C. Lynn Williams's Blog, page 33

MOTHERS Be Nice…

Competing for your son’s attention? Stop! Find someone your own age to rely on and release him from your servitude! You have had your son all of his life, and it is time for him to spread his wings and fly away from your nest. He’s 18 now. You’ve taught him how to take care of himself (cook & clean his clothes and the house), as well as select, treat and respect nice women right? So be NICE to his girlfriend when he brings her to your house. Don’t try to find some reason NOT to like her. His choice of girlfriend may not be who you would have chosen for him. It’s OKAY! Will she be everything that you want for him? Maybe not…then again her parents may feel the same way about him. I am not telling you to keep quiet if you believe your son is dating a ‘black widow’ or something!

Speaking from experience as both a mother of sons, and a woman being brought home to meet “his parents” for the first time, mothers are some rough people to get to know. If your son’s girlfriend uses slang, she’s too common. If she uses an extensive vocabulary, you decide that she thinks she’s better than ‘us’. OMG! He will always be your Pampered Prince – your boy. The true conversation occurs if he asks your opinion of her. If not, don’t offer it.

It’s said that our sons choose women like us.  If you (and his dad) have raised him properly, he will make a great husband and father. You really do want someone to love him and take him off your hands…living with you into his forties is not the plan is it?

C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru

Author & Parent Coach

Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)

The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)

Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Communications, 2013)

Keep Your Hands (and Other Body Parts) to Yourself

At the risk of sounding insensitive, I admit that I have gotten desensitized to news about priests and coaches molesting boys and girls. It happens so often, it seems like daily news. I don’t like it, and it seems to take forever for the truth to come out (the kids are usually adults). Of course, nobody believes that a man of the cloth or a favorite coach is touching our kids inappropriately. Wake up America! Did it ever occur that the ‘acting out’ that our kids are doing, may be related to a secret they are ashamed to tell you?

What I still can’t stomach, is when our teen girls tell us (mothers) that they are being sexually molested by their fathers, stepfathers, uncles (family members) and we don’t listen. What is that about? As I mentor teen girls and young women, I want to say that I’m shocked that mothers prefer to believe their (in some cases) pedophile boyfriend to their own daughter. The sex can’t be that good. To make matters worse, you kick your daughter out, because you can’t possibly believe her. Now what is she supposed to do?

Remember the movie Precious? Precious’ mother knew her husband (Precious’ biological dad) was having sex with his daughter and had fathered Precious’ two children. Yuck! But it happens, probably more often than we care to admit, and it’s a dirty little family secret – especially if a child is born. If there was ever a reason for castration, sexually molesting your kid, niece, nephew or granddaughter is number one as far as this mother is concerned! What are your thoughts?

C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru

Author & Parent Coach

Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)

The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)

Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Communications, 2013)

Just Let Go

Eagle and her babies

Ever had a problem that you could not resolve? Sometimes that’s what parenting is to me, a series of problems (challenges) that seem momentarily unresolvable. The kid that was never a problem growing up, is suddenly a thorn in your side when they move into their 20s. You think, by the time they reach their twenties, you have completed your job as a parent. However, many of our adult children come back home and then what? Or maybe you had high hopes for that child that you waited years for, and once they came into your life, they never have the aspirations to stand on their own and make a living. In fact they are still ‘living’ with you. What do you do?

As mothers, I think it’s doubly hard to push our eaglets out of the nest. I know birds do it all the time, but human mothers are different from animals because we have reasoning abilities. We say to ourselves, ‘well they’re (our children) having a hard time finding a job’ or ‘he’s running with the wrong crowd’ or ‘if I were a better parent, she would be doing ______’ or ‘if I don’t help them, who will?’

