Author: curtis.strite

As parents, we love our children, and we want them to do well.

The paradox is that sometimes these positive impulses end up weighing our kids down as they try to strike out on their own. Parents just can’t win.

So how can we tell when our natural desire to protect our children will deprive them of important lessons in resilience that will translate into valuable skills in the working world? How do we know when encouragement crosses the line into coddling?

To get closer to the crucial question of how to raise a child who is both balanced and self-reliant, compassionate and ambitious, we have to go back to the source of the problem.

Lots of researchers lay the blame for unemployable young adults on “helicopter parenting,” and they might just be onto something. Keyword: “might.” As in any act of parenting, we’re dealing with strong opinions, half-certainties, and a good deal of developing science.

Again, we just can’t win.

The term “helicopter parenting” has been thrown around in a remarkable range of contexts since at least 1967, when child psychologist Haim Ginott published a book called Between Parent and Teenager.

This book featured quotes from teenagers themselves, who said that their overprotective parents seemed to hover over them like a helicopter. Hence, “helicopter parenting.”

This term has taken on new relevance in the internet age, when new parents have access to article after article insisting that they’re making life so easy for their children that the kids are doomed to a rude awakening when they encounter the harsh realities of the working world. We read these stories and we worry.

The horror is that we may be right to worry.

Or we may not. Hey, no one said it was going to be easy.

Psychologist Anne Dunnewold, who prefers the term “overparenting,” told Parents that the label describes parents who are “involved in a child’s life in a way that is overcontrolling, overprotecting, and overperfecting, in a way that is in excess of responsible parenting.”

A seminal 2013 study in the Journal of Child and Family Studies found that college students with “over-controlling” parents were more depressed and less satisfied. The study concluded that helicopter parenting violated the “students’ basic psychological needs for autonomy and competence.”

So helicopter parenting is bad. We get that.

How do we avoid spinning the rotors over our own families?

Research psychologist Dan Kindlon suggests that we need to let our children suffer—within reason, we hasten to add. 

Note that we don’t have to contribute to that suffering—and that we must not. We just have to resist the temptation to step in every time our child encounters a difficulty.

In his book Too Much of a Good Thing: Raising Children of Character in an Indulgent Age, Kindlon emphasizes the importance of giving our kids the tools they need to reach true maturity.

“To be honest with themselves, to be empathetic, to take initiative, to delay gratification, to learn from failure and move on, to accept their flaws, and to face the consequences when they’ve done something wrong.”

As to how this is done, well, again: No one said it was going to be easy. That’s like the motto of all parenting ever.

Nisha Moodley always asks her infant son, Raven, if she can pick him up before she gathers him in her arms.

You might think that’s an odd choice. You might point out that infants don’t speak and that even if this mom asks, she has no way of knowing his response. You might be wrong about those things.

“Since the moment he was born, we’ve always asked before we pick him up,” Moodley wrote in an Instagram post featuring her and her son flashing gigantic grins. “I always feel for his ‘yes.'”

Moodley is certainly not alone in her belief that she can intuit her son’s preferences without verbal language. Many moms say that they can “feel” their preverbal infant’s needs and desires.

Moodley relies on a mother’s sixth sense to feel her son’s consent. She always asks for it before she places her hands on his body. 

Her reasoning is brilliant, especially in a culture that doesn’t always teach boys and men about respecting other people’s physical space—or the vital importance of consent in physical relationships, for that matter.

So why does Moodley ask her son if she can pick him up before doing so?

“Because we want him to know that his body is his, and that others’ bodies are theirs, and no one gets to make choices about someone else’s body,” this forward-thinking mom wrote.

Moodley concludes her post with a piece of advice that everyone should hear.

“If you ever want to hold someone else’s baby, my suggestion is to ask the parent, then ask the kid,” she wrote. “It always touches my heart when someone takes a moment to connect with him and says, ‘Can I hold you, dude?'”

Moodley’s post earned a quick 600 likes and sparked a conversation about men, women, consent, and parenting in the comments section. Of course this took place on the internet, so not all the commenters were particularly polite.

Some moms wrote in with a different viewpoint, arguing that they don’t need permission to express love to their children. The conversation remained civil, and most commenters reached a loving agreement to disagree. That’s something you don’t often find on comment boards.

Yahoo Beauty reached out to Moodley to learn more about her thoughtful parenting technique.

“The best thing I can do is honor his choices about his own body,” she said. “I also want him to pay attention to his instincts, and forcing physical touch could interfere with that.”

Moodley also elaborated on how she senses her son’s consent.

