Trust Is Hard to Restore

Tragically, perhaps, once a question has escaped a parent's mouth and landed on the floor in front of the child, there is no way to make it not have been asked. 

Restoring trust is harder than it looks. Apologies only make reparations on the damage done in the moment. The break in trust lives on long past the event, and the apology. 

Truly, trust can only be restored by constantly and consistently refraining from repeating the offence. I am reasonably quick on the uptake, and managed to discover this (mostly by falling on my face, but I have found over the years that personal humiliation is an astonishingly effective learning tool) quite a long time ago, but with enough repetition to be absolutely certain what I was really doing...

Someone asked me if I'd asked one of my kids something about The Future with some particular boy. It reminded me that I've learned that there are some questions my sister can ask my kids, their friends can ask them, their grandparents can ask them, even total strangers can ask them... but I can't ask.

In my kids' heads, by virtue of me being The Mom, I can't ask some questions. Because the questions are loaded. 

Because they imply a preference or an opinion that should have nothing to do with how they live their lives. 

Because even if I'm dying of curiosity, it's none of my business until they decide to share. 



The weight of my status as 'mom' imparts extra meaning in questions --even if for me (or whomever) it is merely idle curiosity.

Questions from mom's face just will not be heard neutrally by her kids' ears.

5 Questions A Mom Can't Ask

1. Do you think you have a future with him?
This implies that I want (or don't want) her to be involved with him for a long time. That implication on its own colours the child's view of what she's supposed to think or want.

2. Can you afford that?
This implies two things: a. I have any reason to be in on your finances, and; b. I don't think you should be buying whatever it is you're talking about. A: none of my business, and; B: WOW, so totally none of my business.

3. Is your apartment clean?
Wow, yeah, still none of my business.

4. Have you kissed him?
My sister can (and has) asked questions like this... I can't. I just can't. I can't imply that I think she should have, and I can't imply that I think her judgement is poor. I just can't ask.

5. Do you think that's safe?
Same thing, really --the only reason to ask this kind of question is because I clearly don't think it is. Either I don't trust you to have any rational sense of danger, or I think you're too stupid to know what a sense of danger means. 

Can't ask. 

What is Misoproliny? My new word... on hating children

I love English. It's so cool the way you can make up whole new words by using other language pieces.


Misogyny is a combined word, from the Greek, using miso- meaning 'hater' and -gyny meaning 'woman', neatly making the commonplace 'womanhater.'


Misanthrophy is the same prefix with the suffix which means both all people and men --neatly confusing the issue whenever it's 'manhating' rather than 'hating people' that is at issue.


The suffix proli- means child. A misoproliny is, therefore, a childhater. Strange, considering the decades of vile and hateful texts circulating as parenting advice and pedagogy, that this word has never before been coined. On the other hand, I'll take credit for making it up...

How Not Yelling Makes for Peaceful Parenting

Long ago, I attended a La Leche League Canada Area Conference. It was a cooperative event, with all attendees asked to help run the show. I was involved in the registration --it was my assignment-- so I know that there were far more than 200 people in attendance, from 8:30 to 5:30 the first day, 8:30 am to 9pm the second day and from 8:30 to 4 the final day.

Beyond being a great deal of fun, there was something... odd about the experience. It took me nearly two days to figure out what it was.

Of course, it was a La Leche League conference on the West Coast, which lent it an odd air of super-granola in virtually every aspect, but I was used to the Islanders and their homemade soap lifestyles. The oddness was something else. Then I figured it out:

No one (seriously: no one!) was yelling at their kids

Virtually everyone attending had kids with them, with few exceptions of national office-level representatives, and one of the Founding Mothers who by that point had a handful of grandchildren and I'm sure wouldn't have thought of towing them to a conference.

Some of the kids were yelling. Some were melting down completely. 

But no adult in the whole building for the whole weekend yelled at any child anywhere I could see.




To say I was astonished is an understatement. I don't think the possibility of not yelling in life had ever occurred to me. While I certainly didn't make it to my kids' late teens without ever yelling at them, or about them, or near them... the conference opened up the possibility in my head that yelling was optional, not natural or necessary.

