As Christmas day approaches, the hustle and bustle of buying, cleaning, wrapping and planning consumes many of us. I have had many moments when the anxiety has taken the joy out of the season, I admit.

My mom was in the hospital for several months. The night she was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, the air smelled like leaves and we were busy figuring out Halloween costumes and candy. She wasn’t breathing. It was frightening in the deepest sense.

Today, the air smells crisp and clean. The ground is covered in snow and the music of Christmas can be heard everywhere…including my heart. My mother is home and healthy.

I didn’t get Christmas pictures of my children out to friends this year. I didn’t clean my house the way that I like it for the holidays. I didn’t make my homemade chocolates to share. I didn’t decorate the mantel with holly and evergreen.

And, frankly, it is just plain OK because my mom is home.

I am truly grateful. I’m grateful she is home. I’m grateful I can speak with her and hold her hand. I’m grateful my dad feels at ease to have his spouse and best friend of 52 years sitting next to her each evening doing crossword puzzles (in pen!). I’m grateful my brothers and sisters and I held each other’s hearts through the trauma. I’m grateful we’re a loving family that enjoys gathering together in sunshine and snow. I’m even grateful that my kids are harping at me for Christmas presents.

I’m a lucky woman. I get to be a mom and a daughter to my mother for another Christmas. I’m thankful to be so blessed.

Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate this wonderful holiday.

-Lisa

I couldn’t agree more with Dorothy. I remember getting off of the school bus as a kid and feeling such a sense of peace and contentment as I walked up my driveway. I was home. I had made it through another day of teachers, class work, and figuring out my place in the social structure of school.

I heard a speaker a few years ago discuss the concept of home. She described each home as a mini culture with different expectations, rules, and norms. Imagine adapting to life in a foreign country. In a much smaller sense, any of us would have a difficult time adjusting if we were somehow plopped down into a neighbor’s family. The food would vary, the interactions differ, and there are so many small nuances that make each family unique. Shoes allowed inside the house? Favorite television shows? Brand of humor? Holiday traditions?

Even smells. When we come up with an extra article of clothing at our house left by a neighbor, my youngest will say, “let me smell it.” She can sniff it to identify whose house it came from. Scary, huh? I don’t have that particular talent but I do recognize that my house smells like home.

So, how does one create a warm and nurturing home? Well, like most anything worth having, it takes some work. Thankfully, there are resources to assist mothers in making intentional, wise decisions for her family.

I recently came across a website called MomsLikeMe that helps Cleveland moms make those informed decisions. Whether you grew up here or are a transplant like myself, I think you’ll find this site instructive and supportive. It offers online groups for moms on parenting topics such as behavior and development, activities, education, food, entertainment, health, motherhood, shopping, and a category called “my life” where you might share about your pets or perhaps grief and loss. There are such a variety of topics covered that all moms can easily find a group (or several) of interest.

I started reading about favorite local pediatricians, progressed to checking out some book clubs, and finally pulled myself away after getting some advice about curfews.

MomsLikeMe also has photo sharing, marketplace (buying or selling), coupons, and parenting videos from WKYC TV3. In addition, you can find a playgroup in your area, which I feel is critical for some mothers. Like myself, 12 years ago.

After my oldest daughter, Emily, was born I struggled in creating that sense of home that I had grown up with and wanted for my own young family. Some obstacles overwhelmed me.

First of all, we had moved to a condo weeks before Emily was born so we still had unpacked boxes. Not homey. Secondly, my husband was working 70-hour weeks. Thirdly, I lived on the opposite coast from all extended family. Fourthly, the only friends I had made in the area were work friends. Not the kind of friend I would call and complain to about baby spit up and exhaustion. Lastly, I had just had a C-section and had a baby who cried heartily and frequently.

I was not exactly in the frame of mind to create a home. At least not the kind I wanted. Through the haze of new motherhood, I realized that I needed to make some connections. Relationships that would boost me up and support me through these challenges. I joined a playgroup and it made all the difference. I met other moms who were struggling with the same parenting worries and experiencing the same joys. Women who were available at all hours to laugh me out of a grumpy mood, meet at the park, give me advice or provide the occasional babysitting. Moms Like Me.

Now, I watch my three girls run up my driveway to our home with that same enthusiasm and joy that I so well remember from my childhood.

-Kay

There are moments that if a stranger walked into my household, he might jump to the conclusion that we are a dysfunctional family. Whining, yelling, crying. You name it, we’ve got it. I wish mothers felt more comfortable sharing how normal it is to have cranky moments (to put it nicely).

