July 2010
1 post
Blog About Potty Training Abuse Court Case
I read about the Arizona child abuse trial involving Raul and Trica Varela and my heart sank—first for the child, and then for the parents. The broken bones and bruises inflicted on the Varela’s 4-year-old daughter during a “potty-training war” speaks to the frustration parents often experience when attempting to toilet train their children. While there is likely a lot more to the Valera...
December 2009
2 posts
Top Ten Things Kids Say That Ruin a Holiday Visit
(Especially when spoken in a whiny voice)
I don’t like it here!
I’m bored!
There’s no one to play with!
Something stinks!
Is there anything to eat?
I accidentally broke something!
The toilet’s stopped up!
I’m going to be sick!
How much longer do we have to stay?
Can we go now?
How to Stop Your Child From Saying Things That Can Ruin a Holiday Visit (Without the Use of a Gag, a Muzzle,...
Top Ten Things Kids Say That Ruin a Holiday Gift
(Especially when spoken in a whiny voice)
I already have this.
I had one of these before and it didn’t work.
I don’t like this.
How much did this cost?
But I wanted (something else).
I want what (someone else) got.
This is for babies.
My present is better than yours.
Can we take this back and get something else?
Is this all I get?
How to Help Your Child Say the Right Thing So He or...
November 2009
1 post
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: The Mommy...
When one attends as many conventions as I’ve attended during the last 30 years, they all start to blend together into one huge blur. But such was not the case with the Child’s Play Communications’ 2nd Annual Bloggers Brunch put together by a group of premier mommy bloggers. The event began with a panel of six mommy bloggers who shared the basics of what they do and what they don’t do. All six...
October 2009
5 posts
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: A Perfect Family...
As we were pulling away from the Disneyland Hotel, my older granddaughter uttered something that every parent or grandparent hopes to hear immediately following a family adventure. “Everything was absolutely perfect,” she sighed wistfully. “I had so much fun.” Several things prompted her remark. For starters, Disneyland is a pretty magical place. However, as evidenced by the myriad of crying...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Kids and Scary...
An invitation to my nephew’s wedding in Southern California presented a perfect opportunity to fulfill my promise to take my granddaughters to Disneyland. Some accumulated coupons and a red-hot, off-season package deal allowed us to stay for full four nights and days at the hotel and theme park. We were happily ensconced in our methodical efforts to ride all of the rides we had circled on the...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: The Trouble with...
I should have suspected that something was up when the doors opened on a subway train that I was boarding and everyone except eight rowdy teens disembarked and scrambled into the neighboring car. But by the time I figured it out, the train was ready to leave the station. So I hopped onboard and took the first seat that I came to. When the train started, rap music began to blast from a boom box and...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: The Ups and Downs...
I love grandparenting. I really do. But just like everything else, it has its drawbacks. Ask most grandparents and they’ll tell you that one of the best parts about grand-parenting is the fact that that you can spoil your grandchildren to death, then send them home where their parents have to do all of the hard stuff. While that might be true, I always say, “Control is proportionate to...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: The Hamster...
We experienced quite a trauma involving Kaytee Button last week. Kaytee is the Teddy Bear Hamster that I strongly encouraged my granddaughter not to get right before she left for a long summer vacation. I argued that it would be far more reasonable for her to wait until she returned home so that she would not be required to find someone to care for the animal while she was gone. I even went so far...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Teaching Children...
Okay. It’s a fair question. “How do you teach children about sex without causing them to “become sexual” too early?” someone asked after reading my last blog. First of all, parents need to understand and accept the fact that human sexuality is a part of human life and human beings are born with sexual attributes and natures. So, “becoming sexual” begins in the womb. Next, parents need to treat...
September 2009
12 posts
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Overreacting to...
Talk about overreacting! I’m sure that by now most people have heard about the plight of the Demaree family who took a memory stick containing 144 family photos to Wal-Mart to get them developed. Included in the huge batch of photos were 11 shots taken of the Demaree children during bathtime. I have a hunch what these photos were like, because similar photos are strewn throughout my kids’ photo...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Painful...
A few days ago I went in for my annual mammogram. For anyone who has not had this procedure, it would be difficult to understand how painful it can be. However this wasn’t true for the seven women who shared the waiting room with me. Everyone was engrossed in the soap opera playing out on the TV monitor when a piercing scream emanated from behind the closed door. All of a sudden, the TV drama...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Giving Kids...