I'm sure lots of those parents who attended yelled at their kids at some point or other. Why not there?

I think there were two things: a basic premise that yelling wasn't going to help anything anyhow, coupled with a tremendously child-friendly, family-supportive atmosphere. There weren't spaces where kids were expected or encouraged to behave like mini adults (or like they don't exist at all). And that, to me, seems like the core of peaceful parenting.

There is something inherently violent in the premise that children should, or can, be 'little adults.' The very idea insults the core of who they really are: children. 

If they were adults, they'd have fully-formed adult bodies and fully-formed adult brains, they'd understand things the way adults do and would do things the way adults do. But they don't. 

They can't. 

Because they aren't. And they aren't going to just because we have a whole society convinced it's how it should be.

Believing that it is somehow aberrant to create an environment that acknowledges --even welcomes-- childhood's different needs, different pace, different lifestyle; that's just normal here these days. Encouraging violence, whether verbal or physical, is commonplace in the realm of 'how to raise children' advice and theory --even in clinical psychology.

How do we argue that it is possible to raise peaceful children through violence?

This is Why the Demand for Attention Must be Met

Editor's Note: This post contains affiliate links. Linda Clement only ever shares links to books she has read and believes are of value. No authors have been harmed in the sharing of these recommendations...




A great deal is written, and worried about, when it comes to attention-seeking behaviour in children. 

A lot of the concerns are a result of the very-disturbing adults we all know at least a handful of, who are examples of why attention-seeking behaviour run amok is so unattractive.


When parents (and onlookers) attribute that adult behaviour to children who successfully attained as much attention as they needed... there is a problem.

One thing that La Leche League taught me long ago was:  

a need met dissipates

a need unmet remains 

Children need attention. They don't want it or demand it or prefer it or brat it up because they're devious, selfish little hellions in need of a smack. They need it.

Like how they need food and shelter and protection from predators and fresh, clean water and shoes.

Well, maybe not the shoes. But attention, they need. 

In the absence of appropriate attention, children are unsafe both physically and psychologically. They instinctively know that they need attention, so when they are not getting it, they devise creative and astonishing methods of acquiring it. 

Often extremely effective creative and astonishing methods...




In the lovely, funny and pointed book about childrearing, Purrfect Parenting, Beverly Guhl points out that children prefer lovely fresh breakfast cereal that's crisp and flavourful, with fresh, chilled milk. When they are starving, they will eat stale old breakfast cereal that's dusty and served with warm, soured milk. 

What they want is the good kind, but they'll take any over none.



When they get none, they do the most remarkable things. Things I have known attention-starved children to do include (but is not a comprehensive list):

• throw an armchair through a (rental house) living room window (he was 5)
• stand on the train tracks to see if the train would kill him (he was 4)
• cut a flower girl dress to shreds with paper scissors the day before the wedding (9)
• gag herself in order to barf in a restaurant (she was 3)
• stand on a kitten (4)
• pick a stranger's baby up by the ears (6)
• sit and then stand on a baby's head (4 years old)
• light a basement curtain on fire (11)

Now, the thing about these amazing feats is that the children weren't angry --they were all acting with a deep concentration and hyper-vigilance about where the parent's eyes were. 

Every one of them smiled when they got caught --sending their freaked out parents right over the edge. But that smile was from the very heart of them: there, it worked.

Whew... relief --attention at last.

When these kids grow up, they'll have the most remarkable set of coping skills imaginable: like a train wreck their lives become the thing of legend --seriously unattractive, but so hard to look away. So hard not to talk about.

If, though, these attention-seeking adults had made eye contact with someone who took them seriously, and reflected their experience back to them and interpreted the extremely contradictory and confusing huge world for them with kindness, generosity and love, they wouldn't be the attention-seeking adults they have become. 


