June 17th, 2010 04:11pm

Are best friendships unhealthy?

by WineCountry.Mom

Some experts are claiming that it is better to discourage best friendships in the childhood years. (read the article…)

View All Comments (3)
TAGS , , , , | CATEGORY In the news, Kid Issues

February 17th, 2010 03:14pm

Facebook Friendships

by WineCountry.Mom

Everyone has a Facebook. And you? You have, like, 3,000 friends! It’s easy to feel popular every time you log on. And you are getting to know all these people as they update their statuses. At any given hour, you can find out what your friends ate for breakfast, that they are bored, that they have a lot of homework to do, that their parents are dweebs, that they went to the bathroom 5 times in an hour…..

But is it real?

I heard this term – cotton candy friendships – the other day, and it stuck with me. It was regarding the social life of teens online, especially when it comes to Facebook. Think about it. Cotton candy is the kind of treat that we all crave. It is super sweet, has a great texture, and dissolves in your mouth. Who really wants to share their cotton candy? Not me! When you buy cotton candy, you want it all to yourself. You can eat a whole bunch of that yummy cotton goodness! But what happens 30 minutes later? You’re hungry. You want something real. You need to be fed. (more…)

View All Comments (4)
TAGS , , , | CATEGORY Kid Issues, teens

February 15th, 2010 07:25pm

To everything, there is a season

by WineCountry.Mom

Life is full of seasons. In the spring of our lives, we are protected and cared for by our parents. We grow and learn, we change and mature. We are in love with our parents, we hate our parents. We make friends with our neighbors just because they live near us. Our whole world is in the very neighborhood we live in. Hours feel like days, days feel like years, and years feel like an eternity. We are young, we are carefree, we will live on forever. In our season of summer, we have realized that we have minds of our own. And with that knowledge, we are brilliant! We become experts on certain subjects, knowing more than anyone else could possibly know about it. We are the beautiful people, the ones who are on top and going to make this world so much better than our parents – their generation truly screwed things up for us. (more…)

View All Comments (5)
TAGS , , , , | CATEGORY Off topic

January 18th, 2010 09:17pm

Is it ok to discipline other people’s children?

by WineCountry.Mom

We want our kids to have friends. But sometimes friends aren’t welcome. Little Timmy comes over to play with your son, and lets himself into your home as soon as you open the door. And even though he came over to play with your son, suddenly your child is playing by himself in the living room while Timmy rifles through his things upstairs. He invites himself on your family outings. He opens your refrigerator to see what you have to eat. Maybe he lies repeatedly. Maybe he makes a mess of your home and then leaves before cleaning it up. He might use language that doesn’t fly in your home. He might be a hitter, or a biter, or use some other form of brutality to get his way. He might even steal your child’s belongings, maybe even yours. Whatever he’s doing wrong, the kid gets under your skin. Little Timmy has no sense of boundaries whatsoever, fails to follow the house rules even though you have reminded him of them repeatedly, and you have noticed that your child’s behavior has gone downhill dramatically ever since Timmy made his first appearance. And yet your child insists they want to be friends with them. (How do you deal without dropkicking Little Timmy across the neighborhood? Read more…)

View All Comments (9)
TAGS , , , , | CATEGORY As a Parent...., Kid Issues