MEMBER OF THE MONTH!
Isabel Pietri – January MEMBER OF THE MONTH for Rave Reviews Book Club!
How to be a Committed 2015 Parent
As 2014 draws to a close, thank you for supporting me and reading my Staying Sane blog. 2014 was a tough year for parents. The news constantly reported assaults (or murders) on our kids whether from strangers, peers or adults. It’s enough to make you want to move to an uninhabited island until your child becomes an adult. However, we know that’s not going to happen! The best we can do is enjoy the time we have with our young people, and be awesome role models. As a parent, my goal in 2015 is to be a better listener and example setter. What are your parent goals for 2015?
Love between dads & daughters
It’s easy to be the type of parent that says “Do What I Say” instead of being the type of role model that you want your son or daughter to follow. God holds us accountable to be the best parents we can be. Fatherless or motherless kids are forced to raise themselves and we have seen the devastation that a kid trying to raise himself/herself brings.
Are you committed to being the best parent you can possibly be? Our kids spell L-O-V-E with T-I-M-E. Make 2015 special with the time, love and commitment that you share with your son or daughter. Dads talk to that pre-teen daughter about a pledge to wait before having sex. Moms help your son become the best man he can become by holding him accountable to complete tasks and responsibilities when you assign them.
Is parenting easy? Not at all, however you can do this. And I can help! Become a part of my new parent membership program called Parent Sense. Click here to give me your contact information so that I can notify you with more details.
Happy New Parenting Year!
C. Lynn Williams, Ms. Parent Guru
The Distance Between Us
The song Ooh, baby-baby by Smokey Robinson is a story about losing someone you love through an act of betrayal. The singer pours his soul out to the woman he loves in hopes she will take him back.
This story is a different interpretation of the song.
Picture a mother and daughter suffering from the experience of those teen year growing pains.
The communication between the two consists of arguments of whom or what may be right or wrong.
Finally the daughter feels it’s not worth the struggle anymore. She thinks -” Mom will never understand me and I don’t know what her problem is and furthermore I don’t care”.
Tired and feeling that she is not being heard or understood she decides that anywhere is better than home and runs away,leaving mom feeling helpless and with long sleepless nights. Not a waking moment pases without mom wondering where…
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The #Ferguson Experience
We are living through a time of dichotomies. What’s good for you & your family is not necessarily what’s good for me & mine. Clearly this is true for Michael Brown, his family and officer Darren Wilson.
As a Divine spirit living a human existence as an African-American mother, I do not know how to talk to my sons about their rights as African-American males in these United States. It is unfortunate that my sons who have been educated and raised in American schools, and lived a middle class life, can have their lives taken in cold blooded murder by a trigger-happy law enforcement officer. #TrayvonMartin
To make matters worse, yesterday the grand jury decided that Officer Wilson was justified in shooting an unarmed teen and voted not to indict. #MichaelBrown #Ferguson
It is at times like these that I understand and agree with the philosophies of H. Rap Brown versus those of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
This Ferguson experience is unexplainable to me. How do I continue to justify America’s social justice to my sons? A society that allows the killing of African-American males is not the answer to its’ problems. It’s just a matter of time, before my son becomes your son. #removethemaskoffear
If you want to continue this discussion about protecting our #sons, sign up for my Parenting Newsletter. Want to ask questions or dialogue with me about how tough adult issues affect our families; reach out to me on Twitter @MsParentguru or on my Facebook fan page www.Facebook.com/CGWWBooks. #parenting
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Generational Development Specialist
www.clynnwilliams.com
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)
The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)
Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Publishing, 2013)
Queen Latifah & Her Mom… #SustainingtheBond
Mothers, we are always giving to our children right?
I found this wonderful article about one of my sheroes, (actress and talk show host Queen Latifah) and how she is helping her mother through a serious illness. The bond between a mother and her daughter is can be a good one, might need work or may not exist at all. Don’t you agree?
Below is a reprint of part of the People Magazine article dated May 1, 2014 by Monica Rizzo.
Despite her very public persona, Queen Latifah has long been private about her family life. But last spring as she was ramping up production for her syndicated daytime talk show, The Queen Latifah Show, the entertainer was taking on a personal commitment to take charge of her mother Rita Owens’s round-the-clock medical needs.
Owens, 64, was diagnosed last year with scleroderma, an incurable autoimmune disease that has caused scar tissue build up (pulmonary fibrosis) in her lungs. Owens also has pulmonary hypertension (blood pressure in the lungs), which impacts her ability to breathe.