It’s as if mothers think that it reflects poorly on their parenting when their child is less than perfect. This causes the best of us to be less than forthcoming about normal childhood behavior.

It reminds me of how my teenybopper daughter can be in the middle of a pitifest crying about some sort of injustice. “Why can’t I go to the Indians game with my friend’s big sister? Don’t you trust me?” She’ll be all devastated with red eyes, pitiful voice, and defeated body language. Then the phone rings and she’s instantly transformed. She’ll spring up, vault to the phone, and answer with a perky, happy hello. Even at her young age, she tries to hide her emotions from the world. She saves all that good stuff for me.

I don’t want to make light of truly dysfunctional families who struggle with issues such as addictions and abuse. I just want parents to stop blaming themselves for normal childhood drama. Parents are not responsible for their child’s every outburst.

But we are responsible for our own. That brings me to my one rule when responding to your child’s anger.

• Keep your cool. I once heard a speaker use an analogy which has stuck with me. He compared anger to a cage. Your child is in the cage when he is angry and he will do everything in his power to drag you in with him. As a parent, you must stay on the outside and hold onto your temper.

That’s it. One rule. Any other parenting advice is useless without that rule. I find that if I’ve remained calm during an altercation, I usually feel as if I handled it appropriately. However, if I lose my temper I always feel bad about the outcome. I know I can do better.

When I step into that cage, the message I send is one of anger and frustration rather than love and direction. Even if the exact same words are spoken, the emotion I choose to use changes that message.

An aunt of mine, whose children are now grown, well-adjusted adults, once shared with me that when her kids were teens, she truly felt as if they were a dysfunctional family. Looking back she wishes that she understood three things.
1. Losing your temper never helps.
2. It’s not personal. It just feels that way.
3. No family is perfect all of the time.

Most power struggles are normal and healthy. However, if they are overwhelming your family, don’t hesitate to talk to your child’s school or pediatrician about your particular situation.

Stay out of the cage and keep the fun in your family.

-Kay

Once in a while, when listening to a particularly inspiring album, I make a mental note to play it for my future children (don’t have any now, and hope not to for quite some time… until I can provide them with everything I think necessary for raising a child in this day and age). I’m surprised by how often when listening to good music my thoughts move on to how music plays a role in human development.

My parents are your typical groovy boomers who’d dabbled in hippie-dom in their youths and had grown up as fans of the Beatles and Dylan and the like. I have blissful home movies of my parents blasting the Bob Marley Legend album while playing blissfully on the floor with my brother and me. I remember dad playing Led Zeppelin’s stereophonically-enabled “ Whole Lotta Love” in his Mustang. I remember Paul Simon: The Rhythm of the Saints from long desert road trips. I remember thinking dad was demonic or insane when he played Black Sabbath for us.

Picking good music to raise kids to seems like an overlooked aspect of parenting; I’m not talking about kiddie-specific albums or singalong tapes… I’m talking the music that we consider important parts of ourselves. Music that we wished we’d had as kids, music that makes us feel emotions more vividly. It can be sad or scary, heavy or light, loud or soft, uplifting or dancy, silly or sober… the point is that “grownup” music is a clearinghouse for real-world emotions, situations, and outlooks, not to mention a chance to learn about world cultures and social history. It’s a shade of education you can’t find in books or classrooms or anywhere else.

Also, as your child grows up and discovers their own musical taste, it can be a nice cross-generational bridge, a humanizing factor to the forces in their lives least likely to be human: parents. It can show that you, too, once, were cool, and can be proof of a rich inner life, something I doubted my parents had for the longest time.

I’m not advocating playing hardcore rap or death metal (though my dad did treat me to Sabbath), but weaving a diverse soundscape seems a priceless and oft-overlooked tool in the parenting arsenal.

I wish my parents had played an apt sad song or some uplifting blues when I came home from school glum. I wish they’d played much more international and world music, like Bossa Nova and British Punk. I wish they’d played classics like the Staple Singers and Nina Simone and Patsy Cline. I wish they’d played me heartbreak tunes that meant something to them, rather than being forced to go to the cultural-vacuum that is Top 40 radio.