Yesterday I did a book signing at the Ronald McDonald House in New York. It’s a wonderful place, and I had a wonderful time. As a cancer survivor, I was reminded of an experience I had many years ago, immediately following the final surgery that has allowed me to be cancer-free for over 35 years. Part of my recovery program included doing volunteer work at the City of Hope in Southern California....
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Sophisticated...
I’ve always liked Walter Cronkite. That’s why I was one of the first people in line to purchase his autobiography shortly after he passed away. It’s a great book and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in reading about politics from an evenhanded perspective. There was just one quote that made me wince—even though I am certain that it was not intended to be controversial. In fact, it...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Things Not...
My sister is a librarian and has impeccable taste when it comes to evaluating anything with a storyline. So while I was laid up with recent foot surgery, I decided to follow through with her recommendation that I watch the TV show Mad Men. For an entire weekend, I hunkered down on my living room couch and powered through back-to-back episodes from rented DVDs. Having been a young adult during the...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: An Open Letter to...
Recently the success of a camp that my son conducted in Hawaii prompted him to decide that he was going to remain in Hawaii with his family for several months. The decision came from out of nowhere and had a serious impact on prior commitments that my son had made before moving to Hawaii. One commitment involves my granddaughters being in a family wedding that has been in the making for well over...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Using Emergency...
I absolutely cringed when I heard a spokesperson for the September 12th healthcare demonstration in Washington D.C. answer a question from a CNN news commentator. The commentator asked, “I realize that you are pleased with the healthcare that you are able to purchase for yourself, but what do you say to the millions of people who cannot afford healthcare?” The spokesperson answered, “The...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Dealing With a...
In my last blog, I told you about Dr. Harvey Karp’s highly effective, five-step approach to calming a crying infant. A mother of a toddler who read that blog asked me, “That approach might work with an infant, but what if you are cooped up in a plane with a hysterical toddler?” While Dr. Karp could most likely address that question, I have a bit of advice that might work as well. It begins with...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: The Challenge of...
Last weekend, I flew from New York to San Francisco for my nephew’s wedding. It was a long flight and the plane was loaded to the gills. A young family of four was seated across the aisle from where I was sitting. The oldest child was a toddler, and the youngest child was an infant. The moment the plane lifted off, the infant began to cry and didn’t stop until the mother fled the plane with the...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: President Obama’s...
There were a lot of things to appreciate about President Obama’s speech this week to schoolchildren. But as I watched it on TV, one particular section of the speech jumped out at me. It went something like this: You can’t let your failures define you. Instead, you need to let them teach you things that you need to learn. The President reinforced his statement with several stories of very...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Are Addictions a...
The other day, I overheard a mother tell her young son that a teenage panhandler they had just passed on the sidewalk was “a drug addict.” When the boy asked her what that meant, she answered, “He’s a bad person.” I’m not certain how or when addictions became a moral issue. But I am certain that the two subjects do not belong in the same category. To me, addictions relate to pragmatic issues...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Keeping an Open...
When I was in college, it was my privilege to take philosophy from Paul Delp, a very wise professor who affirmed to me the value of approaching every subject with an open mind. Before then, I had been taught that it was virtuous for a person to buy into a system of beliefs and “have the backbone to stick to those beliefs, no matter what.” My amazing professor reasoned that systems of belief...
August 2009
11 posts
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: What Do...
Starting with a 1999 trip to Australia to witness the birth of my first granddaughter, I’ve been intricately involved in every phase of my granddaughters’ lives. Even in the early years when they lived in New Mexico and I lived in Arizona, I spent one or two weeks with Waniso and Sekai every month—either at my house or theirs. My involvement only intensified when, in 2004, my son suggested that...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Ted Kennedy’s...
The announcement that Ted Kennedy passed away brought back a very fond memory.
I was fortunate enough to watch him and Hillary Clinton present to the Senate a resolution regarding education. I was in Washington D.C. to help my mom fulfill her lifelong dream of visiting the nation’s capital city when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. Our visit to the capital building was one of the...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Back to...
Given the fact that children spend the majority of their weekday waking hours at school, it is imperative that school is an enjoyable experience for them. Parents can insure that this is the case by paying attention and by getting involved when necessary. There are many factors that affect whether or not a child will enjoy school. But one of the most influential factors seems to be the...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Back to...
