by Dianne Perea

Olivia is her name, but in small circles we call her "our miracle child". When we lost our second baby five months into the pregnancy, we said we would never again risk that kind of suffering, that much sorrow, that deep of a loss, and such profound sadness which engulfed our family so much that it nearly destroyed us. We were certain our wounds would never heal, but to our relief, they did, and about a year and a half later, the desire to try and have another baby returned to our souls.

Mommy, Will You Tell Me A Story?

by Dianne Perea

My daughter has a room FILLED with really good books, but wouldn't you know it, it is very often her request before bedtime that I simply tell her a story, a "made up" story...you know, a "just off the top of my head" kind of story. Well, I've been asked to do this enough times that I finally figured out a "fool proof formula" for how to do this, a formula I've gotten down to a simple 1-2-3 process so that ANYONE can become the best story teller ever!

STEP ONE: WE NEED CHARACTERS

The first question I ask my daughter is "OK...who do you want this story to be about? I like to then give her interesting character choices, like "Do you want this story to be about two strawberries, three puppies who are sisters, a cat and a cricket, or perhaps about three daisies and one rose?" This gets her mental creative juices flowing to pick characters that are not necessarily people, but still specific enough for me to work with. Sometimes she picks one of my suggestions, but most of the time she comes up with something on her own.

STEP TWO: WE NEED A SETTING


Second question I ask my daughter is "Where are these characters? Are they in a city made of candy, clouds or cotton? Are they in an enchanted forest? Maybe they live in the same city, but haven't met yet." Again, this helps my daughter to visualize the environment in which the characters live, and gives her ideas for painting their background, which also gives me more to work with as I continue to create this story
in my head.

STEP THREE: WE NEED A STORYLINE - WHAT'S HAPPENING?

Third and final question I ask my daughter is "OK, now what is the situation? Are they sad? Are they lonely? Are they trying to solve a mystery together? Are the characters on some kind treasure hunt? Are they in some kind of trouble that they need some help with? Are they on a great adventure together?" Once again, I give these suggestions so she can help me better understand what is going on with these characters, and, in essence, find out what she REALLY wants me to tell her a story ABOUT. Is this a happy story? Is this a story about conflict resolution? Is this a story about friendship? Is this a scary story? What she tells me here will really set the tone and mood of the story, and once I have this third and final piece, I am usually ready with a story to tell her.

So, here's an example of how a story might go.

"Once upon a time, there lived two little strawberries deep in an enchanted and beautiful forest. These strawberries were the best of friends, but they were also very lonely at times, for there were the only strawberries that lived in this beautiful forest. One day, one of the strawberries, Ruby, decided she wanted to venture into the forest to see if there were any others like her and her only friend, Sparkle. Sparkle was very afraid of this, for she feared she may never see Ruby again, and then she would be the only strawberry left in the forest. But Ruby assured Sparkle that she would be safe during her travels and not to fear, for no matter what, she would return to her friend.


The morning finally came when Ruby decided to embark on her adventure into the great, enchanted forest in search of others like her and Sparkle. Sparkle trusted and believed in her friend Ruby and patiently waited for her return. Morning turned to afternoon, and afternoon turned into evening...still no sign of Ruby. Sparkle began to worry deeply...when all of a sudden she heard Ruby's voice. "SPARKLE, SPARKLE, COME QUICK!" Sparkle began to run toward Ruby's voice when she immediately saw Ruby coming over the hill. But it wasn't just Ruby that she saw. Sparkle saw the most amazing thing she had ever seen. A rainbow of red, pink and purple was following right behind Ruby...there were HUNDREDS of others just like Ruby and Sparkle, all happy and anxious to meet Sparkle and explore the enchanted and beautiful forest. Never in her life was Sparkle so happy! That night, all the strawberry friends danced and played together in the forest. In fact, from that night on, they all lived together in the forest for many, many years and it was the happiest times for all of them."

See...a story...as easy as 1-2-3!

Once upon a time, we used to tell lots of stories, stories about our lives, our ancestors, and the legends from our past that could only be told face to face. But we are losing this art, just as we are losing the art of writing letters or making pies from scratch. Telling stories was once the intimate way we connected with each other while passing on the great stories that were told generation after generation. Storytellers seem to be all but gone, but I believe there is a storyteller in all of us. It does, however, take practice and a few tips to bring a really good story to life. It all starts with "Once upon a time..." and the 1-2-3- step plan for anyone to find their storyteller inside.