“There have been times where Raven has responded by reaching his arms out for a hug or turning his head or body away,” she explained. Those signals seem pretty hard to misinterpret.

Ultimately, it’s up to every mom to decide how to be the best parent she can be. There’s no set of rules, and there’s no one way to help a baby boy grow into a wonderful man. As Moodley herself wrote on Instagram, “Trust the pace of your wisdom and the wisdom of your pace.” 

In February 2017, Betsy DeVos narrowly slid through her confirmation hearing to become the U.S. Secretary of Education.

Before Vice President Pence’s tie-breaking vote confirmed DeVos in her new position, she served as chair of a pro–school-choice group called American Federation for Children.

One of the core planks of that group’s policy proposal is to encourage the growth of charter schools, which, in the simplest terms, are public schools run by private groups. Those groups can be educators, special interest groups, institutions, or—as opponents to heavier investment in charters never tire of pointing out—for-profit businesses.

According to NPR, 15 percent of the nearly 7,000 charter schools in operation in the United States today are run by for-profits, which generate income at least in part through funds drawn from the public school system.

In Michigan, where DeVos worked as a chairwoman for the Republican Party before joining the president’s cabinet, 80 percent of charter schools are run by for-profit businesses. That’s a higher concentration of for-profit charter schools than you’ll find in any other state.

Given DeVos’ well-documented support of for-profit charter schools and the strength of her platform as secretary of education, it seems like a good time to stop and ask the crucial question about this new approach to the U.S. public school system. Do for-profit charter schools actually do a better job of educating our children?

A recent study from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University suggests that the answer is decidedly “no.”

CREDO’s study, “Charter Management Organizations 2017,” compared academic performance at nonprofit and for-profit charter schools.

On average, students at for-profit institutions required 23 extra days of math education to reach the same benchmarks as their counterparts at nonprofit schools. They needed six extra days of reading instruction.

By comparison, the study found that students at traditional public schools required 11 more days of both reading and math than attendees of nonprofit charter schools did. However, students who receive special education are far better off at traditional public schools than either type of charter institution.

Special education students at schools in a charter network in which a single organization runs multiple schools fell behind in math by 86 days per year compared to public schools as we used to know them. In other types of charter schools, the students who receive special education fell behind by 108 days per year.

Academics who study charter schools and public education tend to agree that CREDO’s research is rigorous and reliable. Advocates on both sides of the debate regularly cite CREDO studies, although they tend to cherry-pick the research that supports their viewpoint while ignoring the undeniable mixed outcomes in charter school performance. 

No matter where you stand on hot-button issues like school choice, voucher programs, and teachers unions, this CREDO study provides valuable data that should help guide education policy on a national level. The only question now is whether legislators are interested in that data.

“Leashes are for dogs,” they say.

“I’d never embarrass my child like that,” they say.

(Ever notice how when parents are being judgmental of each other, they always refer to their kid as “my child”?)

These model parents are, of course, talking about the child harness—or as it’s more commonly known, the kid leash. This piece of child safety equipment has somehow earned a spot right up there with the co-sleeping debate and the question of how long to breastfeed. These are topics that can lead perfectly reasonable parents to the brink of a fistfight.

Clint Edwards runs the popular parenting site No Idea What I’m Doing: A Daddy Blog. He recently issued a powerful salvo in the Kid Leash Wars, and it’s safe to say that he is decidedly pro-leash.

“We were at the farmer’s market. No shame. I put this kid on a leash,” begins the post that launched a thousand comments.

Edwards goes on to explain that his daughter Aspen is “a wild child.”

“The real difficulty with having a wild child is that you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” Edwards wrote.

“Because the fact is, if I didn’t put Aspen on a leash while at amusement parks, the zoo, a crowded mall, or the farmer’s market, she’d be the lost child announced over the intercom. She’d be the kid popping up in every Facebook feed for wandering into a shopping center parking lot unattended. She could be the child climbing into the tiger cage.”

Edwards admits that he gets a lot of dirty looks and unsolicited advice. All it takes is a quick Google search to find legions of parents with their noses proudly in the air, vowing that they would never demean “my child” with something as crass as a safety harness. Edwards’ post itself is full of comments blasting this father for leashing his child.

To these naysayers, Edwards has a clear message:

“I’m [keeping] this kid safe while maintaining my piece of mind, and that is 100 percent worth it,” he wrote. “Because the reality is she’ll calm down. She’ll figure it out, because all kids do. But until that day comes, I’m going to do whatever I can to keep her out of danger, even if it means a leash.”