We make lots of excuses to ourselves and others when our kids (young or old) have not succeeded the way we would like. It’s probably one of the most painful lessons a mother or father face (in their parenting career). Today let’s use a phrase I learned years ago called “Let Go and Let God”. Unless your child is disabled (mentally or physically), let’s gently push them out of our nest. Encourage them to take that next step, stop making excuses for them, and stop doing things that cripple them. I know it seems scary, but isn’t our job to help them grow into adults that can take care of themselves?  #Parenting101

 

C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Parent Coach

Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)

The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)

Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Communications, 2013)

Is Your Teen a Sex Fiend?

As I sit here thinking back on the things I was most curious about as an adolescent girl; sex was probably one of them. Being curious was one thing; acting on this curiosity was altogether different. My parents were really clear. Sex was a no-no and I knew why. As much as my mother explained about being a ‘good girl’, it took my gossipy guy friends in the old neighborhood to help me stay a ‘good girl’. They talked about all the girls who were giving up their virginity and how easy they were. Who wanted to be considered easy?

Nowadays doesn’t help that sex topics are openly portrayed on TV, the radio, in music videos – EVERYWHERE! A few suggestive lyrics, raging hormones and a free afternoon for your tween or teen child is all they need to get it (as the kids say) “on and popping”. In other words, they will have had sex and become pregnant before you realize that they are attracted to ‘the next door neighbor’. Don’t always assume that they are going where they say they are going. Offer them a ride, and sometimes call the house of their girl or guy friend to make sure they are actually there instead of in the back seat of someone else’s car. Also explain that oral sex is still considered sex. Many young girls have told me that ‘servicing’ a boy is not considered sex and its okay.

So what do you do? One: Have open and honest conversations with them & their friends. I remember asking my daughter to promise to tell me before she wanted to have sex. Well of course she said ‘Mom, I’m not doing that’. Two: Get them involved in after school activities and make sure they get to those activities. If your daughter loves basketball, help her try-out and get on the team. Maybe music is their muse. If so, have them join the Band Club; try out for the fall or spring play; join the Chess Club or Debate team. Having them have something to do after school besides homework keeps them from having time to explore their fantasies; helps them with time management and gives them a good night’s sleep because they will be tired.

The teen years are a time of exploration. Help them channel that sexual energy into something positive and postpone grandparent years if you can. Happy Parenting~

C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru

Author & Parent Coach

Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)

The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)

Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Communications, 2013)

When Parents Make Mistakes

Parents are invincible…infallible…Human!

My husband and I saw Black Nativity last night and I am glad we did! Being a person of color, we usually support movies with African-American actors, directors, film writers during the first weekend the movie airs to support it financially. While I love, Forest Whitaker and Angela Bassett, I’m not crazy about musicals, so I almost missed a golden opportunity. If Black Nativity is still playing in your area, go see it! Anyway I digress… There was a line in the movie that absolutely spoke to me about PARENTING! Rev. Cobbs (Forest Whitaker), the estranged father of Naima (Jennifer Hudson) said “Parents make mistakes…I am so sorry that I meddled in your life.”

Have you ever felt that way about something that occurred between you and your teen or adult child? Were you able to admit it and have an honest conversation with your son or daughter? Or did pride keep you from opening the doors of communication with that person that you love with all of your heart and soul? The movie had another theme that has been really messing up my parenting theory about our teen (or twenty-something) daughters getting pregnant and having children without being married. When my daughter was a teen, we had the ‘SEX’ talk a few times. I wanted to make sure that she understood the consequences to getting pregnant. I felt (and told her) that she would have to move out if she got pregnant before getting married. I felt that way because she, her dad and I talked candidly about waiting until marriage to have sex; if she couldn’t wait then use birth control. I know you’re thinking OMG – it’s okay for her to have sex??? She did not get pregnant, but what if she had? Would I have made her leave home for this mistake? Would we have been estranged? What about her future? Would she have gone to college, grad school, or become the professional woman she is today?

