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Joys of parenting beats rugby for Gavin Henson

Sep 5 2010
by Paul Rowland, Wales On Sunday

GLORY on the rugby field can never rival the joys of fatherhood, Gavin Henson has said.

The controversial star has been on indefinite, unpaid leave from the Ospreys for the past six months, allowing him to spend more time with Ruby, three, and 20-month-old Dexter his children with estranged partner Charlotte Church.

And he says spending time with the two children made him think he would never go back to rugby.

For the first six or seven months, I didnt miss it at all, he explained.

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NEW YORK (CBS) Clear the bookshelves.

Yet another book on parenting is coming your way, written by none other than reality TV star and father of eight, Jon Gosselin.

Pictures: The Gosselin Family

According to the celeb web site Popeater, Gosselin, whose marriage went up in flames before a TV audience, is writing the book with his life coach Sylvia Lafair .

There is apparently no deadline or publisher yet. But a friend of Gosselins told the web site that interest in the book is high and Gosselin would like to capitalize on that.

Gosselins ex-wife, Kate, has written several parenting-type books, including Eight Little Faces and I Just Want You to Know.

And Gosselins counselor and co-writer is the author of a 2010 business book Dont Bring It to Work.

Would you take parenting advice from Gosselin? Take the poll below and explain your vote in the comments area.

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She is now also criticized for portraying her four-year-old daughter Shiloh as tomboy.  All this, many critics argue, do not make her a good mom at all.  While everyone loves Jolie’s acting and her humanitarian works, such aberrations obviously give substance to a group of people who look things the other way.  Consequently, it will be now important for Jolie to change her ways of parenting.  She otherwise will lose the admiration of many followers who till now regarded her super mom.  (ENSNN)

Short URL: http://www.entertainmentandshowbiz.com/?p=70159

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by Ou Young Foon

I have a few good friends, since my primary school days, who are the only child in the family.  Some of their mothers could only give birth to one child due to health reasons.  One mother has a hole in her heart, and her doctor advises her not to conceive again on medical grounds.  Some parents have tried to conceive after bearing their first child but failed without any obvious reasons.  On the other hand, I do know of some parents who feel that they do not have the financial means to provide the best for two children, so they choose to have one child only.

Whether having a single child is by choice or not, getting the balance right in bringing up the child is important.  Certain researches have indicated that only children have slight advantages in certain areas.  In academic achievements, single child parents can devote more time to coach single children in their studies and spend more money towards their education.  With more resources and time available, only children can attain higher academic results. 

The only child may develop good reasoning skills younger, since he is surrounded by adults and not siblings of the same age.  He tends to imitate adult behaviour and speech patterns, making him better at solving problems he faced while growing up.

Encourage your only child to mingle with other children of the same age around your neighbourhood.  If he has cousins or neighbours of the same age group, try to find time to visit them after school or during the weekends.  You may invite them to play in your house too.  Enroll your child in local play groups or day care centers to let him interact with other children.

Learning to play in a group will discourage your only child to turn into a bossy little boy, because if he is one, nobody will befriend him.  Joining other children during play will cultivate values such as sharing, taking turns and feeling for others.  Allow him to develop a wide range of hobbies and interests, so that he will not feel lonely but still enjoy quiet moments, such as reading alone.  Besides engaging in group interactions, it is not a bad idea if your only child has imaginary friends.  Imaginary friends help one to confront loneliness, ward off fear, or to face feelings of weakness in relation to adults or older children.

Parents can help to guide their only child to be more self-reliant and independent since he does not have siblings to fend for him.  When your only child is ready, let him learn to get things done himself, and he will not lean too much on you, his parent.

By guiding your single child properly, he can survive any imbalance of being an only child.  

Learn more about this author, Ou Young Foon.

Click here to send this author comments or questions.

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The six-week class parenting class, called Love and Logic, will start Sept. 16. The course, which is open to all parents in Fairfield County, is designed to help parents decrease power struggles with their children and learn how to better relate to them.

Social Worker and Instructor Barbara Long has been teaching Love and Logic for 10 years and called it one of her favorite programs to teach.

Ive done some other (programs), but I like Love and Logic, Long said. Parents learn how to avoid those power struggles with their kids and how to work with them…the program is especially perfect for parents with teens.