That all seems to make sense. Not everyone agrees, of course.

Commenter Mark Thomson’s response is typical of the never-leashers.

“Putting your child on a leash says a lot about your knowledge of parenting, discipline, and unrealistic value of safety parameters and you should be judged,” Thomson wrote.

“There are no shortages of resources that can help any parent make improvements to their parenting techniques and methodologies. Especially in establishing a base discipline and behavioral expectations of the child. One thing [is] for sure… It’s not the child’s fault. A leash is wrong.”

A surprising number of parents share this viewpoint. Even Judith Goldberg, who writes the “Judy on Duty” column in Parents magazine, does not reserve judgement when it comes to child harnesses.

“Leashes are for dogs,” she wrote. “You wouldn’t put your child in a crate or let him poop on the sidewalk, right? If you have a bolter, invest in a cheap umbrella stroller with a buckle.”

Goldberg doesn’t address the difference between restraining your kid with a harness and strapping them down in a stroller—which sound to us like essentially the same thing.

Besides, comments like Goldberg’s seem to ignore the fact that every child is different. So is every parent.

Unless the American Pediatric Association (APA) or some other authority says child harnesses are harmful to kids, parents should feel free to use them without becoming the targets of online parent trolls. For the record, the APA has issued no such warning.

Speaking of safety, there is one type of child harness that you should avoid like the plague. Some models attach to your kid’s wrist. This can hamper a child’s natural stride, which depends on arm movements along with their toddling legs.

Even worse, if your kid wanders too close to the edge of a cliff and you suddenly pull them back, you might dislocate their elbow or shoulder. If you choose to leash your kid, buy a tether with a harness that fits around the chest, or else attach the leash to the kid’s backpack.

People tend to argue about the things they care most deeply about.

Parents love their children, so it’s natural that they develop very strong opinions on every aspect of raising a kid. Before you rush to judgement, though, consider how different every child is—and remember that some parents have to choose between keeping their kid on a leash and skipping public outings entirely.

The only one who can decide whether to leash a kid is that kid’s parent. There is absolutely no reason to feel guilty for doing whatever it takes to keep your child safe. Don’t let the haters get you down. Bare your leash proudly—it is an expression of your love and concern for your child.

Another commenter on Edwards’ contentious post seems to have the right idea. “I used to be pretty judgy about those things,” wrote Kristin Nosbusch. “Then I had kids. Keep on keepin’ on, man.”

“Save your kitchen,” wrote mom Brooke McDaniel in a social media post that’s gone ultra-viral. McDaniel shared a simple idea that solves a frustrating problem that every parent has dealt with.

When you feed your baby with bottles, you inevitably end up with bottles everywhere. They spill out of your cabinets. They roll underfoot. There’s just no good way to store the items that keep your baby fed.

Until now.

McDaniel described her project: “All my bottles in one place on my wall, space I wasn’t utilizing, instead of having a cabinet with bottles overflowing from it.”

Her secret? A simple, $12 shower caddy. She accompanies her description with pictures of a shower caddy hanging on her kitchen wall. Neat rows of baby bottles fit snugly in the shower caddy, with a row of pacifiers hanging from the hooks at the caddy’s base.

“Best ‘bottle holder’ I could ever have,” she wrote.

If you’re like us, you’re probably kicking yourself for not having thought of this sooner. Don’t be so hard on yourself, though. Allow us to echo McDaniel, who closes her post with something every mom needs to hear.

“And to each one of y’all reading this, if no one told you today—YOU ARE [AN] AWESOME MOM!”

Here are a few more life hacks that will help you be even awesomer.

1. Apply diaper cream with a makeup brush.

Why spend precious minutes washing thick, gloppy diaper cream off your hands when you can paint it on with a makeup brush? You’ll get better coverage and you’ll save time on cleanup.

2. Soothe your teething baby’s gums with breast milk popsicles.

Freeze breast milk in popsicle molds.

The cold will ease the pain of teething, and the milk will keep your baby full and happy.

3. Sneak in your naps when your baby is asleep.

Every new parent ends up terribly sleep deprived.

Take the edge off with power naps. Infants need lots and lots of sleep, so why not steal a few winks alongside your sleeping little one?

4. Place a stick-on hook on the back of the high chair and hang bibs from it.

There never seems to be a bib around when you need one. Ensure that you’ll never have to delay your hungry baby’s meal while you hunt around for a bib: Just stick a hook on the back of the high chair and there’ll always be one on hand.

When bibs are stored right there on the chair, you’ll always have one within reach at meal time.

