Spanish Baby Clothes
Spanish Baby Clothes
|
|
Pocoyo: Pocoyo and Friends $7.17 Studio: Ncircle Entertainment Release Date: 12/31/2007… |
|
|
I Love Lucy – The Complete Fifth Season $19.49 No Description Available.Genre: TelevisionRating: NRRelease Date: 11-JUL-2006Media Type: DVD… |
|
|
I Love Lucy – The Complete Third Season $10.99 ALL 31 EPISODES FROM THE THIRD SEASON ON FIVE DISCS…. |
|
|
Baby Mama $2.24 BABY MAMA – DVD Movie… |
|
|
Baby Sayings Bodysuit – Spanish Boy Baby Sayings Bodysuits are solid interlock cotton with printed sayings. Available in 4 sizes up to 12 months. Available in 4 different sayings: Mi Papa es Numero Uno; Ninito de Mama; Yo Amo a mi Abuela; Hermanito…. |
Simple Red – Fake with English Spanish Turkish Subtitles
The Dysfunctional Parent of the Dysfunctional Child
Being a parent is undoubtedly the most challenging role that anyone could ever embark upon in life. One of the most disturbing paradoxes in life is that children are usually raised by people who themselves carried a variety of consternations into adulthood. It is a compelling argument that there is no such a thing as a ¨normal¨ person who is free of dysfunctional behavior. If that is the case, is there help available for anyone in this life? Perhaps there isn´t one solution and it is more likely that the ones who get through life best are the ones who can accept their shortcomings and avidly take measures to counter their inherent dysfunctional behavior.
At this point, it might be helpful if a definition of ¨dysfunctional behavior¨ is established. There are so many scientific definitions but it seems to me that dysfunctional simply means that you haven´t yet found your niche in life and stabilized yourself and your situation enough to be successful in your social, academic or professional endeavors. It is frightening to discover, though, that this describe most of us!
From single parent to twice-married wife and mom, I still haven´t figured out all the rights and wrongs in this parenting job. I have had some of the worst experiences and the best experiences with my son. He is both a problem and the solution to so many things in my life. I am glad when I get a respite and he isn´t in the house but I also miss him when he is gone. I gave birth to the brightest young man who also happens to have been the poster-child for problem kids. Why is my son the embodiment of so many contradictions? Perhaps it is a combination of factors that range from being raised fatherless, living in too many places at too many different times and having a mother who spent most of his life trying to make it all up to him by overindulging him at every opportunity.
Our experiences as children absolutely affect the type of parents that we become. My parents have each married and divorced several times and they never really spoke with us children about their problems. But like many other children, we already knew what most of the problems were from witnessing or just overhearing arguments between our parents. I thought frequent arguments that resulted in separations and silent treatments were normal in families and I brought that thinking into my adulthood. I had frequently argued with my female friends, former boyfriends or husband in front of my son. I never knew the kind of distress this caused in my son. He said he felt helpless and confused and alone many times when this happened. He was always very protective of me and felt the need to take my side in any argument even if I was wrong. I guess I just assumed that my son knew the arguments weren´t directly about him, so I never bothered to explain things, apologize or attempt not to argue in front of him. I never knew that he thought he was the problem most of the time.
I became pregnant at twenty-one years of age and the father of my son abandoned me very early on in the pregnancy. I contemplated abortions many times because I was afraid of raising a child alone, but I made the decision to have my son anyway and face whatever life brought. I didn´t know there would be so many sleepless nights and that I would have a problem child who would get thrown out of schools several times. But he also completely changed the path of my life in a positive and profound way by forcing me to face reality rather than run from it. I had to face responsibility in a very abrupt way the day I gave birth to my son. I realized I had a real person´s life in my hands and that I had to provide him with a place to live, feed him, clothe him, bathe him and teach him right from wrong. Of course you think about these things when you´re pregnant but it didn´t really sink in until I held in my hands this seven-pound four-ounce baby who had just emerged from my body. I struggled to balance the responsibilities of motherhood and single-parenting with work and trying to have friends and boyfriends. Everything I did, literally everything I did, affected my son- from talking on the phone to friends, leaving my baby at a sitter´s to go to work and finding time to take my son to the park to play.
I did the best I could, but that didn´t always mean I did the right thing. I found sitters that I could afford and that sometimes meant my son spent the day in less than hospitable places. I bought cheap clothes from second-hand thrift stores because I had very little money to spend on clothes and I could have done better with keeping those clothes cleaner. My son and I slept several times for several months on the couches of friends when we didn´t have a place to stay. But I was a fool. I could have relied on my family more and swallowed my pride that dictated that I should do this by myself because I had this child by myself. I´m so angry at my irresponsibility with life in general and I know that it has seeped into my son´s thinking too. He didn´t follow through on many of his tasks at home or school because he wasn´t willing to make the necessary sacrifices and I never enforced responsibility properly. I didn’t learn until much later in my son´s life that there was no room for pride where necessities were concerned.
