How To Find More Time For Yourself

By Real Zest | Published: June 11, 2011

You deserve more time for yourself. More me time. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of me time your life must be miserable indeed. The next minute or so of our time together should help with that.

Here are seven strategies to find more time for yourself. Mix and match. Pick and pull. Gather what glimmers and make it work for you. You’ll live better for the effort.

1. Trick your schedule – Get up an hour earlier than you usually do. Going to sleep earlier will come naturally and you’ll find yourself making the happy trade between low-value distracted evening hours and wakeful starts to a more relaxed morning.

2. Recharge with a power outage – Turn of electronic gadgets for a day. Even better, set hours during which you allow yourself to use all the fancy gadgets you’ve surrounded yourself with. There’s really no need for that iPad to be in your bed and most of us don’t risk loss of life by powering down a phone for the evening.

3. Keep a “no” journal – Journal how many times you say “yes” to extra things that you really wanted to say “no” to then make a change for the better. You may need to rehearse saying no a few times before you get over the feeling that you’ve done something wrong. Soon you’ll see a trend of better energy put into things you really enjoy and aim to get results from.

4. Schedule abandonment –  Look at your calendar and decide which things to skip out ahead of time, so you know that you have the time, rather than last-minute frazzled not showing up because life intervened.

5. Steer toward delight – Physically remove yourself from the things that make you feel like they matter more than they do. Determine to leave the house on Saturday at the same time that you do for work, and then use your Saturday morning to do yoga or write in a coffee shop or whatever it is that you don’t have time for because you always really need to clean on Saturdays. Got kids? Got a partner or friend you can ship them off to? The coffee shop or yoga class can still happen.

6. Quit your job – Not your primary job. The activity that takes up as much time as a second job but doesn’t deliver the paycheck or the joy to make it worthwhile. You might drink a lot. You might read weight loss blogs. You might watch TV for hours on end. Blow your schedule wide open by cutting the activity from your life and opening your world up to new opportunities.

7. Cash in some favors – Make time for yourself by asking others for their time the same way they ask you to give up yours. That coworker who leaves early because you cover for her? That partner who spends every Saturday evening on the town? It’s time for them to step up and give you some of the freedom you’ve helped them attain before.

Have you experienced success in finding time for yourself? Let us know in a comment and thanks for sharing Real Zest with your friends!

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31 Simple Ways To Add Happy To Your Day

By Real Zest | Published: June 7, 2011

1. Go to bed an hour earlier. If you can sleep the extra rest will work wonders for your happiness the next day, and if you can’t sleep, then using the time to read a novel will feel absolutely luxurious.

2. Get flowers for your desk. Picking wildflowers is great if you can, but even buying a single rose to look at throughout your stressful days will make you happier.

3. Put yourself in “time out” for half an hour. Enjoy the space to think and just be. The best punishments for 6-year-olds are often the best happiness boosters for adults.

4. Eat chocolate for breakfast.

5. Take a walk down a road in your neighborhood that is not on your typical route.

6. Make chocolate chip cookie dough and forget to bake it. Extra points for freezing half in nibble size lumps that can be thawed and enjoyed on those days when nothing else is happy.

7. Write a thank-you note. Not only will you feel good about having done so, the act of writing out something that you’re thankful for will make you happier.

8. Volunteer at your local library. Not only will you be doing good, you’ll also get to meet some of the quirkiest people!

9. Buy your favorite childhood beverage. Even if it’s that dreadful overly sweet grape drink that tastes more like grape bubble gum than anything else.

10. Share gratitude. Start a tumblr (it’s free and has a great mobile app) and every day post 3 things that you are thankful for that day.

11. Clean out that closet or drawer where you can never find things when you need them. Then congratulation yourself each time you open it in the future.

12. Give blood. You’ll be helping out a stranger, it’s an excuse to eat sugary things, and you get to feel proud of all the questions you answer “no” to.

13. Pray for a friend. You don’t need to be religious to do this. A few heartfelt words followed by action is something that inspires all sorts of faith.

14. Find a way to cut 1% of your spending each month. Then put it in a separate savings account for your dream vacation.

15. Call your grandmother.

16. Keep a copy of your favorite children’s book on your coffee table.

17. Complete the couch-2-5K.

18. Take a day away from the news–no NPR, no newspaper, no Yahoo! news, no nothing.

19. Picnic with friends.

20. Use an online photo book site to make a book of pictures of some of your happiest times. You’ll both feel happier while laying out the pictures, you’ll get an additional boost a week or two later when the book arrives in the mail, and something to flip through to make you smile for years to come.

