I recently received my copies of Kyra Anderson and Vicki Forman's amazing book Gravity Pulls You In -- a collection of essays about parenting kids on the autism spectrum. The book contains one of the most personal and passionate essays I've ever written (As Great as Trees), an essay about the difficult time leading up to my youngest child's diagnosis with Aspergers syndrome. Once we had the diagnosis, we could start stumbling towards a new normal.
This is the fourth time I've had the opportunity to contribute to an anthology. I've discovered that I'm totally hooked. I love being part of the collaborative process that results in the birth of a multi-authored collection of writing.
So if you're planning an anthology and you think I might have something valuable to contribute, let me know. I'd love to do more of this type of writing.
Once again, I'll be hanging out in the "Ask Ann" booth when I'm not speaking on the main stage or delivering workshops in the show's seminar rooms. Note: The speaking schedule should be going up any day now. I expect to be speaking once or twice each day.
This year, I'll be speaking on the following topics:
The Dirt on Discipline and Other Secrets to
Successful Parenting You swore you'd never end up with one of those
kids – the kid who wriggles out of his booster seat in restaurants and
steals toys from other kids at kids at daycare – but now that you're the
parent of a toddler or preschooler, you're discovering that discipline
isn't quite as easy as you thought it would be before you became a
parent. In this fun and fast-paced presentation, bestselling author Ann
Douglas (The Mother of All Toddler Books) shares discipline techniques
that are both parent-proven and child-friendly while addressing your
toughest questions about life in the toddler trenches.
Less Stress, More Fun: The Secrets of Calm and
Confident Parents We all have a friend who could be the poster
mom or poster dad for parenting serenity. Nothing seems to rattle them.
And as for the rest of us? We survive on adrenaline and caffeine. In
this presentation, bestselling author Ann Douglas (The Mother of All
Parenting Books) offers strategies for zapping stress and having more
fun as a family, regardless of your schedule or budget. Her engaging mix
of stories and practical strategies make this a can't-miss BabyTime
event.
Just a quick post to let you know that I've been invited to become a contributor to BAM! Radio (Body and Mind: Child Radio), the largest educational radio network in the world.
The network's contributors include authors, parent advocates, researchers, and clinical staff working in the fields of early childhood education, physical education and motor development, play research, child development, the neurosciences, and related fields.
Becoming involved with BAM! Radio will allow me to advocate on behalf of
parents and children in a powerful new way and to share what I've
learned about pregnancy, birth, baby, and beyond over the past 22 years. I'm very excited.
I'll let you know about my upcoming BAM! Radio appearances as soon as I get the word. Stay tuned!
About 10 days ago, I decided to conduct a poll asking how
people feel about contests and giveaways on Twitter. I invited people who
follow me on Twitter at either @themotherofall or @anndouglas to respond to a
survey using Survey Monkey. I didn't participate in the poll myself. The poll was set to allow only one response per IP address.
76.5% of the respondents were parents; 23.5% were
not.
51 people responded to the survey, with 49 answering the
question.
Here are the results.
QUESTION. How do you feel about contests and giveaways on Twitter?
I love them. I wish there were more contests and giveaways. 20.4%(10
responses)
I don't mind them. Sometimes I participate in contests and
giveaways, if I have the time.
46.9%(23
responses)
I ignore contests and giveaways. I'm simply not interested.
8.2%(4
responses)
I don't like contests and giveaways. They clutter my Twitter
stream.
22.4%(11
responses)
I hate contests and giveaways. I do anything I can to avoid
them.
2.0%(1
responses)
The 13 comments that people provided offer further insight
into how people feel about contests and giveaways:
I have
done one and I wish I hadn't. I feel like most of them are just an
invitation for spam. That or they promise more than they will actually
deliver.
I'm of
the "I don't mind" group as long as they are not continuous.
