ExpectingWords.com - Helping expecting couples find the right words at the right times

I’ve noticed in my mediation practice that it’s quite common for a spouse to tell me that the relationship was fine until they had kids, and then….”my husband’s flaws blew up in my face!”    I usually tell people that those flaws existed before you had children, but you didn’t notice them because forgetting to buy a tape measure doesn’t compare to the impending disaster of forgetting to buy diapers, and being tired and uninterested in cooking dinner is much less harmful than being too tired to bother giving your kid a bath or being too lazy to buy babyproof covers for the outlets.  The flaws always existed, but the consequences are much worse when children are affected.

Where does this insight lead us?  Since I’m in the same boat as everyone else when it comes to having discovered these new, but old flaws in my mate and myself, I’ll tell you how I handle the dilemma.  First,  I am (more…)

Yesterday, I returned from an amazing three day Smart Marriages conference in Orlando.  (Check out their perspective on the Number 1 Predictor of Divorce and their Relationship IQ Quiz).  While I was there to speak on a panel, I also had the unique opportunity to listen to the leading researchers in the field of relationship education.  I was stunned by the strength of the empirical data showing the harm of divorce and the benefit of lasting marriages.

The California Healthy Marriages Coalition collected some of the new research and organized it into pamphlets (with sourced footnotes) here.  Some of the highlights are:

1. Girls with divorced parents are at particularly high risk for developing depressive symptoms during adolescence.
2. Almost 50% of households with children undergoing divorce move into poverty following the divorce.
3. In surveying 3,828 adolescents ages 14-16, (more…)

It’s a long title, but that’s the best way to say it.  Yesterday we celebrated Blake’s 2nd birthday.  It was fabulous.  Family friends, in the backyard at our new house, pizza, BBQ, music and fun.

The best part was that Blake was lovingly surrounded by all four grandparents and his great-grandmother.  What a lucky little boy!

During the party I was thinking about how next year at this time, Blake will have a sibling.  I wonder how this will affect Blake’s personality.  He gets so much attention right now, and he has since he was born.

One of our friends here yesterday has a seven-month old boy and she was saying how great it is that she just puts him on the floor with a ball and he’s happy playing by himself for an hour.  I overheard this and ran to tell her, “Appreciate this!  Do you know that not all babies do this?  Blake never entertained himself with a ball for more than a few minutes.”  She had no idea.  ”You mean every baby doesn’t happily play with balls for hours?” she asked.  ”One hundred percent, no.  It’s personality that defines how much a child can play by him or herself.”

Soon my theory will be put to the test.  Is it nature or nurture?   (more…)

It’s taken me two years to figure out what leads my husband and I to bicker about little things like how much our son ate for breakfast and whether he’s trending upward or downward in hour of sleep.  This hot button that that creates our fights is… math.

While my husband’s job relies on numbers and calculations, mine relies on words and thoughts.  It’s not surprising then that as we experience life with our son, my husband is obsessed with the numbers of our son’s life, while I am not.  I’m good at math, but I simply don’t remember how late my early-rising son slept last Friday.  “He got up early!  Who cares if it was 5:20 or 5:35?  It was early!”  My husband cares.

Any attempt by me to contradict my husband’s numbers, or to persuade him that the numbers don’t matter, is dumb.  We don’t resolve anything and we end up frustrated with each other.  So I’ve reached a new place mentally.  I will give in to his numbers.  He probably does have a better memory for the numbers, so why fight about them?  Regardless, the numbers don’t mean much to me.  It’s the present moment or the next morning wake-up time that matter.  It’s the fact that our son is talking more and more that matters to me, not how many words he knows.

Today I make a pledge: (more…)

Mother’s Day 2010 has come and gone, but as usual, on that day many people sent around quotes via email to memorialize the day.

Here’s a quote that someone forwarded to me:

“A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie”. ~Tenneva Jordan

Those words seemed sweet and endearing, at first.  But then I decided that this quote was dead wrong.

In the past, a good mother and wife may have been defined as a woman who sacrifices for others, putting her families’ needs before her own.  But nowadays, (more…)