by Ana Gaby | Aug 7, 2014 | 2014, Indonesia, Parenting, Younger Children
World Mom Ana’s son
I thought I had been lucky enough to avoid them, I thought we would breeze through, I thought it didn’t run in the family, after all, my older son never had a tantrum. Oh boy, was I wrong. In the past few weeks my 2 year old, Joshua, has revealed a side of him I had never experienced before. The terrible two year old has unleashed and this inexperienced mama is in trouble! Don’t get me wrong, Joshua is still the sweet little guy he’s always been but when something doesn’t go his way, he is prompt to express his discontent. The repertoire includes high-pitched screams, kicks, a few encounters with the floor and a bite here and there.
I keep saying to myself that this attitude is product of our current transition. We recently left Indonesia and are slowly making our way back to Virginia where we will settle down for a while. Everything that Josh knows, his home, his friends, his school, his nanny are no longer here and I sometimes feel guilty for making them go thru this. We are having a wonderful time visiting friends and family however as familiar as grandparents and close friends are, I think Josh is still getting acquainted to his surroundings and feeling a bit disoriented.
I get it, if I was a two-year old with a repertoire of but a few words to express myself I would probably rely on physical manifestations to show my feelings. The part I don’t quite get is how to deal with it sometimes. Since I didn’t get any expertise with my now four year old, Evan, I am a bit clueless as to what to do every time he freaks out sometimes.
I’ve done my research and I’ve found all kids of tips and strategies, ignore the tantrum, distract him, engage him in conversation, hug him, give him a time out, etc. But what I’ve found works best is just to look at him in the eyes with the biggest smile and ask him to use his words and express what is bothering him. The result is a mix of English, Spanish and Bahasa Indonesia that somehow ends up overpowering the cries and anguish this little two year old feels and I get my Joshie back.
To be completely honest, I don’t particularly like this stage; it is frustrating and exhausting and sometimes outright exasperating. But then when I see my energetic two year old run around and make the best of his day, I realize how blessed I am to have such an amazing little man in my life and I choose to make the best of my day and savor every single second of this season in Joshua’s life.
For this family, the world terrible will be banned and even those “terrible” moments will be terrific learning experiences for both him and me. Here’s to savoring the last few moths of Joshua’s terrific twos and to being grateful every day for God’s endless blessings.
Did your kids go thru the “terrible twos”? How did they manifest it? Did all your kids go through them?
This is an original post written for World Moms Blog by Ana Gaby. You can find Ana Gaby blogging at Stumble Abroad.
Photo credit to the author.
Ana Gaby is a Mexican by birth and soul, American by heart and passport and Indonesian by Residence Permit. After living, studying and working overseas, she met the love of her life and endeavored in the adventure of a lifetime: country-hopping every three years for her husband’s job. When she's not chasing her two little boys around she volunteers at several associations doing charity work in Indonesia and documents their adventures and misadventures in South East Asia at Stumble Abroad.
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by Nancy Sumari | Aug 6, 2014 | 2014, Nancy Sumari, Tanzania, Womanhood, World Moms Blog
I have a birthday this week. An occasion which would usually have me getting excited, prepping for a party or a date night. Or if it were my daughter or better half’s birthdays, you would find me really excited and organizing a party or some sort of celebration.
But this time around, for my birthday, it’s not working out as per usual. I don’t want a celebration or a party. I want something quiet and non obvious, like staying home all day and catching a movie afterwards. Although it doesn’t look like that will happen if my girlfriends have anything to do with it.
By nature I’m a person who gets pretty excited. I’m known not to turn down a party. But for some reason, as I get older, I’m just not keen about celebrating getting older. Sometimes I can feel the clock ticking in my head, but that’s another story for another day.
A male colleague once asked, “What is with women and their age?” It got me thinking. What is it with women and their age?? For some women, even just asking their age is an unforgivable offense.
The sense of alarm and urgency that has overcome me lately is strange yet it has been happening with greater frequency.
Maybe it has to do with the fact that my daughter is growing up faster than I like. Or maybe it’s because I feel that there’s so much I still want to do right at the age I am. Not to mention that of course my body changing and witnessing it is not very desirable.
I suppose I should embrace it. Take it by the horns and “wonder-woman” style my way through these feelings? But how? How do I get excited when all I want is to do is stay in bed all day and not hear a word about my birthday?
Has anyone else ever gotten weary of growing a year older?
This is an original post by Nancy Sumari from Tanzania. You can find more of her writing at Mama Zuri.
Photo courtesy of the author.
by Jennifer Burden | Aug 5, 2014 | 2014, Awareness, Education, Humanitarian, Older Children, Save The Children, Social Good, Social Media, World Moms Blog, World Voice, Younger Children
World Moms Blog is thrilled to be taking part in Save the Children‘s #FindTheWords campaign. The campaign raises awareness over 30 days with 30 words to emphasize that every child needs early education to thrive. The community of mothers that form World Moms Blog are committed to improving not just the lives of our own children, but of all children around the world.
