to build that awareness and then work with your children from a point where you bring out their brilliance more because whenever it goes emotional no matter if it is on your side or your child’s side everybody loses.
There cannot be a win-win. You can only be in the world of emotion if you have the attention on yourself. So the first — and whenever you have the attention on yourself no matter what somebody else does from outside, it is never quite satisfying.
Carrie Lauth: That is very true.
Nicole McKenzie: That is other reason why it is such a challenge to say, “Okay, me, I’m a mom. I need to have fun,” because the attention from the outside is on you, but you always have to look and see what else do I need in my space in order to have fun? How do I have to set up my environment in order so I can respond and have fun, the more fun I have, the more I am going to look out for everybody else and energetic, too.
Carrie Lauth: How does your book help us to bring out the brilliance in children?
Nicole McKenzie: My main goal is on how my book and my classes are very different from the parenting systems I have seen so far is that they actually show you on how not to engage emotionally.
They teach how to build a stronger emotional awareness where you see more. I call them games, emotional games, like if your 5 year old is pouting, and if you try to go and help or get them out of that there is a big chance that you actually get pulled into the same frequency. Emotions come across on a certain frequency.
Now, if you can start seeing what is actually happening you can appreciate the child because when you look at it, she is 5 years old and it is actually a brilliant play for her to come up with! To see what will get you engaged, to get your attention and get you engaged into a power struggle.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah, she would not do it if it did not work!
Nicole McKenzie: Yeah, also to come up that is brilliant in itself.
If you can see the brilliance and say, man it is brilliant and you even talk: “It is absolutely brilliant (that you are doing that) and so far it has worked, but it we will do it differently now.”
By showing them that and then getting their focus off themselves on to something else (because you can only be in a state of emotion when you have the attention on yourself), so you shift the focus of attention and get them on to something else, all of a sudden she goes back into her more happy self, into that pristine operating system. But also since you have seen the game and you acknowledged it, you hold her accountable to a behavior that is more appropriate. You bring out more of her brilliance. If you go in to negotiate in that space, you find a compromise somewhere and she does not really snap out of the emotional mood and it does not really serve her. So, even if it looks like a win for her, it is not really a win. The more she uses the emotions, the more she thinks those emotion are part of her character, too. They get like ingrained into your picture you have of yourself.
Carrie Lauth: Wow. You mentioned tools, is not it funny that as parents we come in to parenthood with no training? You have to have examinations to get your degree, to get your diploma, to get a driver’s license, but we come into parenting with no examination, no tools.
Nicole McKenzie: It is amazing, yeah. I mean driving is not as important as parenthood. We do not actually have a slight idea on how it works! For me, when I started to be a parent, I was like completely at a loss. I said: “This is awesome, what do I do now?” It is the biggest adventure I think we can go into in life.
And it is going to stay an adventure. I do not think there is like a system with each step — children do not go in step. They are all over the place. So, the only thing that is constant is your tool kit that you have and then your curiosity to see where your kid is at, so you can respond to the child versus just a strict way of being with them.
That is what I see so far that works best. What I would like to give my parents is a lot of tools that work and build their curiosity so they can respond and then try different tools. One day you may use the hammer and it works, the next day you try to hammer again it does not work. You need to have a tweezers or whatever. It is a completely different tool for the same child for the same behavior.
Carrie Lauth: Give us an example of one tool that your book will teach parents.
Nicole McKenzie: It will teach you many tools that you will find in other books. Definitely one thing that does work with children is to set boundaries and boundaries only really work if you also have consequence, so that is one of the first thing you have to see is what kind of environment do I have to create around myself in order to have fun. Actually when I do my classes and ask parents, “Okay, what do you need in order to have fun?” A lot of them have no clue. They look at me and say, “I’ve never really looked at that.”
Carrie Lauth: Because it is not a priority in their lives anymore.
Nicole McKenzie: It is not a priority and yet it should be a high priority. Because the more fun they have, the more they can respond. They first make a list and see okay, and once you start looking, it is not that many things you actually need in order to have fun.
And those few things you come up with maybe two or three things then become your boundaries. Let’s say: no arguing, no fighting, and picking up after yourself. Those are the three things that we have to change in order for me to have more fun.
Now, we set those in place and they only will work if you have consequences that you agree up on in advance. If you argue, you have to do five jumping jacks. Consequences in my theory do not have to be punishment. There is a huge difference between discipline and punishment. I am not interested in punishment. I am interested in pattern interrupt, in changing the focus of attention, and in seeing on how things work so you can respond differently.
Carrie Lauth: Why do you think that is an important difference there between discipline and punishment? Explain more about that.
Nicole McKenzie: Because discipline is holding a child accountable without judgment or criticism where punishment you always come from your emotional system.
“They did something wrong; therefore, they need to be punished“. You know what is right; therefore, it is up to you to punish them and they better mind you. There is an emotional charge in it. There is the judgment and the minute you come from there, you come from an emotional system. Now, the minute you come from the emotional system, you invite them into power struggle.
You can test it even on yourself. If somebody judges you, no matter if the feedback is right on, but if it is done with judgment, you are going to go right into a struggle, into a conflict. It is an indication to go into a power struggle. Discipline is without judgment. It is feedback where you do not make them wrong, you know, you even appreciate their brilliance for the game and still hold them accountable. It is a very different approach.
Carrie Lauth: Well, discipline comes from the word discipline, which is a taught one. And sometimes we forget that, and think: “Well I am going to get you”.