“I wasn’t going to do the show unless she came here,” Latifah tells PEOPLE in its latest issue. “I knew she was dealing with her health issues sometimes and I would not be able to get to her as easily.”
Despite the challenges caring for someone who’s ill, Latifah, 44, says she can’t imagine anyone else looking after her mother.
“Anyone who has a job and then has a family member at home who is ill, it’s 24 hours. You have to be there. They need you,” says Latifah, who enlisted friends and family members to help out while she’s at work. “I try to be as in the moment and as present as possible. And then I try to get some sleep and go to work and be present there and then go home and be present there.”
“It’s not a day or night that she doesn’t peek her head in my room and make sure I’m okay,” says Owens, a former high school teacher. “If it’s medical she’ll go in and grill the doctors and make sure they are doing what they are supposed to do. She sacrifices her time, her resources. She genuinely loves me and I know that.”
For more from Latifah and her mother, including details on Owens’ condition and her treatment, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE magazine.
If you are taking care of an aging parent (and raising children) part of the sandwich generation. To learn more about loving and communicating with your mother, invest in a copy of my book, ‘Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES. http://bit.ly/Uzr9v6 If you would like to ask questions or dialogue with me about how tough adult issues affect our daughters, reach out to me on Twitter www.twitter.com/cgwwbook or on my Facebook fan page www.Facebook.com/CGWWBooks. Use hashtag #TellHerTheTruth
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Generational Development Strategist
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)
The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)
Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Publishing, 2013)
P.S. If you have a daughter and live in the Chicago area, treat yourselves to a half-day retreat on Nov. 22nd to share stories, experiences, bond and renew your relationship with each other. Here’s the link to register: mymothermyself.eventbrite.com
Want to Lose Weight? Identify Hidden Sugars…
Repost of Dr. Mercola Interview with JJ Virgin 
Not all sugars are created equal, and they’re hidden in most of today’s processed foods. Nutritionist, fitness trainer, and author JJ Virgin has written a new book that helps open your eyes to the way sugars are hidden.The book also provides practical tips on how to wean yourself from this pernicious ingredient that will decimate your health.
In The Sugar Impact Diet: Drop 7 Sugars to Lose Up to 10 Pounds in Just 2 Weeks, she tackles the confusion surrounding sugar. Many health-conscious people are still under the mistaken belief that as long as the sugar is all-natural, it’s fine to eat.Not so. Agave, natural fruit juice, raw cane sugar, and any number of other natural sugars will still wreak havoc on your health.
“[S]ugar is really public enemy number one,” she says. “That’s why I chose to focus on it. I don’t think added sugar is really the problem; I think it’s what’s in a lot of our food that we don’t recognize [as sugar].Whether it’s having apple juice (which is worse for you than a soda), or having a yogurt sweetened with fruit juice concentrate, or whether you’re just thinking that fruits are free for all, these are all creating problems.
I wanted to create a structured program that could help someone break free of those sugar cravings, drop the weight forever, and then let them go back and [do a food] challenge… in order to connect the dots between what happens when they drink one of those big fruit smoothies that are supposed to be so healthy.”
To End Sugar Cravings, Your Body Needs to Burn Fat as Its Primary Fuel
As JJ notes, whether the sugar comes in the form of a muffin, a fruit juice-sweetened yogurt, or a smoothie, it’s all the same thing to your body. “Food is information,” she says. And she’s right.
Once you break free from your body’s constant need for yet another sugar fix (remember, sugar is more addictive than cocaine!), you’ll experience great levels of newfound energy and clarity of mind. But in order to get there, you need to retrain your body to burn fat as its primary form of fuel instead of sugar.
This can be a real challenge for many. JJ’s book specifically addresses the gradual process of getting from burning sugar to burning fat as your body’s primary fuel, in order to maximize your chances for success.
“There’s got to be a transition period, where you go from sugar burner to getting your body to be able to start to burn fat again,” she explains.
“You have to taper down from where your starting point is, which is what I call a Sneaky Sugar Inventory, of things you would never think about (like sundried tomatoes and marinara sauce) that we’re just using like crazy not realizing how much sugar this is actually adding into our food.”
The Sugar Impact Scales: A New Way of Looking at Sugar
As an initial step, you’ll want to weigh yourself and measure your waist-to-hip ratio, to determine your starting point. Next, you do an initial inventory of all the hidden sugars in your diet.
This means reading the labels on all the foods you eat, including items you might never expect to contain sugar, such as that jar of pickles, condiments, sauces, and marinades, and so on. JJ lists all the sneaky places sugars hide in your diet in her book, and by creating what she calls Sugar Impact Scales, she’s created a new way of looking at sugar.
