mother blog – Mother, Inc

Boys and Girls

April 27, 2010

I’m no expert on parenting, evidently. Most of my ridiculous parenting theories are a direct result of watching too much TV and other even more useless videos on the Internet. Which is why I recommend that you take what I tell you with generous lumps of salt, if you haven’t already figured that out.

But once in a while, I get enlightened by the experts who actually have impressive degrees on early childhood education and I stop to listen. Then, I pass them along so that I can sound more credible than I actually am. After all, Motherinc is a *serious* resource for parenting and it is my goal to share these wonderful nuggets of wisdom.

You can stop snorting now, I can hear you.

No, really, today is one of those serious days. We’re going to talk about boys and girls. Specifically, their different learning styles because we all know that girls are far superior to boys in terms of sheer mental abilities. We can’t help that but what we can do is figure out a way to make learning as easy and effective as possible for everybody.

Of course, I’m going to introduce the expert to you now. Remember the time I sat down for a forum with Fiona Walker, the Principal Director of Julia Gabriel, and I became very well-acquainted with the mini sandwiches? She’s kindly offered to share her thoughts on topic. So, to summarize, here’s what we’ve got.

1. Girls have better listening skills and a more sensually detailed memory.

2. Girls have an advantage in the language arts.

3. Girls are biochemically less impulsive.

4. Girls generally use more areas of the brain for verbal and emotive functioning.

5. Girls are often better able to multitask, with fewer attention span problems.

Boys, well, they are basically the opposite. Ok, if you really want the details, the male brain is better suited for symbols, abstractions, diagrams pictures and objects moving through space. Boys learn by being physically active and can ‘switch off’ if faced with too much verbal explanation.

exactly what I'm talking about

If you ask me, you’re way more likely to get through to girls by explaining stuff. With boys, you need to keep your explanations to short grunts and hand gestures. Or you can bribe them with raisins to do your bidding.

I’m probably not doing justice to the original version so I’m going to just post the whole thing here and you can read it for yourself.

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by Daphne

blogging about blogging

The accidental blogger

August 25, 2009

I was in one of my contemplative moods earlier today and one of the things I contemplate about most is how my life turned out so different from what I expected it to. I’m not the kind of girl that has the next 30 years all planned out, but I do have a general idea of what it will be like. It used to change all the time, like one day I’d be going on a book tour LA (after releasing my NYT bestseller) then another I’d be some fancypants advertising hot shot screaming at lowlife executives (you don’t get to be a hot shot without the screaming). In none of those scenarios, I’d be sitting at home with curlers in my hair blogging on the laptop.

First of all, I never had a thing for blogging, which is why I’m only jumping on the bandwagon an entire decade late. When it comes to the Internet, I’m one of those suspicious old farts. It’s evil, I tell you. It’ll mysteriously syphon off all my money and spy on my every little move. Plus, I’m a fiercely private person and the thought of having random folks well-acquainted with the intimate details of my personal life gives me the creeps. What if I get stalked by a psycho and get chopped up into a thousand tiny pieces and fed to dogs? Bet you didn’t think about that, did you?

Also, how weird would it be to have complete strangers giving you knowing winks and nudges or coming up to you and say “Had a nice weekend there, aye? Hard at work making #3, I see” (which by they way is NOT happening). Then there’s the likelihood that in my fit of shock, I reach for my pepper spray right after I paralyze them with my karate moves… only to find out that they’re totally harmless die-hard fans of Mother, Inc.

That’s also why I never kept diaries or journals – so they don’t fall into the hands of preying eyes. Ok, I did keep a diary once, back when I was like nine, and it had entries like “Dear Diary, I fell down the stairs at school today while trying to jump 4 steps in a row, but I missed and took a tumble and landed flat on my face with my skirt ridden up to my waist in front of a bunch of boys who actually died laughing. Please let me die.” There were also a few other incriminating entries, none of which I want to recollect. A few years later, I decided it was too painful to read so I burnt it and scattered its miserable ashes into the sea.

That’s the fate of my one and only diary, so it is hardly surprising that I’m not a fan of this whole idea of blogging.

But having kids, it turns you into obsessive compulsive freaks who MUST keep a record of every little fragment of their lives. The first roll, the first step, the first crap on my thigh that gave me rashes for a week. So since it hasn’t stolen any of my money yet, the Internet is now my new best friend. I spend hours everyday surfing blogs of other mothers (and I am also addicted to FML – it makes me feel so much better about my life) to find solace in the fact that plenty of other moms have gone on ahead and survived to tell the tale.

More than that, the beauty of blogging is the community. It opens up a world of possibilities and connects you to people you otherwise would never have a chance of knowing. Motherhood is one of the loneliest jobs and by far the most difficult. Now that I’ve taken the plunge into the blogosphere, it’s turned out to be the best decision I’ve made in a long time and I ain’t turning back.

So once in a while I get the occasional troll, but they can eat my dust because I KNOW KUNG FU. And believe me, if you can find me, I can find you too. That’s the beauty of the Internet.

by Daphne