Just by helping us spread the word by sharing on social media you will be entered to win a $100.00 gift card!
CREATE
The inspiration word we were given by Save the Children for this post was “create.”
We believe in creating the world we want to live in, here, at World Moms Blog. When I was looking to find a one-stop-place to read about mothers in different cultures and countries back in 2010, I couldn’t find what I was looking for. So on a whim, I decided to create the site I wanted to follow, just for fun.
In turn, the web site led me to new corners of the globe for social good and to meet my fellow World Moms, raised awareness for global health programs for women and children, created various international journalistic opportunities and fellowships for our contributors, and connected many very different women whom, otherwise, may have never connected, but are so glad they did!
Today, World Moms Blog writes from over twenty different countries spanning the globe, yet, we’ve found that mothers from such diverse places all want the same things for their children: health, peace, education, and security. We all want to see our children thrive and grow to their full potential.
There is an incredible sense of pride in creating something, whether you are a child creating a “masterpiece” or a mom creating the family financial plan. In creating World Moms Blog, I have had the opportunity to see many of our contributors run wild with their passions across our pages and witness our editors build our behind-the-scenes in managing over 60 volunteer contributors. That’s creation gone wild, and I love it!
With the help of the women who were part of writing and/or later embraced our mission statement, our site has blossommed into a tight-knit, albeit, world-wide community where the contributors and readers alike are able to broaden their worlds and connect over continents…all through the conduit of motherhood.
The word create inspires all we stand for at World Moms Blog. Whether it is to create an opportunity for yourself or for others to thrive globally, to create the life you want to lead, or the world you want to live in.
And we admire the work of Save The Children in creating a safe, healthy space for the children who need it most. Kids are at our heartstrings! Here are some amazing facts about the challenges children face around the globe:
- The first years of life are critical in children’s development, shaping cognitive, social and language skills, as well as lifelong approaches to learning. Evidence shows that 85 percent of brain growth occurs in the first five years of life.
- By age three, children from low-income homes hear on average 30 million fewer words than their peers, putting them 18 months cognitively behind his or her peers when they start school.
- 65% of young kids in need have little or no access to books. More than two-thirds of poverty-stricken households do not possess a single book developmentally appropriate for a child under five.
- Parents who talk less with their children in an engaging and supportive way have kids who are less likely to develop their full intellectual potential than kids who hear a significant amount of child-directed speech.
- Around the world, if all students in low-income countries acquire basic reading skills, 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty.
Help create the future we want for children with Save the Children’s #FindTheWords. Early education creates an environment for young minds to flourish all over the world.
Just by helping us spread the word by sharing on social media you will be entered to win a $100.00 gift card, here are the rules:
To enter share our post via twitter or Facebook or Snap a picture anywhere you see the word “Create” out in the world (or what it means to you) then post it to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
To officially participate, your contributions must be tagged with the proper hashtags
#FindTheWords
#Create
and don’t forget to tag @WorldMomsBlog so we know you are in the running to win!
(The more people who share our posts the better chance we have of winning an interview with actress Jennifer Garner! So what are you waiting for!?)
a Rafflecopter giveaway
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by founder, Jennifer Burden.
Jennifer Burden is the Founder and CEO of World Moms Network, an award winning website on global motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. World Moms Network writes from over 30 countries, has over 70 contributors and was listed by Forbes as one of the “Best 100 Websites for Women”, named a “must read” by The New York Times, and was recommended by The Times of India.
She was also invited to Uganda to view UNICEF’s family health programs with Shot@Life and was previously named a “Global Influencer Fellow” and “Social Media Fellow” by the UN Foundation. Jennifer was invited to the White House twice, including as a nominated "Changemaker" for the State of the World Women Summit. She also participated in the One Campaign’s first AYA Summit on the topic of women and girl empowerment and organized and spoke on an international panel at the World Bank in Washington, DC on the importance of a universal education for all girls. Her writing has been featured by Baby Center, Huffington Post, ONE.org, the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life, and The Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists.” She is currently a candidate in Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in the Executive Masters of Public Affairs program, where she hopes to further her study of global policies affecting women and girls.
Jennifer can be found on Twitter @JenniferBurden.
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by Ecoziva (Brazil) | Aug 4, 2014 | 2014, Body Image, Brazil, Food, Life Lesson, Maternal Health, Nutrition, Traditions, World Motherhood
I have been an emotional eater for over two decades and over the past six years or so – when I became fully aware of the matter – I have approached it from multiple angles and using all sorts of techniques. I have worked on issues related to my father’s death when I was a teenager, my relationship with my mother and childhood issues of all sorts. I have undergone several different types of therapy, from the more traditional ones to art therapy, Gestalt therapy, family constellations and energy psychology. I have used EFT, NLP, reiki, homeopathy, ThetaHealing and many other alternative treatments.