21. Write a letter to your younger self. Use the letter not only to tell yourself about how life has been so very different from what you could have predicted, but also to forgive yourself for your mistakes and to appreciate the vibrancy that you never could control.

22. Take vitamins.

23. Sing while you go about your morning routine.

24. If the weather is good, stop whatever it is you are doing and go outside just for a few minutes.

25. Make weekly rather than yearly resolutions. The wins come more quickly and the losses are more easily forgotten.

26. Research charities that show concrete results for helping the most needy and donate.

27. Sincerely compliment a coworker. Do this consistently and you may be a little freaked out by how quickly the praise starts flowing back.

28. Practice saying “yes” to your children. Their joy in getting what they want will bring great happiness (in addition to avoiding the fights that come from saying “no” when it isn’t really necessary).

29. Re-record your voice mail greeting on your personal cellphone while smiling. You will sound happier and people will naturally leave happier sounding messages in response.

30. Watch your favorite comedy.

31. Go through your closet and donate everything that is in season that you haven’t worn in the past month.

What have you done this week to add happy to your day? Take one of these suggestions for a spin and let us know how it goes or add one of your own below. Thanks for sharing Real Zest with your friends!

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Thanks, Luis Hernandez, Amir Kuckovic, and Camdiluv AmmyLynn!

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On Bribery

By Lisa Ahn | Published: June 4, 2011

True confession: I once offered Rainbow Girl a dollar to stop talking for fifteen minutes. In my defense, we were in the Orlando Airport at the end of a disastrous vacation. At least one of my children had vomited every day for a week and a half. We were traveling home on my last and final nerve.

So, I bribed her. “Don’t talk for fifteen minutes and I’ll give you a dollar.” She made me keep time. In the relative quiet, I watched strangers walking by. I was sure that they had never exchanged money for silence, that they had never clammed up their offspring with cash.

It turns out that the Orlando Airport was just the beginning of my bribery career. Orange Tic Tacs work great to keep a toddler awake in the car so that she’ll nap at home. At the library, store, or doctor’s office, I have whipped out lollipops as an enticement towards good behavior. I have bribed with stickers, donut holes, and movie nights. To locate that maddeningly lost letter “B” from the set of alphabet cards, I’ve offered cold, hard cash. Finding a lost toy usually merits twenty-five cents to a dollar. (The letter “B” turned up weeks later in a bin of books. No one got paid.)

Somehow, in spite of my quirks and neuroses, my children have not turned into money-grubbing monsters. They help around the house, no financial strings attached. They often do chores unasked, folding laundry during the lull of quiet afternoons, arguing about who gets to sweep, and choosing their favorite napkins as they set the table. Their room is (mostly) neat – though I wouldn’t look too closely in the clothes drawers. They never ask us for money, though they are expert hagglers at a toy store. (They are kids, not saints, after all). Against all odds, I have managed not to mess them up completely.

I doubt I am alone in either my fears or my faults.

In each moment of parenting, I see a reflection of who I am – the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Through the distortion of that mirror, I imagine that I should be more like this or that mom –more spontaneous, or carefree, or calm. Instead, I am what I am – always trying, learning, growing – but still and always essentially me. Imperfect.

My kids love me in spite of the bribes. Not because of them. They give me crazy monkey hugs and take my hand.  Through them, with them, I learn to lead and also to follow. At the Orlando Airport, I felt like the worst mother in the transcontinental flow. Now, I understand that we all look through our own distortions – through the lenses of who we are and who we want to be.  My kids have better eyes, and for that I am thankful.

Years after Orlando, they are louder as well. Next time, I may have to raise my rates.

Get Real Zest by RSS or email here. Follow Lisa on Twitter and check out her blog.

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10 Time Management Tips For Moms

By Kathleen Basi | Published: March 29, 2011

As an at-home mother of little ones as well as a writer, composer and flute/voice teacher who volunteers as choir director and natural family planning teacher, I have to be really smart with my time in order to accomplish anything at all. Here’s my take on maximizing time and productivity, based on my experience as a write-at-home mom.

1. Break down big tasks into small ones.

Working from home, interruption is part of the landscape. If all your tasks are big (“write article for ____.”), it’s going to be hard to get traction on them. Break them down into small parts that can be accomplished among the interruptions (“research sources;” “contact sources;” “research statistics; schedule interviews”). How do you keep track of such minutiae?