When our brains become comfortable again with forming and telling a simple story, especially the kind that wide-eyed and eager-to-please children love to hear, a very specific kind of human connection begins to reform. Suddenly other stories will surface to our mind....real stories of our lives, stories of those who have lived before us, maybe even stories we were told as kids and just needed to be reminded of and we will begin to re-tell them to a generation of kids who, more than ever, need this unique and intimate human touch and connection in their lives.

TWEENS MAY SOUND CATCHY, BUT IT'S MISLEADING TO PARENTS
by Dianne Perea

Tween?! Tween?! My daughter is NOT a tween. Heck, she JUST turned 10! She's still just a little girl. She plays with her Barbie dolls, Polly Pockets, crayons and coloring books. Heck, she's not EVEN thinking about boys, much less getting crushes on them. I've got years before I have to have "that" conversation with her.

Sound familiar? Well, if it does, please listen up, because I've got a major news flash for you that came as a shocking wake-up call for me. I was checking my e-mail the other day when I got this message that looked suspicious and unfamiliar. I opened it. It was a password confirmation for my 10-year-old daughter who needed to be a registered user to play on Trollz, I think, and her password was a boy's name next to the word "boyfriend." I thought "This can't be right...this must be a mistake." But soon I realized it was not a mistake. So, a couple hours later, I found a quiet moment and asked my daughter if she knew a boy by the name of the name that was in the e-mail. "Nope," she said to me, just as cool as a cucumber. I asked her again, "Are you sure you don't know a boy by this name, or maybe you once knew a boy with this name." She didn't skip a beat with what she was doing. "Nope...no, Mom...don't know any boy with this name and never have." Then came the silence. Finally my daughter stopped what she was doing, raised her eyes and head and with the slightest bit of suspision and said to me, "Why do you ask mom?" I told her the truth, and suddenly I saw sheer panic come over her face. Then came the tears. "Mom, I don't want to have this conversation with you!! This is awkward! This is embarrassing! Can we stop talking now!?" We hadn't even started talking and she wanted to stop.

Here's my point. Parents...I'm just like you. I'm raising a 6-year-old and a 10-year-old and when I look at my girls, all I can see are my babies. But they are not babies, no matter how much I wish they still were. My 10-year-old is a good kid. She gets good grades, stays out of trouble, has one or two close friends who are really nice...but here's the kicker...she's the quiet type. Up until now, I've always just let this fact be what it is. I've never pushed any comfort zones with her or asked her to open up to me when she didn't want to. But those days are officially over. No one is more upset about this than my daughter. She HATES having "talks" with me now, but as I have explained to her, if we cannot talk now, we really won't be able to talk when she's 16. She cries every time I ask her to talk to me about anything personal, you know, more than the "How was your day, are you hungry, did you do your homework?" kind of conversation. But according to that e-mail I got, we've got to go beyond those questions, and like yesterday. Are we having fun right now? Absolutely not. Both she and I are having a hard time getting used to this new level of relationship and trust with each other, but I always have to keep in mind that I am the parent and I gotta stick to my guns for what is best for her.

I would like to personally ban the word tween when it comes to describing pre-adolescent kids, for it implies they have entered their teen years. Folks, our kids are dealing with pre-adolescent feelings and subjects at ages that would blow our minds...8, 9 10, 11. The Internet is no help, and I am one of those parents who is constantly monitoring where my child is going online, and I still can't keep up with her. So here's the bottom line. Talk to your kids. No...I mean, really talk to them, even if they give you every reason to believe there is no reason to have such awkward conversations with them. If they are not talking to you, trust me, they are talking to someone else. Please don't wait until it's too late, because even good kids can get led astray, just like that. A brick wall gets built one brick at a time, remember that. One little brick may not seem like much today, but over time, it could be the brick that seals the fate of the communication, or lack thereof, between you and your child. Remember this, too...if it hurts a little now, imagine how it's going to feel in 7 years.

Are You An Offspring Worshipper?
by Dianne Perea

No parent wants to read that they are doing something wrong when it comes to raising their kids, but to all the parents reading this, please be brave and take a quick survey to see if you just might be what I am calling in the parenting world an "Offspring Worshipper (OW)."

Do your kids:

Go from one activity to another without cleaning up after themselves?
Have to be told to do certain things over and over again?
Seem to view the household chores as being the parent's job and not theirs?
Do not help you bring in or put away the groceries unless you ask them to?
Do not help with the laundry unless you ask them to?
Do not keep their rooms consistently clean?
Don't seem to value your time as much as their own?
Constantly ask you if you can help them find something they have misplaced?
Ask for an allowance for doing what should be just expected behavior from them?
Have a difficult time taking criticism at school or at home?