Twitter Tuesday for a weekly giveaway is too much, but a special contest
or a 2-3 times a week reminder of a giveaway/contest are fine if it's a
special or unique event and not an ongoing thing. I don't like clutter in
my stream so as long as it's not excessive, I'm okay with it.
I love
to check for new ones several times a day.
I
unfollow people who tweet to much about contests and giveaways
I hate
them and they clutter the stream, when everyone I follow then posts about
the same contests. Ugh! Maybe if I won I'd change my opinion. :)
It was
fun at first, but now I'm just annoyed and I don't want to help shill
bloggers' swag.
Seems
like I always miss the contest. Only see winner announcements so I
constantly feel like I've missed out.
Repeatedly
RTd contests and giveaways I consider spammy though. (No more than once /
day please!)
Eh.
I
don't mind contests when the contest creator tweets about it, but it bugs
me when they make tweeting about it a mode of entry, so dozens of other
people are tweeting. That's sort of annoying and tedious.
It
depends on the contest and I try to keep my participation from annoying
others who follow me.
I
don't mind them, but they shouldn't be in your face like the [brand name
deleted] contest. I ended up unfollowing people because they would. not.
shut. up. about the [brand name deleted].
Kind
of a combination...
Here are some conclusions I have reached, based on the
results of the survey. Some of them may be in the ballpark; some of them may be way off base. My survey sample was small, after all. But working with the numbers I have and the comments I received, here goes:
Just one in five people are contest fans. 20.4 % of people love contests. 55.1% don't really care either way. 24.4%actively
dislike them.
A contest should be something special. If you're having a
contest every day, most people will start to think of your contest as spam.
Play fair. If you decide to run a contest, make sure you're offering something of
value and don't use your contest as an excuse to create a mailing list and then
start spamming people.
Win friends, don't alienate people. Consider how often you're promoting the same contest – and
how often your followers are also retweeting those same repeated promotional
messages. You want your contest to be something positive, not something that annoys and alienates people.
Don't flog the contest to death. It appears that some people who previously enjoyed contests and giveaways on
Twitter are starting to lose patience with them. Perhaps contests and giveaways have been overused on Twitter. Maybe some fresh marketing ideas need to emerge. Perhaps people on Twitter are more interested in sharing ideas than entering contests (unless it's a really unique or exceptional contest).
But enough from me. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.
I hadn't realized, until today, that I needed to do a few extra things to make Google happy after I switched a few of my blogs over to one of the Typepad Advanced Templates. I noticed recently that every entry for my blog was showing up under the root URL (not too helpful if the entry in question was very old). As if anyone was going to scroll back through countless entries until they found the entry in question....
I recently followed the instructions above for One Woman. One Blog. and that took care of the problem quite nicely. (Maybe that will even solve some of the difficulties my blogs have had in showing up at Technorati.) Every once in a while I try to trouble-shoot these technical issues on my own blogs. Then I get busy again and move on.
Good thing there are technical gurus who troubleshoot these issues on my blogs at ParentCentral and Yahoo Canada Lifestyle, or you'd never be able to find anything I write....
Today was a frustrating day. Everything I wanted/needed to do on my computer really required a high-speed Internet connection -- and such a connection simply isn't to be had here at the cottage. My options are dial-up or an Internet stick (core network, two bars).
I'm trying to keep a sense of humor about the situation by selling myself on the so-called benefits of slow-speed Internet.
It's forcedslowness. I can't spend too much time online. It's too frustrating.
I'm getting to experience the frustration that motivates young children to keep at a task until that glorious moment when they master it. (Staying in touch with her inner toddler is a good thing for a parenting author, don't you think?) Mastery when you're working with a slow Internet connection = completing the simplest of tasks. Writing a blog post, uploading an image, paying a bill, or (gasp) attempting any task involving video.
Sometimes my sense of humor goes AWOL, along with my Internet connection. The chipmunk-powered connection can only handle so much.
