Posts tagged ‘parents’
Care Enough To Join Me
We had an event in my community yesterday and it had been a culmination of twice weekly activities over a six week period, that included young people from elementary through high school as well as adults.
We had a pretty decent turnout, with most parents attending with their child. The odd thing was that the parents of one of our teens did not attend. She said they were home cleaning house 𧟠đ§˝. I was really bummed out, for her. She had had some rough times during our weekly meetings with family issues but during the entire time, we never met her parents. đđ
It took me back to the days when my children were younger. We tried to attend everything they were involved in. Of course that wasnât possible, but we tried. And maybe this was true for my teenâs parents. Maybe they attend every other event and just couldnât with this one. Watching her during our project meetings I got a different impression. To me she felt lonely and alone.
So this is what I want to say to her parents: It is important to show up in your kidâs life as often as you can. Doesnât matter if they are 5, 15 or 25 years old. Our kids love our support! Yes itâs easy to show up for the large events like graduations and milestone birthdays. But sometimes we have to be parents no matter how busy our days are and be available! That means we play games with our kids, we go for walks (yea put down the headphones, game controllers and phones) đ
As the parental unit (one of my daughterâs favorite phrases), our kids wonât remember that we were trying to make a living and had to put food on the table thatâs not the first thing that they will remember about us. What they may remember is that we sat on the stairs and talked with them about what the 2020 election means; theyâll remember that we drove to the lakefront and watched the sunset; that we talked into the night about good and bad decisions, that we watch their favorite Disney movie 10 times… in a row. They will remember playing Monopoly with you and how many properties you bought!
Your child will remember the times you spent doing stuff together!
I feel bad because my teen friend looks and feels lonely. It doesnât feel like she has a good support system and I hope she has a stronger one in the future.
Oh and parents… try to be more mindful of the time your child really needs with you.
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Chickenpox Vs Coronavirus
If youâve ever had a child with chickenpox, you know how important it is to stay in the house and how miserable your child who has the chickenpox is. Chickenpox is highly contagious. Youâre usually feverish and very itchy, and like the coronavirus, you are quarantined to stay inside until youâre healed.
Coronavirus reminds me of the chickenpox, because you feel terrible if you catch it, and itâs contagious! The huge difference is that some people are dying because of the coronavirus, and thatâs pretty scary. So stay inside and keep a social distance from everyone⌠well except your family.
As a parent, I think about all the opportunities that this quarantine is offering me:
- I get to spend more time with my family and my husband (actually as empty-nesters, my husband and I get to spend a lot of time with each other)
- I get to make memories that Iâm otherwise too busy to make
- Limited take-out – we eat more often as a family
As an adult, I can:
- Stay up late
- I can binge watch TV programs I never have time to watch
- Read books I have promised I would read, as soon as I get time
You get the idea⌠These are benefits of this quarantine. If you are an Entrepreneur, youâre still busy trying to figure out how to stay connected with your customers or clients. You may have to change how you do business because you are now forced to communicate with people online, by social media, by phone. I know these are new challenges for me. However as a mom, I stay in touch with my children daily, and I think about how to stay engaged with them, even though we are miles apart. If we were together what board or card game would we be playing or what movie would we watch together? My kids loved board games and we would play Monopoly, Life, Uno or Phase 10. We also enjoyed cooking and eating together and then sitting around the table and talking to each other.
QuaranTeened
For those of you with teens, the biggest challenge is probably for your teenagers who are very social and used to talking to their friends instead of you. They would rather stay in their room and talk on the phone or talk to their friends on Snapchat or Instagram. This quarantine is a great opportunity to open those communication channels between the two of you and start talking. Ask their opinion on the coronavirus quarantine. It might be a little awkward, getting the conversations started. Itâs okay, keep talking and finding topics that they will talk about with you.
- Cook together
- Depending where you live, ride bikes together
- Watch movies
- Have fun and enjoy each other.
I believe this time is really designed for us to get closer to the people that we love or at least learn how to love them.
In-House Spouse
Probably the next biggest challenge is how to play nice with your spouse when you are both working from home. Itâs easy to forget what attracted you to each other, if you are cooped up, raising kids, working from home or trying to figure out how to pay your bills, because one of you have lost your income due to the quarantine.
The challenge is to do something fun daily together. Bring up wonderful memories from the past. Binge watch programs together. Show interest in something that your spouse or partner is interested in.