Nicole McKenzie: I think ideally what we are as parents is like a coach. How can I instead of controlling my children, which a lot of parents think they have to do with their children, is how can I coach them? What are the important skills I want to coach my child to have so I can go into the world and be happy? So, there is a huge difference there, too. How can I coach and not control?
If somebody coaches you — if you look in sports, you have a good football coach. Now, he is going to see what you are good at. He is going to bring that out more. He is going to support you in each step and give you suggestions. He is going to hold you accountable. He maybe even has pretty strict rules that you have to follow, but you are not getting judged if you overstep one. It is just that a consequence applies. It takes the whole “I-am-the-good-one-and-whatever-I-say-goes” away. It is more on an equal level even though he is the coach and you a part of the team.
I think as parents we are the coaches and the parents build the family team. Now, how can you run that family team in a way that really works and brings out the best in all the people? I think it takes honesty, it takes discipline, and it takes coaching, and also for me what is vitally important is how to keep the connection with my children. My oldest one is now 17 and we still have a very deep connection. My 16-year-old and 14-year-old, two boys, they are all going through the teenage years, but they are going through it while I am not their friend. I am more their coach, but we still have a very deep connection and trust between each other.
Carrie Lauth: Now, speaking of being a child’s friend, what would you say to a parent who is trying to be child’s buddy? Is that a trap?
Nicole McKenzie: For me it is like a trap, yeah, and I do not think I am my child’s friend. They have friends that are their age. They do things with them that I am not that interested in. I think friends are very important, but a parent, I am much more interested in being a coach. I was born before them so if I can get across what I have noticed with life and make their start much easier and get them off on a good track, that is much more important to me than being their friend and go have some beers together. No, I think it is quite a trap trying to be the friend.
Because friends they act nice to each other in order not to lose the friendship. They are afraid to say something honestly in order not to lose or risk the friendship. I think with your children, a good coach sometimes can be quite hard in their feedback
Carrie Lauth: A coach tells you what you do not want to hear sometimes., but you need to hear it.
Nicole McKenzie: Sometimes and you have to be willing to do that. You cannot always just wash it over, which we can do with a friend. It is just a very different approach and in the long way, I have a lot of kids who come out of divorced families and it is quite often that one of the parents, usually the dad wants to stay friends and lets everything go and the mom has to implement some rules again and it is almost like “oh, I’m just gonna go with Dad because I can get away with anything. He’s my friend.”
In the long run, it is going to backfire because it does not really build a level of trust and respect between the child and the parent.
Carrie Lauth: Well, explain more about trust. How do you build trust in your child?
Nicole McKenzie: They come in to the world with trust in you. The question is almost how you undo it.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah, very true, very true.
Nicole McKenzie: Because whenever you look at your baby, you know, there is only trust there.
The baby is full of trust. How do you lose that with your child? That is my curiosity.
A lot of parents do lose it by not being what they say. At one time they say something and two minutes later the opposite applies.
I watched one time a child whoa wanted some chewing gum from his mom and his mom said no. Forty-five minutes later, this little 4-year-old was pestering his mom about the chewing gum. His curiosity was not the chewing gum anymore. It was a game. Can I get mom? And you could see her anger level was just rising. I mean it was to the point where she almost was steaming and she tries to ignore this little one and then after 45 minutes she, just to get rid of him, got a chewing gum out and gave him the chewing gum. That is one way of how you lose trust, saying no and then 45 minutes later the no does not mean no anymore.
Sometimes it is a no if mom is in a bad mood, but then if I can shift the mood it may become a good — it is always this unclear situation for the child where he does not really have much security on where to move or not to move because it is always changing, not having a structure where within that structure they can explore and experiment freely and no, once I step over the boundary, there will be a consequence. No big deal.
That is how we lose trust, by being friends and letting things go by and pretending we have not noticed. It is quite a challenge to be a good coach and sometimes we have to say things we would rather not say. Sometimes there will be maybe harder times you have with your children just because you wanted to make sure that they could see the lesson and not hard in a way where they are wrong or anything like that, but hard in seeing how life works. Life is not just an easy thing all the time.
That is why I think if we approach parenting like a good coach approaches his football team and sees okay, how can we have as much fun as possible and how can I coach those kids to bring out the best within them at least on the football team. In order to do that, he has to put down some rules and usually those coaches if you look, they are quite strict, too, but usually one thing those coaches have in common, too, they are okay with the kids making mistakes because that is a very important learning part of growing up, letting them make mistakes. That is when we learn.
Carrie Lauth: So tell us more about your 12 week parenting class.
Nicole McKenzie: They then can sign up and download a lesson every week. It also comes with a first aid kit, I call it, because it is the tool kit that has tools and examples on how to use the tools, so you have a little bit of an idea on how to work those tools into your daily life and try them out. I am very excited about it because I think it really will prepare parents very nicely and it integrates into your daily curriculum. I know moms are very, very busy and it is hard to even read a parenting book while you have children. Because you do not really have time and the little one cries and then this happens, so I wanted to create something that you just can do during you do all your other stuff and starting to become more curious and you can do it over 12 weeks or you can do it over a year.
It is really up to you, but if you do it, it will build your level of awareness and it will build the way you see your children and I think it really brings out a deep appreciation and also a curiosity on how to bring the genius out in your child. Every child is born with a unique genius. How can you bring that out? The more a person, according to Maslow, wants to have a great life, if they can find something that really satisfies their genius, they are going to have a much better chance on being happy within their lives. If you are a painter and you do bookkeeping for a living, most likely part of you will be unhappy.
Carrie Lauth: That is great because like you said it is easier to digest a small bit of information at a time when you are very busy and distracted with your children.
