Raising teenagers can be difficult at best. While it may seem like an alien life form invaded the body of your formerly sweet and lovable child, your teenager really is not that much different than the child you once knew.  He or she is simply attempted to establish his or her own identity, and that means separating his or her identity from you as parent.  This is a natural and normal process, and you should reassure yourself with the knowledge that it is just a short period of time in the life of your child and it will pass.

If you are having a difficult time dealing with a disrespectful, angry, or out of control teen, you need the new book by Norbert Georget, NO-NONSENSE PARENTING FOR TODAY’S TEENAGER – How To Feel Like A Good Parent Even When Your Teenager Hates You.

Even as teenagers, your children need and want your love.  Their attitudes can make it difficult to maintain a healthy relationship. It is important to understand that as much as your teenager wants your love, he or she also wants you to respect his or her individuality and burgeoning independence.  When teens feel as though they are being treated like a children, if you are being “over” protective, if you expect your teen to believe what you believe and think what you think, your teen will rebel.

If you are struggling with a teen that will not listen, lacks motivation, is having trouble getting along at home and at school, is obsessed with technology or might be dealing with an addiction problem, Norbert Georget can help. NO-NONSENSE PARENTING FOR TODAY’S TEENAGER – How To Feel Like A Good Parent Even When Your Teenager Hates You is a book designed to help parents navigate the landmines of bringing up teenagers in a modern world of video games, internet, and cell phones.

Teens are under an enormous amount of pressure.  Parents want them to do well in school and get into a good college and make decisions about their future.  Teen friends seek to confirm and uphold each others’ ideas, thoughts, and identities and encourage each other to be as independent as possible.  Peers pressure each other to try new and risky things, like drinking, drugs, and sex.  Learn how to approach your teen and have open conversations that lead to better relationships, more trust, and less chaos in your home.

With Norbert Georget’s NO-NONSENSE PARENTING FOR TODAY’S TEENAGER – How To Feel Like A Good Parent Even When Your Teenager Hates You you will learn why discipline and choice are important concepts when raising teens. You will learn to discipline your teenager without feeling any guilt. You’ll be able to handle your disrespectful and abusive teenager without any more yelling, arguing or hard feelings. You WILL still stay sane as a parent even when you take away all privileges and your teen still tries to defy you. You’ll learn to consistently keep to your disrespectful teenager’s behavior expectations and mean it. Ultimately, you’ll bring back peace in your mind and in your home.

You see, as a first time parent, you might as well throw all of your preconceptions in the trash.  Some things are way easy than you expect.  Half of the crap that you think you need, you’ll never use.  And the things that you think will be the easiest end up being the most difficult.  It boils down to individuality.  No matter how many of your friends have kids or how many nieces and nephews you have, you’ll never get the perfect answer to your questions.  So what does any frantic parent do at 11:30PM when their kid won’t sleep because they have a fever and is coughing?  Turn to the internet of course.  Where else will you spend 10 minutes of searching time, to walk away thinking that your child is autistic and has sleep apnea combined with some third world malaria-esque illness?  My advice, steer clear of Yahoo Answers and the Baby Center message boards and focus on true medical sites.  Yes, you may end up thinking things are worse than they are based upon the symptoms, but it’s better than Mary from New Jersey convincing you that you should soak your kid in a rubbing alcohol bath to get their fever down.  (note, do NOT do that)  So what do I do?  Here is a quick ordered list of the steps we normally take:

1. stay calm and assess the situation.  take her temperature if she has a fever, check for bumps or bruises if she fell down or hit the basics (diaper, drink, food) if she’s being extra cranky.  no point in rushing to the ER if your kid is thirsty.
2. ask your friends.  yeah I said that they’ll never have the right answers, but they’ll have answers that might help you figure out what the problem really is.
3. hit the internet.  with a grain of salt.
4. call your insurance company.  what?  really, i found out recently that my insurance company has a 24 hour on-call nurse that is accessible via phone and can help you walk through the basics.
5. if it’s daytime, just go to the doctor.  just because you love ER and Scrubs, you’re not a doctor.  don’t be cheap, spend the $10 on your co-pay and get the kid checked out.
6. after hours?  go to urgent care or the ER.  better safe than sorry.

If you’re looking for more general parenting advice, buy a book.  I’m not going to litter these posts with ads anymore, but the “what to expect” books are great and anything with a high review ranking on Amazon.com will generally be a safe bet.  Message boards and parenting sites are hit or miss, just use common sense.