Oh, and switch up the chores with your kiddos, so that Mom (or Dad) donât get burned out. Tweens and teens can cook and clean too!
Interested in learning more about your familyâs dynamics? Contact me – Ms. Parent Guru to receive information about my inspiring parenting programs for Aging Parents, Mothers and Daughters, Mothers and their Sons, Fathers and Daughters or Fathers and their Sons.
Click Here to become a part of my parenting community.
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Parent Coach, Author & Speaker
Every Adult Is Not Parent Material
When I read or listen to the news about parents abusing or killing their children, my heart breaks and I know they must not have had someone that they could reach out to and ask 
for help. Last night I read about a woman who was insanely jealous and suffocated one of her children because she thought her boyfriend was cheating on her. Â Other stories talk about how women didn’t feel they had anything to live for and decided to take their own life and the lives of their children.
I realize that children come into our lives in different ways. Some people have kids very early in life (or late in life) and love them as the spiritual gifts they are. Other people have them “accidentally” and treat them as objects or hindrances and never really “get it“, that the child in their life is truly a gift from God and here to teach us specific lessons.
While I was a twenty-something, I didn’t want kids. I wanted to climb the corporate ladder and go as high as I could without the responsibility of raising children. Plus growing up I had had many jobs babysitting kids (as well as watching my own brother & sister), so no thank you was my answer to having kids! After much thought and five years of marriage, I decided, I had room in my heart for a child. While that was my decision, I realize not everybody gets to decide or puts that kind of thought into having their children; I just wish they would.
Raising kids is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done! Kids take your Time, your Patience, your Energy and all of your Money! However I would do it again without a second thought. Were there times that I wanted to give them back to the Creator? Yes – probably so! But that’s the time that you reach out to someone close to you; someone who is saner than you and you say “Help! I need some time to myself“.
If we’re honest, we know some of those women before they’ve reached the breaking point. If you’re like me, you feel their “strangeness” when they come around you. Follow your intuition next time. When you feel that one of your women-friends  or family members is a little too quiet or withdrawn, reach out to her and offer her your time and attention. Take her children for the day, so she can take some time for herself. You’ll have to do it without judging her because life has a way of coming back around to each of us. Today it may be your turn to help a woman out, and tomorrow, that woman may be in a position to help you. You never know. I call it KARMA.
For my prayer warriors, here is my prayer: “Father, today we pray for those facing desperate and lonely times. We pray especially for poor and defenseless children everywhere. Help us meet their needs as we are able.” Daily Bread 12/21/2016
Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!
C. Lynn Williams
@MsParentguru
www.clynnwilliams.com
Parent Goodies – Video Blog (Letting Kids Make Mistakes)
We are told that making mistakes helps us grow.
As parents, it’s hard to let our kids make mistakes. 
Click here to view: https://youtu.be/QK09flTHbyw
Enjoy!
Ms. Parent Guru
Hey Iâm An Adult⌠I Donât Need A Curfew
I remember the summers that I came home from college. At school, I had no curfew; at home, my mother had a different view. Girls did not need to stay out late! While I donât remember our first encounter with the issue of curfew, I do remember the summer before heading off to law school in the fall. I was 20 years old and felt that I was an adult. I usually made it home just before daybreak. Part of  it was having a great time, and not wanting the fun time to end. The other reason was that I felt I didn’t have to answer to my mother, because of my age. My motherâs conversation with me was âWhat will the neighbors think?â Being young and full of myself, I told her I didnât care what the neighbors thought. Case closed right? But it wasnât. What I now know, is that itâs important for parents to discuss the house rules and expectations especially curfew, guests (girlfriends or boyfriends) sleeping over and issues like that with their young adults preferably before they go out and stay all night.
When our daughter came home on college breaks, we discussed a reasonable curfew – 2 am. As she matured, I only required a text message if she didnât plan to make it home. Our youngest son is in his mid-20s, and hasnât come home the last three nights heâs been out. I thought, okay so clearly heâs an adult, but if something has happened, we would never know. So we had the talk. This time, it wasnât about curfew, but about the responsibility of letting us know his plans, especially with the random violence and police brutality young black males are facing these days.
How are you managing life with your college student at home?
