Helping boys cope plus GRAND Social No. 70

I have three daughters. Lifting them up and doing all I could to help them cope with getting through girlhood on their way to womanhood was always top of mind for me as a mother. For decades, it seemed the concerns of girls and the issues they face were top of mind not just for myself and other mothers of girls but for society as a whole.

In the meantime, boys and their equally scary and scarring issues fell through the cracks. I never really considered the depth of despair mothers of boys might be going through while we mothers of girls had research and support of all sorts to help us muddle our way through raising our daughters.

Now that I have grandsons, though, I do consider the plight of boys. Fortunately society as a whole seems to be considering such things a bit more of late, too.

I recently learned of a new book that, though I've not yet read it, seems to me like one everyone — parents and grandparents of boys and girls — should look into. I've added it to my must-read list after seeing the trailer last week. I was so alarmed by the stats on boys that I felt compelled to share the trailer with you.

Take a look:

(Masterminds & Wingmen on Vimeo.)

This isn't a sponsored post nor is it a review of Masterminds & Wingmen. I simply think we all should find out more about how to lift up our sons and grandsons and help them cope in their journey from boyhood to manhood. This book might shed light on how to do that. If you know of other resources that could further make a difference for boys, feel free to share in the comments. And if you read Masterminds & Wingmen, I'd love to know what you think.

I'd also love to see you participate in GRAND Social No. 70 — by either sharing a link, reading the links of those who share or both. Let's dive in!

How it works:

• All grandparent bloggers are invited to add a link. You don't have to blog specifically about grandparenting, just be a grandparent who blogs.

• To link up a post, copy the direct URL to the specific post — new or old — that you want to share, not the link to your blog's home page. Then click the blue button marked with "Add your link" below and follow the directions.

• You can add up to three posts, but no duplicates, contests, giveaways, or Etsy sites, please.

• Adding a mention such as This post linked to the GRAND Social to your linked posts is appreciated. Or, you can post the GRAND Social button anywhere on your page using the following code:

<a href="/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><img src="http://grandmasbriefs.squarespace.com/storage/GRANDsocialbutton.jpg " alt="Grandma’sBriefs.com" width="125" height="125" /></a>

• The GRAND Social linky is open for new posts through Wednesday evening, so please come back to see those added after your first visit.


• If you're not a blogger, you have the pleasure of being a reader. Bloggers who link up would be honored to have one and all — other bloggers as well as readers — visit, read and, if so moved, comment, even if just a "Hey, stopping by from the GRAND Social."

• For another grandparent linky, visit Connie's Grandparent's Say It Saturday Link Party each Saturday.

What I learned this week: Keeping the browns and the blues at bay

I love avocados. Jim hates avocados. So any avocados I buy are mine and mine alone to enjoy.

Because I usually only eat half an avocado at a time — in sandwiches, salads and so forth — the second half that I save for later often turns brown while sitting in the fridge waiting for me to nosh on it.

Not anymore.

This week I learned that if you lightly spray the cut avocado with cooking spray, it doesn't turn brown.

Seriously.

Pictorial proof is here:

The other day, I ate half an avocado on a sandwich at lunch time. I lightly sprayed the other half and stuck it in a baggie (bagging it loosely instead of having it touch the avocado flesh, just to see if the cooking spray really did work).

 

Five hours later I pulled the avocado half from the fridge to slice up for a dinner salad. It looked like this once released from its bag:

 

See? I kept the browns at bay, thanks to cooking spray. Easy-peasy.

Keeping the blues at bay isn't as easy-peasy, I learned this week.

As many of you know, my sister has been hospitalized for more than two weeks now. Yesterday she was moved from ICU to a regular floor. There was even talk she might get to go home in a day or so.

Hooray!

Just a few hours after my sister called with the good news, I got another phone call, one informing me my sister was back in ICU. She'd suffered another coughing/bleeding/nearly heart-stopping episode and had been returned to the unit where they could care for her best.

The blues instantly set in for many of us.