Well, no I didn’t want her to have sex, but let’s be honest here;  part of the teen experience is that LOVELY puberty that starts to occur to our kids when they turn 12 or 13. The boys you couldn’t stand in fifth and sixth grade, now start to look a little less like wimps and more like hotties! A kiss on the lips, turns into raging hormones! Right?!? If your daughter loses control (and has sex) she’s screwed (no pun intended) unless she is taking birth control. Again I digress. So for mothers like me who take that hard line, what are our daughters supposed to do if they find themselves pregnant? That was the dilemma of Mary (Grace Gibson), the very pregnant and homeless teen in Black Nativity. She said, “I made a mistake and was kicked out. I have nowhere to go, so here I am pregnant and homeless.”

The other theme that caught my interest was the relationship between the mom (Naima) and her teenaged son (Langston). God, she really loved him (and he loved her too), but as a single mom trying to make a living for the two of them, she was unequipped to offer him the masculine discipline & love that he needed to grow into a man. Well I won’t tell the entire story, but I’d like to end with this: if you, and your son or daughter have not spoken to each other because of miscommunications or disappointments, reach out and call them and begin to mend the fences. There is nothing worse that not having an opportunity to say “I’m sorry” and having regrets for the rest of your life.

 

C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru

Author & Parent Coach

Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)

The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)

Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Communications, 2013)

Did I study? No. I was trying hard not to freeze. Or starve.

Guest blogger, Paul Gamboa

 

With the early calling off of school, it allotted a lot more time than I had expected to have to cook these last few days. Figured spaghetti would work nicely. We had most of the ingredients lying around. As the water boiled for the pasta, I watched the condensation on the kitchen windows begin to freeze before the pasta was even done cooking. Moments like that can easily get lost, but they’re important.

I’m pretty thankful to have a warm place to live.

As we all know, though, this isn’t the case for many of our students.

The school that I work at is routinely amongst the top performing schools in the state. We received a Blue Ribbon school award from the Department of Education last year for being high performing but still showing growth. We also have demographics that would show that this should be the case.

We have less than 5 percent of our students labeled economically disadvantaged. I have very few students who take time each day worrying if they wore enough clothing to make it home safely or if, when they do, they will have enough to eat.

This isn’t the case with other buildings in my district. There has been a steady increase in free and reduced lunch kids in my district. The school with the highest, at almost 65 percent, is literally on the other side of the tracks from my school, less than a mile away.

I was teasing my wife about her fascination with this storm. She also teachers fifth grade at a suburban school. However it is a very different world than I teach in.

Her school has slightly more than half the students coming from low-income households. It took me awhile (I’m not always a quick study) to realize why the fascination, bordering on panic, was occurring about her district not announcing cancellation. She has students that don’t have coats that can handle this weather.

This wasn’t mass hysteria over #Chiberia2014. She was truly terrified what could happen to some of her students if they had to try to negotiate the cold.

Sadly, this isn’t even close to the schools with the biggest needs. It’s the dirty little secret that is plaguing our country, and as a direct result, our schools. How are students going to learn when they are coming from homes, if they have one, that are struggling to meet their Maslow Level 1 needs?

You’d be hard pressed to find a teacher anywhere on the planet who hasn’t experienced this in some capacity. However, the fact that a sickeningly large number of our “low performing” schools also have the highest numbers of poverty-stricken students shouldn’t really come as a surprise. It’s the topic many people don’t want to talk about.

When a kid is wondering if they are going to be able to safely make it home, or if they will eat that night, or if they will see their parents because they’re working multiple jobs to try to get by — learning is not going to be a priority. The same goes for the parents. If the two options I was faced with were: desperately find a way to make sure my children’s basic physiological needs were met or make sure that homework was done, I know which path I’d lean towards.

Yet this is something that teachers are faced with every day. Educators see students coming into our classroom and we will do anything we can to try to help them. Almost without exception, this is done without fanfare, without acknowledgement and seemingly not even cared about by most of our country. It doesn’t make it any less frustrating. It’s impossible to argue that poverty doesn’t have a direct effect on education.