Above all, I wish I’d been introduced to the Talking Heads. In fact, I’m still bitter about the fact that I had to find them on my own in college. Never was there a better combination of lyrical wisdom, a pervasive thread of human confusion and darkness, a sunnier optimism, a groovier, fuller sound, a wider range of styles. Seriously, this band would have taught me to be fearless in a rapidly accelerating age, it would have looked at the day’s ironies and absurdities with a poet’s eye, and would’ve made me an even stronger person than I am today.

This one goes out to my future little ones.

- Dan

I do not have kids. Nor do I know for sure that I want to have kids.

I have friends who have kids though. Seeing them with their babies makes me want to have my own. Witnessing that kind of love and deep committment almost brings me to tears.

But seeing a child in the mall screaming his head off while his Mother drags him half on the floor with sticky hands, stained clothes, and cotton candy all over his face makes me think twice.

This is an important decision. I am not in a place in my life now where kids are an option (considering I’m not even in a relationship), but I’d like to at least keep my mind open to the possibility.

My Mother often tells me, as we see these loud-mouthed spectacles all over malls, grocery stores, parks and the neighborhood, that I will feel differently once it’s my own child. That my whole perspective will change. That I will love like I have never loved before. That it’s something I won’t understand until I hold that precious being in my arms for the first time.

And I believe her.

I hate to say though, that I might just be too selfish to produce a child. I value too much my sleeping in on the weekends, my time alone reading, my playing on the computer whenever I want, my trips to the gym or the movies… All that fades away when you have a little one in your life. (At least for the first few years anyhow.)

So I can’t understand the back and forth that I feel about this. When I visit my best friend and her 18 month old, I can’t wait to have one of my own. I think about how I desperately want to have a little girl who looks just like me. Who will gaze at me and latch on to me like I’m her whole world. Who will follow me around and want me to pick her and hold her all the time. Who will always smile when she sees me walk into a room.

But when I see toddlers raising hell all over the place in the neighborhood I change my mind.

Why the paradox? Am I just afraid? Or am I really too selfish?

Perhaps it’s both.

Until I figure it out I am just going to have cats and dogs.

- Jaime

My 11-year-old son’s first piano teacher four years ago demanded a certain number of practice minutes per day per semester. No excuses.

If he practiced all the minutes he was supposed to, he was called to the front of the end-of-year recital along with his peers and given a certificate and a little gift.

If he did not succeed, no matter the reason, my son was left to sit in his seat along with the scattered few other miscreants.

There were two times when he didn’t make his minutes: Once was when he was in first grade and in bed with pneumonia for three weeks. Another was when we were away at Thanksgiving, visiting family, and didn’t have access to a piano.

His teacher knew him to be a diligent student and a gifted pianist. He only missed his practice total by 35 minutes.

But she refused to respect our excuses.

And so eventually, we found another teacher, one who values my son’s love of music more than she values perfection, one who expects progress and practice, but doesn’t punish or shame if expectations are dashed, one who understands that I don’t take my child to music lessons so that he can be further pressured in his young life.

Clearly this was not the philosophy of our first piano teacher, whose only child is a music major in college, whose husband is the orchestra director at a local university, whose family’s whole world is music.

I remember the one time we asked if we could leave the recital right after Benjamin’s performance because he had a soccer tournament. The way she turned on her heel and walked away, you’d think we just told her that our family hates all music and we don’t believe it has a place in our lives.

Music Has Its Place

On the contrary, music has a place in our lives, but that’s just it: “a” place.

Our second teacher knows children love other things, too, that there is a fine line between encouragement and pressure, that some children will turn off to a particular discipline, whether music or sports or something else, if they are forced.

Who hasn’t heard about the child who took gymnastics lessons three days a week from age 3-14, only to quit from burnout right about the time she’s getting really good? I know a child whose parents pushed her to play violin all her life, who got a scholarship in violin at a prestigious college, who switched her major to business as soon as she got to college.

While certainly I do not deny there is a measure of discipline and practice involved in music lessons, and something to be learned from the experience in and of itself, this is not at the core of why I take my son to music lessons. I take my son to music lessons to celebrate his love of music.

During the past two years we’ve been with this second teacher — between my son’s soccer practice and baseball, between homework, school and family events, between making straight As on his report card and reading Harry Potter 12 times — I have encouraged and promoted daily piano practice.

I remind him to practice.

But sometimes I don’t.

Sometimes, without so much provocation and pressure, my son sits at the piano all on his own. And when I walk in to see what he is practicing, he is smiling.

For additional tips on gentle persuasion of daily practice, take a look at this article on Music Education from About.com.

-Debra-Lynn