“It looks at fructose grams, glycemic load, nutrient density, and fiber. Bad are fructose and glycemic load; good are nutrient density and fiber,” she explains.
“Depending on where the food falls, it can either be low, medium, or high-sugar impact. The reason this was so important to me is I keep looking at programs out there, and they either focus on fructose… glycemic index, or glycemic load.
That can be very confusing because it makes things like agave sweetener look great. It makes milk look great… People go, ‘We should have fructose because fructose is low on the glycemic index.’
The difference between fructose and glucose is fructose doesn’t trigger the whole insulin response. Because of that, it doesn’t trigger insulin, leptin, or ghrelin, so it doesn’t tell your body you ate anything. Instead, it just goes to the liver. If there’s no room for it to become glycogen… it starts becoming fat.
You look at that and you go, ‘Okay, food is information. What does fructose say?’ It says, ‘Hey, make fat but don’t tell us we ate. Stay hungry.’ What a nightmare!”
So what are the basic symptoms of having high-sugar impact? Gas and bloating are common, as sugar feeds yeast, fungi, and detrimental bacteria in your gut. Other symptoms include joint pain, headaches, fatigue, inability to lose weight or weight loss resistance, and sugar cravings.
By grading yourself on those and other symptoms, while tracking your waist, hip, and weight, you’ll get a clearer picture of how sugar impacts your body, and your progress in terms of retraining your body to burn fat instead of sugar as its primary fuel. Click to read the rest of the article.
If you want to read more dietary issues that affect our families, follow My Blog and sign up for my Parenting Newsletter. Want to ask questions or dialogue with me about how tough adult issues affect our families; reach out to me on Twitter @cgwwbook or on my Facebook fan page www.Facebook.com/CGWWBooks. #SugarWeight
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Generational Development Strategist
www.clynnwilliams.com
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)
The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)
Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Publishing, 2013)
P.S. Are you part of a blended family? I have a new book coming out soon about #BlendedFamilies. Contact me if you want to read a short excerpt…
3 Things You Want to Know…
(Reblogged from The Parenting Skill Daily)
Parenting Tips: My Teen Lost His Phone, What Do I Do?
By Olfa Turki
Looking for parenting tips on how to handle it when your teen loses his phone? Read my story to see how I handled it! My teen is in high school and commutes for one hour a day. To keep my sanity, my husband and I provided him with a cellphone for emergency calls. It was a long debate at our home, whether we can trust a 12 year old with a cellphone. But since I am a helicopter mom and since he is commuting for a long time, I wanted to feel safe and be able to reach him during his commute. I wanted him to be able to reach me in case something happens: a bus missed, a metro not working.
Substance Abuse – Does It Run In Families
By Eric Metcalf, MPH
@EricMetcalfMPH
Want to know if you’re likely to develop a health problem? Looking at your family history can often help you measure your level of risk.
For example, if a close family member has had type 2 diabetes, certain forms of cancer, or heart disease, you may also have a greater chance of developing the condition, too. The same is true for alcoholism and drug addiction. If a close family member has had a substance abuse problem, your risk is also higher.
Some of the extra risk that runs in families comes from the genes that one generation passes down to another. But other elements within your family can influence if you develop a problem with drugs or alcohol. For example, drinking too much or using drugs may have seemed normal to you from an early age because you saw family members do it.
What Kids Need to Know About EBOLA (Video)
Shared by Ann Morgan James
If you want to read more #parenting tips, follow My Blog and sign up for my Parenting Newsletter. Want to ask questions or dialogue with me about how tough adult issues affect our families; reach out to me on Twitter @cgwwbook or Like my Facebook fan page www.Facebook.com/CGWWBooks. #ParentTips
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Generational Development Specialist
www.clynnwilliams.com
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)
The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)
Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Publishing, 2013)
P.S. Hey… I have a new book coming out soon about #BlendedFamilies. Get in touch w/me if you want to be one of the first to read a short excerpt…
4 Shockingly Simple Rules That Could Keep Lots Of Teenaged Boys From Committing Rape (reblog)
A lot of people feel that this article is inappropriate and will be offended. I suggest that you read to the end and decide for yourself. Reblogged from Angieup.tumblr
Instead of teaching girls how to not get raped (“don’t wear this,” “don’t ever drink,” etc.), what if we went to the root of the problem and raised boys to know the ins and outs of consent?*
Here’s how you can rule out sleeping with someone:
1. She’s hammered.
2. She seems unsure if she wants to (you should never have to talk anyone into it).
3. She’s passed out.
4. It seems like there’s any other reason she might regret it in the morning. (Even if it’s not rape, do you really want to be someone’s morning-after regret, when instead they can remember you as a total gentleman?)