One of the things that my school is actively engaged with is the Green Harvest Food Pantry. It is a charity that deals exclusively with getting food to the working poor. It’s a wonderful thing for my kids to understand what it costs to live around here and how hard it is even for those with a job, or two, or three, or four. Even many parents with full time+ jobs are having trouble making ends meet.

I make sure that my kids understand this as part of our school’s food drive. At times though, I wish that I could take this out to more people. The steady growth of poverty in our country is what has been crippling education. If we don’t make sure that our kids have proper nutrition, clothing and shelter, they have very little chance of living up to their potential in the classroom.

Watching law after law pass which tries to “fix” the problem gets more and more frustrating. All educators have seen the impact on students when their biological needs aren’t being met. Sadly, most of us are seeing it more and more. We will continue to do what we can to help the kids when they’re within the school’s walls, and outside when we can.

I find it funny that a major candy bar company has an ad campaign based around the slogan, “You’re not yourself when you’re hungry.” Yet when it comes to schools we’re supposed to completely ignore poverty and blame any low performance purely on bad pedagogy and corrupt teacher unions.

I’m going to go ahead and disagree.

These last few days are cause for a genuine reason to be thankful (those of us who have sufficient clothing and shelter) and also a genuine reason for outrage (many of our kids don’t). I just wish that the narrative were more focused on this.

As always, your comments, feedback and stories are welcome in the comments section. Stay warm everyone and here’s to a great 2014!

 

Eating Through the Holidays…

I LOVE to eat! There I said it! There are so many wonderful memories wrapped up in food and family – at least in mine. As a kid, it was fun to have relatives come over and eat together. We usually dressed up for dinner, and the table was set with a tablecloth and linen napkins. I loved turkey and macaroni and cheese. As I became vegetarian, meat no longer interested me, but I was still a homemade rolls girl. Ahh… the smell of fresh bread or cake in the oven

was pure love! As I have gotten older, not only do I enjoy getting together with family and eating; I enjoy the preparation of foods, usually remembering conversations that accompanied “cutting up onions and peppers” for dressing or making “greens” as we talked about the latest family news.

My biggest problem with “eating” through the holidays is that I’m always drawn to the saltiest or sweetest foods . For example, we have plenty of grapes and apples in the house, but NO, I want popcorn or oatmeal cookies! It wouldn’t be so bad – EATING – if it wasn’t accompanied by weight gain, an increase in blood pressure and all of the health issues that we, African Americans face. Oh well, it was good while it lasted.

Back to my salads, grilled fish and working out. Happy Holidays to you and your family!

 

C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentgu ru

Author & Parent Coach

Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)

The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)

Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Communications, 2013)

Dads Are Important Too

family Christmas and other dad traditions

When I think of the holidays, Christmas especially, I think of my dad and my granddad. As I write this post, a myriad of memories crowd into my heart about the men in my family. Today is ‘Dad’s Turn’. My dad would drive our family through different neighborhoods to look at the Christmas decorations. A day or two before Christmas, we would pick out a Christmas tree and decorate it. ..Lots of fun…

My dad was usually the parent that my siblings and I could count on to ‘play’ with us and have fun. He would jump out of the closets and scare us, and tell us stories about him and his brothers growing up. He was the male balance of our household – the last word. When he would play with us, we’d forget he wasn’t a kid like us and be disappointed when he became ‘Dad’ again. No fair… We would drive every week to our grandparents to spend Sundays with them and the Ed Sullivan Show. I hated that show, but loved the family time together. I loved watching my dad interact with his dad. They looked just alike, except for the age difference. While Dad was disciplined, Granddad was even more disciplined, yet he let me do things I couldn’t do with my own dad like comb his hair, and push in the buttons on his very cool Dodge dashboard. Granddad also smoked a pipe and had the most delicious smelling tobacco.

As a young girl growing up, Dad was always there. He may have been preoccupied, or asleep on the couch, but I remember the time he spent with us. I knew what he expected of me. I also knew I could trust him. His way was different from Mom’s. They both meant business; however when Mom told us she was going to ‘tell Dad’, we knew it would not be good. As much fun as we had with him, he was a former ‘military’ man and didn’t tolerate nonsense!