If only cooking spray could keep the blues away from hearts and minds as well as it keeps the browns from avocados.

That is what I learned this week.

May your weekend be grand, your browns and blues easily cured... or avoided in the first place.

Today's question:

What did you learn this week?

Prayers and a post somewhere else

As a blogger, knowing how much private story to share with readers and how much to keep shuttered away for only those one knows in person can be a challenge. I sincerely want to share myself and be transparent with those who take the time to read Grandma's Briefs. If I shared here each and every personal struggle I face, though, I'm pretty darn sure you'd get sick and tired of reading about them. I know for a fact I would get sick and tired of sharing them.

So I've not yet shared the hell of the past 10 days with you. But today I will. I'm sharing today because I need to request healing thoughts and prayers from you and I need to explain why I'm sending you elsewhere — when bloggers are supposed to do all they can to keep visitors on their blog — to read a post written by me but published on another site. (Chalk it up to that whole "freelancer" thing I so want to be when I grow up.)

One of my favorite photos of my sister Debbie as a young girl. She still has that smile, that light in her eyes.See, my younger sister Debbie — the second youngest of my four sisters — has been in and out of ICU since a week ago Monday... August 26. To make a long story a teensy bit shorter, Debbie was rushed by ambulance to the hospital when her lungs and heart went into distress early Monday morning. Things haven't been good ever since, at least not for very long. She'd get stable, then have a coughing fit that would stop her heart. Lifesaving measures have been instituted a time or two.

Yesterday Debbie was transported by ambulance to the ICU at a hospital in Denver. Today she faces a heart procedure to try and figure out what's happening and how to stop it.

My sister just turned 45 August 22. This is crazy. And scary.

So today I'm asking you to please send healing prayers for my sister and for all of us who love and adore the wacky woman. Thank you so very, very much.

Because of the situation with my sister, I'm unable to gather my wits enough to write a decent post of any sort for you today. That said, though, I did recently publish a decent post on another site. On Grandparents.com, to be precise. So I'm sharing that with you here today in hopes you'll read it there. It's about sharing family stories with the grandchildren, and it begins like this:

My daughter, mother of my two grandsons, is an early childhood educator. Each school year, my daughter hosts a Grandparents Day celebration and encourages her students to invite a grandparent (or two) to attend school with them. One highlight of Grandparents Day is when the students "interview" their grandparents on what school was like for them at their grandchild’s age. The anecdotes shared by the grandparents, my daughter says, never fail to dazzle and often downright befuddle the rapt grandchildren.

There’s no need to wait until Grandparents Day to amaze and entertain – as well as enlighten and educate – grandchildren with stories of not only your past, but of their past, too. Children of all ages...Click here to continue reading 6 FAMILY STORIES TO TELL YOUR GRANDCHILDREN AGAIN AND AGAIN on Grandparents.com.

Thank you for reading. More importantly, thank you for your healing thoughts and prayers for my sister.

What I learned this week: One way my eldest daughter is not like me

My eldest daughter, Brianna, is very much like me. She and I enjoy the same books, same movies, same music — for the most part (that silly girl adores country music far more than I ever will).

We like the same clothing style, love the same foods, and we have many of the same mannerisms. We even unintentionally say the very same things at the very same times often enough that Jim, upon hearing our comments in stereo — one side me, one side Brianna — regularly responds to us with, "Will you two stop doing that!?"

Yes, Brianna is very much like me.

There is one way in which my daughter is so not like me, though. It's something we both learned this week. It's something that led me to thank God out loud upon hearing.

That something is this: Brianna does not have MS.

I'm talking about multiple sclerosis — a drag of a disease I've worried for decades one or more of my daughters would inherit from me... despite there being no proof MS is hereditary.

Hereditary or not, Brianna began expressing concerns about unusually numb feet and oddball sensations in her body about six months ago. Just a complaint here and there, sentiments she'd pass along knowing darn well it was scaring the hell out of me despite my calm and reassuring demeanor at the mentions.

"It's probably just related to your back," I'd say on the outside while fearing the worst on the inside.