Nicole McKenzie: And you can do it any time of the day. You can sit down for five minutes in the evening and just go over your day and look back and see okay, what did I notice? It is really a building of awareness and then you start slowly to integrate the tools, so you do not just come home from a one-day class and you are full of new ideas and it is overwhelming.
But also another good way is just to go on the Internet and look at my book. It has a lot of examples in there, too. It explains the way of how we use our emotional system and how to hold your children accountable without punishment and I think it is a good start. You can either order it as a hard copy or it is also downloadable.
Carrie Lauth: Well, this is really nice, Nicole, and I have enjoyed our talk very much. Thank you so much for being on.
Nicole McKenzie: Me, too. Thank you very much. It sure was fun talking to you and I always appreciate when I have an opportunity to share this learning method with other parents because I almost fell on top of it by mistake. It was never my intention to write a book. I am a mom, not a writer, but when I saw what I had and I saw how other people struggles with the simplest thing in parenthood, I said I have to do something.
There is no need for this. It could be so much more fun, so much more efficient, and so much more enjoyable also for the child. They love to be brilliant, to be seen as brilliant, and the more you see it and the more you look, the more it is going to come out. It really works really well — it is exciting to see parents starting to use it and with great results.
Carrie Lauth: I am sure that when mom has more fun that the children have more fun, too.
Nicole McKenzie: There is a saying in English I think, yeah? If momma has no fun, nobody has fun. I know it is true in my family. I am going to make sure nobody has fun! J It is just human nature. It is not something we try to do or, you know… It is just what we do out of human nature.
That is why it is so important to see how can we have fun being a parent.
Carrie Lauth: I really enjoy your newsletter as well.
I printed out the Rule #1: Mom Has Fun! and put it on the refrigerator.
Nicole McKenzie: Oh, you did? Oh, good. I recommend that for everybody to do. It is just a nice reminder, you know, because you look at the fridge everyday and say, “Oh man, I didn’t have fun again,” and by the way, yeah I have this parenting method that you should have fun. I also think it is vitally important for us as parents to make mistakes. Get completely emotional, it is not a bad thing. I have six children and sometimes I yell at them.
I am sure it does not feel good, but I would shift human. It is human nature to make mistakes. Now, what I do when I get emotional like that afterwards I usually say, “You know, you guys, I really down loaded on you and it wasn’t right.”
Carrie Lauth: And that is very, very powerful. That is so much more powerful than them thinking that mommy is perfect.
Nicole McKenzie: Absolutely. It is so important for you to make mistakes. This is as much an adventure for you as it is for the children. You do not know what is going to happen the next day, more challenges your family will have to approach. If you are willing to make mistakes, the more you are willing to make mistakes and also say, “Hey, this was a mistake, by the way, that did not work at all,” the more they will be willing to make mistakes, too, and learn that making mistakes is actually a great thing.
Edison, it took him like a thousand times of experimenting with a light bulb before the light bulb ever became a light bulb. A lot of his disciples said, “What are you doing, this is a waste of time. Make more mistakes after the other.” His answer was, “I’m not making mistakes. I’m eliminating possibilities.” So, it takes that kind of an approach in order to succeed in life.
If your child learns oh, I am just eliminating possibilities, tried this game, tried this game, tried this many plays and if it does not work, hello, I am just eliminating possibilities, to build a way where a mistake is not a fallback. It is like “oh, that didn’t work, let me try this way.” I think that is vitally important to build that in them, too. And in you, too. Do not try to be a perfect parent. It will be awful. It will be a big mistake.
First of all, it is impossible. And if you do make mistakes, you feel guilty about it. “Oh, I did something wrong. Did I damage my child forever?” Most likely not.
You actually did your child a favor because he would see “oh, mommy is not perfect either. It’s okay for me to make mistakes.” We will make mistakes. It is absolutely vitally important. If we act out of emotions, that is vitally important, too. If we can do it with awareness, we are a huge step ahead. I can talk for hours before you have noticed. This is my passion.
For more information about Nicole’s ebook, click here.
For more about her 12 week parenting class, go here (you get a special discount as a Natural Moms Talk Radio listener!).
Are omega 3 fatty acids safe for breastfeeding moms?
October 18, 2006 | 2 Comments
There has been a lot of research lately about Omega 3s, how supplementation with Cod Liver Oil or other sources of Omega 3s is a good idea. Polyunsaturated fatty acids are an essential nutrient that the body cannot produce on its own. Personally, I use Nordic Naturals Cod Liver Oil, as it’s the only kind that I can actually stomach!
Here is some more info for nursing Moms: is Omega 3 safe for breastfeeding?
Replacing Mom with a Product – How far will it go?
October 17, 2006 | 1 Comment
Thanks to Hathor the CowGoddess for the heads up on this one.
While I can see a *tiny* use for this product, like when Mom’s presence is impossible (while strapped into a car seat maybe?), overall this product and many others like it frighten me very much.
Why not just hold the baby if he wants to be held? Would you accept a cloth substitute for your husband when you wanted his comfort? How about a lifesize doll instead of your children?
Serious about organics?
October 16, 2006 | Leave a Comment
If you’re serious about eating organic food, it’s challenging enough when you’re eating at home. But if you’re traveling, it’s downright tough!
Here are two websites that you might want to bookmarkt. These help you locate restaurants that serve organic foods:
Local harvest and Organic menus
Bon appetit!
Natural Moms Podcast #27
October 16, 2006 | 2 Comments
This week on the show, my friend Jennifer Houck of Attachment Moms and I discuss attachment parenting burnout.