2. One word: lists.

Lists are our friends.

3. Schedule like a maniac.

Now that you have your tasks, set up hour-by-hour blocks, starting with the inflexible (lessons, pickup and dropoff, etc.) and working your way down to five-minute blocks. No block is without a dedicated purpose. Obviously, you have to be flexible. But it’s easier to alter a plan than to accomplish things without one. And don’t forget that your brain can always work, even when your hands can’t. You can brainstorm in the car driving from point A to point B.

4. Prioritize.

You have a lot to do, but not all tasks are equal. An article approaching deadline ranks above housecleaning—unless you’re having house guests tonight.

5. Identify tasks that can withstand interruption.

Emailing and research, for instance, can usually be done piecemeal between interruptions—in other words, while the kids are awake. This post, for instance, was scribbled on the back of a coupon and typed into my computer at the grocery store, at the park, and at the table while negotiating bites of vegetable with my toddler.

6. Plan all tasks for maximum time efficiency.

If you have to go upstairs to change a diaper, make sure to change the laundry and carry a stack of kids’ books while you’re at it.

7. Be prepared for opportune moments.

Wherever you go, take something with you to work on, in case you happen to get 5 minutes while you’re waiting in the car, the grocery line, or the doctor’s office. You probably won’t, but be prepared anyway.

8. Sacrifice a guilty pleasure.

You can’t do everything, so you’re going to have to decide what you can do without. For me, that’s TV.

All the above tips help you make use of short bits of time. But sooner or later, you have to have a big block of uninterrupted time. Some projects and tasks can’t be completed without them. I’m sorry to break it to you: there’s no painless fix. I know of only two ways to create blocks of time where there aren’t any:

9. Get a babysitter.

10. Get up early or stay up late.

Sleeping in on the weekend is a luxury. Take it when you want to, but don’t make a habit of it!

So there you have it: my secret for doing it all. What time management tips do you find helpful?

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7 steps to get organized this week

By Real Zest | Published: March 27, 2011

You’ve spent the last seven months rushing kids out the door, partner to work, and orchestrating the near-chaos that is the beauty of your life. Sound about right? Now your house has slipped into disarray. It’s time to gain back some of that lost ground!
Here are seven steps you can use (one each day next week? hint, hint!) to bring sanity back to your daily routine:

1. Take back your purse

Take your purse and gently shake the contents of your purse out into the open. Weed out the junk first. Then the flock of receipts. Then the stuff you’re not sure you can explain. Wallets are for cash, credit cards, ID’s and the gym member card you haven’t made time to use recently. Want to keep it that way? Make time each week, perhaps during Sunday dinner, to file important papers you’ve been carrying around, get rid of junk, and make sure you’ve not run out of tissues or lip balm.

2. Divide to conquer your bathroom

Bathroom drawers are big, most of the things you keep in them aren’t though! The solution? Pick up a few of those cute little containers you’ve eyed at Target and divvy up your bottles, brushes, tubes, trays, and what have you into containers you’ll finally be able to reach without struggling for!

3. Set up a landing routine

When you come in for a landing, don’t just throw your things wherever! If you’re lucky enough to have a closet near the entry to your home, commandeer the inside of the closet door as your landing space. Hooks for keys, a holder for outbound mail, and even a peg to hang your favorite purse will give you an easy place to land and make your takeoffs even simpler and stress-free.

4. Winterize your closet

This is about getting ready for next Winter while you’re digging through your closet at the close of this one (Thank goodness!). Large clear stacking drawers are your best friends for this job. Fold and stack your sweaters into drawers and stow them away. If you’re really into the idea, you can buy extra drawers and switch them out based on seasons.

5. Give paper a system and banish paperwork

Getting the papers taken care of your desk is a big thing. If you need to take it in steps, handle 5 pieces of paper each day until you’re caught up. Preferably in the morning. The trick to keeping ahead of paper is to avoid it whenever possible by handling bills online. The only time you’ll see paper is when you’re printing records and that can all be done in batches, if required at all! Handling lots of paperwork for others in your house, too? Set up an inbox and outbox so you control what’s covering the middle of your desk.

