More "light" reading

I have a few more quotes/links I wanted to jot down that I've found since my last post.

1.  I loved Stephanie's post at Diapers and Divinity entitled I am evolving.  No one is more shocked than I am.  Goes to show we can really develop that mother heart if we desire it.  There is a light at the end of the tunnel! :)

2.  I also enjoyed the post by Delia on the MMB Community site regarding the concept of holding on to your kids.  She does this by home-schooling her kids.  She stated:

It's hard enough to hang on to your kids, sending them off to  school may be easier and parents may think it is good for kids to learn to deal with the real world. But the teenage brain is not that well  developed as scientists are beginning to find out. Hold on To Your Kids is not a home-schooling book, it's about parenting.

She also shares a few quotes from the book (or maybe it's a review of the book from somewhere), Hold on To Your Kids:

This books helps support the need to be more involved. It comes at a time when more parents are working outside the home. I think we need to take care and  pay attention, it passes all too quickly.

Like countless other parents, Canadian doctors Neufeld and  Maté woke up one day to find that their children had become secretive  and unreachable. Pining for time with friends, they recoiled or grew  hostile around adults. Why? The problem, Neufeld and co-writer Maté  suggest, lies in a long-established, though questionable, belief that  the earliest possible mastery of the rules of social acceptance leads to  success. In a society that values its economy over culture, the book  states, the building of strong adult/child attachments gets lost in the  shuffle. Multiple play dates, day care, preschool and after school  activities groom children to transfer their attachment needs from adults  to their peers. They become what the authors call "peer oriented." The  result is that they squelch their individuality, curiosity and  intelligence to become part of a group whose members attend school less  to learn than to socialize. And these same children are bullying,  shunning and murdering each other, as well as committing suicide, at  increasing rates. The authors' meticulous exploration of the problem can  be profoundly troubling. However, their candidness and exposition lead  to numerous solutions for reestablishing a caring adult hierarchy.  Beautifully written, this terrific, poignant book is already a  bestseller in Canada.

That whole concept of kids connecting with peers rather than adults reminded me of my student teaching experience in Western Samoa.  Sadly, at least when I was there (and I'd guess it's still true today), fa'a Samoa (the Samoan way) was often to beat one's children.  I noticed that this caused a much stronger bond between siblings than between parents and their children.

So, although we're talking different reasons for children to connect with peers, there still seems to be a huge importance to connecting with adults.

This whole scenario reminds me of the article The Dangerous Digital Vortex:

If you have a teenage daughter, for example, and she’s off in a corner texting her friends during a family gathering, then she is emotionally withdrawing from her family.

3/30/11 Update:  After I jotted this all down, I went up to bed and started reading Larry Lawrence's Courageous Parenting again.  Wow that article totally relates!

• ... we are reminded in the family proclamation, parents are responsible for the protection of their children. ¹ That means spiritually as well as physically.
• The story of Eli teaches us that parents who love their children cannot afford to be intimidated by them. (1 Sam 3)
• ... Robert D. Hales has observed, “Sometimes we are afraid of our children—afraid to counsel with them for fear of offending them.” 
• By listening closely, we can discover the desires of their hearts, help them set righteous goals, and also share with them the spiritual impressions that we have received about them. Counseling requires courage.

Lastly (I think), I'm also reminded of Protecting is a Part of Good Parenting by Kelly.  Good post and thought provoking comments on that one.

3.   Lastly, I subscribe to the Juvenile Instructor blog.  It's full of very interesting historical stuff.  I don't usually read the posts, though, because they're too long and they're written at a college level.  1 - I don't have the attention span to read anything really long these days, and 2 - my ability to read college level stuff ended about 8 years ago.

Anyway, there was a short post regarding the impact of losing a child by Todd Compton, particularly in Mormon polygamy days.  I was so touched by the trials of those women.  My heart ached for them.

Well, here's a long post for anyone who wants it!