Mom Book : 4278 of Mom Central's Tips--For Moms from Moms - Softcover

DeBroff, Stacy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684871467 ISBN 13: 9780684871462

Publisher: Free Press, 2002

Synopsis

SMART SOLUTIONS ABOUT ALMOST
EVERYTHING FOR MOMS, FROM MOMS
Created by hundreds of contributing mothers from the MomCentral.com community and Stacy DeBroff, The Mom Book features lists, tips, stories, and defining principles for everything from hiring a nanny to setting up a home office to surviving a rainy day at home. Here are answers to on-the-spot questions about fussy eaters, tantrums, starting school, work-family balance, and the thousand and one other skills needed to thrive as a mom. After all, who better than experienced mothers to share insider parenting advice?

About this title

About the Author

Stacy M. DeBroff is President and Founder of Mom Central and co-author of Mom Central: The Ultimate Family Organizer. Prior to becoming a parenting author, she founded the Office of Public Interest Advising at Harvard Law School and directed it from 1990 to 1998. She has been nationally recognized for her contributions as a lawyer by such media as The American Lawyer, The National Law Journal, and National Public Radio. The mother of two, she lives in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

A typical day in my home office: The kids come in from school, and my son Brooks heads straight for the couch, hoping to watch TV. I plant myself between him and the set, cajoling him to confide a morsel or two of information about first grade, and reviewing options of things to do besides watch TV. An hour before her soccer practice, Kyle walks in holding her stomach. It's the third day in a row she's been complaining of a stomachache, so I call the pediatrician's office. The nurse tells me what I fear: I should bring Kyle in immediately. But I'm in the middle of honing the Defining Principles for the first chapter of this book, and I'm on an editorial roll. It comes down to Pediatrician vs. Book, and the pediatrician wins, hands down. Kyle, it turns out, has strep throat.

This everyday emergency encapsulates both my life as a working parent (though my stay-at-home friends tell me how much they can relate) and the complexities of parenting. The crises and parenting issues seem to repeat themselves with stunning regularity. Such moments are what truly make this The Mom Book. In between karate practice, sick days, pottery lessons, summer vacation, family vacation, and stolen moments at the gym that I rely on for my sanity, I've written this book. When homework and spelling tests loom, fall weekends beckon, and my babysitting help evaporates, I find myself negotiating, minute by minute, the daylong effort of taking care of my kids' needs and making sure they feel loved and attended to. In the meantime, I'm writing away, interviewing moms, selecting tips moms have e-mailed, and editing chapters.

Once upon a time, when I was in law school, my ambitions ran toward being a senator. Now I'm happy to manage seven hours of sleep and help the kids get their homework done on time. How could I have known that the negotiation over the six sentences Brooks must compose for this week's homework would run longer and more passionately than any debate on the Senate floor? The frightening thing is, my life, though overwhelmingly overbooked at times, is not unusual. In fact, I feel extraordinarily lucky to have found a way to pursue a career and stay home -- no matter how imperfect the balance may be at times.

Prior to focusing professionally on the issues that consume most moms' lives, I worked at Harvard Law School for nine years. I founded and directed the Office of Public Interest Advising. While there, I counseled thousands of students in their twenties on how best to structure their professional careers and embrace public service work. A substantial portion of our conversations centered on how to find a confluence between professional goals and personal values, accommodate dual careers, have a personal life, and raise a family. For the women I advised, the work-family dilemma was foremost on their minds. And for me, as I aged from twenty-nine to thirty-eight and had two children, my perspective shifted radically.

I started off thinking of balancing work and family as completely doable. Yet as my kids grew older and became more eloquent in their pleas for mom time, and as my husband's career heated up, even my part-time schedule didn't cover the gaps. I found myself in a profound state of angst. How could I reconcile my strong ambition with the needs of my family? How could I find the time to create the sanctuary I wanted our house to be? How could I provide my children with hands-on mothering? I have come to recognize that it's an ongoing struggle to simultaneously be a devoted, attentive mother and embrace a professional drive to excellence.

For the vast majority of working and stay-at-home moms, the challenge of primary parenting responsibility consumes our waking moments. Yet we seldom share with each other the details and logistics of everyday parenting, household, and organizational dilemmas. Often we stumble about, hoping to arrive at a quick answer to our parenting-related problem of the moment, be that getting homework done or changing a squirming child's diaper. In the midst of our hectic and active lives, we look for solutions to practical parenting dilemmas that others discovered long before us. This book comprises the best pragmatic thinking of hundreds of moms and helps you master the logistics of parenting without constantly re-inventing the wheel.