Download the Mp3 or read the transcript below.
Natural Moms Talk Radio Show # 27
Carrie Lauth: You are back with Carrie at Natural Moms Talk Radio. I am joined this week by Jen Houck. Hey, Jen.
Jennifer Houck: Hi, how are you?
Carrie Lauth: Good. Tonight, we are going to talk about attachment parenting burnout. Do you think this is a big problem in the attachment parenting community?
Jennifer Houck: Carrie, it can possibly be because a lot of parents, they build attachment. We totally keep to ourselves and do not let other people know that we do get burned out. It is good to talk about that I think with other people. Moms know that this is a real thing.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah, I agree. I have never thought about that, that we may not always share our feelings because we may not have the same support network.
Jennifer Houck: Right.
Carrie Lauth: That is part of the problem I think, but let me tell you why I wanted to talk about this, this week on the show. First of all, I wanted to have you on the show because I know that attachment parenting is something that is important to you. You even have a site with information about attachment parenting.
I was with a group of moms the other week and one of the moms, she had a child. He is almost two. He is about 22 months old. The subject came up about doing things for yourself as a mom. I just had this feeling about this woman. I just had a feeling that she was stressed and so, I heard her talking about burnout.
I told her that I have read this book. It kind of challenges you as a parent to sit down and make a list of things that you love to do. I sat down and my mind just went blank. I thought, “This is a problem” because I love my life, but I could not think of anything that I did just for me that was not part of my like roles. I thought, “Well, I need to make some changes.”
This mom asked me. She just jumped around and she was like, “Well, what did you do?” I said, “Well, one thing that I did was I joined a gym.” She said, “Really?” She said, “I did too and I’ve taken a couple of yoga classes” and she said, “I cried for the entire hour both times.” When she said that I knew automatically that why she was crying was not because of being away from her son for that hour, it was the release. When I asked her about that, she just started to well up and then I started to cry. It was like, “Oh, man!” The female hormones in there. No, but I just felt for her.
It was a cool moment, but I do not think that she wanted to give herself permission to experience burnout. I think that is an issue probably for all moms, but especially in attachment parenting because I think, like you said, we do not have always the support network that we may have, otherwise, because we might feel that we are so different than the people around us that we might not reach out. Secondly, we do not always want people to think that we are bringing it on ourselves because of the way we parent. You think that is part of it too?
Jennifer Houck: I do not think all these parents are planning anything because — my parents are not big on my attachment parenting that I do and I do not want to have them [unintelligible].
Carrie Lauth: Yeah.
Jennifer Houck: “Well, if you will get a break. Let us watch the girls,” but I just do not want to hear it and I do not care.
Carrie Lauth: Right. Yeah. It is interesting because when I was sitting here thinking about the ways that you can see the signs of burnout on yourself and how you can prevent it, I thought if we are ever in doubt, we are not really selling the idea of attachment parenting. If you are sitting with a pregnant friend of yours and she does not have children yet and you are saying, “Oh, are you planning on breastfeeding your baby?” She looks at you and she sees like major bags under your eyes and you have not washed your hair in a week, you are totally stressed-out looking, she is going to think, “If that is what it is going to look like, you forge it.”
Jennifer Houck: I did not think about that.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah. I got some great feedbacks from some of our listeners. I am going to share some of the things that they have said with me about what do you think a mom can do to prevent burnout in her life like even from the time her little one is young?
Jennifer Houck: I do not know what I have done and what helps me is when my husband wants me to have one is when he comes in sometimes he will take the girls for maybe an hour and I will just go up to the bathtub or something and soak for that hour just to get away for just a little bit. By the time I come back down the stairs or anything, it just feels like kind of refreshment over me.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah.
Jennifer Houck: Because I am back at it.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah.
Jennifer Houck: Sometimes he will watch the girls while I run to the grocery store like that. I know that it is just going to the grocery store, but still it gives you another refreshment, to rejuvenate before you get back home.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah, it is funny how if you are accustomed to always doing your shopping with little ones, how it can be fun.
Jennifer Houck: Yeah.
Carrie Lauth: If you get to go without them. I know my sister — she has four boys and just like stair steps. She would go shopping late at night when they were in bed and my parents and I — this was before I had kids of my own, we used to kind of chide her about it like, “Don’t you know how dangerous that is for you to be going out shopping at night?” She was like, “Are you kidding? It’s my lifeline. I take my time. I’ve got two buggies and I get what I want. No distractions.” That is funny how can that be a fun thing to do on your own.
Jennifer Houck: Then some moms hate to go the grocery store. If I can get by myself for one day out of a month, oh boy, I would probably enjoy every minute of it.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah. I used to treat myself to a coffee because that was just like my break, going grocery shopping and I would get a latte or something, treat myself an expensive, fancy drink.
Jennifer Houck: Yeah.
Carrie Lauth: Well, I was thinking a lot and I have been reading a lot lately about boundaries. It occurred to me that I do not think that attachment parents are particularly good at boundaries. I do not mean that in terms of just setting limits with your children. That is kind of the first thing that comes to our mind when we think about boundaries, but to me boundaries are more about setting a limit with yourself. Boundaries are just kind of a law of the universe like gravity is a boundary. You can try to go past that boundary and you are going to get injured.
Jennifer Houck: Yeah.
Carrie Lauth: There is going to be pain if you push up against a natural boundary. There is going to be pain for the people involved or like you have to eat and you have to drink water. Those are not things that you can escape from. It is just a natural, built in boundary of life.