They would be able to co-exist with other equals from a position of being filled --not empty and starving and willing to do anything, sell anything, permit any kind of humiliation just to get looked at for one more moment. Just one more bowl of tooth-breaking cereal swamped with curdled milk in what amounts to a steady diet of it...

Humans need attention. They will get it, anyway they can. 

Unhappy in a Great Life? The Reason is the Misery Contract

Editor's Note: This post contains affiliate links. Linda Clement only ever shares links to books she has read and believes are of value. No authors have been harmed in the sharing of these recommendations...

...recently been thinking about happiness --talking about it, reading a great book (What Happy People Know by the guy who runs one of the programs at Canyon Ranch) about it...

It seems to me that many people have unilaterally signed a contract with the universe that is not only unnecessary, but that is quite insane. I call it the


The Misery Contract






I will be happy when all--not some, but all of my conditions are met.

who was it that wanted you to be happy and has pissed you off?











I have to get all this stuff done before I can afford to be happy.
just what do you think happiness is?

As long as that person is in my life, I will prove they've screwed up my life by being miserable.
ooh, excellent plan, that will really get through to. . . . no one






Things that happened before now will preclude my happiness until they have not happened.
good luck with that

I can't be as [young, free, rich, pretty, thin, helpful, generous, intelligent, popular, wise, funny, powerful, famous, capable, talented, lucky, sexy, fit, healthy, immortal] as I want to be, so I can't be happy.
1. who says you can't be, and; 2. what's that got to do with anything?

My life is not my own, I have responsibilities and obligations I have to live up to before I can be happy.
you're crazy --that's ridiculous... be happy AND fulfill your obligations and responsibilities

They need to compensate me for what they've done --then I can be happy.
cool idea, but 'to compensate' means 'to give OTHER than what is needed' --how will that help?






I am deeply flawed and have sinned, when I'm pure I can be happy.
yeah, so, never then, eh?


I am not worthy, I haven't earned happiness and don't deserve it.
oh. my. god.

There is too much evil in the world, too many people killed and maimed and starving and suffering for it to be okay for me to be happy.
how does it help them to have you suffering too?









I am in pain. I'll be happy when I don't hurt.
the case is closed: pain lost --happiness alleviates a lot of pain and makes whatever pain is left much easier to endure

I am afraid to be happy. Too much good stuff happening attracts bad luck.
ha. ha. ha. ha. no it doesn't

Removing Blankies, Dummies, Lovies and Special Teddies, with Love

On a mother's Q&A forum recently I wrote:

I am confused at the people who give children a comfort object to avoid needing a person to comfort the child, only to take the object away when the parent decides it's inappropriate.

If you know you're going to take it away, why give it in the first place? Just wonderin'...

While I comfort myself with the thought that I can influence the whole world so much that I can stop parents from ever compelling a child to attach to an object--any object--instead of a person, I do live in the real world. 

Lots of people have already got kids attached to things. Avoid it if it is still possible, but if you are already here, recriminations are pointless and now parents only have the power to fix it, not undo it. As Terry Prachett quips: what has happened tends to stay happened.



I have a friend who is still angry, confused and bitter about a stuffed bear her dad discarded. This may seem frivolous --why would a grown woman hold onto such a trivial issue? Well, I think the primary reason is what the object meant.


The bear (pillow, blanket, stuffy, cuddle toy, pacifier) was this woman's mother-substitute. The bear was there when mother wasn't, reliable and consistent, available and held together from the long-ago magic of childhood and desperate need.


Dad, to the still-three-year-old part of this woman's existence, threw out her mother.


I say this in the hopes that parents will understand what they're asking their children to give up and perhaps pause before acting out of impatience, a sense of incompetence, or the unfairness of the child getting to keep the mother-substitute for longer than they were allowed as children.


If the object is truly a problem for the parent, the solution is not to eliminate the object but the child's need for the object. 

The simplest way to do this, of course, 

is to put a person in its place. 

Yes, yes, I know.

I did say 'simple.'

I didn't say 'easy.'

First Day and Already Worried About Further Education

Wow, 2009 was such a long time ago... I wrote this then...


