mother over 40 Archives - Page 4 of 7 - Mothering in the Middle

Misery Loves Company – A Mom’s Up and Down Journey

by Jane Samuel

This morning when I should have been tending to any number of things I hopped on Facebook. I knew I owed a few friends a recipe and was on my way to look up who in my messages tab when I decided to scroll down and see what was new on the “block.” Since I only manage to get on Facebook about twice a week for a grand total of ten minutes – no, I am not cool –there is usually a lot new.

Amid the save-this-animal, clap-for-that-child, and find-this-funny was MotheringintheMiddle’s post: Misery Loves Company. Ah, this same tune had been playing over and over in my mind since 2013 poked its head in the door.

Misery sure does love company. […]

Tips for Good Dental Care in Middle Age

by Dr. Carolyn Schweitzer D.D.S.

One of the many challenges of mothering in midlife is coping with declining hormone levels just as our tween’s hormones are beginning to surge. But there’s another less talked-about health issue that shows up in middle age. As a dentist and mid-life mom myself, I deal with it daily. It’s the fact that our most complex and costly dental problems usually arise after we reach 40. […]

Nine Things You Should Do To Keep Up With Your Children Online

by Mia DeBolt

In the day and age where information is at the tip of our fingers, answers are a “google” away, and “Siri” can find what you want in seconds, it is a very different world in which to grow up.

Children these days don’t remember the days where personal computers didn’t exist, dial-up internet took forever to connect, and cell phones were the size of your forearm. That’s because things have changed so much. And that’s why the way we parent has to change, as well. […]

South for the Winter – Or Just a Week…

by Andrea Lynn

The girls and I are just back from Florida, where my mom and dad live three months of the year. Nowhere else are so many generations from so many cultures on display than Florida in wintertime. Our flights were full of families heading south to see Grandma and Grandpa. A few adolescents traveling alone, plenty of babies and toddlers, and in one case three generations visiting the fourth – great-grandma – in West Palm Beach. Everywhere I looked there were bulky boat-like vehicles, often American-made, with out-of-state plates and drivers who fail to signal. […]

Crazy, Loco Love

by Liz Raptis Picco

When it comes to loving my teenagers, Crazy Loco Love stretches me just shy of breaking point. At times, the connection between our children almost seems hardwired to snap, split, and break away while they reach for adulthood. They seem like strangers when they’re sheathed in snarky self-absorption. The plausibility of body snatching pods intensifies: I’ve stared into their eyes, just in case. […]

Six Heart-Healthy Tips for February, American Heart Month

by Brant Secunda and Mark Allen

February is American Heart Month. It provides a wonderful opportunity for us to focus on the organ that beats around 3 billion times, nonstop, in the average human lifetime. Your heart keeps you alive. It sends life-giving oxygen, nutrients, and natural medicine through your bloodstream to all parts of your body. That’s what your heart does for you. What have you done for your heart lately? Most women don’t think about heart health, until mid-life. Sometimes, once there, it can be too late. Why not take this month to pay attention to your heart’s health? Here are six ways to do it. […]

The Soapbox: In Defense of Older Mothers

by Caren Lissner

Dear Reader: Here’s a great piece in “The Frisky,” on new older mothers:

Magazines seem to love writing about women’s choices, particularly if they can inspire readers to conclude that we’re making the wrong ones. Just before the new year, a much-talked about New Republic cover story focused on women and men becoming parents at an older age. The piece was written by an author who is herself an older mother and was concerned about a steady increase in birth defects and autism in recent years, although it’s been difficult so far to prove a direct correlation.

Meanwhile, one of Boston Magazine’s cover stories that same month was about a growing breed of women who believed that it’s okay to have an “occasional” drink while pregnant. Yes, that was the language — “occasional” 00 yet the subject was so provocative that it warranted top billing. Let’s not forget the May Time cover of the woman breastfeeding her three-year-old son (she didn’t appear to be drinking wine at the time). Soon after came the story in The Atlantic by Anne-Marie Slaughter that blared: “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” (The Atlantic has published at least three stories since 1995 about women facing diminishing marriage and pregnancy prospects if they wait; one of the most famous such pieces, “Marry Him,” from 2008, urged women to settle for “Mr. Good Enough” rather than waiting to have babies.)

To read the rest of the article, please go to:

http://www.thefrisky.com/2013-02-15/the-soapbox-in-defense-of-older-mothers/

Love That Rings True

by Jenilyn Gilbert

I met my husband swing dancing in Grant Park in downtown Chicago when I was 38 years old. We dated for a couple of years and I was one month into my fortieth year when I walked down the aisle.

I recall the time before I met him; all the first dates, sadness over not having a life partner and feeling so left out and so behind my peers. I attended so many wedding showers and weddings that I never thought my turn would come. When I attended a friend’s second wedding, I thought ‘that’s it, this will never be me, now they’re starting to run two circles around me. I will never get married.’ Now that I’m two years into my marriage I just want to be pregnant. […]

101 Affirmations for Children

by Evelyn Lim

I compiled a list of affirmations for children, recently, from a wish to help mine with self-mastery and positive programming. As adults, many of our limiting thought patterns can be attributed to childhood conditioning or having unconsciously adopted negative societal beliefs. While we look for ways to help realign ourselves, how about starting with a better way forward in our children? […]

on loving a teenager

by Karen Maezen Miller

They love us in a different way.

I said that when someone asked what it was like to have a teenager.

I feel like we’ve lost a daughter.

My husband said that after a silent and inconsequential Sunday.

Just shut up.

I said that to her after a ride in the car yesterday.

And yet, there is love, so much love between us and it has gone nowhere! I am standing on the high bluff over death valley, infinite openness in all directions, stunned dumb in the emptiness, but I know the space before me is pure love. Pure love. Life grows here, even when we can’t see it. Refreshed in a cool night, fed by invisible rivulets. A whisper of sea sails five hundred miles across five mountain ranges, and the whisper is this.

They love us in a different way.

They love us in the space, the space that is nothing but love.

Love is not a feeling, not a thought, nothing given or got, not more or less. Not a precaution or warning, not a push or a prod. Not a reminder, not a teaching, not a performance. Love is not what I say and not what you hear. Not how was school how was the test what about homework what are you wearing wash your face eat your dinner pick up your shoes I don’t like her him that when if what did you do what did you say what about your terrible wonderful failure success happiness sadness what about me what about me what about me?

Love is the space between us. There is so much space.

What will you put into that space today, I ask myself before I hear the roar of my own echo.

Just shut up.

Reprinted with permission […]