6. Speed up your kitchen

It’s time to speed up your kitchen by reducing the frenzied crashing about in search of omelet pans and pot lids.The double-action potato masher isn’t the only cool and useful gadget introduced to the kitchen lately. Shelf-doublers that allow you to keep pans without stacking them in each other minimize clanging crashes. Frames to “file” cutting boards like manila folders will save space and can serve as a “book stop” for muffin pans and cookie sheets set on-end.

7. Add storage to common areas

The amount you spend is up to you but the basic trick here is to introduce mobile storage options to the common areas of your home. Woven baskets, boxes, or framed cloth totes (pretty much anything cute enough to be seen) will do the trick. Extra containers for a weekly organize-and-dispatch session where all the stray items in common areas are divided and returned to their homes will allow you to keep a few steps ahead of the messes that drag down the spirit and make it hard to have guests over.

Got another tip to add? Let us know in the comments!

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Photos: Meredith Farmer, Yvestown
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Spring cleaning? 5 tips for managing toys

By Sarah Joy | Published: March 25, 2011

Toys are not fun when they’re all over the house. If you’re stepping on green army men, threatening to sell wayward dolls on eBay and are using items like daddy’s lighter as a body doubles for game pieces, the toys have taken over.

Your children’s toys aren’t evil, they’re just a little misguided.

Here are five ways to manage toys in your home so that they feed your children’s imaginations and not your trash cans.

Jane: I’m afraid the nursery isn’t very tidy.
Mary Poppins: It is rather like a bear pit, isn’t it?

1. Choose Toys Wisely

Be the gatekeeper to your castle. Banish cheaply made toys (like the kind that break before you get home from the dollar store) and ones that have no meaning to your children. Kids will ask to buy toys just because they light up and sound like broken drive-through speakers.

Ask your children to think about what kinds of toys they would like to have before you go shopping. Encourage them to build collections of quality toys (figurines, train tracks, doll houses, kitchen set, costumes, etc.) so that they can really play with them to the fullest. When children put thought into their toys, they’re more likely to take care of them.

2. Set Toys Free

The ending scene of Toy Story 3 is a beautiful example of how well cared for toys can be given to younger children when they are outgrown. Instead of taking toys to the curb (sometimes, this is okay… but use this option sparingly!), be on the same team and have your children be part of the decision making process. Show them the benefit of setting their toys free.

“You had a lot of fun with this Noah’s Ark when you were three. Can you think of any three-year-olds who might like to play with it, now that you’re ten?” Or, “I’ve noticed that you don’t play with your Lincoln Logs as much as you used to. Would you be interested in selling them to earn money towards getting the R/C car you’ve been wanting?” (Selling toys online is a great way for kids to earn money and a fantastic learning experience. It’s also another incentive to keep toys in good shape so that they’ll retain value.)

3. Rotate Toys

Ever notice how quickly kids become bored in a huge mixed-up pile of toys? That’s because it’s overstimulating. There are too many choices coming at them at the same time and it’s difficult to figure out which is best. To cope with overstimulation, they flit from one toy to the next and never really focus on one particular toy long enough to really enjoy it. The answer? Rotate toys.

Using durable storage containers, pack up toys in sets. Plastic animals go in one box. The pirate ship, crew, and treasure box go in another. As you label the boxes, write down the contents on a master list and keep it somewhere for the kids to see — like the family message board. Store the boxes out of the play area’s field of view (like, in a closet in the same room) .

The children can read the list and request toys be taken out of storage, or you can choose which toys you’d like out. The rule is that only one box may be open at a time (unless, the kids can think of a good exception… like, “I want to be wearing my pirate costume while I’m playing with my pirate set.”) and that everything must be put back into its box before another box is opened.

It’s amazing, but kids will actually spend more time playing with each individual set of toys. Their play becomes more creative because their choices are more limited. Furthermore, they will have all of the pieces to their toys because they are being stored together, instead of having to dump an entire toy box to find the tiny pink brush for their purple horse.

4. Keep the Toys Safe in Their Kingdom

Toys need to stay in designated areas. This is not because toys are unwelcomed, its more that toys are special and it wouldn’t be good if they were lost or ruined. Certainly exceptions can be made upon request, but the more toys “allowed” out of the play area, the more likely the toys will start to think they are the rightful rulers and stage a coup d’état. Escapee toys can be gathered up and put into a box in a pinch (like, if your house is for sale and you have short-notice showing) but all of the stragglers must be put in their proper places before a new box is opened.