These days people are so quick to run to Google when they have an issue (parenting or otherwise) when there are usually better, more qualified answers just a quick phone call away.  Educate yourself with well reviewed books, ask your pediatrician the right questions and don’t hesitate to pick up the phone and call someone that fixes broken kids for a living.  Mary from New Jersey might have kids that never cry and are perfect model citizens on the internet, but let’s be honest here…I have yet to meet a kid that doesn’t flip out once a while, is covered in boogers more often than not and won’t eat anything unless it’s processed and full of sugar…even Mary’s kids outside of Yahoo Answers are confusing little terrors like the rest of our kids.

A little background, my daughter is 16 months old and climbs like a mountain goat. She can lift herself into a high chair, I caught her perched on top of a tall stool like a gargoyle and seeing her run across a (4+ foot tall) console table doesn’t shock me anymore. Every time I get her out of the crib, she lends me a hand, or foot, by putting one leg up, ankle on the railing.

So what do we do? If we get her a regular bed with rails, she’ll get out and play all night…trust me, she will. Do we just run that risk, lock everything down in her room and let her run around if she doesn’t want to stay in bed? She’s not quite old enough to understand that falling over a crib railing is going to REALLY hurt and on the same note, she doesn’t understand that she should stay in her bed until one of her parents come in to get her.

So seriously, what should we do? Pillows on the floor? Put her room on lockdown and put her in a big girl bed? Is there some sort of pediatrician approved bungee device? (kidding)

Bonus points for funny answers.

My recommended kid games (from A Whole Lotta Nothing)

as much as it might seem like a good idea to rush into potty training, especially if you have a kid who is showing advanced abilities, studies show that you should wait.  but not too long…

A new study suggests 27 to 32 months is the ideal window for moving your child out of diapers. Children who were toilet trained after 32 months were more likely to have urge incontinence — daytime wetting and bed-wetting — between ages 4 and 12.

I’ve heard about a method that involves three days and NO diapers, probably some messy pants and some unpleasant laundry, but has success.  Well, I know of two cases that worked…we will cover that soon on PoppaBlog.

More on the study mentioned above, here.

I wanted to pass on a quick savings tip before dropping the first annual PoppaBlog.com Holiday Gift Guide for Dads and Kids on you.

I recently saved 15% on a purchase just by using Bing.com’s cashback feature. Check it out here. Just search for the retailer or product that you’re interested in and save some loot. It takes about 60 days to get the money back, but come February, it’ll be nice to have some extra cash for Valentine’s Day.

The notion of directing users to a particular site for a percentage off isn’t new, another pioneer in the area is FatWallet.

Another great place to look is the same place that takes money from you every month, your credit cards. Discover offers their Shop Discover and American Express has shopAmex (which will actually let you use your points for merchandise).

Bank of America has announced Add It Up which offers percentage discounts as well, and works with their credit and debit cards.

Some workplaces offer additional benefits in the form of employee discounts. For example, I recently purchased a Sears gift card for my father and received a 15% discount, just for being an employee of my company! Check with your HR people to see if you have anything similar.

I’m sure there are a pile of cash back and rewards programs out there worth mentioning. If you know of any, please comment and share with the readers.

Here are some tips to keep you and your kids out of the doctor’s office this holiday season:

• Stay Home. For real, avoid unnecessary trips.  Junior doesn’t need to wait in line with you at 6AM on Black Friday to get that $249.99 laptop at Walmart.  Also, with H1N1 (swine flu) flying around everywhere, this would be the year to tell your extended family that you really don’t care for them and you want to spend Christmas at home with the wife and kids.
• Take the Meds. If your child is over 6 months old, get a flu shot.  With the H1N1 hype happening right now, most people are losing site that the regular flu tends to get nasty in late December.  Protect yourself and your kids and get both types of shots.
• Tell your friends and family to get shots. As adults, our immune systems have been strengthened by shirtless football games in January and the barrage of germs, viruses and parasites that are ingested during spirited beer pong play…your kids on the other hand have not led the cultured life that you have and can’t handle exposure like you can.  Avoid exposure by (putting on some pants) asking your relatives to get flu shots before you come and visit.  If grandma really wants to see her granddaughter, she can take her butt to the pharmacy for a shot.
• Keep them clean. I saw a kid pick up a chicken bone from the floor of a restaurant and put it in his mouth once.  Gross right? I swear, the little buggers will touch and eat anything…ANYTHING.  Keep their hands clean and keep an eye out for what they’re touching.  Grabbing Uncle Randy’s wooden leg is one thing, sucking on a handrail at the mall (I literally just gagged) is another. 
  