To tackle the ambitious content of this book, I spent hundreds of hours talking with and interviewing moms, gathering their solutions, stories, and reflections. Scores of others shared their expertise and experiences via E-mail and on our Mom Central Web site, www.momcentral.com. What I looked for were smart ideas that make you go, "Aha! I've got to try that," and stories that illuminated the various aspects of raising kids and running a household. The voices of these women are woven into the tapestry of the text, not only as Mom Quotes, but as ideas offered in the individual sections.

Because the book incorporates the collective wisdom of so many moms, the Mom Quotes sometimes express contradictory opinions. What worked perfectly for one person may have proved futile for another. And while this book primarily addresses parenting a child from birth through age eight, much of the practical advice applies all the way through your child's teenage years.

I, along with Jill Martyn, my senior editor at Mom Central, and a handful of energized interns, spent thousands of hours searching the Internet to absorb what moms think about, worry about, need solutions for, and share ideas about. I was amazed and daunted by how much time it took just to wade though hundreds of posted messages. I was also discouraged by having to read through lengthy paragraphs of text in parenting books just to get to the point. So we did the homework for you, enabling you to find the practical answers you seek without having to do hours of extensive research, surfing, or talking with hundreds of moms yourself. I arrived at the bullet format to help you access clever ideas quickly, making the book a tool you can use whenever a parenting dilemma presents itself.

We had many laughs along the way, testing out suggestions offered by moms, from edible peanut butter play-dough (a big hit that inspired artistic creativity) to the frozen pea bag that doubled as an ice pack for a visiting playdate who got a bad bump. Then we had the rejected ideas, like the orange peels we baked to make the house smell more homey, but drove everyone crazy with food cravings.

As I wrote this book, my eight-year-old daughter, Kyle, would pop into my office with dozens of hints of her own. "I've got a Mom Central hint for you!" she would exclaim. Her hints have ranged from telling all of you to buy "no tears" shampoo, to have visiting cousins name their favorite toy so they always feel welcome, and to pack lots of chocolate milk boxes for long car rides. Her chiming in with her own suggestions and reflections has been very much a part of the book's creation for me and captures in many ways the heart of parenting and the fundamental brainstorming process that went into this book. Of course, there was also six-year-old Brooks, who before going to play with his friend Carey after school declared indignantly, "If you weren't working on that book, you would have the time to drop my Gameboy off at his house!" Sometimes as a mom, you just can't win.

Each chapter starts with ten Defining Principles to give you an overview of a topic before delving into the pragmatics. Simply for the purposes of clarity, some chapters use "he" and some "she" when referring to your child. I have also referred to "child" in the singular, while recognizing that you may have a larger family.

I believe that we still face several generations of transition before we will see a dramatic shift in parenting roles, with responsibilities divided more equitably between men and women. In the meantime, as we wait for the generational tide to change, I address this book primarily to moms, though its advice clearly applies to dads as well.

I have chosen to refer to your significant other as your "partner" throughout the book, rather than husband, boyfriend, ex-husband, lover, and so on. I have done so in recognition of today's diverse family configurations, given that many parents no longer raise children within traditional nuclear families. Moreover, "partner" captures the hopeful attitude I believe best for the team effort in running a home and parenting a child. For single moms, I have interspersed suggestions aimed at helping with the significant extra burdens you absorb and struggles you face as a parent. I have used the phrase "working moms" to refer to women who have jobs and work for money simply for purposes of clarification. That all mothers work goes without saying, and I want to emphasize this point.

Some contributing moms have requested that their identities be kept private for personal reasons or to enable them to speak candidly about difficult topics. Still other moms contributed tips electronically, via E-mail or posting on our Mom Central Web site, giving no further contact information. As a result you will read some anonymous quotes sprinkled through the book (you'll also see some quotes from me, indicated by my name). Wherever possible, I have added children's names and ages to personalize each mom's remarks, to help you contextualize the experience of the mom quoted, and as a tribute to all our children, without whom none of us would have anything to say!

Approach the book's text much as you would a cookbook, looking up recipes for solutions to the everyday parenting and household issues you encounter. Refer to the detailed table of contents or the index to zero in on a current concern or problem you need to tackle. Use the thousands of ideas in this book as a springboard for creative solutions of your own, experimenting to discover what works best, given your child's temperament and your unique family situation. I also invite you to come to www.momcentral.com for additional resources and links to parenting resources.

Copyright © 2002 by Mom Central, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0684871467
• ISBN 13: 9780684871462
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 704