See, Brianna was in a car accident a few years ago, rear-ended by a landscaping truck that never even hit the brakes as she was stopped at a red traffic light. It wasn't good, especially for her back. Brianna eventually, though not even 25 years of age at the time, had to undergo emergency back surgery months after the accident but related to the accident. She's had minor pain and numbness and pings and pinches in her feet and legs ever since.

But when those minor pings and pains recently changed to major and began sounding more and more like the pings and pains I experienced before being diagnosed with MS 21 years ago, neither of us could ignore the symptoms. Brianna needed to see a doctor who would confirm or rule out MS.

Brianna saw that doctor Wednesday.

The doctor ruled out MS Wednesday.

I learned Wednesday that my daughter who is very-so-very much like me is not like me in the one way I prayed she and her sisters would never, ever be.

Hallelujah!

Yes, there's nerve damage and neuropathy and issues my daughter — who just turned 31 on Sunday — will deal with the rest of her life, things that may worsen throughout her life.

We both agree that sucks.

Yet we also both agree on this: Thank God it's not MS.

In that way we are very much alike.

In that way we both say — in stereo — hallelujah!

And that is what I — and Brianna — learned this week.

I learned another thing this week (yesterday, in fact), this one far more sad: Our bloggy friend Joan, whom many of you know as Gramcracker and who blogs at Gramcracker Crumbs, lost her husband unexpectedly this week. Please keep Joan and her loved ones in your thoughts and prayers.

Have a safe, happy and memorable weekend. I look forward to connecting with you again on Monday.

Today's question:

What did you learn this week?

New mom possessiveness: Seeking help from the grandmahood

I recently received an email from a pregnant mother who will soon have her first child. As the baby's birth nears, the new mom wrote, she's having difficulty coming to terms with the intense, scary and perfectly normal feelings of possessiveness over her baby — especially in relation to the soon-to-be-born child's grandmothers.

"Can you help?" she asked me.

Seems my post titled Grandma's No. 1 came up when this new mother Googled search queries such as "grandma obsessed with my baby." Admittedly, I just may sound a tad obsessed in that post, but I wrote those words from the heart and believe it's the truth on how many a grandma feels about her grandchildren. We are obsessed.

Which is exactly what concerns this new mother. It's why she asked if I could help her understand us crazy-in-love grandmas — an understanding that may help if her baby's grandmas turn out like the rest of us.

Before I respond to her, though, I'm seeking input from you, the Grandma's Briefs "grandmahood." Together we may properly shed light on why grandmothers feel the way we do. My hope is that as a whole, we can offer some guidance regarding what she calls the "stickiness in my heart" and her overwhelming feelings of possessiveness for her newborn when it comes to the "pretty reasonable" grandmothers in her life, who admittedly "haven't pulled any super crazy overbearing grandparent moves." 

First, of course, I must share with you the new mom's concerns about grandmothers in general and my Grandma's No. 1 post in particular. So here is the bulk of her letter to me:

There was a specific part in your post that bothered me. You said, "The thing is, when it comes to grandkids — and any grandma knows this, so I'm pretty much talking to the non-grandmas here — it's such a fresh, new, overwhelming love that it's hard to not gush and glow over it. New mothers feel the very same world-shaking love for their newborn, for their little ones as they grow..."

I have to very much disagree that grandmothers feel the SAME love for a newborn as their mothers do. Strong and also world-shaking, yes — but not the same. And even the way you worded this — that in fact mothers share the same love as grandmothers, instead of the other way around, also rubbed me the wrong way.

I also truly don't understand this section: "Much to their delight, they're getting a second opportunity to relish the fully-enveloping motherly love for a child. And relish it we do. Just like we did when our first child was born. And the second. And the third. And more."

I see what you're saying here, but this is NOT your child — so it is not the same love, and it may feel fully enveloping but it should still not compete with the mother's own love.

I'm sorry if I sound confrontational. That isn't my intention. I hope you'll forgive my very strong new mama feelings.