5. Don’t Be a Hypocrite

Although you’re no longer playing with dolls (or your She-Ra: Princess of Power figurine), the most effective way to teach children to be good stewards of their things is for you to be a good steward of your things. Be just as diligent about clean-up as you expect from your children.

Can you walk across the floor of your bedroom without stepping on things? Do your cupboards throw plates at you every time you open them? Do you constantly buy things just because they’re on sale, not because you really need them? If this sounds like you, humbly admit that you, too, have a problem in this area and are taking strides toward change. It’s hard enough for adults to have respect for hypocrites!

By taking care of the things that are entrusted in your care as a family, it is just another way of practicing gratefulness together.

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What story do your numbers tell?

By Kathleen Basi | Published: February 20, 2011

Have you ever thought about how much of our identity is defined by numbers? Social Security, driver’s license, phone, credit card, salary… Numbers can reveal a lot about a person, but those aren’t the ones that do it.

Here are some of the numbers that define my life:

36: age. 5-4. Height. (Mumble mumble144mumble): my weight. And 4: the number of letters I get to put after my name (B.M., M.M.).

Hm. Not so important, I think. How about these?

349: number of Facebook friends (no wonder I miss so much). 96: number of Twitter followers.

Maybe not. Let’s try something different:

1: marriage
2: married parents
2: living grandmothers
3: children
24: aunts and uncles
36: first cousins

These numbers say a lot about me: they paint a picture of a stable family life, of a rich family life that spans generations, an experience that many people don’t get these days.

But even the most revealing numbers only show an incomplete picture, like a low-res image blown up too far. Weight fluctuates depending on many factors; you can always add a degree to your name. How many of my Twitter followers are spam phishers? How can the number of aunts, uncles and cousins communicate that we actually know and love and spend time together? How do I break that number down to honor the memory of a cousin who passed away on the cusp of manhood, as his body succumbed to muscular dystrophy? How can a number communicate the experience of leading music at his funeral Mass?

One last try. 3: Number of years spent trying to conceive before my children came along. 6: the number of times Julianna has been hospitalized. 2: the number of times we almost lost her. Now we’re getting somewhere. Those are defining experiences, encapsulated by a single number.

Then there’s the number 21. For most of my life, I thought the only significance of that number would be the age I was legal to drink. Then came Julianna, my chromosomally-gifted daughter. “21” catapulted me into a whole different category: mother of a child with Down syndrome. And even that, which seems like a pretty specific category, turns out to be a deeply nuanced experience—just like every other.

We get fixated on numbers sometimes—square footage, bargains made, amount of debt paid off. We enter into competition with other parents about our kids’ numbers: how early did they walk? How many words, at what age? When did they start reading? How many Girl Scout cookies did they sell? But in the end, numbers can paint only a partial picture of us, and perhaps serve as an introduction. They’ll never do more than that, because every number carries the weight of its own story. And the stories are where we become human.

What numbers begin to tell your stories?

You can follow author Kathleen Basi on Twitter or check out her blog.
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How I write about my children

By Lisa Ahn | Published: February 13, 2011

Meeting someone new is a fragmentary blessing. Within that sliver of time, you can reinvent yourself, a blank page, history unwritten. Your secrets are safe, unremarked. No one needs to know about crazy Aunt Molly, or the senior prom disaster. There’s no need to confess that you still eat peanut butter straight from the jar.

All of your fumbles and foibles have yet to be discovered. It’s a delicious fringe of time, heady with possibility, with a second – or thousandth – chance to be graceful, and knowing, and funny. The thrill and the risk combined are what make us shiver, just a little, at each fresh encounter.

As a writer/mom, I steal those moments from my children whenever I put their history to the page. I take their mishaps and delights, their dreams and adventures, and filter them through words of my choosing, framed by my gaze.

Years from now, when they no longer fly through rooms with blankets billowing behind them, those days will endure in the amber of words, my words, telling. And while their childhoods are undeniably cute and precious, I sometimes wonder how my girls will react to such disclosures when they are ten or fifteen or twenty.

In one sense, my concerns are outdated. We live in a public culture, one where Jon and Kate’s kids had a fan club before they were out of diapers, where the offspring of celebrities are famous at birth, and where people often know more about the President’s daughters than they do about the kids next door. Why should my children be any different, their lives any more private? They were born into an age ruled by twitter and Facebook, My Space and Flickr, Foursquare and LinkedIn. Each one of us is simply a few keystrokes away from the kind of disrobing that Google can provide, vital statistics and personal history shrouded in nothing more than binary code.