Throughout his life my son has been a continual problem at schools- both public and private when I could eventually afford to send him to one. He couldn´t get along with his peers and he began to constantly lie about school and his responsibilities to avoid doing them. I did the only thing I knew to do in these situations- I spanked him. In fact I spanked him so much and so hard sometimes that many people thought I was being abusive. I didn´t want to hurt my child as much as I wanted him to start behaving and listening. But I knew I had to find another way to reach my son.
One day after work and after a long day of researching options like mentors and psychological help and medication for problem children, I decided to try something that my parents never did with me when I was young- I tried talking to my son. I took the advice of an older, experienced single mother that I met online (yes, online) and I decided to sit down and talk to my son in his room just before bed. I presented him with some of his toy figures and asked him to show me how life was for him every day at home, with friends and at school. He started with school and demonstrated that he knew he wasn´t doing his work and that he got in trouble for not obeying the teacher about talking and staying in his seat. He was extremely hyperactive and difficult to control at school and sometimes at home. He also demonstrated how he was teased so much by other children and how they would take things from him and attack him. I always taught him not to fight and I felt so guilty while I listened to his stories of other kids picking on him so much. Then, he described his relationship with me and showed how he got spanked so much and how I never listened to him and how I didn´t do many fun things with him. He told me once that the most fun he had with me was when we took a bus ride from the East Coast to the West Coast for three days. He said we talked, we laughed and we didn´t fight about school or his behavior. We just had a good time. I wanted so badly for that to happen more often but I didn´t know what to do to make it all right. But I knew the change in my son could only start with a change in me.
I had tough decisions to make and that meant (1) eliminating distractions while I worked on my relationship with my son, (2) finding out why he was having trouble socially and academically, and (3) providing more stability and family involvement in his life. It took years for me to successfully implement these things and I cried and suffered insomnia so much but I was willing to own the responsibility for taking part in having a problem child. My son started seeing counselors and psychologists with me and he started taking medication that sometimes helped him to control himself. Once I began implementing those changes in our life, I began to see small changes in my son- and in myself. We became more stable financially and emotionally. We spent more time with my family. And we never had to sleep on anyone´s couch again.
My son is now fifteen. I am married and living in Spain. My son is now taller than me and I am certain he is smarter than me too. He is fully bilingual and speaks English and Spanish fluently. His Spanish was self-taught and he is even helping me to learn better Spanish. He attends a Spanish Catholic boarding school and had a very difficult first year there. He had to fight his old nemeses of hyperactivity and disobedience. With my husband´s help, I had to become more consistent with disciplining my son and enforcing repercussions for disobedience and not following instructions at home first before my son really began to respond to the more structured and strict atmosphere of the boarding school. Letting him go away to school was one of the toughest decisions I have ever had to make in my life. I wanted him near me for company, but I also knew that he had to become more independent and learn to make better decisions in his life. He had to learn to teach himself apart from me because I was part of the reason he had so many problems anyway. He still makes bad decisions but the change is that he is able to face them and make better ones the next time a similar situation presents itself. By letting him go away from me, he has taught himself and me more about responsibility than I could ever have done at home with him. I see my son on the weekends every two weeks and all summer long during summer vacation and he has really grown into a more responsible young man. He is more clean-cut, more organized, more scholarly, but also more aggressive towards me and my husband. I am working on his aggressive manner towards me and his step-father but I believe that the aggressiveness is a result of newly-found freedom and independence. My task now is to help him balance that independence with the social responsibilities of respecting his parents and others and their opinions. I am certain that this can only be possible with patience and keeping the lines of communication open between him and me. I have not been a perfect mother and I never will be, but neither have I ever regretted giving birth to my problem child. By examining his problems and challenges, I was able to gain a better understanding of my own problems and challenges too. Together, we are learning about overcoming dysfunctional hindrances and making something of ourselves in spite of the challenges that life dealt us.
About the Author
J. Marie Walker is a 37-year-old mother and wife currently residing in Leon, Spain. Born to a military father and Filipino mother, she has lived in the Philippines and the United States. She has held many positions that include financial analyst, private English instructor, editorial assistant, administrative assistant and office manager. Her current ambitions include writing and painting watercolors.
Need help finding children’s clothing line?
I’m looking for a children’s clothing line with mexican/spanish sayings on it. Does anyone know of any? Like bibs with baby sayings in Spanish.
Sears has a line of Dora the explorer clothes. Some may have Spanish Words on them.
Rocket Language is arguably the top language software developer in the world. Only Rosetta Stone can offer any argument to this fact. Both products have loyal followings, but offer radically different methods on how to Learn To Speak Spanish. Their price tags are also radically different, which could make a difference to a student on a budget..... Click here to read the rest of the article: Spanish For Beginners
