Poop? Toilets?  Yes it is a scatological title…but I need to get your attention and if you’ve read this far I succeeded.

In my years of being a professor, therapist and/or friend – I have been asked so many times about toilet training that I almost scream.  It would have been better to ask each person for a dollar…then I’d be extremely wealthy.  Yes – I did answer them all but I never wrote down what I said…

So here am I years later, still getting questions about toilet training and still thinking about a good answer.  It finally came to me: you have to decide whose poop it is and whose pee it is!  Then you will be able to choose what comes next: your toilet training or your child’s.

Read the entire article about toilet training

Many years ago I wrote a textbook called Growing Children. 

My co-author, Freda Rebelsky, and I had often been asked how people could get copies as it is out of print.  So over the years, we tried to interest some publishers in re-printing it but there was no interest.  Maybe because it was a paperbound book and only 70 pages of text… [read this as "can't sell for $100."]

So  I decided to redo it in  a different format and with a different focus – it is NOT a text book; it is a book mostly for parents and is now called:

You Can Totally Screw Up As A Mom And Still Raise Great Kids

I also think of it as child psychology for the non-psychology major….for the parent, the high school student, the engineer, the CEO, the HR person etc…anyone who wants information without the list and review of the studies that led up to the information.

That is what Growing Children was originally intended to be – it was a small textbook on child development for the non-psychology major and now it is an e-book with a different name for anyone who wants to know about child development…

And you can buy it on this page:

You Can Totally Screw Up As A Mom And Still Raise Great Kids

PS…writing a textbook was a bit easier – when I   nearing the end of a textbook I sent the manuscript to the publisher who did the formatting, editing, and marketing.  Now I had to do all that [with a little help] and it took longer than I planned [sigh]

But it is DONE!

That may sound like an oddball question but we need to ask it.  Are children just smaller versions of adults?  Are children just good imitators of the "adult-ness" around them?

Many years ago the above two questions would get a resounding "yes" or a strong "maybe." 

Next time you are at a museum look at the old masters paintings of families – the children are dressed in adult-like clothing and their proportions are adult-like. 

Newborn baby – note the large head!

Did the early artists "see" a small head when painting – or was it such a prevalent attitude that the artist intentionally "missed" the actual size of the child's head and body in order to appease the family paying for the painting.

Children being seen as something almost entirely different from adults was not a viable notion until the early part of the 1900's – not that long ago.  Yet there are persons today who think children have no ideas of their own and are molded solely by what their parents do to and for them.

Children are different.  Yes they are the same species as the adults who raise them – but how they function;  how they learn, think, and talk follows that child's path of development.  And it's not an adult path.

The way you "see" children affects how you raise them.

There is more about this thought in my forthcoming e-book:

You Can Totally Screw Up As A Mom And Still Raise Great Kids

Coming soon!  Stay tuned for details!

I am a firm believer that few adults would want to re-do their teen years.

If you are one who would like to re-do them – AS THEY WERE – please please add a comment and tell us why.

The years where your age ends in "teen" are given different labels by different theorists; labels like adolescence, pre-adult, puberty, and one I like – "normal psychosis."

No matter what it is called, we as a species need to evolve through those 7 years.  Not that 12 and 20 are always so great but we don't tend to put kids that age into the category teen.  [By the way, I usually say "kid." It's a habit from way back when I first started studying psychology.]

The teen years tend to be ushered in by hormonal changes – which in turn lead to physical changes and all of this is accompanied by emotional, cognitive and social change.  Just like with 2- and 3-year-olds coping with an awful lot of changes – a teen seeks a variety of ways to deal with what is going on in their body.  A major difference is that 2 and 3-year-olds are still under parental control while teens are not- or not as much as we as parents would like.  They are in school, they often travel there and elsewhere without the car pool or parent.  They learn to drive – and like it or not – they experiment with "things."

"Things" can include not only drugs, alcohol and sex; it can include personality, academic interests, and sports.  It's a period where the once "child" is learning "who am I"  and "what do I want me to be."

This self-learning can lead to sudden mood and personality shifts – some intentional, some probably hormonal -  it's why I say about having a teen in the house:   Welcome to "normal psychosis." 

This is life with a teen … and I'll be writing more about this – so please comment and let me know what you'd like to see here.

I was reminded the other day about young children and Halloween.  Many do not like the costumes. Why?  Because for young children the line between fantasy and reality is not a clear line.

For young children, seeing IS believing, so you can start to think about what goes on in the child's mind on Halloween with all it's costumes.