My baby had her first day of school last week... it was so exciting: buying all the supplies ($$ faint! $$) planning the lunch menus, packing what she needed the first day, getting up on time, catching the bus all by herself. 

It makes a mommy proud.

The really cool part is that she's 17, and her first day of school is collage.

Can't Get In Without...

On the homeschool email lists, the semi-annual arguments about what is necessary to be successful in life has just passed. This year, the focus was on the economy (universally terrible, in spite of the thousands of new jobs and low unemployment numbers) and the unwavering but unreasonable requirements of employers. 

It is 'necessary' in one mom's view, to make sure her kids not only have diplomas from high school, but also at least a bachelor's degree --because that is the only way to be employed, today. 

She knows because she's been out there looking for a job by handing out 25 resumes a week, and she doesn't have a degree, which is why she's unemployed. 

She's applied for university and since she doesn't have a high school diploma, she can't get in. She also can't get any funding, because she's been turned down 'by everyone.'

I'm only amazed that she has a roof over her head, the impediments to success are so thick on the ground around her...

The Gatekeepers...


It is a prevalent view that it is not possible to get into university or college without a high school diploma. Often, university admissions offices will tell applicants this 'fact' directly. Call one up and ask, I assure you the usual answer is 'high school diploma necessary.' 

After that 'fact' is shared, ask what the entrance requirements are for 'mature student'... and if you're bored and want to talk longer, ask what the pre-requisites are for 'taking a single course.'

The admissions office has a particular job to do, regarding the casual questions of the general public (read: unwashed masses): maintain the sanctity of the gates. 

It is the gatekeeper's job to keep the incompetent, incapable and unlikely from getting anywhere near the lecture halls, because they are already well over-quota. Their job is not to tell anyone the 'other' ways into the system.

Other Ways In...

Then, of course, there are the myriad other ways into the college/university system that vary from person to person, and facility to facility.

It helps to remember that a university's primary task is to stay full. They have seating requirements to meet their budgets, and without enough tuition being paid they haven't the budget necessary to keep the quality of professors which attracts the quality students (does this start sounding like a circle to anyone else but me?)

Once it is understood that universities do not have boatloads of money holding up the pillars of their ivory towers, but they do have escalating costs, it becomes easier to see that if a candidate smells even slightly like they might end up looking good on behalf of the school (to attract donations, other students and good professors), it's a lot easier to get in than having good grades on a freshly printed high school transcript.

A few hints:

1. Winter session has fewer applicants, overall, than fall session, but has budget requirements every bit as high.
2. Heads of Departments are allowed to invite students in without anyone's permission.
3. Reading and responding to current research published in journals is an attention-getting method for future applicants looking to catch the eye of Department Heads.
4. Exhausting community resources in the field is an excellent way to find mentors, referees for entrance and bursary applications and to coincidentally run across Heads of Departments who are active in the field.
5. Attending public lectures, auditing courses and attending open-houses all enable applicants to suss out the movers and shakers local in the field.
6. Accredited private colleges offer more-focused coursework for specialized fields, often resulting in higher degrees of employability plus all the pre-requisites necessary to enroll next term in university in the same field.
7. Community colleges and accredited online universities have much lower intake standards (one that I know of requires applicants to be 16, except in special circumstances) but offer fully-transferrable credits --often not only easier to get into, but smaller first- and second-year class sizes plus a lot cheaper per credit.

Both my daughters selected private colleges, so they could concentrate on the subjects they wanted to learn without the mandatory (and expensive) requirements for out-of-field studies. Both of them decided in mid-summer which program they wanted, and getting in required a phone call to see if there was still room, a printed application form filled out and an application fee. One asked for confirmation from the registering school that they were homeschooled, the other wanted a short essay regarding what she hoped to gain from the program. 

Both said on their websites that applicants had to be 19 or high school grads, but on the application form of both there was a space for 'parent or guardian signature if applicant is under 19' and nowhere to fill in prior education information.

There is still room in my daughter's program, if you know anyone who wants to get into college this year...