Still, I wonder what I owe and what I own when it comes to my children’s stories. To what extent does writing their childhood circumscribe their future, their undiscovered selves?

To balance the scales, I invent pathways between thin lines, between writer and mom. I cobble together cloaks and screens to separate my stories from the children at their heart. I give my daughters new names, transform them into characters. My youngest becomes Boo Monkey, while my eldest is christened Rainbow Girl. I opt for stock photos, rather than family photos, to illustrate my work. I reveal and shield my children within the same web of words.

At this age, my kids are delighted, tickled to find themselves sketched in print. Their comments, questions, and laughter reverberate as echoes between the lines, a small collaboration. Still, I am ever-vigilant for the cringe or frown, for the slight wrinkle of embarrassment. I use myself – chronically shy and easily embarrassed – as litmus. Would I mind? Is there anything here to regret?

Ultimately, I am comforted by the limits of language itself. I cannot ever write my children, truly. Too much escapes, wriggling free, outside of words, in the margins, unscored. Google can only capture just so much, and binary code, like twenty-six letters, is small when laid beside a living life.

In spite of the stories I use to frame them, my children will always be more than I can say or imagine. They will step into beautiful moments, unwritten, with the power to transform themselves, to become, again, what they wish to be. Still, at the heart of every new encounter, I hope they will stand upon the bone-etched knowledge that their writer/mom embraced them with an infinity of words set loose, like wings.

Follow Lisa on Twitter at @lisa_ahn
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On Bullying a Bully

By Julie M Green | Published: February 1, 2011

They say there’s no such thing as a bad child, only bad behavior. Recently I’ve had the misfortune of experiencing up close and extremely personally this so-called bad behavior.

When I enrolled my two-year-old son in a program named (wishfully, ironically) Terrific Twos, I was excited. The aim of the class is just to give tots a taste of preschool life, with its structured activities ranging from crafts to stories and singsong. Beyond that the big draw for me is the chance to drop off my son and eventually leave the room for a while.

Awful as that sounds, as a stay-at-home mom I want to give my son a chance to adapt and cope without me. After all, I won’t always be there to hold his hand or fight his battles for him. Plus, I don’t want his first experience of school to be Armageddon.  Like many people, my formative memories of starting school include clinging to my mother’s pant leg outside the school entrance. (Say what you want about daycare, but at least DC kids are socially adept and learn the hard lessons of separation at an earlier age than those who stay at home.)

By the second session of Terrific Twos, however, my own panic set in. The idea is to have caregivers attend the early part of the program, before disappearing for the second half. During one of the first sessions, out of nowhere my son was broadsided as he sat (go figure) on a ride-on BMW. The other boy, who we’ll call Fred, threw my gentle giant to the ground. In a flash, I ran to console my startled and shaken son who lay howling on the floor next to the toy car.  Literally minutes later, Fred’s nanny sauntered over, uttered the feeblest, ‘That wasn’t nice’, while Fred carried on riding the Beamer.

Sadly the incident wasn’t an isolated occurrence. During that same session I witnessed Fred yanking toys from other children, and he later practically throttled another boy on a ride-on. The nanny remained lackadaisical and never once corrected Fred’s (mis)behavior. He isn’t a naughty kid, just one who’s misguided, and one who’s quickly learning to get what he wants by stealth.  Speaking to other concerned caregivers, who had all noticed little Fred and his tyrannical behavior, we knew we needed to step up. But how to proceed?

Should we attempt to discipline Fred as a collective? Should we confront the nanny by staging an intervention? Or should we simply keep a lid on it, as well as a tight leash on our own kids so as to keep them out of Fred’s warpath?

The issue of bullying is a real hornet’s nest, and one with which schools and governments are currently grappling. We fully recognize that it takes a village to raise a child, and yet no caregiver wants her (or his!) methods challenged or corrected. Perhaps, striving for a middle road, we will voice our concerns with the program organizer and leave her to confront the nanny and/or redirect the boy’s bad behavior.

The Fred story perfectly illustrates the myriad gray areas of childcare today.  How assertive is too assertive? How permissive is too permissive? There is no right or wrong path as a parent — just the one you ultimately decide to walk, the one you have to live with at the end of the day. So, whichever path you decide upon, choose it wisely.

You can follow author Julie M. Green on Twitter here or get Real Zest sent to your inbox here.
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