From Susan Merrill
The Blog
Sexualizing 7 Year Old’s – Ugh!
They are at it again! Abercrombie & Fitch have a new kind of bikini for 7 – 14 year old girls and it’s padded and push-up. Ugh, ugh, ugh. I am tired of this company. They have been doing this for years. A & F has had so many opportunities to change their sexualizing ways but have refused (see Today Show video below). In fact, it seems like they almost enjoy the sensationalized attention they receive. As a mom I will not allow my children to shop there and if you didn’t either, we probably wouldn’t have to put up with this company in a few years. Make it your mombligation! Refuse to purchase their products in the hopes that they will cease to exist.
Read Post →Mombligation: Walking Your Child Through Tough Decisions
Hey there! Before we dive into the blog, we wanted to make sure you were able to get to this article about7 Things a Mom Can Do To Make Her Children Strong. The link in today’s Espresso Minute comes here instead of going to the article, so we didn’t want you to miss it! Ok, now onto the Momligation you won’t want to miss… Two of my children were adopted when they were 9 and 12 years old. They both had a rough start to life and had to work through some training that they missed in their younger years. One of the bigger issues was in the area of obedience. I was really frustrated with their inability to learn from mistakes. No matter what I did if they wanted something they took it. Finally, their counselor explained to me why I was seeing toddler behavior in tweenage actions. Children go through several stages in understanding obedience. A child cannot skip stages and must progress one by one through them all. The stages are: Stage 1 – I see it, I want it, I take it. Stage 2 – I see it, I want it, I take it but I …
Read Post →Dream Big
So many kids and people take what they have for granted – health, talent, opportunities. And because they don’t see what they have they don’t challenge themselves to dream that big dream, formulate a vision for their lives that is intimidating to them but not impossible. Watch this and dream big, show it to your child and tell them to dream big.
Read Post →i Am A Generation iY Groupie Parent
I was at a convention recently and heard a fascinating summation of a new breed of parents. Of course, what captured my attention and scared me was that I could see myself in some of what he was describing. The speaker was Dr. Tim Elmore. The topic was parenting the iY Generation. iY’s are the children born in the latest wave (after 1990) of Generation Y or the Millennials. Elmore has done a lot of homework on this generation. I would know because with five iY children in my family, I have my own subset of the population to test his theories on. However, it was not Elmore’s analysis of the iY children but of their parents that you might want to think about. He calls us Groupie Parents. I am afraid he has good cause. Just as a groupie idolizes a rock star, groupie parents idolize their children. I was deeply convicted and am rapidly making some parenting adjustments on my 5iY’s as I now call them. Here is the short take on Groupie Parents from Dr. Elmore’s book Generation iY Our Last Chance to Save Their Future.
Read Post →Hero
“Heroes can impact a person’s life greatly. My hero is my mom. I greatly admire her because she helps me in many ways. A hero doesn’t have to be someone famous. It can be an average person or even below average. It is just someone that you look up to and want to be like in some ways. My hero is my mom because she wants me to succeed and will push me in different ways to get me there and because being a mother is a very difficult task and I admire her for undertaking that task. My mom is always pushing me to do my best in everything. She wants me to do well in school, sports, and everything I do. She thinks that I have lots of potential for things even when I don’t think I can do something. She is very hard on me but in the end I will probably look back and be happy that she did push me. Being a mother is a tough job. My mom is always busy running errands, working, picking up kids from school, and the list goes on. While all this is happening the kids in our family …
Read Post →Children before Marriage? Think Twice!
I thought this was a very interesting article from CNN and I would love to further question the constituents polled by Pew. I wonder why so many Millennials value raising children above marriage? Is it because they are discouraged about marriage? Have they experienced more relationship heartache than previous generations? Or are they just following a popular trend? It seems dangerously out of order. I have a theory that there are several “markers of maturity.” This first marker is getting a job and taking care of yourself. The second is marriage and learning to selflessly care about someone other than yourself. The third marker is the hardest–raising children. It is challenging because it is very sacrificial. As a parent you should care more about your child than yourself. Of course, with each marker you pass you become a better, wiser, and hopefully, less selfish person.
Read Post →My Sister Is So Darn Smart
My sister started teaching full time this year which has really but a damper on our talk time. I used to be able to call her on my way to work. Now we can only talk after work and the kids definitely get in the way of that. So this week I was reduced to a Sunday call and she answered from her car speaker phone. What followed was not what I had desired (a family recap with her alone) but a conversation with “the car” full of charged up kids on an expedition. It seems they were en route to park #5. It was invite a friend and go park hopping day and she didn’t mean Disney Park hopping. Nope this was a high energy, blood pumping, family fitness expedition with the final destination being a hot dog roast at Park #6. It was fun, it was free and why didn’t I think of it? She is so smart my sister!
Read Post →10 Days and Counting
Ten days left. That’s all I have left. Got to keep pushing – so the weights went on today. I know it seems silly, but do you have any idea how much those ski boots weigh? This is hard. The one I am taking skiing is the one that wrote the Hero paper. So, I don’t care how much my pacemaker has to kick in to get me up and down that mountain – I am motivated!
Read Post →My Up Hill Battle With a Down Hill Payoff
Two weeks from today. That’s all I have left. For 30 days now I have been in an up hill battle to get in shape for the opportunity to take my son skiing. The battle really began on February 3 when I had heart surgery – an ablation – to fix an electrical impulse in my heart that sends it to 220 whenever it feels like it. It was my second ablation and one of a dozen heart surgeries (I have a pacemaker). Without it no skiing. The ablation was actually the easy part when I compare it to the daily grind of pushing myself after a year of no exercise. I really don’t like exercising especially when I am under pressure. It’s just scary when your heart is so unpredictable. But I love my son and he asked me to take him. So two weeks is all I have.
Read Post →Stay Informed
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