Interested in learning more about generational parenting? Contact me – Ms. Parent Guru to receive information about my inspiring parenting programs for Young Adults, Aging Parents, Mothers and Daughters or Mothers and Sons. Email me at: info@clynnwilliams.com
Want to read more about 21st Century parenting with old school values, Click Here to become a part of my parenting community.
PBS Documentary Looks at One Juvenile’s Life-Without-Parole Sentence
Imagine this happening to your fourteen or fifteen year old son.
PBS Documentary Looks at One Juvenile’s Life-Without-Parole Sentence.
When Parents Make Mistakes
Parents are invincible…infallible…Human!
My husband and I saw Black Nativity last night and I am glad we did! Being a person of color, we usually support movies with African-American actors, directors, film writers during the first weekend the movie airs to support it financially. While I love, Forest Whitaker and Angela Bassett, I’m not crazy about musicals, so I almost missed a golden opportunity. If Black Nativity is still playing in your area, go see it! Anyway I digress… There was a line in the movie that absolutely spoke to me about PARENTING! Rev. Cobbs (Forest Whitaker), the estranged father of Naima (Jennifer Hudson) said “Parents make mistakes…I am so sorry that I meddled in your life.”
Have you ever felt that way about something that occurred between you and your teen or adult child? Were you able to admit it and have an honest conversation with your son or daughter? Or did pride keep you from opening the doors of communication with that person that you love with all of your heart and soul? The movie had another theme that has been really messing up my parenting theory about our teen (or twenty-something) daughters getting pregnant and having children without being married. When my daughter was a teen, we had the ‘SEX’ talk a few times. I wanted to make sure that she understood the consequences to getting pregnant. I felt (and told her) that she would have to move out if she got pregnant before getting married. I felt that way because she, her dad and I talked candidly about waiting until marriage to have sex; if she couldn’t wait then use birth control. I know you’re thinking OMG – it’s okay for her to have sex??? She did not get pregnant, but what if she had? Would I have made her leave home for this mistake? Would we have been estranged? What about her future? Would she have gone to college, grad school, or become the professional woman she is today?
Well, no I didn’t want her to have sex, but let’s be honest here;  part of the teen experience is that LOVELY puberty that starts to occur to our kids when they turn 12 or 13. The boys you couldn’t stand in fifth and sixth grade, now start to look a little less like wimps and more like hotties! A kiss on the lips, turns into raging hormones! Right?!? If your daughter loses control (and has sex) she’s screwed (no pun intended) unless she is taking birth control. Again I digress. So for mothers like me who take that hard line, what are our daughters supposed to do if they find themselves pregnant? That was the dilemma of Mary (Grace Gibson), the very pregnant and homeless teen in Black Nativity. She said, “I made a mistake and was kicked out. I have nowhere to go, so here I am pregnant and homeless.”
The other theme that caught my interest was the relationship between the mom (Naima) and her teenaged son (Langston). God, she really loved him (and he loved her too), but as a single mom trying to make a living for the two of them, she was unequipped to offer him the masculine discipline & love that he needed to grow into a man. Well I won’t tell the entire story, but I’d like to end with this: if you, and your son or daughter have not spoken to each other because of miscommunications or disappointments, reach out and call them and begin to mend the fences. There is nothing worse that not having an opportunity to say “I’m sorry” and having regrets for the rest of your life.
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Parent Coach
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 Communications, 2013)
Ladies: Love Traditional Style!
I love Thanksgiving because I get to spend time with members of my family that I ordinarily don’t get to hang out with.
 I have lots of nieces, nine I think; and my two of my closest nieces are in dysfunctional relationships with men! One of them is working out father abandonment issues, and she finds the most “ugh” guys to get involved with. They are either married to someone else or in love with someone else – WTH? The guy of the hour, can’t hold a job, smokes weed and runs around on her! I love her so much and so as usual, I stuck my head in her business, suggested she make a clean break with him (the father of her second child), and move on. She followed my move on advice, and changed apartments. Whatever..
My other niece, the more cautious one, got involved with a guy that she met over a year ago. They admired each other from a distance and she eventually accepted his request for a date. 