I think that as moms taking care of ourselves is something that we also need, but sometimes we do not set good boundaries with ourselves. Like this mom that I was commiserating with a couple of weeks ago, her son is almost two and she is still not getting any sleep at night. She looked exhausted, but she was just talking about how she does not get even two or three hours of sleep at night, uninterrupted. Some of the other moms that were around were like, “It is okay for you to set limits with your child. He is not two weeks old.”
Jennifer Houck: Right.
Carrie Lauth: There is a big difference for him. He can understand limits. He can understand that mommy has needs as well because he was still nursing at night. He was waking her up very frequently and having a two year old in your bed can kind of mean more interrupted sleep for you, but if he is still waking up like a newborn baby would, it is okay to set limits there.
Jennifer Houck: Yeah and Lindsey, she does not sleep a lot until she was about 19 months old I guess. She was waking up about every two hours to nurse and finally one night it just hit me a lot. I know she does not need the nutrition now, so I am just going to have to rock her or something when she wakes up, but it took me a long time like the woman that you were explaining to right from out of that I guess. I probably get a lot burned out because during the day, I have a 3-year-old that is enough to fall and here, I am trying to see stuff like her too with lack of sleep. It is definitely something I guess hard to come to grip with, but it is true like you said. You do need to set boundaries for you and your child –
Carrie Lauth: Yeah.
Jennifer Houck: To get that.
Carrie Lauth: Well, I kind of left my thought. I do that a lot. What was I going to say about boundaries? Oh, you know that there is a difference between hurting and harming? I think parents who are attracted to attachment parenting, that philosophy, they want so badly to not harm their children with bad parenting. Maybe they have seen bad parenting or have been the child of bad parenting or maybe they had really good parenting and they are trying to emulate that with their own kids. We want so badly to do the best for our children and not to harm them, but we sometimes forget the difference between hurting and harming.
Sometimes when you hurt ego or you disappoint them or whatever, you are not doing them any harm, but they might be harming you by not appreciating that you are a separate person and that you have needs of your own.
Jennifer Houck: Yeah. My husband has to remind me that all the time that, “They are still going to love you remember,” but I just have a hard time with that, that I will always want to put their needs first. I want to make sure that I am doing everything that they want me to do and sometimes I have to do things, keep on doing things. It just leads to burnout like you said if you do not clear it until you sit down and unlearn that [unintelligible] you may have to do it a different way now. Like you said, we do not have a support system in place like that and no one can help do that, it is hard.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah. Well, it is comforting to see groups popping up like Attachment Parenting International and Holistic Moms Network and even La Leche League, they are a breastfeeding group, but most of the women that attend La Leche League meetings are advocates of attachment parenting. I mean certainly the founders were because they promote co-sleeping and a gentle discipline style. That can be another source of people, but that is a good point. We have to have support for our parenting style. We have to have people even outside of our family who can support us and be a safe place to express our feelings. Like you said, you do not always want to express your feelings to someone who may say, “I told you so or well, you need to change or whatever.”
Jennifer Houck: Yeah.
Carrie Lauth: You need to be able to express your feelings in a safe place. I got this really great letter from Julie Nathanielsz who was actually a guest several weeks ago on the show. She is a life coach and she talked about with her daughter, Angelica, how she was a couple of months old. She said that she walked out into the garden and she felt like she was going to burst into a million little pieces because she just wanted to have a few minutes to herself and her mom was holding the baby and then the baby starts crying. The thing that she figured out was that she was not a failure when she felt that way. That it was okay to feel that way.
Jennifer Houck: Yeah. Yeah.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah.
Jennifer Houck: The big thing is you live with those feelings from time to time and overwhelm it. You need to get away. Do not think those are bad feelings and that you are going to be a bad mom just because of that.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah.
Jennifer Houck: It actually makes you even a better mom. You notice the things about like that. I definitely agree with you. It does not make you a bad mom.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah. Well, we are good at being empathetic with your children.
Jennifer Houck: Right.
Carrie Lauth: We are disciplining our children and we end up with, “Oh, I know it’s so hard when you can’t get what you want. I know, I hate it when I don’t get what I want too.”
Jennifer Houck: Yeah.
Carrie Lauth: We forget to be empathetic with ourselves and we want to feel guilty about stuff or we want to beat ourselves up when we lose it or whatever, but we do not shame our children that way and we do should not shame ourselves. It is not helpful. Well, Julie had a couple of tips here that she said works for her. She said that she — a movement class like yoga or something like that.
I think exercise, period, is very important because not only does it help you work out stress and powerful emotions, but it gives you more energy. I was just reading an article on the Sunday paper about women and fatigue. It said that one of the symptoms of fatigue is actually getting worked up about small things. I never really thought about that because you would think that like if you are really tired, that you are not going to react to stuff, but if you are reacting to stuff and you are getting really stressed out and just blowing up, it can be a sign that you are not getting enough sleep or not enough sleep.
Jennifer Houck: Wow. I did not know that.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah. She said spending time with nature by herself is helpful. I think being outside is a great thing like if you can spend some time outside with your children every single day, it seems to help them do so much better and it helps me feel better. Have you found that?
Jennifer Houck: Definitely. Luckily, my girls love to walk or just go on walk a few steps, nature walk. We will go down the road, looking at the leaves there, different rocks or something. They love that and it just helps us all I think. It gets us out of the house a little bit and it gets us talking and I just love them to laugh.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah.