• Teach them how to sneeze and cough. I keep telling my 6 month old that if she doesn’t start covering her nose and mouth when she sneezes that I’m not going to let her talk to boys until she’s 50.  Lucky for me, she’s not covering up.  If your kid is old enough to get it, teach them how to cover their mouth/nose and teach them to wash their hands afterward.  A sick kid is bad enough, being known as the family that’s spreading the outbreak can get you run out of some places.

Do you have any tips?  Please comment!

Here are a few tips from PoppaBlog.com on keeping your collection clean and prolonging the “Daddy, what’s a ho?” question until he gets to grade school.

1. Buy another iPod: chances are, you probably even have an old one laying around that you’re not using.  Take one for Daddy’s collection and bob your head all day long to N.W.A.’s greatest hits when junior isn’t around and use the other one when you’re off to Gymboree and rock out to The Wiggles.
2. Start buying the “clean” versions: I can’t believe that I even wrote that.  As a non-parent, I would stand on the closest soapbox and scream “freedom of speech!”  Now that there are little ears listening, I can (kind-of) understand why evil places like Walmart sell edited versions.  Of course, not giving their consumers the right to choose which version is a big ole can of worms that I’m not going to open here.  There are two major issues with buying edited music.  One, your buddies will surely make fun of you.  Two, the censors aren’t so picky about sexual context and there are still a pile of words that get through that aren’t so good for the little one.
3. Start listening to non-explicit music: GASP!  Are you implying that I get out of my box and listen to different music?  Not completely.  If you’re into rap and hip-hop, there are plenty of non-explicit options.  You can generally find instrumental versions of popular tracks and guys like DJ Shadow and RJD2 have been making some amazing music with samples and turntables for years now.  Granted, some tracks might have a sample or two that is not kid friendly, or a track with a guest MC spouting out some nasties, but just move those to your dirty iPod.  And remember kids, Will Smith didn’t have to curse to sell all of his records.
4. Turn off MTV: oh wait, never mind…they haven’t played music videos since I was a kid.
5. Keep tabs on them: Nobody wants to be the bad cop.  However, if your child is old enough to have their own iPod and has access to a computer and has a friend, they WILL get their hands on music that they shouldn’t have.  It’s human nature to be intrigued by the dirty things in life.  There’s a line on Run-DMC’s – Raising Hell album that went “I leave all suckers, in the dust, those dumb mother f@%&ers can’t mess with us.”  I got that TAPE in second grade, and I think that I rewound and replayed that line about seven thousand times after I heard it.  I think I turned out OK, but I was also very shy and didn’t run around repeating everything that I heard.
6. Find some kid’s music that you’ll both enjoy: Yes, I mean that.  There are a handful of albums out there by artists that you might even know that have done kids albums.  Alternatively, there are kid’s versions of music that you might be into.  Need proof, check it out:
   
   …Biz Markie, The Roots, lullaby versions of Radiohead and Metallica, and that’s what a quick search of Amazon.com produced. Surely a quick look in iTunes would yield more results.

I’d love to hear some tips and advice from other parents out there. Leave a comment, tell us how you manage to keep an AK-47 off of little Jimmy’s Christmas list, even though you rocked a Jheri curl and wore an Oakland Raiders hat to your 8th grade dance.

A post on co-sleeping grabbed my attention. Call me sexist, but I’d typically expect the mother to be the main proponent of co-sleeping. Especially if she is breast feeding and the little one wakes up frequently. Natural Papa is a big fan of it, and I’ve actually met a few other dads that were down and figured linking to his post might interest some of my readers.

Here is a snippet of his article:

Co-sleeping is one of the principles of attachment parenting, and also one of the most contentious. For those who practice it, it’s normal and healthy. For those who don’t, it’s dangerous and irresponsible.

“You really let your baby sleep in the same bed with you? Isn’t that dangerous?”

Before our first child was born, my wife and I discussed co-sleeping, and I have to admit that I wasn’t so sure about it. I read about the basics, the pros and cons, and intuitively, it seemed right. But when I thought of actually having the baby in bed with us, I had some reservations. After some serious study of the issue, and talking to others, I eventually came around, and now, I can’t see doing it any differently.

My wife and I have been co-sleeping with all of our children for almost 12 years (one at a time, though, not all of them at once), and I believe that if you can disregard the negative bias of the mainstream media when it comes to natural parenting, and trust your own instincts, co-sleeping is beneficial to the entire family.

And here’s the link again. A good read, worth checking out.

Hubby: Do you want something to eat?
Me: um…no thanks. I don’t really have an appetite.

Hubby: Are you upset with me?
Me: No…I am just feeling this overwhelming sense of sadness, and I don’t know why. I just know that I need you here with me.

Hubby: Do you want to talk about it?
Me: I don’t know how to put into words what I’m feeling…I just know that I feel lousy but so in love…all at the same time. I could cry at any moment.