The positive side has been that I have learned a lot throughout this process. Trying to create a healthier relationship with food has undoubtedly been what has most helped me stay on my personal/spiritual growth path over the past few years.
Emotional eating is a complex issue that can have multiple causes. These causes generally carry specific purposes which might still “serve” the emotional eater in certain ways, such as eating for a sense of comfort or protection or even to “numb” oneself of difficult feelings. Thus, they can be complicated to release unless the person becomes aware of the underlying events that gave food such emotional significance and are able to let go of that.
For instance, it might be that, as a child, someone gave the person something sweet every time he/she was upset, so the person developed the habit of eating sweets every time negative emotions come up. Letting go of that habit would then involve things like: becoming aware of the pattern and how it began, finding ways to heal the inner child that is used to being given sweets instead of the true attention or emotional support they need when negative emotions come up, and realizing that there are now adult ways of dealing with negative emotions.
Additionally, I believe we can only stop emotional eating when we truly want to. It is not like one consciously wants to continue having an unhealthy relationship with food (although one could, as surrender can also be a good tool!) but it can take time to become aware, deal with and let go of the multiple unconscious blocks around the pattern.
In my case, for example, I recognize that I have frequently side stepped certain issues and have not gone as deep as I could in certain treatments. On the other side, respecting our pace and giving ourselves the time to deal with the often painful issues – as opposed to judging ourselves and making ourselves wrong for “failed” attempts – is essential.
In my case, after three years of great improvement, my second pregnancy (which ended up in a miscarriage), followed by the pregnancies and births of my two youngest children, brought my emotional eating back to square one.
It was no surprise to me that pregnancy would once again bring up issues that would be difficult for me to deal with, but I expected that things would get better after the babies were born and began to get older. However, even though my youngest is now 16 months old things have worsened terribly and over the past few weeks I have gained more than 5 kg (11 lbs).
I have still not figured out what is triggering this new fallback, yet while using a combination of the techniques I have learned over the years, a story I hadn’t thought of for many years came to mind. I will tell that story in the next part of this post.
TO BE CONTINUED…
And you? Please share your stories about your relationship with food. Do you interfere in your children’s relationship with food?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog from our writer in Brazil, Ecoziva.
The image used in this post holds a Flickr Creative Commons attribution license.
Eco, from the greek oikos means home; Ziva has many meanings and roots, including Hebrew (brilliance, light), Slovenian (goddess of life) and Sanskrit (blessing). In Brazil, where EcoZiva has lived for most of her life, giving birth is often termed “giving the light”; thus, she thought, a mother is “home to light” during the nine months of pregnancy, and so the penname EcoZiva came to be for World Moms Blog.
Born in the USA in a multi-ethnic extended family, EcoZiva is married and the mother of two boys (aged 12 and three) and a five-year-old girl and a three yearboy. She is trained as a biologist and presently an university researcher/professor, but also a volunteer at the local environmental movement.
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by Salma (Canada) | Aug 1, 2014 | 2014, Bilingual, Canada, Childhood, Communication, Cultural Differences, Culture, Education, Family, Homeschooling, Language, Life Lesson, Multicultural, Relationships, Religion, Salma, Traditions, World Moms Blog, World Motherhood, Younger Children
On her visit to our home last October my mother had a lot of one-on-one time with my three year old son. While I was in the hospital giving birth to my fifth child, she was asking some serious questions. In this short period of time my mother came to a serious conclusion; her grandson doesn’t know about God. (more…)
An Imperfect Stepford Wife is what Salma describes herself as because she simply cannot get it right. She loves decorating, travelling, parenting,learning, writing, reading and cooking, She also delights in all things mischievous, simply because it drives her hubby crazy.
Salma has 2 daughters and a baby boy. The death of her first son in 2009 was very difficult, however, after the birth of her Rainbow baby in 2010 (one day after her birthday) she has made a commitment to laugh more and channel the innocence of youth through her children. She has blogged about her loss, her pregnancy with Rainbow, and Islamic life.
After relocating to Alberta with her husband in 2011 she has found new challenges and rewards- like buying their first house, and finding a rewarding career.
Her roots are tied to Jamaica, while her hubby is from Yemen. Their routes, however, have led them to Egypt and Canada, which is most interesting because their lives are filled with cultural and language barriers. Even though she earned a degree in Criminology, Salma's true passion is Social Work. She truly appreciates the beauty of the human race. She writes critical essays on topics such as feminism and the law, cultural relativity and the role of women in Islam and "the veil".
Salma works full-time, however, she believes that unless the imagination of a child is nourished, it will go to waste. She follows the philosophy of un-schooling and always finds time to teach and explore with her children. From this stance, she pushes her children to be passionate about every aspect of life, and to strive to be life-long learners and teachers. You can read about her at Chasing Rainbow.
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