Search Results for: blog is your toddler destined to be a troublemaker

Does Your Toddler Make You Cry?

If he doesn’t sleep through the night, is a hellion on the playground, goes on joy rides without you knowing it or breaks into other people’s homes when he’s supposed to be in time-out, then there’s a good chance you’ve shed a few tears in the last week or so. The good news: If you’re a mom and your toddler’s behavior makes you weep, you aren’t alone. Whether you have a rambunctious toddler or not, a new poll shows that the average woman cries for 12,012.92 hours over the course of 78.5 years. To put that into perspective, women basically … Continue reading →

Is Your Toddler Destined to be a Troublemaker?

He is if his name is: Alec Ernest Garland Ivan Kareem Luke Malcolm Preston Tyrell Walter Ah, so, now we finally know what’s in a name… trouble, trouble, and trouble. At least that’s what the experts maintain. And by experts I mean a professor from Shippensburg University named David Kalist. Writing in Social Science Quarterly, Kalist insists that giving your boy any of the aforementioned names could land him in jail later in life. Why? Kalist believes that giving newborn males odd, girly or strange first names it “increases the tendency toward juvenile delinquency.” Kalist based his conclusions on a … Continue reading →

Think First

“You’re a waste of human skin.” I’ve thought that about several people I’ve met over the years, but I certainly wouldn’t say it to them. It’s not because I fear their reaction; rather, it boils down to self control. Think before you act; in the end, it could prevent a lot of unnecessary drama. Too bad parents in Berlin, Maryland, couldn’t exercise the simple rule. Doing so, would have kept them out of the headlines. Unfortunately, now, the entire world knows the small town is home to a bunch of bullies. You can read all about the bully war thanks … Continue reading →

Grandmother Bullied on School Bus

Oh the lessons you can learn on a school bus. Lesson #1: Don’t bully an innocent grandmother/bus monitor, and then smirk as someone shoots video of you in the act. Because… Lesson #2: The chances of said video going viral are astronomical and… Lesson #3: The chances of said grandmother having the last laugh are even greater. Just ask Karen Klein. The 68-year-old grandmother from upstate New York has endured plenty of pain in her life, including the death of her beloved husband and the tragic loss of her son to suicide. However, it took a bus full of tweenage … Continue reading →

Has School Security Gone Too Far?

It’s the stuff urban legends are made of: A 10-year-old boy from Tennessee is bored out of his mind while eating lunch at his elementary school cafeteria, so he decides to chew off pieces of his pizza to resemble a gun. He then proceeds to wave the slice of pie around like it’s the real deal, and ends up getting being banished to the “silent table” for the rest of the semester. Sound absurd? Perhaps, but it’s also 100 percent true. According to news reports, Nicholas Taylor will be dining in silence for allegedly using his teeth to form a … Continue reading →

The BFF

My daughter has a wonderful BFF. Make that 20 BFFs. At the end of each school day she tells me about all the fun she had playing with her BFF… du jour. My kid is an equal opportunity playmate and sees everyone as a potential best friend. She’s seven. At first I thought it was sweet that she rotated BFFs amongst the gaggle of girls and boys in her grade. Then, I wondered if she was the only kid in the class without a true blue pal. However, after reading a new report about bullying and the social ostracization of … Continue reading →

Ready, Set, School: Bullying

Now that my daughter knows that she will be getting the teacher she prayed for (and by pray, I mean saying a healthy dose of novenas and lighting enough candles to burn down a Cathedral) she is happy to be heading back to school. Me, not so much. I am a bit concerned about the bullying problem that surfaced last year. I am hoping that the school has come up with a new approach to addressing the issue rather than simply putting a band-aid over it. We’ll see. School starts in two weeks. In the meantime, I’ve been consulting with … Continue reading →

Dread

Four words you never want to hear your 6-year-old utter: “Mommy, what’s Dr. Phil?” I wish the question had been prompted by a random commercial for the daytime talk show, but alas, that would be too easy. No, my daughter’s query about the man, who implores millions of people to “get real,” had nothing to do with an errant encounter with a TV ad and everything to do with a run-in with a socially “mature” 7-year-old on the school playground. “Where did you hear about Dr. Phil?” I asked, trying hard to hide the panic in my voice. “Ella,” my … Continue reading →

Genealogy and Behavior

You already know that your ancestors contributed to how you look. Did you know that they also might have contributed to how you act? This is the classic debate of nature vs. nurture. How much of who we are is determined by our ancestry, and how much is determined by our environment? The debate has been going on for a long time, and there is still no clear winner. I began to wonder about the impact of heredity on personality a couple of weeks ago. One day, I noticed that my son does the same thing that I do when … Continue reading →

“Hey, Stupid!”

“Mommy, am I stupid?” When those words came out of my five-year-old daughter’s mouth the other day while I preparing lunch, I almost dropped the knife I was using to cut strawberries. “Stupid” is a banned word in our home, so I knew my daughter’s query was not joke. “Stupid?” I repeated, partially hoping that I had misunderstood her. “Yeah… am I stupid?” “Absolutely not!” I responded. “Why would you ask such as thing?” “Today two first graders called me stupid.” Oh really, I thought, trying to disguise my anger while simultaneously squashing thoughts of doing something, well, stupid, to … Continue reading →