Hubby: Can you tell me what you’re feeling?
Me: All I can say is that I feel this profound sense of emptiness and there is no rational explanation for this grief. I am overjoyed and I truly have the perfect life. I have a husband who loves me, a beautiful newborn daughter, who is the love of my life, and no stress or drama and yet, I feel such an indescribable sense of loneliness and feelings of inadequacy. I’m miserable that you are going back to work, and I’m miserable that I have to return to work in a few months. I just want to be with her all the time. I look at our daughter and I am overwhelmed with love. It’s more intense than anything I have ever felt in my life. Beyond these thoughts, i can’t explain the origin or why i am in this state. It is as though my hormones have taken over, and I am completely out of control with my emotions, and if I continue talking about it…I’m going to cry once again.

For anyone out there who has ever experienced these feelings, this was my entire second week of motherhood. No one tells you that this overwhelming sense of loss / grief / emptiness / sadness is looming, or that you’ll experience a seesaw of emotions ranging from bliss to tears all within minutes…nor does anyone explain how to handle this hormonal state of utter distress. I am here to tell you that these feelings are all normal and completely natural. This my friends is Postpartum Blues.

It is as if you are fine one day, elated, on a huge cloud of bliss, celebrating this new life, then you turn around and the next minute you are crying and feeling completely out of sorts. You have no idea how to make these erratic feelings stop and your husband / partner is completely helpless, unsure of how to comfort you. Additionally, you don’t know if it will end and you don’t know if there is a light at the end of this bleak tunnel. You feel like you are going on an uphill battle with your child by your side and you don’t know how to handle these new feelings and emotions.

What I wish someone would have told me is that it’s ok to feel these things, and that you should never feel embarrassed to discuss your thoughts. I was so ashamed that I felt such profound sadness, that I tried to suppress my feelings, and even told my closest friends and family members that I was not experiencing anything hormonal. In fact, even when my mother expressed that she had a bad case of postpartum blues, I did not share my experience with her. I’m ashamed to say that I thought people would view me as weak, or that it was a sign that I was not a good mother. Especially when I had so much to be thankful for, and had such intense feelings of love for my family.

Dads / partners, postpartum blues are very real. They are overwhelming and unexplainable. What your wife needs, is not answers or solutions or the old “baby, you are such a strong woman!” pep talk. What your wife needs is a hug, a kiss, a smile, some cuddle time, and your undivided attention. Do not make the mistake of telling your wife that she should be positive and strong for the baby. What woman wants to hear that she is not living up to an imaginary standard? What she really needs is your comfort, support and understanding. Without that, it is a slippery slope from postpartum blues, which may last from one day to 2 weeks, to postpartum depression, which can persist for months and years. Take it from me, I needed my husband to be in sync with me, to protect me and make me feel loved and comforted by telling me what every mom wants to hear – that I am the most amazing and loving mom on this earth.

SOME TIPS:

• Be sure that the house is in complete order (cleanliness / ample food / nursery is set up, etc.) before you arrive from the hospital with your little bundle of joy.
• Arrange for loving friends and family to stop by. As much as you may want your privacy, it’s nice to feel loved and appreciated after going through such a huge transition. It’s also nice to keep her distracted from only focusing on her sadness.
• SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP! All new moms need their sleep. This is a rejuvenation period for mom, so be sure that she is taking care of herself!
• Allow your wife / partner to cry – encourage it! Do not let her feel like something is wrong or let her feel like she should be worried. Allow her to cry on your shoulder and let out all of her feelings. This is such a great way to cleanse her system and feel a sense of catharsis. This is all part of a normal pregnancy postpartum.
• Get mom out of the house everyday, even if it is for a short walk or car ride. Being out in the real world can be refreshing.
• Avoid Isolation. Be sure that your wife / partner has a support group available at all times. Be it her best friend or sister in law, be sure that she always has someone readily available if you are not accessible.

RESOURCES FOR POSTPARTUM BLUES:

• Baby Center – Postpartum Blues / Depression
• March of Dimes – Postpartum Blues / Depression

Again, this is my take on postpartum blues. If you notice that your wife is experiencing more prolonged symptoms over an extended period of time (longer than 2-3 weeks) you should seek professional help immediately! This is not shameful and is completely treatable! I know someone who experienced postpartum depression for over a year. She is now back to feeling like herself again.

RESOURCES FOR POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION:

• Great book for Mom – It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita
• Great book for Dad – The Postpartum Husband: Practical Solutions for living with Postpartum Depression

This is definitely not kid’s stuff…no pun intended.