If you can answer "yes" to even one of these questions, you might be an OW, and perhaps your parenting techniques are creating the very behavior in your kids that is driving you absolutely insane. Now, before you get too defensive, let me tell you that I am one of the worst offenders of OW, but I didn't realize I was until very recently, and might never have had it not been for what I thought was the worst thing God ever gave me: arthritis.

For the past several months, I have been waking up on Mondays so battered and beaten from the weekend's business of running around and picking up after the kids, going up and down stairs all day long, doing the laundry by myself, shopping and putting way groceries alone, and just overall being the household nanny, when it occurred to me one morning as I sat in bed with a heating pad on my back with two empty jars of Advil on my bedside table, "Wait a minute...wait just a darned minute. This is madness. I have a 10-year-old and a 6-year-old who are more than capable of giving me some help around here, so why are they not giving it to me, and worse, why am I not asking them for it?" It was these questions that made me stop and ponder for a long time...a really long time.

I always viewed myself as a pretty strict parent, or rather a parent who did not have spoiled kids. I mean, you have your Willy Wonka, Veruka Salt spoiled, and I knew my kids were not that, but as I pondered the "Why were my kids not helping me and why was I not asking them for their help?" question, I had to think that perhaps, just perhaps, my kids were spoiled in another kind of way. I slowly started to see and understand some things that I had never seen before.



I believe I am in this generation of parents who, through the very best of intentions, has inadvertently taken themselves and their kids down a rather strange road along the journey of parenting, a road I'm sure many of us never thought we'd find ourselves on.


The journey starts pretty much like all the other generations before ours: we want our kids to have more than we did - more education, more time to be creative, more time to develop their minds and imagination, more time to be a kid, more time to laugh, have fun, read, think, explore, etc. All these things are good things to want for your child, BUT...here comes the but...at what cost? Everything has a cost, and there are some things you just can't put on a credit card. This leads me to how I became an OW.


I wanted all these things for my kids so much that I became practically obsessed with them having it, willing to sacrifice anything...even my own body...for them. When we talk in terms of sacrifice, we very often also speak in terms of worship, for they go hand in hand, and this, my friends, is how I began to worship my children in terms of their every need, want and desire.

My children are not spoiled in the typical sense, but they are clearly overindulged. Perhaps to some this is only a game of semantics, but I am trying to make a very fine line distinction because I feel it is an important one to make. My kids have good manners, are pleasant to be around and are overall well behaved, but they have an expectation here at home and a sense of value about their time vs. my time that I have created over the years, and the only one can change these perceptions in them is me.

For the past several weekends, I asked my kids to help me out with the laundry, groceries, housework and to pick up after themselves without my having to tell them. At first, they did it with no complaints because I don't think they realized these would become reoccurring requests. When I finally sat them down and told them the main reason I needed their help on a consistent basis was because mommy's body was hurting so badly from doing too much work, my oldest one began to cry. She said she didn't realize she was making me work so hard. Then I cried. I guess I just assumed they saw me working and how hard it all was for me, but kids don't work like that...you gotta just tell them.

As a recovering OW, I know how hard it is to take one second away from your child's time to learn, laugh, play, explore, create...all those things our parents didn't have the time or money to afford to give to us as much as we wanted. But we were learning different lessons when we were young, lessons about sharing, going without and still enjoying life, working together, helping our parents out and being proud of it, being hard workers at a young age that gave us good, strong work ethics. These lessons gave us qualities that make us great people and good parents, qualities we want to instill in our kids but can't as long as we are OWs.


Things are going a lot better now in my home. The work around the house gets done faster, the kids are really proud of themselves and their efforts, and they have a sense of ownership of more than just their toys now. My kids have come to see mom in a whole new light and with that has come a whole new level of respect from them. Oh, and best of all, my back doesn't hurt as much. It can only get better from here.

Parenting Done Best From The Sidelines




Like most 10-year-old girls, my daughter is at that point where she is trying to decide what she wants to be when she grows up. Even though she has a pretty strong sense of her own identity, meaning she's quite comfortable in her own skin, she's having a hard time deciding if she wants to pursue her artistic side, her theatrical side, perhaps an athletic road or maybe an intellectual one. I watch her from the sidelines of her life, trying hard to be that gentle and helpful coach, guiding her and steering her clear of danger, yet encouraging her to put herself out there and take those risks that will allow her wings to unfold and enable her to fly. It's a painful thing to watch your child try something and fail, or try something that you know isn't right for him or her. My daughter has amazing gifts in creative writing and language that she's simply not interested in outside of the classroom, and no matter how many times I gently encourage her to pursue these talents, it's as if my words fall on deaf ears.

