Tuesday, July 17, 2012
"Our children should understand that the adults in their lives – not just their parents, but all adults – care about the choices they make and what they do," writes columnist Dr. Molly O'Shea.
I'm not sure when it changed. Maybe it never did. Maybe my notion of a neighborhood where the adults all kept an eye on the kids, broke up squabbles, made sure they weren't breaking the rules and told the other parents what they saw is a romantic one – more a movie scene than reality. It seems, though, that adults today are afraid. Afraid to step in when 8-year-old kids they don't know are fighting on the playground. Afraid to tell random kids at the pool to slow down when they're running recklessly. Afraid to intervene when a gaggle of middle school kids is teasing another kid and excluding him. Afraid to call the parents when their teenager is heading to a house to 'hang out' when they have never met the kid or the parents. Afraid to …
Thursday, April 5, 2012
"I think that as we shifted toward technology, we encouraged a disconnection from each other in ways that are hard to teach," says columnist and pediatrician Dr. Molly O'Shea.
I'm sitting outside on a glorious, unusually warm March day, writing. When I was a kid, the only options for writing were pen and paper. My only options for reading were books or newspapers held in my hand. The only option to communicate with my friends was to go over to their house or call them on the phone. How times have changed. Now, I never use a pen and paper, and to be frank, it feels foreign when I do. I still read some books the old fashioned way and get the Sunday New York Times, but otherwise, my reading is all done digitally. I text or email rather than call most of the time and spend a tremendous amount of time in front of some device or another. My kids, though, are even more integrated with technology, and even as a geek …
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Columnist Dr. Molly O'Shea struggles with learning to let go as her kids grow up and become more independent.
I’m frustrated. It’s Thursday afternoon, and every Thursday, I drive Conall to fencing while Declan rides the bus home and is on his own for about 45 minutes or so. Declan is 13, in seventh grade and is growing in front of my eyes. When I take Conall, I leave a note and a snack for Declan, and the rule is that if you’re still hungry after the snack (today a brownie and a pear), you can have more fruit or veggies, which are in ample supply. For the last few months, Declan has been eating large amounts of junk food when he’s left alone. Whole packages of Oreos or large plates of brownies are consumed. Once, he ate five granola bars in 20 minutes. Ugh. He’s not fat (not yet, at least), but gorging on food while I’m gone concerns me. The …
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Dr. Molly exhausts every option trying to come up with the perfect birthday present for her teenage son, Declan.
I was stumped. My son Declan’s 13th birthday was approaching, and I had no good ideas. He loves watching sports but already has jerseys for the teams he likes. He doesn’t play a sport himself, though, so equipment wasn’t a good option. Believe it or not, he’s not that into video games, either – he will play Temple Run or Fruit Ninja on his iTouch, but that’s about it. He doesn’t read for pleasure, so books were out. He did say he wanted a Sponge Bob cake for his birthday, so at least I knew I’d make that for him, but the cake would be quickly consumed with nothing but a photo to remember it by. I wracked my brain. I queried my friends. I asked his brother and sister and my boyfriend Tony to get some ideas, and you know what they came up …
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
'I was lucky and knew then what I wanted to do with my life and never felt that my dreams and passions would be derailed by something as mundane as an ACT exam,' Dr. Molly O'Shea writes.
Standardized test season is about to begin, and my daughter, a junior in high school, is sharpening No. 2 pencils and finding her student ID card in anticipation. On the surface, test taking remains one of the few things unchanged from my high school years. Still no pens allowed; still paper booklets and Scantron sheets. Yet there’s a tension that didn’t exist for me. Sure, I needed to do well on my SAT and ACT to get into a good school, but almost no one I knew took a test prep class or studied for the exams in the late '70s and early '80s. To be honest, I think I realized I was taking the ACT the day before the exam. My parents or counselor or someone had signed me up, and because it wasn’t a topic of discussion amongst my friends (the …
Friday, February 10, 2012
Dr. Molly O'Shea shares how a weekly meal with friends and family has helped her family cope with difficult changes.
Wednesday is the first day my kids are back with me each week. They spend Monday and Tuesday with their dad, and they are with me Wednesday, Thursday and every other weekend. It’s an even split and infinitely fair, but it remains strange years later that I have a homecoming of sorts every Wednesday. Before ‘Friends for Dinner’ became routine, my boyfriend Tony would join us for dinner once in a while on a Wednesday, and for a long stretch, one of Conall’s close friends would come home from school with him and stay with us until about 8, having dinner with us every Wednesday. I was off work Wednesdays until recently and would greet the kids at the door and have some wonderful home cooked meal for us all each Wednesday night. We would sit …
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
We may not remember how to do calculus, but that does not mean we aren't learning new, important lessons every day.
Conall: "Can I have some help with my math homework?" Cocky Me: "Sure! I love math! It was my best subject all through school." Conall: "If 7/8 of the points in a basketball game are scored by the home team and Sandy is scored ¼ of the home team’s points, what fraction of all the points scored in the game were scored by Sandy?" Less Cocky Me: (long pause) "Is Sandy a he or a she?" Conall: "What difference does that make??" Busted….. I loved math all through school and even got through calculus in high school. It was a breeze for me then, but after years of intellectual disuse, my math skills are apparently gone; they disappeared without a trace and didn’t even have the courtesy to leave a forwarding address for problems like this. Hmmm. I …
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
We all need to let someone else drive at times, even if we worry that they don’t know exactly where they’re going and may get a little lost.
Single parent. Isn’t there a better term for people who are divorced and raising kids? It connotes a solitary and difficult role: alone in the sea of diapers or car pools or school conferences or packing lunches. In reality, I am single and a parent, but I share the joys and chores of parenting with my children’s father, and we both are equally engaged in their lives. I’m lucky in that way. I’m a full-time parent when it comes to thinking about the children and their needs, worrying about their struggles, and celebrating who they are, but only about half the time do I need to be in charge of the logistics of their everyday lives. On the days that the kids and I have together, I am on my own to figure out how to pick up someone from school …
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Pediatrician and single mom Molly O'Shea considers the negative effects of her dependence on technology.
I wasn’t allowed to watch TV when I was a child. I’m 46, and growing up, I remember when all the kids were talking about Happy Days, I had to just sit and listen or try to fake some knowledge of the show I didn’t have. I thought my parents were crazy and mean for not allowing me to watch TV like all the other kids. Sure, I’d sneak sometimes and watch stuff like HR Puffinstuff on Saturday mornings when my parents were still asleep – I even remember trying to convince my parents that having watched Mass For Shut Ins on Sunday morning (without permission) meant that I shouldn’t have to go to mass. In general, my only hope of getting pop culture was to watch shows at a friend’s house. As a result, I was forced to entertain myself in ways my …
Robin
3:12 pm on Wednesday, July 18, 2012
I have been the parent, on more than one occasion, to tell other people's kids to stop throwing rocks at windows, it's not nice to hit you need to stop now, or 'does your mom know that you do that' followed by, 'where do you live?' Somehow it hasn't turned the kids against me, however I'm more worried that some crazed indignant parent will attack me for daring to interfere with their perfect … more ›