Jennifer Houck: Then when you come back in, they are like, “Oh!” Well, that is definitely a good day.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah. I think in a lot of ways it is powerful because number one, just being with nature it is — we are designed to be outside.
Jennifer Houck: Right.
Carrie Lauth: We are not really meant to be in these little boxes in the dark. The sunlight actually can shift your mood around and can help you sleep better and stuff and with the kids, it seems like it helps them to kind of organize themselves especially if you have a child that is a bit on the hyper or demanding side.
Jennifer Houck: Yes. It helps them unwind. I think when we go outside too it especially helps my girls nap better.
Carrie Lauth: Oh yeah.
Jennifer Houck: If we are inside all day, they do not want to nap. If they want to cry too, this seems like it helps with the unwinding or the relaxation time.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah. That is so true. Yeah. Julie mentioned spending time one on one with a good friend. We talked about that a little bit. Are you able to do that? To me that is very difficult to find the time.
Jennifer Houck: I think now in this area — we have just moved to this area and it is more with attachment moms. There are a lot people. Most of the area outside is 50% home schooled. I can just see the parent when I am out and about there. You can tell they are more of my parenting style. I am hoping now that I am in this area that I can relate to more people, but usually I have spent no one on one time with friends.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah. I have been so bad about not focusing enough energy on trying to reach out to friends, but that is so important because women need each other. I am always talking about how in this country — well, I guess all of like industrialized society sections women off and it is not that way in most places in the world. Women are all together. They do their work together. They take care of their children together. They cook together. They give birth together. They do all that stuff not in a nuclear-style family situation. I think that is such a recipe for depression and burnout issues and stress.
Jennifer Houck: It is pretty sad when all of your friends that you do spend most of the time with are online virtually.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah.
Jennifer Houck: It does help, but I cannot do that some days.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah.
Jennifer Houck: Like if I am having a bad day, I can get on IM or something Yahoo and mail. I talk to her a lot everyday and if this helps venting to someone about your day then I guess give it all your chance or whatever and sort of like start anew the next day.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah and that is convenient that we have that.
Jennifer Houck: Right.
Carrie Lauth: It is hard to get together sometimes because everybody is so busy. Sometimes I call up a friend and it is like it takes us three weeks to work our schedules out so that we can get together.
Jennifer Houck: Yeah. Everyone have busy schedules. Your child having soccer or your child having baseball.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah, all the activities.
Jennifer Houck: Right.
Carrie Lauth: That brings me to another good point because this is something that Julie mentioned. She said that one of the things that helped her is to just hang out with her daughter like just go somewhere and take the morning and just hang out and do not try to do anything else. Just focus on her and just have a good time. I remember when my son was just a toddler, my first and he was an intense kid, but sometimes when I was feeling really burned out, I would just stop everything that I was doing and just get on the floor and play. I realized that it was not really him that was making me feel stressed. It was all the other stuff. Have you ever found that?
Jennifer Houck: Definitely. I know during the day if I feel like I am getting sort of short with the girls then I will say, “Okay, it’s time to get in the van. We’re going to go to the store or something just to walk on in the store” because I can just feel myself tense up and I do not want to get like that with my girls.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah.
Jennifer Houck: It is not my girls it is this other stuff, this piddly stuff and [unintelligible]
Carrie Lauth: Right. Yeah. I thought that was such a good point. Well, you mentioned like you feel yourself getting tensed. What do you think some of the signs and symptoms are? Like how would a mom know if she was reaching that point or she was going to lose it? What kind of things do you feel when you are getting burned out?
Jennifer Houck: If your child is — like their both picking at each other, sometimes you can tolerate it, but if this gets on your last nerve and you cannot tolerate it no more and you just feel yourself getting short. It is just piddly stuff like that or even if they are filling a bottle in the house or something, days like that you can usually tolerate it, but if you feel yourself getting short like and your just going to go like, “Grr! Don’t do that no more,” but I think I can just feel myself like my blood pressure is going to blow or something or like Madison, I will say something like, “Madison, you need to stop whining now. This is not a good time to be whining anymore.” He said, “Mommy, I’m not whining. I’m crying.”
Carrie Lauth: That is cute.
Jennifer Houck: It is just certain things like that. I do not know if they said she wails like that or not.
Carrie Lauth: Are you kidding? Oh boy. It is so funny to me how — oh goodness. It is funny to me how I can see it so clearly that most of the time when they are doing that, it is because they are trying to get my attention. I think even us, grown-ups will do that sometimes like have you ever picked a fight with your husband just because you are feeling kind of neglected or something? You do not even realize it at that time, but later on you are like, “Man! I was totally getting worked up over nothing just because I felt lonely.”
Jennifer Houck: Yeah.
Carrie Lauth: It is so funny, but — yeah, they totally do that. This other mom mentioned that spending a lot of time snuggling and cuddling and just getting physical with your kids can help if you are feeling that you are about to snap. I think that is really true because anytime you are overreacting the things, it is like you are not really looking at your child. You might be going around the house, hollering about stuff. You are not really looking them in the eyes and you are not touching them. It is nearly impossible to be upset with someone when you are looking at them in the eye. Like if you are wanting to argue with somebody, you are not looking at them in the eye.
Jennifer Houck: Right.
Carrie Lauth: Never. I think it is impossible because it is like you — that is intense and that is kind of intimate to look someone in the eye or to touch them so that is important. You have such an advantage when you are breastfeeding because you have that oxytocin flowing to your veins. It is funny because I have talked to moms who weaned abruptly and they were just wigging out. Emotionally, their emotions are just all over the place and they were snapping at their husbands and snapping at their kids.