So please, please tell me: Do grandparents actually think that their love for the grandkids is the same as the parents' love?

I genuinely do not understand the grandparent obsession, to the point that it seems unhealthy to me. And I know all the boundary-less women my mom and MIL know that have grandkids are not helping them to be sane about my baby. I and am of course on the other side of life right now and just really struggling to relate to their feelings. I want to respect them, but also set reasonable boundaries.

Any tips on how to handle these feelings without hurting the grandparents' feelings or causing strife? Is this just something that needs to change in my heart?

Thanks for listening.

I want to tell this new mother that yes, we grandmothers do feel an all-consuming love for our grandchildren that is just like that of a mother, at least in terms of the degree of consumption.

I want to tell her that reasonable, well-intentioned grandmothers certainly don't want to possess or parent our grandchildren, that we delight in seeing our children parent our grandchildren, sometimes with such delight we fear our hearts will burst with pride.

And I want to tell her the importance of remembering that at least one of the grandmothers she worries about once held her in their arms, that they loved, adored, cuddled and worried about her in exactly the same way she is and will with her baby. That that grandmother fully understands and could shed light on the situation better than any stranger could. So talk to her about boundaries, expectations, her love and respect for the grandmothers in relation to what works for her as a new mother.

Mostly, I just want to tell her to not fret about competition or who loves the baby more, to accept that her role as the one and only mother of that child is a given — and that rational, loving grandmothers will give her the space to be that, do that, own that.

That's what I want to tell that new mother. But I want to know what you — the grandmothers and others who may see yourself in my words or hers — would tell this heart-heavy mother who wants to do and be and feel what's right for her baby, for the grandmothers and for herself.

So please share your thoughts. Ultimately, perhaps the best thing for me to do is direct the new mom to this post and your comments, so she'll glean guidance from the grandmahood collective, not just from me. I thank you. I venture to say she will, too.

Today's question:

What would you say to the new mother regarding the "stickiness" in her heart?

Weekend woes plus GRAND Social No. 66

Sometimes the weekends don't go quite as one might hope they would. This past weekend was exactly that way for my daughter Megan and her family.

The weekend started off all wrong for poor Megan. After a long first week of school, she arrived home Friday afternoon to find Mac in bad shape and Preston furiously scrubbing blood from Mac and Bubby's bedroom carpet. Just moments before, Mac had jumped from the night table and came down hard on the wood bedframe around Bubby's bed. Down on his mouth. His upper gum, to be exact.

Megan zoomed Mac to Emergicare while Preston scrubbed blood and stayed with Bubby. Emergicare turned her away, saying, "Get that boy to the pediatric dentist now!" She took him there, X-rays showed no broken baby or permanent teeth, and the poor little guy left with an open wound (technical term for the ouchie: degloving) that will supposedly heal relatively quickly.

Scenes from the woeful experience:

Tiny Mac prepped for the dentist.

The ouchie — after seeing the dentist.

As one Facebook friend said, "No more monkeys jumping on the bed!" I hope she's right. Not so sure Mac learned his lesson, though, as despite the pain, Mac still was a chipper little fella, evidenced by this photo taken immediately after the one above of Mommy holding back his lip:

Still smiling.

The weekend woes didn't end there for Megan and the gang. Next up was a bad-hair day — for Roxy, the family dog, who normally looks like this:

Roxy — July 2013

Megan texted me a photo Saturday afternoon of Roxy, who now, thanks to an "oops!" by the groomer, looks like this:

 

Not the best weekend ever. But as Megan said about the turn of events: It could be worse. Cheers to perspective — and to Mac's mouth healing quickly. (And Roxy's fur growing fast, too!)

Plus... Cheers to one and all joining me today for GRAND Social No. 66! Time for the party!

How it works:

• All grandparent bloggers are invited to add a link. You don't have to blog specifically about grandparenting, just be a grandparent who blogs.

• To link up a post, copy the direct URL to the specific post — new or old — that you want to share, not the link to your blog's home page. Then click the blue button marked with "Add your link" below and follow the directions.