Love and Logic is a philosophy founded by Jim Fay and Foster W. Cline, doctors who have a combined total of 75 years working with and raising kids, according to the Love and Logic Web site. The program is designed to help parents better understand their children, curb anger and frustration, and develop practical parenting skills.

The class will take place one night a week for six weeks. The cost of the course is $30; financial scholarships are available.

Long said the program has four, main principals that teach parents how to become a Love and Logic parent. Among those principals are learning how to share control, how to determine who takes ownership of a problem, how to teach kids to think through and solve their problems and how to show empathy.

Of those principals, Long said she thinks showing empathy proves to be the most challenging for parents.

Its easy to come across as being sarcastic, so that one takes a lot of work, Long said.

She said she thinks the course is helpful for parents who are struggling to understand and relate to their children. She said parents complete a questionnaire at the beginning and end of the course; by the end of the course, she said, parents are already seeing significant improvement in their relationships with their children.

She added parents often will tell her, through the class, theyve learned how to better handle difficult situation with their child or children.

What I hear a lot of the time is, my parents whipped my butt and that got me in line, but we live in a different culture and I think whipping butt doesnt work the way it used to, Long said. This is a different and more effective approach.

Michelle George can be reached at (740) 681-4342 or mgeorge@nncogannett.com.

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The essential information, Young said, was this: Webb was in by her curfew Tuesday night. Then she sneaked out her bedroom window without her mothers knowledge.

The drowning occurred around 4:15 am Wednesday, when three cars carrying 11 people, ages 16 to 21, were swept up in the swirling floodwaters of Mud Creek. Webbs parents waited for more than six hours before her body was recovered downstream.

The Bible verse from Psalm 25 that Young read at Saturdays funeral service at Grace Church in Des Moines seemed appropriate: Remember not the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you are good, O Lord.

Before the service on Des Moines east side, the song Over the Rainbow played as photos of Webb flashed on a video screen. In the pictures, Webb was shown posing in front of a birthday cake, tailgating at a Kansas City Chiefs football game, and snuggling with her fluffy white dog, Lucy. In every picture, she looked like a kid - always smiling, often making faces at the camera.

Who among us has never been disobedient in our lives? Young asked.

The high school and college pastor at Grace Church, Jonathan Meyer, spoke glowingly of Webb, a girl who loved her horse named Pringles, whose first car trip after getting her drivers license was to visit her grandparents, and who attended Bible camp every year since she was 5. She was an opinionated girl, Meyer said, who was a brown belt in tae kwon do and whose favorite phrase to say to her mother, Wendy Webb, was, I know, Mom, I know.

In his message, Meyer compared parenting to wearing seat belts. Keeping children away from danger can be uncomfortable, but children need parents protection.

I suggest we do a better job as parents of saying no to our sons and daughters, Meyer said. This is a reality check to parents.

He directed the same message to youths: Saying no to ill-advised, dangerous situations can be difficult, but its the right decision.

I know it is not cool to say no to one another, Meyer said. I know that you potentially could lose friends, and people may distance themselves from you. But my question this morning: Who wishes four days ago they would have said no? I would suggest that every single one of you would have said no now that you know what you know.

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How Did Spike Lee Come Up With The Unique Title For His New HBO Documentary?

Spike Lee recounts the touching story about his late grandmother that inspired the title for his new HBO documentary, If God Is Willing and Da Creek Dont Rise, which gives an update on New Orleans since the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina.

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Aug. 6, 2010 — Parents of children with autism may be more likely to divorce when their children reach adolescence or young adulthood than parents of children without this or other developmental  disabilities, finds a new study in the August issue of the Journal of Family Psychology.

Despite this increase in divorce seen as children with autism grew up, fully three-quarters of these parents did remain married, the new study showed.

You are not fated to get divorced because you have a child with autism, but there is a prolonged vulnerability to divorce for these families, study researcher  Sigan L. Hartley, PhD, a professor of human development and family studies at University of Wisconsin, Madison, tells WebMD.

The CDC estimates that about one in 110 children in the U.S have autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the umbrella name given to a larger group of disorders that can affect social and communication skills.

Empty Nest vs. Full Nest

In families not affected by autism, the day-to-day parenting responsibility dies down, and parents get more alone time as children age, she says.

This is not true for many parents of autistic children. Frequently adult children with ASD continue to live with their parents. There is no empty-nest syndrome in these households.

