Risque business for Miley Cyrus?
Parents of “’tweens” and younger children have probably heard by now about the controversial photos of Miley Cyrus that will appear in the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair magazine. To some, the photos by Annie Leibovitz are suggestive and inappropriate for the 15-year-old star of the Disney sitcom “Hannah Montana” and the clean image that Cyrus projects to her fans. Others, who think the photos are artistic and classical, wonder what all the fuss is about.
In any case, she (but especially her parents) should have known that provocative photos of a 15-year-old girl, even if innocent, would take on a life of their own among her young fans and the parents who are trying to protect them from the smuttiness of today’s world.
I don’t know what Cyrus hoped to accomplish with those photos — a more grown-up image, perhaps? — or if she was just having fun with a renowned photographer and in awe of the spectacle of being Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus and the doors that the character has opened for her.
As parents, we try to stay on guard to make sure good judgment prevails when it comes to our children, long before people are saying, “well, hindsight is 20/20, but … ”
Supernanny to the rescue
In the same way that every parent has the smartest and the cutest children (me included), I also stake claim the world’s most stubborn child. My 7-year-old seems determined to “win” — in whatever way that means.
When things start going poorly, we have every intention of maintaining the calm parenting skills that we 100-percent support in the imaginary world of mature thought and common sense. In the real world, however, the 7-year-old wins, and the little voice in our head that snarkily says, “Who’s the adult here?” just ticks us off.
So when the children are finally quiet and asleep, and the good sprits of the evening are ruined, we’re often feel like terrible patience-less parents, wondering aloud how a 7-year-old can outfox and outlast us again and again.
Then Tivo switches to Supernanny.
Thank God for Supernanny.
After 15 minutes, my kids look like angels again. But realistically, that’s bound to happen by morning anyway, with or without a TV show.
After 15 minutes, I feel like a decent parent again. We don’t have it so bad. And that’s something to be thankful for.
- Alan
Do you have your child’s birth certificate?
I knew where it had to be. Yes, I did have Cade’s birth certificate, or, at least that’s what I told the school officials as we planned for my 3-year-old to begin school.
But after sifting through stacks of papers, opening legal-sized envelopes, digging through my cedar chest and emptying drawers, I decided I really, truly had never ordered copies of Cade’s birth certificate.
I felt guilty, disorganized. Why hadn’t I taken care of this? But then I started thinking about some of the little obstacles we had to overcome when Cade was born, how he had to undergo light treatment for about a week for jaundice, how his blood had to be tested constantly for about two months because the numbers were not exactly where they were supposed to be, and how we had to go through a liver scan … We were a little busy.
And then, life kind of evened out. Trips to the hospital became less frequent, and we went on about our business, dealing with normal everyday “stuff.”
When I found my middle daughter’s birth certificate last week, guess what? I had ordered her’s right before she started school. … Maybe I wasn’t such a bad, forgetful mother, after all.
So, today, I went to the Oklahoma Department of Health and stood in line to get what I should have gotten a few years ago. It wasn’t a great experience, but it wasn’t so terribly awful either.
I stood in a long line – it was a Monday and other parents were having to enroll their kids, too, and they needed their children’s birth certificates. Yes, the man behind me carried on a colorful conversation peppered with every expletive you could imagine on his cell phone, and after standing in that line, I had to stand in another line to pay … and then I had to wait for my number to be called. But the people assisting everyone were friendly.
And then it was done. I had my son’s birth certificate – four copies – you never know when you’re going to need an extra.
So, here’s some advice. If you have children and you haven’t gotten their birth certificates, go ahead and take care of that today. You can mail in your request or you can go to the Health Department, 1000 NE 10th St. If you go in person, print off the form ahead of time, fill it out, and then all you have to do is step into line. You won’t have to worry that you’ve forgotten information or misplaced your ID, because you’ll already know you need it.
And, then, when you enroll your kids in school, and someone asks if you have their birth certificates, you can say, “Yes,” and know that it’s true. - Linda
Who can sleep at a sleepover?
Five giggly, chatty first-grade girls fell asleep in their sleeping bags on my living room floor around midnight Saturday. It was my daughter’s 7th birthday and her first sleepover.
In fact, it was the first time I have ever let her have friends to spend the night, having set the arbitrary age of 7 as the age to allow sleepovers when her older brother turned 7. So now that we’ve officially launched sleepover era in our house for two of my children, I’m wondering when all the rites of slumber party passage begin – prank calling, fingernail painting, toilet papering, truth or dare, commiserating over boys, etc. – all the things we did at one age or another during slumber parties when we were kids.
What do you think is the best age to start allowing friends to spend the night or sons and daughters to go spend the night with friends? At what age do sleepovers end? What rules do you set beforehand? How involved are you as a parent? (more…)
Gifts for Gals
Over the weekend, my girls and I handcrafted some Mother’s Day gifts for their grandmothers. Piper found the instructions in a family craft book and we had most of the supplies on hand. I won’t say what we made (hopefully, the grandmas read this blog!) but the gifts came out really cute and personalized.
It can be a lot easier for children to come up with gift ideas — women love to get kid-made crafts and we keep them forever. But do you have any ideas for gifts from adults to their mothers? It seems I get my mom a candle every other year, which she always accepts graciously.
Post your ideas here for both hand-crafted and store-bought gifts for Moms. It can be easy to say that it’s the thought, not the gift, that counts — and that’s true — but women also love to be pampered and made to feel special, on any budget.
Susan Simpson
Pretty please be quiet
Is it wrong to tell your kids to “shut up?” What if you say it in a very loud voice? Maybe even SCREAM it?
Apparently this makes me a “Bad Mommy.”
But no one listens to Good Mommy when she politely asks that her overvocalized children “keep it down,” “play the quiet game,” “quit bickering” and “zip it.”
But SHUT UP? That gets their attention. It renders them speechless for a moment. Then they tell me that shut-up is a bad word. That I should go to time out.
Is time out in a quiet place?
I’m on my way.
– Susan Simpson