• You can add up to three posts, but no duplicates, contests, giveaways, or Etsy sites, please.

• Adding a mention such as This post linked to the GRAND Social to your linked posts is appreciated. Or, you can post the GRAND Social button anywhere on your page using the following code:

<a href="http://grandmasbriefs.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><img src="http://grandmasbriefs.squarespace.com/storage/GRANDsocialbutton.jpg " alt="Grandma’sBriefs.com" width="125" height="125" /></a>

• The GRAND Social linky is open for new posts through Wednesday evening, so please come back to see those added after your first visit.


• If you're not a blogger, you have the pleasure of being a reader. Bloggers who link up would be honored to have one and all — other bloggers as well as readers — visit, read and, if so moved, comment, even if just a "Hey, stopping by from the GRAND Social."

• For another grandparent linky, visit Connie's Grandparent's Say It Saturday Link Party each Saturday.

Help wanted: Shattering the grandma stereotype

Do you feel marginalized, ignored, stereotyped when it comes to your role as a grandparent? Are you fed up with brands presenting erroneous and ageist advertisements that mock grandmas in unrealistic and ridiculous ways (how many times can we stomach the unoriginal, "this ain't your grandma's whatever" in an ad?) or brands that completely ignore grandmas in their marketing efforts?

I'm fed up with both. I'm especially fed up with the stereotyping of grandmas across the board, not just by ignorant brands, but by any and all in the media who think grandmas are nothing but old grannies sitting in their rockers, knitting their lives away. I'm talking about those perpetuating the myth that grandmothers look like this...

(screenshot of Google result)... instead of this...

Those are real, live grandmas above, a sampling of the grandmas I've featured as Grilled Grandmas here on Grandma's Briefs. If those lovely, vibrant women are what grandmas look like, why does a Google search for "grandma" result in — at the very top of the list — the inaccurate caricatures I show in the screenshot above? Gah... the frustration.

You've heard me complain about this in the past, especially by way of my The grandma in a box post I published here a while back. There has been some progress made since I wrote that post nearly a year ago. For one thing, The grandma in a box was named in the 2013 BlogHer Voices of the Year as the People's Choice selection in the humor category. That post and I — along with 99 other well-deserving bloggers and their works — will be honored in the VOTY Community Keynote and Cocktail Reception Friday evening, hosted by none other than Queen Latifah. (Does that mean I get to shake her hand, hear her call my name, find out if she read my post? I don't know... but I'll share with you what I find out!)

That post is my fed-up-grandma story, though, and I want to hear your story, want to consider ways in which grandmothers and grandfathers may feel marginalized, left out, stereotyped, especially by brands, in advertisements and otherwise. I want to keep those things in mind while at BlogHer the end of this week, possibly even share a few of your stories and suggestions with the brands I connect with, in hopes the erroneous and outdated grandma stereotype will be shattered, that brands big and small will get that the grandparent demographic — grandmas and grandpas — matters... and carries with it a large amount of disposable income they spend regularly on themselves and their loved ones.

We all have a unique story, all have ways we relish being a grandparent, as well as ways we feel the title gets in the way when people look at us, consider us. I want to hear about the latter from you, today — your gripes and complaints about the grandma stereotype. I'd like to add your story to my story, carry it with me as I do my best to represent grandparent bloggers at BlogHer.

Sure, there will be other grandma bloggers at the conference, but I'm not sure how many will be proudly waving the grandma flag. I plan to proudly wave that flag in hopes of making you proud, in hopes of making things even just a wee bit better — and realistic — for all of us grandparents, at least in terms of how brands view us, represent us.

So my question for you today is this:

In what ways do you feel marginalized, stereotyped, ignored, erroneously represented by brands, marketers and media? Feel free to be as long or as brief as you like, just please be honest and real. Feel free to offer suggestions for improvement in the area for the brands, too, if you'd like. I'll share what I can.

Thank you for your stories and suggestions and for helping me (try to) make a difference for our grandmahood (which, I'm happy to report, includes a few grandpas, too!).