 Ladies: dating is your opportunity to find out about that guy! It is not time to âjump into bedâ with him! You don’t know him! He could be married, crazy, abusive, just NOT your type! Have a couple of months of pure dating without sex (of any kind). Let him talk about what he does and does not like. You do the same thing. Let your mind get to know him before you introduce your body. In any event, not practicing âsafe sexâ gave her & her guy friend an early birthday present â a baby! Now she gets to find out that he has baby mama drama and since heâs a âPampered Princeâ, she also has periodic issues with his mother. (The Pampered Princes are those whose mothers donât believe their sons do any wrong.)
Take your time to get to know him, before you KNOW himâŚ
Â
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Parent Coach
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 Communications, 2013)
When Suicide is NOT the Answer
I had a friend in high school who told me he was going to âkill himselfâ. I was beside myself with worry, told my parents and my dad said â âIf he was going to kill himself, he wouldnât tell you first.â Of course the guy did not kill himself, but my brother did⌠Parents should never have to bury their children but they certainly shouldn’t have to bury them because they’ve committed suicide. Suicide is such a desperate call for help and in my opinion indicates that there were no other options. The problem for most parents is how is it that our child, teen or post-teen adult lives and interacts with us every day and we have no idea that they are contemplating suicide? Mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse is often the cause of suicide.[1] Additional stress factors such as difficult interpersonal relationships, long-term sickness or financial worries can also contribute to feelings that âlife is no longer worth livingâ.
According to HelpGuide.org, most suicidal people give signals of their intentions. Below are some warning signs that we can look for to recognize and hopefully prevent suicides with our family, friends and students:
|
Suicide Warning Signs |
|
| Talking  about suicide | Any talk  about suicide, dying, or self-harm, such as “I wish I hadn’t been  born,” “If I see you again…” and “I’d be better off  dead.” |
| Seeking  out lethal means | Seeking  access to guns, pills, knives, or other objects that could be used in a  suicide attempt. |
| Preoccupation  with death | Unusual  focus on death, dying, or violence. Writing poems or stories about death. |
| No hope  for the future | Feelings  of helplessness, hopelessness, and being trapped (“There’s no way  out”). Belief that things will never get better or change. |
| Self-loathing,  self-hatred | Feelings  of worthlessness, guilt, shame, and self-hatred. Feeling like a burden  (“Everyone would be better off without me”). |
| Getting  affairs in order | Making out  a will. Giving away prized possessions. Making arrangements for family  members. |
| Saying  goodbye | Unusual or  unexpected visits or calls to family and friends. Saying goodbye to people as  if they won’t be seen again. |
| Withdrawing  from others | Withdrawing  from friends and family. Increasing social isolation. Desire to be left  alone. |
| Self-destructive  behavior | Increased  alcohol or drug use, reckless driving, unsafe sex. Taking unnecessary risks  as if they have a “death wish.” |
| Sudden  sense of calm | A sudden  sense of calm and happiness after being extremely depressed can mean that the  person has made a decision to commit suicide. [2] |
As a parent, we donât understand it when a young person takes his/her life because of hopelessness or frustration. We often wonder where we went wrong. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suicide is the third-leading cause of death for 15- to 24-year-olds, after accidents and homicide. It’s also thought that at least 25 attempts are made for every completed teen suicide. If you are concerned, here are some prevention tips that you may use:
- Speak to that person if you are worried
- Respond quickly in a crisis. Determine if the risk is low, moderate or high
- Offer professional help & support
Suicide Hotlines and Crisis Support
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline â Suicide prevention telephone hotline funded by the U.S. government. Provides free, 24-hour assistance. 1-800-273-TALK (8255). (National Suicide Prevention Lifeline)
National Hopeline Network â Toll-free telephone number offering 24-hour suicide crisis support. 1-800-SUICIDE (784-2433). (National Hopeline Network)
—
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Parenting Coach
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! Available in September, 2013 (220 Communications)
When to Cut Finances to Your Adult Child
When do you stop helping your children (even those over age 21) financially? I remember paying my daughters’ phone bills until they were about 25 years old. We wanted to make sure they were able to handle their household bills, and we were able to help them, so we did.
What’s interesting is that I met a woman whose husband still relied on his mother to pay his rent. This man was 50 years old. That’s pretty riduculous right? Here is a link to an article that advises us on when to close our checkbooks:
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/personal-finance/cut-financial-cord-on-kids-1.aspx?ec_id=cmct_02_comm_PF_mainlink
Let me know what you think..
MsParentguru
Staying Sane While Raising Your Teens 
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