Conscious Family Journal

Happy Flights: Avoiding Airplane Ear Pain

 

Welcome back to the deep, dark mysteries of family travel.

 

Last week I posted My Top 12 Tips for Traveling with Kids on Planes. I received feedback from several concerned moms, asking for suggestions on how to avoid the dreaded airplane ear pain. 

   

First, please note that I am not a health professional and I do not offer medical advice. I am writing based on my own personal experience here. 

   

Also, if you are traveling with infants or very young (non-verbal) children... you have my support, my sympathy – and if you happen to be sitting behind me on my next flight – my utmost understanding.

 

Caring for a baby in pain takes a special kind of grace. Comforting one in the cramped, sometimes hostile confines of an airplane should earn you some kind of medal.

Words Count: How to Clean Up Your Family’s Vocabulary

 

Conscious Parenting Skill-Building, Week 2

 

Do conscious families call each other idiots? 

   

We are just getting into the second week of our intensive focus on building conscious parenting skills. Last week, we learned How to Stop the Yelling.

   

This week, we will continue to work on developing positive communication skills. After a recent bout of profanity-laced conversation (and no, it didn’t all come from me), we needed another family meeting.

   

We’ve all heard the adage, “Actions speak louder than words.” I guess, I beg to differ.

 

The way we speak to each other sometimes is downright atrocious. The words we use, the tone of voice, the yelling and screaming. The words.

   

Why do siblings treat each other as if they were the worst of enemies?

 

Why do parents talk to their children as if they were beneath contempt?

 

Perhaps the second question is the answer to the first.

My Top 12 Tips for Traveling with Kids on Planes

 

Airplanes and your children: A good mix?

 

Greetings from 30,000 feet. We are somewhere over Baltimore – or maybe Richmond, Virginia – on our way to a family vacation in Florida.

Sunshine. Warmth. Grandma and Grandpa. Mickey Mouse.

 

What more could a sun-deprived, so-darn-tired-of-winter-I-could-just-spit, family from New England ask for??

This is a relatively easy trip for us.

   

I promised myself, when I adopted my sons (at the ages of two and three), that I would not give up my passion for travel. Just because there were three of us – and at that point, two of us became stroller-bound when fatigued or cranky – we needn’t give up the wonders of seeing the world up close and personal.

 

That would be taking the concept of “stay-at-home Mom” just a little too far.

How to STOP THE YELLING

Conscious Parenting Skill-Building, Week 1

  

Let’s face it, we are a loud family. 

    

I come from a family of yellers and despite my best intentions, I am about midway through raising a family of loud children.

  

This is not the way I want us to be.

  

I grew up as one of ten children. Making yourself heard in our house was sometimes a challenge. We all learned to yell (as well as to talk at the same time, like the ladies on “The View”), at an early age.

  

While I became quite proficient at the skill, I have realized for decades now that yelling as a communication style is only slightly less unsatisfying than being the person who is yelled at.

 

Most days, it sucks.

 

Note to self: Stop using the word “sucks”, especially in front of the kids.

The ABC's of Self-Love. Or, 5 Fun Ways to Be Your Own Valentine

 

“A... I’m adorable, B... I’m so beautiful, C... I’m a cutie full of charms.”

 

Perhaps, one of the greatest rites of passage into adulthood is learning to love ourselves fully.

 

As children, we absorb most of our sense of self-worth from our parents, peers, siblings, teachers and environment. When we “grow up,” we are expected to be confident, fully functioning adults who can help our children build their own healthy self-esteem.

  

The problem, of course, is that most of us did not grow up surrounded and supported by perfect people. Our parents, peers, siblings and teachers all had baggage of their own, leftover from their childhoods.

  

As Louise Hay puts it in her seminal work, You Can Heal Your Life, we are all “victims of victims.”

  

And so, as adults we must take responsibility for our own growth and healing. We must find a way to love ourselves fully, thereby building the skills necessary to love others fully.