5. Keep pacifiers clean by storing them in disposable condiment cups.

You know those little plastic condiment cups they give you at restaurants? Those things make terrific pacifier holders.

Throw in a binkie, put the top on, and carry a pacifier around in your purse without it getting all covered in crumbs and germs.

6. Get a white noise machine for the nursery.

Soft, consistent background noise can help your baby sleep.

That leads to more sleep for Mom and Dad, which makes everyone happier.

7. Opaque dark curtains also help keep baby asleep.

The darker the room, the better your infant will sleep. It can be hard to get a room totally dark for daytime naps—unless you hang thick, light-blocking curtains on the windows. While you’re at it, get an extra set for your own bedroom. You’ll need all the sleep you can get.

8. Use your vacuum sealer to make diapers super portable.

Vacuum sealers make great baby shower gifts. Why? Because in their natural state, diapers are pretty bulky. Vacuum seal them in plastic to flatten them out for better portability.

9. Wait until your baby’s in a deep sleep to cut their fingernails.

It’s not easy to trim an infant’s nails. They tend to squirm and wiggle and generally present a very difficult target.

The solution is to wait until your baby has been asleep for at least 20 minutes, then go in with the clippers.

10. Get a small mesh laundry bag for your baby’s socks.

Baby socks are way too easy to lose in the wash. They’re tiny. Plus, they’re socks—they’re predisposed to going missing.

If you throw them in a little mesh bag before tossing them into the washing machine, you’re way more likely to keep the pairs intact.

11. Transform a playpen into a sun-proof outdoor enclosure with an extra fitted crib sheet.

Fitted sheets for cribs usually fit perfectly over the top of a playpen. Throw one on top to create a safe zone for the baby while you finish the yard work.

The sheet will keep insects out and shield your infant’s sensitive skin from the sun. When it’s time to go back inside, you can whip it off in an instant.

12. Help your newborn drift off to slumberland by gently stroking their face with a paper tissue.

We’re not sure why this works, but it does. Take a tissue and pull it softly down your baby’s face. The sensation makes them uncontrollably tired. This might not work for every infant, but it has a pretty good track record, so it’s worth a try.

Our parents never had to deal with this.

You know the story. You hand your kid your Android phone or a Kindle Fire just to keep them quiet while you finish balancing your checkbook. Next thing you know, you get hit with surprise Amazon charges from in-app purchases. So much for a balanced checkbook.

The problem is that many apps labeled “free” are anything but, and some of those apps are games that greatly appeal to children. Although downloading and playing the game won’t cost you anything, kids may be tempted with highly coveted items or enhanced functionality that come only at the cost of real money. And guess whose debit card is associated with that Amazon account?

If these charges seem unfair to you, well, the Federal Trade Commission agrees. As of April 2017, the FTC negotiated a deal with Amazon that will end with the tech giant handing out more than $70 million in unauthorized in-app fees.

If your kid splurged on digital coins or fancy digital outfits between November 2011 and May 2016, you may be eligible for a refund. Here’s what you need to know.

1. Amazon will send emails to customers they believe deserve a refund.

The FTC assures us that Amazon will reach out to affected parents. “All eligible consumers should have received an email from Amazon,” according to an FTC press release dated May 30, 2017.

We all know how things like this work, though. It’s easy to slip through the cracks. If you haven’t received an email offering you your money back, don’t despair. There are a few ways to request a refund for the unbelievable amounts of money your kid was able to spend on Farm Story. 

2. You can also request a refund directly from Amazon.

Amazon set up a web page for eligibility claims, and it’s live now. Just visit this page, log in to your account, and follow the prompts.

3. Learn more about requesting refunds in your Amazon Message Center.

Yep, there is such a thing, though most users don’t check it very often. To access your Message Center from a desktop, log in to your Amazon account just like normal. Hover over the “Accounts & Lists” link to open a drop-down menu. Select “Your Account,” the first option in the right-hand column.

Then locate the box labeled “Email alerts, messages, and ads.” Select “Message Center” from that list, and you’re there. Information about requesting a refund for unauthorized in-app purchases should be listed under “Important Messages.”

4. We’re guessing that Amazon would rather you take care of this online, but there is a phone number you can call.

Just give Amazon a ring at 866-216-1072 to discuss your refund (or just to complain about how your kid managed to spend $5,000 without you even being notified).

No matter which path you take toward your refund, don’t wait too long to get started. The deadline for a refund request is May 28, 2018. After that, you’ll be stuck with your kid’s virtual purchases, which, of course, burned real-life money.