When I was about 8 months pregnant with my first child, I was sitting in traffic one day and witnessed something that sent a shiver of cold dread through me. A tween-aged boy was skateboarding on the sloped carport roof of a nearby bank (yes, the roof!). I looked down at my swollen belly and pleaded with the little person inside to please, please, please be a girl. A few weeks later, in my child’s first act of defiance, he turned out to be, well, a he. A boy who, now four, wants a skateboard so badly it sends him into contortions of begging every time he sees someone gliding along on one…

Whether or not your kid is a kamikaze in the making, there are times as parents when we’re going to be called on to be the first responder to some childhood mishap. Below is a guide for some of the more common ouchies you’re likely to encounter. Of course, this list is no substitute for taking a good CPR and First Aid course, which you can find in your area by calling your local hospital or chapter of the Red Cross. (If you took one when your child was a baby, take a refresher!) The Red Cross has recently updated many of its CPR recommendations. read more

I never thought of myself as having a problem with anger. Sure, there was the odd bump in the road, but mostly I went about my early adult life enjoying smooth relationships with friends, family, colleagues.

I had waited until my mid-thirties to become a mother, and like everyone, had very high expectations for myself. I would be the Über-Mother: able to negotiate any and all difficult child-rearing situations with ease and grace, building the most loving of mother-child relationships.

… Or at the very least, I would make none of the mistakes that I felt my mother had made with me. Mom was angry a lot. She didn’t seem to have much fun raising two embattled girls, mostly on her own. My sister and I still joke about Mom’s “Angry Face” – the bulging eyes, the gnashing teeth, the death-grip on the back of your neck. That, I vowed, would never be me.

Then I had my first child.

He was a beautiful little bundle of intensity, with emotions that completely trumped his size. At first it was amusing to see his little face all scrunched up in anger and to encounter his acts of pint-sized defiance. Then it was exhausting. (I often laid awake at night worrying about what I had in store for me when he reached adolescence, given that his will at the age of two already completely outstripped mine.) By the dawn of his toddlerhood, all of my notions about über-motherhood had flown out the window and I was hanging on by my fingernails, just hoping that we would both survive the next 16 years without a visit from the Department of Social Services. read more

We are parents, and it’s our job to feed our kids. Sounds straight-forward, doesn’t it? And for most of us, our parenting careers start off just that simply:

Baby cries = offer milk or formula = baby grows exponentially.

This usually works very well for the first several months. But then the adventure of solid food begins, and the equation gets messier:

Then, somewhere around the 18th month, a mysterious switch goes off inside your child, compelling her to loudly declare her independence every day in every way, and all bets at the dinner table are solidly OFF. It’s enough to make a mother long for the simple predictability of 2 am feedings. read more

As mothers, one sound that we hear a lot is babies crying: crying because they’re hungry, because they need a diaper change or because they’re just plain uncomfortable.
When it comes to baby’s hearing, dealing with ear infections is a familiar — and unpleasant — reality for many children.

An ear infection results when fluid becomes trapped in the middle ear, and can cause anywhere from minor discomfort to sharp pain. As adults an ear infection is often just an annoying pain that eventually goes away, but for baby it can be a serious ailment that should be watched closely to prevent hearing loss. read more

Where’s the Me in Momeeee? Mealtime, play dates, laundry, errands and housework — the list is endless. In the middle of everything moms have to do and everyone they have to care for, it’s easy to lose track of a very important person — themselves.

In her book Mom Management: Managing Mom Before Everybody Else, real-life mom Tracy Lyn Moland challenges women to become better mothers by taking care of themselves. In other words, manage mom first.

Bringing organizational skills to the role of parenting, Tracy, an internationally recognized author, speaker and consultant, offers practical tips for active women trying to juggle all their responsibilities. She helps even the busiest Mommies create a life map to rediscover personal dreams and aspirations. She also gives suggestions to help accomplish those goals while enjoying the role of motherhood.

Her easy-to-read chapters include hands-on exercises intended to define the things you want to become in life along with practical suggestions for breaking goals into manageable mouthfuls. She defines the difference between doing and being and encourages women to develop into the best kind of mom
they can be.

Whether you take the time to read this book all at once or slowly savor each chapter, Mom Management opens your eyes to new ways to succeed in the very important role of motherhood — without losing yourself along the way.

Get the book: Available for $15 at amazon.com.

– Kerry Bennett

Kerry (who says she needs all the organizational help she can get is a wife and the mother of four busy sons. On the side, she does freelance writing of family-oriented movie reviews for parentpreviews.com.

Buying groceries is a constant task for Moms, and there never seems to be a convenient time to hit the grocery store without the kids in tow. Thus, trips to the store quickly become a huge headache with your little ones grabbing every box of cookies they see and complaining about the healthy food you put into the cart. Or if you are like my sister-in-law Karen, you will watch in dismay as your one-year-old son reaches behind him and promptly hurls a dozen eggs on the supermarket floor.

And then there are the comments from older women as you shop, discretely critical of the commotion or unhappiness they see transpiring. If your children get too restless, disaster can strike — a tantrum. read more

After the first few times that precious baby cries for hours on end the routine becomes overwhelming and seemingly impossible to stop. The need to communicate with your baby is there but the ability is not.

Danielle Kolachick, a mother of two from Poughkeepsie, NY, was sleeping when her six month old began to cry. She went into his room, picked him up out of his crib, checked his basic needs to find nothing wrong and then laid him back down hoping he would sleep. “You’re okay little guy you just have to go back to sleep,” Danielle consoled him.

“Then he just looked up at me and signed the word milk,” Danielle said. “It was such a fulfilling feeling … I thought all right, now we’re communicating.”

Learning to use non-verbal communication, in the form of sign language, can be a window to ending long crying spells by helping you to understand your little one’s needs. read more

Q: I know it seems like a simple question, but my son is 6 months old and still not sleeping through the night. I feel like I’m never going to get a full 8 hours ever again. What can I do or should I be doing to help him sleep through the night?

Susan
Boston, MA

The Mommy Panel’s Advice:

We unanimously agree that the key to a baby sleeping through the night is parents deciding to let them. Let us explain. Your baby is not waking up during the night because he is no longer tired or because he is hungry. Rather his waking is a natural break in his sleep cycle and he calls for you to help soothe him back to sleep. If you do not respond to his cries, eventually he will learn to soothe himself back to sleep. read more