If you have a son or daughter with autism, your parenting responsibilities remain pretty steady, and you dont see the drop-off as children age, she explains to WebMD. The day-to-day parenting demands continue and remain fairly high, she says. These persistent demands may contribute to stress in the marriage.

Researchers compared divorce rates over time among 391 parents of children with autism and parents of children without disabilities.

The divorce rate for parents of autistic children was 23.5%, compared with 13.8% among parents of children who did not have any disabilities. The divorce rate was similar among both groups until children turned 8. This is when the divorce rate went down among parents of kids without developmental delays, but remained high for parents of kids with autism, researchers report.

More study is also needed to understand the issues facing these families, Hartley says. Services directed at families of older children with autism may help more families stay together. As it is now, most services focus on the early parenting years, she explains.

Second Opinion

Brian Freedman, PhD, clinical director of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders at Kennedy Institute in Baltimore, recently published a study debunking the myth that there is an 80% divorce rate among parents of children with autism.

And this study seems to further debunk the myth, as the results indicate that over 75% of families with a child with ASD remained intact, he tells WebMD in an email.

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Get ready to read some amazing blogs! The editors of Parenting magazine and BlogHer have worked together to track down the year’s best family-oriented writing on the web. Now its time to celebrate the authors: Weve asked these bloggers to create exclusive pieces for Parenting magazine and the BlogHer 10 Conference, which begins Aug. 6 in New York City.

Wonder how we decided on the must-read parenting blogs of the year? We turned to the experts, a panel of 20 editors and bloggers from BlogHer.com and Parenting to go out and find the years best posts. These women took us very seriously, returning with more than 200 diverse, well-written nominees. Then we read and read and read some more, using this criteria to recommend ten blogs that we thought your year would not be complete without reading — theirs were the most interesting, well-written, and just plain fascinating pieces. You can visit Must-Read Moms on Parenting.com to find links to all of the nominated blogs. And now, without further ado…meet the Must-Read Moms of 2010:

Meet the Must-Read Moms of 2010

Christy Everett from Following Elias - After her son was born four months premature, the first words Christy Everett heard were: “He’s alive, but I can’t tell you he’s going to survive.” Today, Elias is 6, and has a baby sister, Olive. Throughout it all, Christy has kept a touching, rather meticulous record of both their lives as well as her own. “I started writing about Elias a few weeks after his birth, as a way to keep family and friends informed on his status,” Christy explains. “As the days in the neonatal intensive care unit turned into months, I found this written outlet was important for my own healing and growth.”

Dawn Friedman from This Womans Work has two kids and a delightfully odd husband, Brett. Her children are Noah (born in 1997) and Madison (born to her first mom, Pennie*, in 2004 and brought to her family through a domestic, open adoption). She is a freelancer and homeschools.

Eve Kuckuck’s from Impersonating Normal. Her blog used to be called Infertility Rocks!, a jaunty response to the years she spent trying to get pregnant. Now, she’s has the hard-won title of mother of two. “That leaveth not much time for the internet these days,” she writes.

Julie Marsh from The Mom Slant has absolutely no formal writing credentials whatsoever, but that doesn’t stop her from pontificating on politics, religion, and any other topic that catches her attention. A former Air Force officer and music industry project manager, Julie now lives outside Denver with her husband and three young children.

Linda Sharps from All amp; Sundry - lives in a Seattle suburb with her husband, the many-adjective’d JB, and their sons Riley and Dylan. In addition to her day job at a Mac software company and the whole wrangling-two-children thing, shes also a freelance writer and is going back to school part time. Her hobbies include training for various ill-advised fitness events, taking photos with her battered Nikon D70, reading comic books, and thinking about zombies. She enjoy profanity and yoga pants.

Liz Dwyer from Losangelista - She lives in LA but at heart, shes your average Black/Irish Midwesterner who loves to write, read, eavesdrop and take photos. Shes a Bahai, an insomniac, and ponders becoming vegan. Shes fanatical about chai and will love you forever if you get her front row tix to a Depeche Mode show.

Lori Holden from Weebles Wobblog is a work-at-home mom of two who survived the fires of infertility and adoption. She has recently entered the chauffeur state of parenting and has been known to compose an entire post at a red light.