Maybe it goes like this: "If I put on a mouse costume then I AM a mouse and then I'm not John anymore and that's scary."

Children get upset when parents put on eyeglasses or change hair styles.  "Maybe you are NOT my parent – but some other person."

Halloween is not a fun thing until you are old enough to know about object constancy….until then, changing visions may mean the object has really changed.

So if your young child does not want to wear a costume – there is a good cognitive reason. 

Parenting teenagers is a difficult topic.  No one can tell you how to be a parent; especially of a teenager. 

[ Read the full article about parenting teenagers.]

Like teens, parents are not amenable to listening to other people – at least not usually. 

If someone tells you that you need to be a stricter parent or to spend more or less time with your teenager when you do not believe this is the way to parent – would you listen to them?

That said – teens need rules.  Teens do not need more and more freedom even though that is what they tell you they need and want. 

As a parent you need to set limits for all your kids – they bump against the limits and fight them but that is a good thing.  It's how they learn what are the rules for our culture.  If you keep moving the limits as kids bang against them – they never understand limits.  Kids are very good at the "gimme gimme gimme" game and it is perfectly fine to say "no no no" to them.

I never said it was easy having a teen in the house – in fact it can be downright nasty. 

This site and blog are not and can not be about how you should/could/would raise your child….Why? Because your child is yours and mine is mine.  I didn’t want anyone telling me how to raise mine and I won’t think of telling you how to raise yours.  What I will do though, is suggest ideas, raise questions, and mention what research shows about children. 

Parenting requires thinking – about the child, about yourself and about the interaction between you.  Add in a spouse, other children, pets and life – and you get a more complicated scenario. 

I’ll do my best to keep the "scenes" as simple as I can when first introducing topics but then will raise questions about the influences of the "added" effects.

Also because much of what I will be writing is based on American research, what I say will be more true of American kids than kids around the world. Some information from other countries will appear so that we can see the differences in child rearing and ask if any of it makes a difference. And since we are a country of many types of families, some of what we learn from other cultures may explain your family’s or your neighbor’s in-home culture.

President Obama wants to be sure his kids have safe peanut butter to eat. He does not want to worry. Neither do most of us. The last administration chose to not staff the FDA food inspectors choosing to reduce that number.

That’s why it is so nice to have a caring parent in the White House – one who sees his own children as reflective of all nations’ children – deserving and needing untainted food.

Here is the FDA update list – just for teh peanut recall – it’s very long! http://cli.gs/ZjeYTe

Salmonella has been reported in 43 states. Here is a CDC update.

As of 9pm EDT, Thursday, January 15, 2009, 453 persons infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella Typhimurium have been reported from 43 states. The number of ill persons identified in each state is as follows: Alabama (1), Arizona (9), Arkansas (4), California (60), Colorado (10), Connecticut (8), Georgia (6), Hawaii (1), Idaho (10), Illinois (5), Indiana (3), Iowa (1), Kansas (2), Kentucky (3), Maine (4), Maryland (7), Massachusetts (40), Michigan (25), Minnesota (33), Missouri (8), Mississippi (1), Nebraska (1), New Hampshire (11), New Jersey (18), New York (18), Nevada (5), North Carolina (4), North Dakota (10), Ohio (57), Oklahoma (2), Oregon (5), Pennsylvania (13), Rhode Island (4), South Dakota (2), Tennessee (8), Texas (6), Utah (4), Vermont (4), Virginia (20), Washington (13), West Virginia (2), Wisconsin (3), and Wyoming (2). Among the 437 persons with dates available, illnesses began between September 08 and December 31, 2008. Patients range in age from <1 to 98 years; 47% are female. Among persons with available information, 23% reported being hospitalized. Infection may have contributed to five deaths.

It’s so wide-spread make sure you read the advice to consumers and let’s make sure that the new administration places a high priority on protecting our food! the last one did not…because money and appeasing stockholders were more important than the people consuming the products.

UPDATE: King Nut Companies issued a total recall of peanut butter that it distributes Saturday amid fears of a salmonella outbreak that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said has infected 399 people in 42 states.

More food news – the bad news stuff ! Hope this year food is better protected!

Peanut butter is once again being implicated as the source of a major samlonella outbreak in the US (Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter were the implicated sources in the previous outbreak).

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) and the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) today issued a product advisory after MDA’s preliminary laboratory testing indicated the presence of Salmonella bacteria in a 5-pound container of King Nut brand creamy peanut butter.

Read more here and here

I can’t wait til we have someone in charge of food who cares about people and not profits!