This one mom, I asked her. I said, “Well, have you ever thought about that maybe because you weaned your daughter that abruptly that is why you are feeling that way?” She was like, “Oh, my gosh. I didn’t even think about that.” She was like, “You’re right. It started just exactly when I weaned her.” When your body abruptly stops that flow of oxytocin, it is like “Whoa! Withdrawal.”
Jennifer Houck: Yeah.
Carrie Lauth: It really does help you cope and be relaxed. It is like nature’s little parting gift.
Jennifer Houck: I definitely agree with that because — and this was sort of when I was uneducated because if I were to know now what I know then, I would never weaned Madison. Madison was 14 months old when I got pregnant with Lindsey so I thought, “Well, I gotta wean Madison. I can’t breastfeed her while I’m pregnant” and I hate that because I wish I could have known that. I have to stop. I did not even give her no notice or anything. It really stressed us both out. I could tell that I was really short with my husband and so with Lindsey when I did start doing it with her I spent over like two months time. It was so much easier this time than last time. I think it is like your body is so shocked because you just got cut off the breastfeeding that quick and your body is so used to doing that everyday and then you just cut it out.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah.
Jennifer Houck: It is like a shock to the system.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah. Yeah, it really is. What else? What else can help or help you identify burnout? I know for me sometimes, it feels like a physical thing like you can feel your chest getting tight and you are kind of gritting your teeth and going, “Oh, I’m not myself today. Why?” Then you realize, “Oh, man. It’s been a week since I’ve been out by myself or I haven’t taken a bath alone in a while.”
Jennifer Houck: Yeah.
Carrie Lauth: “I need to have a bath by myself.”
Jennifer Houck: Sometimes I can feel my face getting red too, but definitely ending now with Madison being in preschool. It gets us out. Three times a week, we are doing that. We also join the playhouse here in our town and it is mostly made up of attachment moms. Since we have been going there, it just seems like it helps to do something everyday and not stay in the house all day.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah. I have to do that too. I have to leave the house every single day.
Jennifer Houck: It gets too much.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah.
Jennifer Houck: Even for the kids. They need different surroundings too. They do not need to be looking at four walls all day.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah. Yeah. I remember this mom told me once, she said, “I love driving.” She had a bunch of kids, but she said, “I love to drive because it is so relaxing.” Mine were really much younger. They were just babies. I think I had just one and I was like, “Are you kidding? I don’t enjoy driving anymore now that I’m a mom.” I used to love to drive when I was younger, but now that I am a mom, it is like I am thinking about the serious aspect of having these lives in my hands, but now I feel that way. Sometimes when I am in the car, that is the only time of the day that I do not have somebody either in my lap or on my hip or pulling on me.
Jennifer Houck: Right.
Carrie Lauth: They are just listening to their little audio book. Maybe my almost 4 year old will actually fall asleep.
Jennifer Houck: Yeah.
Carrie Lauth: Which she will not do at home. It is like my little built-in break.
Jennifer Houck: I am happy that you see it that way because I see it that way.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah.
Jennifer Houck: I do not know. I guess I have a little way of thinking that it is true with Madison most of the time. She is almost four now and she will always fall asleep in the van. She will refuse hands down that unless they have been outside playing hard. It is like an hour or two that she would come in and will sit there and she just falls asleep on my lap or something.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah, that age is so challenging because they still need a nap, but they do not fall asleep. I can sit in here, my laptop is in my daughter’s room and she will say, “Mommy, I want you to work with me.” That means, “I want you to come in and get on that computer while I lay in bed.” She can lie in that bed for an hour and she will never fall asleep, but I take her in the car, we do not get out of the neighborhood and she is out cold. She still needs a nap because by dinnertime, she is just out of her head. She is so tired. Anyway, that is challenging. I think that a lot of times what happens is that when our children get a bit older, we start expecting more of ourselves than we did when they were babies when really it has not gone easier to get things done. That pressure creates feelings of burnout like, “Oh well, now that my baby is two, I should have my clean house back.”
Jennifer Houck: Not that way.
Carrie Lauth: No. It is not realistic because now you have got baby on wheels. You have got a baby who can climb and move chairs across the kitchen and open all the cabinets and drawers, open the shampoo bottles.
Jennifer Houck: Right.
Carrie Lauth: All that stuff. My daughter pushed one button on my laptop and I was not familiar with this one button and it disabled my wireless network card. I spent an hour trying to troubleshoot. I was like, “Oh, my gosh. What’s wrong?” I tried all my stuff that I always try if lose my connection and then I got on the phone with tech support and they were like, “Okay, there is this little button on the top of your laptop” and I was like, “Oh, my gosh. I can’t believe I just spend an hour because of one tiny little button all I had to do is mash it for as quick as just one second.” Oh boy, I have a sick, sick little one.
Jennifer Houck: Definitely, I will just tell other moms about when you just start feeling those tense day or the stress coming on you, but you cannot stop them just take time out when your husband gets home and just take that short bath or whatever have you or go outside and just take a walk by yourself or even if you cannot, your husband is not home, just take the kids with you. Put them on a wagon or stroller and just enjoy it. Do not think that you have to keep on going and going because you do not have to. You do not have to be — women, you are not going for an award for the most perfect mom.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah.
Jennifer Houck: Your kids are going to love you no matter what.