Now, is it just me or does it seem that humans want what we cannot attain easily, or in other words, we believe that if something comes to us naturally then it must not have as much value as the things we struggle hard for? Well, maybe this isn't the human condition, but I'm watching this phenomenon happen in my daughter. She seems to be ignoring her obvious, God-given talents in order to pursue something else ... anything else. What that "else" is, she has no clue yet, but she's working really, really hard to find it. In the meantime, I'm patiently searching with her, supporting her efforts the entire way, but whispering in her ear every now and then, "That sure was a great story you wrote the other day." She gives me that, "I know what you're trying to say, Mom," smile, at which time I immediately change the topic. This is how delicate my efforts must be, for anything else stronger would crush the paper-thin confidence she has about her innate abilities and strengths. Why does she seem to run from what she does best? I have no idea, but before I get too high on my horse right now, let me take a step down, and another back, back about 30 years and let's shift the focus off my daughter and onto me when I was her age.


I remember having lots of visions of what I wanted my life to look like when I grew up, none of which materialized. I pursued many career paths that were dead-end roads, but I always rationalized the journey with "right direction, wrong path." Never did I consider back then that I was actually going in the wrong direction because that would mean admitting I was doing something wrong, and of course, no one wants to admit he or she is wrong. It took me only 30 years to get it right, so who am I to judge my 10-year-old or anyone else for that matter?

Parents just want to save their children from making the same mistakes they made, but we all know it's not just as simple as saying, "Don't make all the mistakes I made." This expression makes the top 10 list of "Please don't say that to me, Mom and Dad!" Every single soul has to EXPERIENCE its own successes and mistakes, for this is how self-esteem is gained ... or lost. If we don't experience something ourselves, it's just not real ... it's just not ours.This is just the way life works. So like I said earlier, I have to learn how to let my daughter have her life, just like I've had mine, but my daughter also must know that I've got her back at all times. There's a big difference between playing the game for her and watching her play from the sidelines. The key is to encourage our children to come to us parents who are sitting on the sidelines and talk to us, give them our ideas and suggestions, rest with them, play with them, have fun with them, pat them on the back and tell them how proud we are of them and how much we love them and then send them back out into their "game of life." Their life, their field, their game. We parents are here to teach our children the skills they need to navigate and maneuver within the world for an entire lifetime. We would never dream of doing our children's homework for them, for what real and lasting skills would this teach them?

We, the parents, have the privilege of watching and advising our children as they grow and learn how to play the game of life. But we cannot, we must not, play for them. That is not responsible parenting, and more importantly, it robs our children of what is rightfully their life experiences, bruises and all. Remember, we have our own game fields somewhere that we're still playing on, and if we walk off our own field to play on our child's, we leave an empty spot on our team.

Perhaps we should invite our children to come and watch our life game and let them sit on our sidelines. I'm pretty sure they would be very interested in what we are doing and probably would have some encouraging and insightful words for us if we would just give them the opportunity.

Never Let A Movie Hold You Hostage
 

It has been my experience that most movie trailers do a good job of giving a clear impression of what the movie is about. The trailer is also critical in terms of determining if the movie is appropriate for younger viewers (PG-13 just isn't enough information.) Word of mouth, whether it's a written film review or an actual conversation with someone we know who has seen the film should also give us what we need in order to decide if a movie is for us or not. However, even with all these filtering methods, we still can make the wrong choice and end up sitting in the theater, maybe even with our kids, watching a movie we suddenly realize we shouldn't be. Before you know it, you're being held hostage by a film.

This happened to my family at the theatre when we went to see Monster House. Fifteen minutes into the film, all four of us were casting looks at one another, as if to say "Oh my goodness, we gotta get out of here. What are we going to do?" I made the poor decision of making my whole family sit through the whole movie, thinking it would improve and ultimately leave us feeling good. Oh, hindsight. The movie got worse and worse and worse. By the end of the movie, we were all just numb. The drive home was completely silent. When we got home, everyone flocked to the television/dvd player to watch one of their favorite movies that we own. I went into another room and just sobbed.

What is my point? Don't let a movie hold you hostage...ever. No matter how much you have paid for the ticket, no matter who is with you, no matter where you are in the theatre, no matter what, if you KNOW you shouldn't be watching a movie at the theater, WALK OUT, and walk out with you head high. If you have rented the film, return it and never think twice about what the rental fee was. Remember...you only get one psyche and it's your job to protect it. It only takes a second, a flash of a disturbing image to scorch our psyches, and sometimes the scorch can be so deep and lasting it will haunt us forever.

Our brains are very sensitive and so are our "guts." If you get that "gut" feeling about a movie, don't question it for one iota of a second. Your "gut" knows. Trust it.