Polly Paganhart from Lesbian Dad - comes by her parenting chops by virtue of a daughter (since September 2004) and a son (since January 2007), both carried and birthed by her beloved. She came by most of the rest of what goes into her blog by virtue of some book-learning (BA: Berkeley, English; MA: Minnesota, American Studies amp; Feminist Studies), some teaching at both universities (American Studies, Women’s Studies, Composition, Pedagogy), and sundry activism hither and yon.

Ronnie Tyler from Black and Married with Kids is a thirty-something year old professional 4 kids in the DC Area. She and her husband Lamar share their opinions and points of view on relationships, parenting, politics, current events and anything in between. Theyve won two “2009 Black Web Awards” in the categories of “Best Blog - Culture” and “Best Lifestyle Blog” and are regularly featured guests on multiple media outlets.

Vicki Forman from Speak Softly recently published her memoir, This Lovely Life. It tells the story of her twins birth at just twenty-three weeks in utero, and the continuous emotional reassemby of her and her familys lives resulting from one twin, Ellie, passing away at four days post-partum, and the other, Evan, surviving with multiple special needs including blindness and a seizure disorder.

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Its easy to get sucked into the obsessive-parent vortex, but in at least one area of my parenting life, Ive loosened up by following my sons lead.

Three years old and often described as a bundle of energy, Kians never been one to be hemmed in. Hes the kid youll find skipping the snack break at a play date for a chance to tinker with the LEGOS, or the one who must be physically extricated from the parking lot, where hes been fixated on a squashed leaf resembling a rocket ship.

Like our Colonial forebears, my son lives the mantra Dont tread on me, and thats whats convinced me to stop hovering and loosen the reins. How? By giving up Mommy and Me classes.

Its hardly as trivial as it may sound.

I couldnt wait to sign up for our first class, Baby Yoga, when Kian was 5 months old. But then we joined a tumbling class that was rather chaotic. It was followed by a music class that made him cry. Next, we tried a Spanish class, but keeping Kian tethered to my lap was torture. Then came an art class in which I chased my son around like a human zamboni under the instructors glare. Finally, we tried Toddler Gymnastics. The coach expressed a zero tolerance policy for kids straying from the group, and I spent every class dragging Kian back to the circle. I was exhausted. We quit after Week 4, putting an end to two years of early childhood enrichment activities.

Cutting back was hard for me. Ive always been a joiner. As a child, I participated in a large number of extracurricular activities, which resulted in my burning out from most of them. My mother had stressed that quitting was never an option, so I had trudged off to my Brownie meetings and dance lessons, telling myself I was a better person for it.

Looking back on the classes my son and I had shirked over the span of two years, my Type A personality trembled with despair over my failure to live up to my mothers standards, both in my lack of follow-through and in the money wasted in missed classes.

In the end, my husband was my validator. Feeling guilty, I told him how skipping out on so many activities intended for our sons benefit had gotten me thinking about other ways Id screwed up. It was clear that going AWOL on the classes was the cherry on my sundae of parenting failures.

Joe gave me the swift kick in the pants I needed. Youre kidding, right?

In the end, I decided its OK to quit if youre doing it for the right reasons. For me, the reason was simple: Life is short, and childhood even shorter. Structure will elbow its way into my childs life soon enough. And, knowing his personality, I imagine hell fight it every step of the way. Why introduce it any earlier than necessary?

Swearing off Mommy and Me classes has challenged me to become a more creative parent. Now the burden is on me to provide ample opportunities for Kian to venture and fail, learn and grow. As it turns out, its not that difficult, and its been much more fun. Well practice math by counting the cars rushing past our house. Well learn about movement by mimicking airplanes taking off in a grassy field. Well make our own artistic masterpieces by scooping rainwater out of a gutter and splattering it, Jackson Pollock-style, across the sidewalk.

Im convinced Kian gets more out of this one-on-one time than he would from any class. One evening, after a particularly beautiful afternoon wed spent kicking around together at the local playground, he was quiet as he played in the bath. I asked him if anything was wrong. He said no, then measuredly declared, Mommy, I like to think about going to the park today.

The biggest lesson Ive learned through it all has been to let go of my own hang-ups, which is where helicopter parents often fall short. After agonizing over why my son wasnt behaving exactly like the other kids in these classes, it finally dawned on me: It just doesnt matter. Kian is who he is: rambunctious, inventive, brooding, and tender. I love it that he is all of these things, and I wouldnt have it any other way.

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