P.S. My he/she conventions here are in no way an attempt to shut out gay men from the conversation — these are notes to my son (who happens to be heterosexual) and other heterosexual sons. To gay sons out there, just pretend I said he, because this goes for you, too!
Here’s how you can be sure it’s okay to proceed with sex:
1. She is in control of her faculties.
2. She is enthusiastically willing.
3. Check in with her! “Do you want to be doing this?” is a great thing to ask when things are going to another sexual level. The worst thing that will happen is she’ll rethink it and say, no, she’s actually not ready. It’s important at that point to pivot to doing something else together, and not make her feel guilty for changing her mind. While that may feel like a bummer to you in the moment, what you’ve just achieved there is fucking badass. You’ve just put someone else’s feelings ahead of your physiological needs. You’ve just treated somebody the way you hope another guy would treat your sister.
All of this is to say, I actually think you’ve got this. You’re going to do great things in the world as you fully inhabit your manhood, and I think the integrity you’re made of is going to come through in all kinds of situations. I really wish you a great, fulfilling sex life where you each mutually benefit and you each come away from it feeling fortified and better for it; not damaged, confused, or disappointed in yourself.
Love and hugs and rainbows and all that,
Mom
To read the full article, click here: Son It’s Okay
If you liked what you read, follow my blog for more articles, info and camaraderie with other people just like you & me. Reach out to me on Twitter (@cgwwbook) or Facebook (CGWWBooks)
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Generational Development Coach
www.clynnwilliams.com
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)
The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)
Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Publishing, 2013)
Secret Of Successful Marriage
Advice to Successful Marriage
I just attended my cousin’s wedding and loved how the groom & bride couldn’t keep their eyes (or hands) off of each other.
Best wishes to my fellow blogger, Black Grey and White. Enjoy friends! ~C. Lynn
Getting directly to the point. Here you are going to find those untold precious advices that can transform your married life from a ‘I-made-a-mistake’ song to a sweet love note!!! Tada!
Well, that was exaggeration. To tell you the truth, if you act upon the following three advices you will lower the chances of divorce in your relationship. Divorce rate in many (I think all the) countries, is sadly, getting higher and higher. The reason is (maybe) the increasing materialistic approach to get happiness and contentment in life. If it is not the only reason. It surely is one of the reasons.
Well, here on this blog our (why do I write our? Traces of a former lecturer style are still in my mind, maybe.) aim is to make life easier and happier. So, following are the three gems;
1. Wife should be thin as compared to husband. Now, I…
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Tips For #Backpack Safety For Kids
(reblogged from TheBlackList Pub)
It’s that time of the year again, time to go back to school shopping. As another summer comes to an end and a new school year is quickly approaching, parents are beginning to prepare their kids for a successful year at school and this often means the purchasing of a new backpack. With so much to do in order to prepare for the upcoming school year, few stop to think about backpack safety for kids. Did you know that carrying a heavy backpack to school just may be causing health problems for your kids?
According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, children between the ages of 5-18 account for 6,500 emergency room visits related to carrying a backpack that is too heavy for them. More research indicates that by the end of the school year, nearly 60 percent of all school-aged children will experience at least one episode of lower back pain. Backpacks that are too heavy are responsible for a significant amount of back pain from children ranging in age from elementary school all the way up through college. Common symptoms of poor backpack loading and carrying can include headaches, poor posture, neck pain and shoulder pain or stiffness. Here are some tips to help you pick a bookbag that won’t harm your child’s back.
Tips for Backpack Safety for Kids:
Make sure your child’s bookbag is no more than 5-10 percent of his/her body weight. A backpack that is too heavy will cause your child to bend forward in an attempt to better support the weight of his/her backpack rather than allow the shoulders and straps to support the weight. A bookbag that is overweight can be dangerous to the health of your child’s back.
Compartments are key. Look for a backpack with compartments to effectively pack your child’s bag. You won’t have to worry about your child’s lunch being flattened under their textbooks.
When packing a backpack, make sure your child places items that are bulky or pointy away from the back of the backpack. Pens and pencils rubbing against your child’s back can lead to painful blisters.
To read more click here: http://bit.ly/1nMPBkE
If you liked what you read, follow my blog for more articles, info and camaraderie with other people just like you & me. Reach out to me on Twitter (@cgwwbook) or Facebook (CGWWBooks)
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Parent Coach
www.clynnwilliams.com
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)
The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)
Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Publishing, 2013)
Staying Sane While Raising Your Teens 
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