I had a college professor who began her teaching career in a makeshift, one-room school located in a remote area of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She was at her best when regaling us with what seemed to be far-fetched stories about the indigenous people with whom she worked. One such story involved the installation of a small U.S. postal outlet inside the general store. Before then, there was little...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Back to...
I was having dinner with two business associates the other day. Each had a daughter who was starting their first year of teaching, and the men thought that it would be fun for all of us to get together to celebrate. Fifteen minutes after meeting Amanda and Gretchen, I knew that the New York Public School System had snagged two additional amazing teachers. Several glasses of wine later, Gretchen’s...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Back to...
Over the years, I have heard more opinions about the right way to begin a school year than I can recall. Among the many approaches to starting a school year in a way that will ward off classroom chaos and keep things under control, there are two approaches that immediately come to mind. First there is the belief that a teacher needs to start off as a strict disciplinarian so that students will...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Back to...
While I seldom forget a nightmare, I almost always forget a good dream. But such was not the case with a dream that I had the other night. It caused me to wake up smiling, and even as I write this blog about the dream, I find myself with a smile of my face. In my dream, it was the first day of school and I was a third-grade teacher greeting my new students. The room was beautifully organized and...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: The Debate About...
It took weeks to pack everything up and move my entire family to New York, and during that time, a lot was lost in the shuffle. One loss was my health insurance. A missed payment and non-response to several crucial notifications gave my insurance company the out they were looking for, and they dropped me like a hot rock. Finding an insurance company willing to insure a 60-year old woman with...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: The Cultural...
I work with an amazing first-generation Polish woman who moved to America many years ago and settled into a Polish neighborhood in Brooklyn. While she speaks “broken” English, and I speak no Polish, we still manage to carry on some pretty interesting conversations. One recurring subject of our conversations is my friend’s regret that the children in her neighborhood “have blended in so much you...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Beating the...
It’s hot. It’s muggy. And the kids I’m passing on the sidewalk are cranky. So it goes without saying that their parents are cranky too. Heat plus cranky kids plus cranky parents is a recipe for disaster. And no matter where I am outside my apartment, I find myself holding my breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s time for a change in the hot summer weather. But since we mortals have no...
July 2009
12 posts
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Neda’s Death and...
Recently, I went to a family restaurant that had television monitors throughout and a few video games that were located in a special section. Although the combination of TV and video game sounds was almost deafening, I had a hankering for the mini corn dogs on the menu, so I decided to ignore the sounds and stay. The hostess led me to a table directly under a monitor and facing a table for four....
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Capital...
I can’t get Byrd and Melanie Billings off of my mind. The ruthless killing of two incredible people, parents of 16 children, 12 of whom they adopted, many with special needs, is overwhelming. This senseless tragedy becomes even more egregious in light of the recent discovery that the apparent motive for the crime was financial gain. Murdering the Billingses for money was like tossing aside the...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Once a Parent,...
There’s not a stepmother on the face of the earth that wasn’t rolling her eyes when she read the recent People Magazine article about the “new romance” between Jon (of Jon and Kate Plus Eight TV program fame) and a twenty-two-year-old woman who “likes to party.” I know because I speak from firsthand experience. In the article, Jon states, “I’m in a new period in my life and feel very free.” Now,...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Drugs, Alcohol,...
As far as I can tell, there’s only one good thing that came out of my excessively conservative and restrictive background. That is the fact that I have never smoked, I’ve never used illegal drugs, and I didn’t try alcohol until I was well into my thirties—which resulted in my never developing a dependence on any of these things. While I am not foolish enough to conclude from my own experience that...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Adult-Oriented...
My granddaughter graduated from kindergarten and the two of us celebrated by spending the day together in the city. After spending time in Central Park, FAO Schwarz, the Disney Store, and her favorite restaurant, we went to see a movie. I knew that we would have no trouble finding one because, when Hollywood discovered that kids’ movies are cash cows, it started cranking out full-length animated...
Parenting Advice from Joy Berry: Military...