"The online world of mothers is being transformed by
marketers with their own specific agendas. These marketers—who are eager to tap
into the $1.7 trillion market that mothers represent—have the budgets to ensure
that they are able to tap into the conversations of mothers, wherever those
conversations happen to be taking place online. Web 2.0 sites are eager to find
ways to generate revenue from their operations and marketers are the source of
that revenue, so their needs will often eclipse the needs of mothers in online
communities....
"Moms have always been generous about sharing their wisdom
and ideas with other mothers, but now a third party is privy to those
conversations. In the world of Web 2.0, there's a third party sitting (or
eavesdropping) at the table—a marketer who is taking notes and looking for ways
to use mothers' ideas to sell products back to mothers. More often than not, moms are not being compensated for these intellectual property contributions in any meaningful way. Rather than paying cash -- the traditional currency of business -- marketers and the mega-corporations that they front for offer fleeting fame and freebies. On a per-hour basis, these 'pay rates' can amount to lower rates of compensation than the rates paid to workers in third-world sweat shops --working conditions these mega-corporations to go great lengths to distance themselves from.
"Horizontal violence* between mothers online is the result of
the lack of respect shown to mothers by other online users. This type of
hostile activity is at its rawest in the blogging community ("the wild
west") as compared to in the highly moderated (and much less authentic)
world of social networking sites aimed at mothers. When horizontal violence does occur on social networking sites, the social networking tools that are built into the site architecture can be used with merciless effectiveness (at least until a site moderator steps in). Rumors and misinformation can be forwarded to an entire network of contact and on-site and off-site site a mouse click. Deleting someone from a list of friends can be accomplished with equal ease (and, in many cases, that former 'friend' won't even realize that they've been de-friended).
Perhaps the most important conclusion that web-savvy mothers must keep in mind is that horizontal violence will become less of a problem when the status of mothers and women is improved both online and in the real world. Until this happens, it's important for mothers to acknowledge its existence and to work towards collective solutions. In "Horizontal Violence in the Workplace," Carolyn Hastie recommends a series of strategies that appear to be just as practical and relevant to the world of mothers: recognizing and acknowledging that horizontal violence occurs between mothers and using the term 'horizontal violence' to name the problem; raising awareness of this issue and addressing the cultural issues that allow horizontal violence to continue to be a problem between mothers and women; speaking out against instances of horizontal violence whenever they occur; addressing individual attitudes and behaviors; and practicing self-nurturing and self-care so that each woman ins able to 'do the things that help [her] to be healthy and happy in all aspects of [her] human-ness.' Once she applies that age-old common sense to dealing with a
computer-age online problem, Mom 2.0 will have more to give her Web 2.0
girlfriends. And it's a 100% product-free solution to boot."
*Note: The term horizontal violence is used when members of
groups with low status display hostile behaviors toward their fellow group
members as opposed to lashing out at their oppressors.
Related:
Mom-101: The Year that Shame Died: Mom-101 writes: "Much to my surprise however, what turned out to be the problem at
BlogHer was not how the marketers acted, but how so many bloggers
acted. Without pulling punches, I will say it was shameful...I am in no way saying that popular bloggers don't like free stuff or
that you should be ashamed for wanting some free dish soap. I publish a
site that gives away products daily and I love how happy it makes
people. What I'm saying that blogging 'success' shouldn't be defined by
the amount of stuff you get. It's about what you put out, not what you
take in."
Mom-101: Blog With Integrity: We're Taking Our Community Back: Mom-101 writes: "We've put together Blog with Integrity, a voluntary pledge, complete with blog badge,
for any and all bloggers (not just parents) who want a way to show
their readers, marketers, the PR community, and certainly the press,
that we are committed to integrity, responsibility and disclosure, and
that a few bad apples do not speak for all of us. Not even close."