Like most families in the sixties, he was a family man. I never understood why he didn’t do housework. Okay yes he cut the grass, painted things when necessary, and barbecued the meat during holidays, but it never made sense that we (the Gist kids) had to wash walls and clean up the kitchen! When I had the nerve to ask why we had to wash walls, he would say “You dirtied them up didn’t you?” Let me just say that after washing the walls, we kept our hands off the walls! While Dad didn’t cook much except BBQ, occasionally he made lunches for us – fried Spam sandwiches and tomato soup. Yummy! He’d cut the sandwiches into shapes and while no one today would dare eat a Spam sandwich, it was another fun time with Dad.

A lot of those traditions changed as our family went through the transition of divorce and separation, I remember the times when I didn’t see my dad much. He would promise to come by for a visit, and never show up. My mom was careful not to talk bad about him to us, so all we had then was disappointment. I didn’t reestablish my relationship with him until the summer before I left for college. I had sassed my mother and wasn’t on speaking terms with her, so I cherished the times I got to spend with dad. We talked about a lot of topics, and I got a chance to know him as a person. I asked him about the times he didn’t show up and how disappointed we were. I remember him saying that he was barely getting by (financially) and didn’t want to show that side of himself (to us).

Perfect, he was not. Necessary to me growing into the woman I am now, very definitely! Today, there are a lot of girls growing into woman without the benefit of their dad. Woman decide what men they will become involved with based on the relationship they have with their father (dad), stepdad, grandpa or other positive male role model. Merry Christmas Dad!

 

C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru

Author & Parent Coach

Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)

The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)

Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Communications, 2013)

I Accept You Just As You Are

Have a teen or adult child with a secret? Not just any secret, their sexuality secret? Did they tell you or you just ‘knew’ that they preferred same sex mates? What did you do with that information? Did you ostracize them or tell them that you accept them for who they are?

The beautiful thing about being parents, is that we not only have the task of raising teens into wonderful adults, we also need to listen with non-judgmental ears when they tell us things about themselves – especially things that may be different from us. If your teen feels that you don’t or won’t accept them for who they are, they begin to lose trust in you and in themselves. If you won’t accept them, what’s the chance that society will accept them? Who do they go to share their “weight of the world” secrets? Many teens who feel that they can’t talk to anyone (their secret is so bad), commit suicide.

Here are some words you may share if or when you need them.

“It’s time for you to move forward with your life and stop worrying about whether you will be accepted for who you are. I’ve known (intuitively) that you had a different sexual preference since your high school / college days. It’s okay with me. Don’t worry about your father either. None of us has the right to cast stones. There is no reason to feel ashamed or have any other feelings that make you feel depressed, unworthy, needing to hide. It’s important (to me) that you live an authentic life, full of love. Be who you are and leave those other concerns behind you. You are important to me. You are safe and perfect just as you are. I love you.”

As parents, we have the responsibility for raising our children, and we also have the choice of accepting them for who they are. We may not like decisions that they ultimately make, but God doesn’t always like the decisions that we make. Accepting our kids for who they are helps them build self-acceptance and self-esteem. We also have to be okay that our friends, family and church may not agree with or accept our child’s sexuality. Thinking now about how you want to handle discussions with your family, friends or pastor, would be a great idea.

C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru

Author & Parent Coach

Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)

The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)

Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Communications, 2013)

Alpha Kappa Alpha Mourns the Passing of President Nelson Mandela

Reblogged from I Love My AKA:

The world suffered a great loss with the passing of former President of South Africa, the Honorable, Nelson Mandela. An outpour of support, love, prayers, and goodwill has been expressed all over the world after the news was announced.

Today, Alpha Kappa Alpha, too, made an announcement. Sent , the following message was disseminated to sorors across the world in honor of a great man and a great legacy:

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