When I pass by an accident on the highway, I never look. This is because the one time I did look, the images I saw were indelibly imprinted on my brain and they still haunt me to this day. So when I recently saw a headline that read, “1 in 8 returning soldiers suffers from PTSD,” I thought to myself, “They must mean 7 in 8 returning soldiers suffer from PTSD, because 1 in 8 simply can’t be true.”...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Michael Jackson’s...
A lot has been said about Michael Jackson’s plastic surgery—both before and after his death. Most of the comments have been critical. Some people criticize the outcome of Michael’s various surgeries, but most criticize the decision to have any kind of plastic surgery at all. Like everyone else, I have my thoughts about why people are critical about Michael’s surgery. Plastic surgery is expensive...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Chivalry Is Not...
I’m here to tell you that chivalry is not dead. It’s merely manifesting itself in unexpected ways. The other day, I was loaded down with a purse, briefcase, and roller-bag, so it was imperative for me to find a seat on the crowded subway. Doing so in New York has become a full-on contact sport. When competing against teens that are hell-bent on sitting so they can better access their various...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: A Parent’s...
Do you want to hear a bedtime story that would test any young parent’s metal? If you do, try this one on for size. When my hyperactive daughter was barely three years old, she taught herself how to disengage all of the locks on our front door. Her favorite time to use her Houdini-like skill was in the middle of the night when everyone in the family was asleep. She loved escaping into the night and...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Three Horrific...
Someone almost punched out my lights today. It wasn’t the first time, and it probably won’t be the last. I had several meetings in the city. The last one took place in a restaurant across from a movie theater. After the meeting, there was just enough time to catch a movie before heading home. I hurried to the box office, purchased my ticket, and rushed to my seat just as the movie was starting....
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Children And Pets
My son and daughter-in-law vastly underestimated my granddaughter when they came up with roadblocks specifically designed to dampen her desire and slow her resolve to get a hamster. The main obstacle was her need to come up with enough money to purchase the pet plus all the equipment and supplies needed to take care of it. Given today’s inflated cost of cages and other necessary accouterments,...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: My Amazing...
An 18-year-old Hispanic girl who lives in my neighborhood saw me transporting my two dogs in special carriers that enable people to take their pets with them on the subway. She needed a way to transport her pet rabbit to the vet, and she approached me about borrowing one of my carriers. During her pick up and return of the carrier, I noticed her outstanding connection with my two dogs and asked...
June 2009
12 posts
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Answers To Three...
QUESTION #1: Is there a difference in the advice that one would give to a child who has lost a parent after a long-term illness and a child who has lost a parent suddenly? Losing a parent is one of the biggest traumas that any child can encounter. And whatever the circumstances surrounding a parent’s death, getting over it is always extremely difficult. Losing a parent unexpectedly and losing a...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: America’s...
An extremely precocious fourth-grade boy lives in my building. Oftentimes he comes into my apartment for a snack from the cupboard that I keep well stocked for my grandchildren and other kids in our complex. The boy plays the cello and would rather read than play sports. In addition, he prefers to have one friend instead of many, and enjoys playing with girls as much as he enjoys playing with...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Farrah Fawcett’s...
I was riding the subway into the city. Sitting next to me was a father and his elementary-school-age son. The father was reading a newspaper article about the death of Farrah Fawcett while his son played an electronic hand-held game. When the father finished the article, he folded up the newspaper and sat quietly. The boy asked, “Who is that woman?” The father answered, “She was a famous movie...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Michael Jackson’s...
Like millions of people, I was affected by the death of Michael Jackson. But the thing that bothered me most was something that might not have bothered others. It sickens me to hear all of the amazing post-death tributes to Michael in light of the way he was treated when he was alive. Salacious accusations and inappropriate labels were steadfastly maintained, even though he was legally exonerated....
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: So What Can We...
“Jon and Kate plus Eight” is a reality show involving two parents and their eight children. Recently the couple announced their decision to separate and the media exploded with opinions regarding their decision. The decision to maintain or abandon a marriage that is struggling must begin with an honest assessment of why one is choosing to stay or leave. If two people are completely compatible but...
Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: So What Can We...
The subject of divorce is a continuous thread that runs throughout public consciousness. However, sometimes it takes center stage when a well-known couple announces that they are divorcing. Such is the case with Jon and Kate, the stars of a reality show that also features their twins and sextuplets. While I don’t watch the show, it’s hard to ignore the media hoopla that has tracked the couple’s...