Hey, moms and dads, it's back to schooltime again -- that crazy time of year when you might as well just camp
out in the mall parking lot rather than driving back and forth across
town in some unending quest for all the back-to-school essentials. (Of
course, if you've got a kid in that delightful "I have to visit all the
malls in town before I purchase a single item of clothing" stage,
you'll have to rethink your strategy a little to allow for multiple
treks to multiple mall parking lots.) Just remember to pace yourself,
folks: we've got the entire months of August and September ahead of us.
(Forget
what T.S. Eliot said: it's not April that's the cruelest month -- it's
September!)
Here are some tips on surviving back-to-school time as a family.
Get your kids back on a school-year sleeping routine before it's time to head back to school. Otherwise, your kids will end up suffering from what back-to-school
"jet lag." (It's not exactly reasonable to expect a kid who's been
sleeping in until 11:00 a.m. all summer to be functional at 7:00 a.m.
on the first day of school!)
Establish the shopping ground rules before you hit the mall.Your
negotiating power goes down the drain after a couple of hours of
shopping. At that point, you're willing to buy just about anything your
kid wants just to make the pain stop. That's why it's important to
establish your kids' clothing budget long before you leave home and to
mutually agree on the number and price of outfits to be purchased
beforehand. Oh yeah, one more thing: avoid spending for the sake of spending (an easy trap to fall into at back-to-school time). Only buy what your kids genuinely need. The Center for a New American Dream
and its sister site IBuyDifferent.org provide practical advice on living consciously (according to your
values), buying wisely (buying green whenever possible and trying not
to get sucked into the vortex of over-consumption) and joining with
others who share your commitment to working towards a new North American
dream. (Remember the old one? It was all about acquiring more stuff.)
Keep your schedule as free as possible during the first week back at school. Not only will you want to leave time in your schedule to squeeze in
all those unpredictable errands that have to be run that first week --
like dashing out to pick up whatever school supplies you missed from the teacher's must-have list, or spending
an hour in line (or online) trying to sign your kids up for swimming lessons
-- you'll also want to be available to listen to your kids as they bring
you up to speed on all those exciting first-week developments.
Keep things simple on the mealtime front.You have enough other things on your plate without having to worry
about, well, what's on your plate. Order in pizza, pick up subs on your
way home from work, or reheat that mystery casserole that's been
languishing in the back of your freezer. The nutrition police won't
book you for cutting corners in the kitchen one week of the year.
Take time for yourself. It's easy to spend the entire month of September running around at breakneck speed, picking up school supplies,
signing your kids up for extra-curricular activities (here's why you might not want to overdo things on that front, by the way), and making the
rounds of school open houses and picnics. Don't forget to take time for
yourself during this crazy time of year. Otherwise, you could find
yourself feeling supremely grumpy by the time the month draws to a
close.
Set some goals for yourself as a parent.While your kids are busy setting some school-year goals for
themselves (or perhaps simply starting school for the very first time), take a moment to set some goals for yourself. Maybe you want to play a more active role at your kids' school or make contact with their teachers more often -- or figure out ways to ensure that your kids have lots of time for fun
and relaxation during their non-school hours? Make sure your goals are
something concrete enough to be measurable and that you put your goals in
writing so you can refer back to them during the school year.
Ann Douglasis the author of The Mother of All Parenting Books, The Mother of All Pregnancy Books and numerous other books about pregnancy and parenting. She is frequently featured in the print and broadcast media.
I received a note this morning letting me know that The Mother of All Blogs has been included in a list of 100 Powerful Blogs for Your Self-Improvement. Nice to know. Thanks for letting me know, Amber.
I'm also continuing to blog weekly over at Yahoo! Canada. You never know what I'm going to post about over there. It's as much as a surprise to me as it is to you. (I pick my topics at the last minute.)
You can download copies of this poster to share with a friend or to post at your workplace or local library. Please note that enrollment is limited to 24 girls and the VIFs (very influential females) in their lives, so please sign up early to avoid disappointment.