Carrie Lauth: I think we teach them good habits when we respect our own needs. We teach them how to take care of themselves and that is important for them to learn. That is an important skill for them to learn in their relationships with other people. I blogged about this the other day, but my 5 year old, he was trying to build some little Lego structure, that is his favorite thing. He usually always comes and shows us what he has made and he is very proud of it, but this particular instance, he did not want his sister looking at what he was building. She kept trying to stick her nose over his shoulder and look and he was like, “Lana, I don’t want you to look at it. I don’t want you to look at it” and she kept trying. Finally, he goes, “Respect my boundaries.” I thought, “Oh, I love it.”
Jennifer Houck: That was a good one.
Carrie Lauth: Right. I was proud of him for not reaching out and slugging her, but using his words, but very firmly telling her, “Look, I said no.”
Jennifer Houck: Yeah.
Carrie Lauth: “I don’t want you looking at my stuff.” That was pretty cool, but they need to learn how to do that. We even have to do that with our friends and our family. We have to learn healthy limits with people, how to say no.
Jennifer Houck: Yeah.
Carrie Lauth: We are teaching them good life skills, but well… To sum up, I think the thing that I really wanted to get across with this show is that feelings of burnout does not mean that you are a failure as a mom and it does not mean that you do not love your children.
Jennifer Houck: Right.
Carrie Lauth: Parenting is an intense job.
Jennifer Houck: It is definitely a fulltime job.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah.
Jennifer Houck: Like you said, we are teaching them things too.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah.
Jennifer Houck: We are their best teachers if anybody. If they see us getting burnout all the time, they are going to think when they are growing up, they are not going to learn how to take a break and kids need a break so much.
Carrie Lauth: Oh yeah. Absolutely.
Jennifer Houck: It is a win-win situation for both you and your kid.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah, that is a great point. They do need a break from us. They need to miss us. That is a good thing for them to miss us sometimes. I know sometimes my oldest three will go off to my parent’s house for the weekend. I enjoy the break, but I am definitely missing them.
Jennifer Houck: Wow.
Carrie Lauth: They come back and I can tell that they have missed me and that feels nice. They love grandma and grandpa, but they do not want to live there.
Jennifer Houck: Yeah.
Carrie Lauth: They miss mom and dad. That is a good thing. I think it helps them to appreciate us more because they do take us for granted a little bit, but that is a good thing. That is a healthy childhood. You take your parents for granted when you have good parents until you are much older and more mature.
Jennifer Houck: Yeah.
Carrie Lauth: Well, Jen, thanks so much for talking with me about this. Your website on attachment parenting is attachmentmoms.com is that right?
Jennifer Houck: Right.
Carrie Lauth: Okay. Well, I enjoyed talking with you.
Jennifer Houck: Well, thanks for having me, Carrie. I really enjoyed it too. I think it is a good thing to let parents know about this.
Carrie Lauth: I almost forgot to mention. Dr. William Sears and Martha Sears, his wife who is a registered nurse, they have eight children together and they have a couple of books that talked about mommy burnout. I think one is called The Baby Book. I am pretty sure that is the one that talks a lot about mommy burnout and so that is a great resource.
Mom Burnout, Take 2
October 12, 2006 | Leave a Comment
I really appreciated Julie’s comments here and got her permission to post her thoughts here. Julie is a life coach and you can visit her online at Realized Potential.
“In attachment parenting, we are attempting to parent in a very old style – a way that developed along with our own biological development. It’s therefore a fabulous way of parenting – it fits our biological babies and their innate needs perfectly. Unfortunately, we no longer live in a society that fits that type of parenting. We do it almost completely in isolation. Yes – a nuclear (or even small extended family) is basically isolation compared to the communal groups that biological anthropologists believe humans lived in for most of our existence on earth.
This means that burnout is not only almost inevitable, it is also wide-spread. Moms out there need to know that they are not failing when they feel burnt out!!!!!
I recall my birthday two months after Angelica was born. All I wanted was to have an hour by myself. My mom took Angelica, and I went to sit in the garden. But my mom kept interrupting me for unimportant things (like the phone ringing), and of course Angelica wanted to nurse, and I felt like I was going to literally burst into little pieces and be scattered all over my lawn. Worst of all, I burdened myself with the notion that there was something wrong with me that I felt like that. Not! 
Since then I’ve learned a few tricks that help me not only get by, but actually find my center and feel good again. I’m doing my best to implement at least two of them every week. For all of them, it helps me to actually commit to a day and time in my calendar, and plan to have my mom or husband take Angelica during that time. – a movement class (tai chi, qi gong, yoga etc.) – time in nature by myself – time one-on-one with a good friend
In addition, now that Angelica is sleeping more soundly at night and nursing less, I am less exhausted. I still go to bed with her and nurse her to sleep. Once she is asleep, though, I give myself permission to focus on myself and I read or journal or or meditate or pray. This has done wonders for me!
Another thing I do is get out of the house with Angelica and take a morning to just hang out together. No multi-tasking. My job is to enjoy her company. This, too, refuels me!
Thanks for broaching this important topic.”
Warmly, Julie
Realized Potential
A catalyst for growing your life.
Mom’s Stories of Burnout
October 12, 2006 | 1 Comment
One Mom describes her parenting experience with her first child and says,
“I can definitely say that I was burnt out from parenting [my first child] the way I had been when [the second] came along. I was tired, on edge and not really enjoying life to the fullest. My husband was also tired of the family bed and we needed a change!
What I learned form those years really is that each child is different. Yes I agree with a lot of the attachment parenting values. But make sure that you chose the ones that are right for your family as a whole… If the family bed does not work out try something different.
What helped our family get out of burnout was to set up more structure in our life..”
Karen
Heirloom Wooden Toys