The Ridiculous and the Sublime

 

Tales from the Bumpy Road to Consciousness

 

Warning: The following article contains descriptions of specific bodily functions that may be too explicit for some readers. Or maybe not.

 

I am trying to grow, really I am.

 

Each day, new learning opportunities present themselves. It might be a moment during meditation, when some new insight blooms into being and I am different than I was before.

 

It might be a moment of stillness, when I remember to stop and look at my child without judgment. And I see the Divine, right there in front of me. 

    

And I realize anew that God is all around me, and in me, and I only need to stop long enough to feel the grace. The absolute, amazing grace.

 

Of course, there are also many, many, many times when I can’t quite get there.

5 Ways to Boost Your Child's Self-Esteem with Mindful Eating

Conscious Parenting by Meg Brown for BodyEcology.com 

Anyone parenting today has heard a lot about self-esteem.

Put simply, self-esteem means holding yourself in high regard. It’s self-esteem that helps children handle conflicts, resist negative influences and quite possibly, have happier, healthier lives.¹

So as conscious parents, how can we positively influence our children’s self-esteem?

Cultivating A Healthy Self-Esteem

Building and maintaining healthy self-esteem is a lifelong journey.

You can help your child along that path by consistently offering experiences of belonging, learning and contributing, such as:

• Find ways to help your child feel like she belongs within the family.
• Help him develop a sense of competence – a deep-seated belief that he can learn to be successful.
• Teach them that they can contribute to the family’s welfare in a worthwhile way.²

Parenting from the Trenches: When Mommy Misbehaves

 

There is something about the intersection of peri-menopause and puberty that makes mid-life parenting extra special. On any given day, someone in the family unit is experiencing an explosion of hormones.

 

Some days, it is my eleven-year-old son.

 

Some days, it is forty-seven-year-old me.

 

Other days... you know where I’m going with this.

 

Today was a particularly “fun” example of what happens when we have a mother-son, head-on, hormonal collision.

 

Son (regarding evil younger brother): He’s lying! Why do you always believe him instead of me?

 

Mom: You have exactly one chance to tell me the truth now, or I will keep your cell phone for a whole week.

 

Son: Fine! I don’t know where my cell phone is anyway!

The Sky's the Limit

Is there anything you wouldn’t do to build a stronger connection with your child?

 

In her profoundly simple, Connection Parenting: Parenting through Connection instead of Coercion, through Love instead of Fear, Pam Leo suggests that a big part of conscious parenting is learning how to connect with our children.

 

“In today’s culture, we talk about spending quality time with children. We know that children need attention, but attention is not the same as connection. We can pay attention to children and still not connect with them emotionally. Children need high quality time to meet their minimum daily requirement for connection.” – Pam Leo

 

This is something that really struck a nerve with me.  As a former corporate crazy person and closet perfectionist, I find it all too easy to get totally caught up in my never-ending To-Do List.

  

When I slip into my manic must-do mode, I lose my connection to my children. They start to look like just two more objects in my bag of responsibilities that must be moved through time and space on schedule.

Glutton's Remorse: When You've Eaten Like There's No Tomorrow

 

So, one of the problems with attending a Super Bowl party when you don’t really care much about football, is that you tend to spend the entire evening hovering around the buffet table.

 

This would be the definition of mindless eating.

  

Which, of course, is the exact opposite of mindful eating.

 

Despite fifteen months of nutritional education and dedication to the Body Ecology Diet, I fell off the healthy eating wagon with a thump. Okay, to be perfectly honest, I kind of jumped.

  

It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, though. I was at my sister’s house, and she is always thoughtful enough to provide healthy options. There were fresh fruits and vegetables, which I enjoyed.

    

And meatballs in marinara sauce, cheese fondue, baked brie with raspberry compote, brownies and macaroons and Rice Krispie treats.

 

I could have resisted beer and chicken wings, but macaroons? Rice Krispie treats??