I Want Him to Want Me

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A wife of 20 years has finally realized what the man she chose to marry and love forever really needs:

Or watch other videos at youtube.com/DrLaura.

Read transcript here.

Talking Face-to-Face Is Becoming A Lost Art

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I have never understood cafes which actually cater to the “I don’t want to talk to anyone” types who hog tables and chairs for hours while they play with their laptops or Kindles or cell phones or iPads.  I guess some café owners permit this (and even offer free use of computers) in order to get business.  Yeah…business.  One group of people sitting for hours can’t possibly bring in more revenue than a constant flow of sippers and munchers who stay for short periods of time.

When I walk into a café and see these hulks buried in cyberspace, I usually turn and leave.

One day, my husband and I took a motorcycle ride and decided to stop in Arroyo Grande, California for breakfast.  The area had a small “old town” feel to it, with roosters walking in the street.  We went into the café and everyone was talking!  Whenever someone new walked in, it was “Hi” all around.  Nice.

Walking around the streets of most cities, you’ll often see people on cell phones, texting or talking to themselves (otherwise known as talking through their “Look Ma, no hands” Bluetooth devices). 

It’s not nice to not interact.

Café Grumpy, in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, banned laptops and cell phones.  Besides the smell of coffee, the sound of people actually talking to each other fills the air.  In the late afternoons, people are writing on paper, reading print newspapers, and lingering over books in a corner.  The owner makes the rounds, talking to these solo patrons.  Person to person contact is made.

Humanity is resurrected…resistance is futile.

Quote of the Week

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Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.
               - Carl Jung
                  1875-1961
                  Swiss psychiatrist and
                  Founder of analytical psychology

Pleasant Surprises

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A few weekends ago, my husband and I rode our motorcycles out for lunch, something we do regularly.  As we were preparing to leave for a post-lunch ride, a woman pulled up in her car to ask me about my (I’ll admit it) beautiful motorcycle.  The overall mural on the bike is gorgeous:  a free-flowing, hand-painted, artistically brilliant representation, combining Hell’s Angels and patriotic themes.

We engaged in conversation, and she commented that, at 83, she didn’t think she could get into motorcycles.  I suggested a trike.  Anyway, she told me she’d been a journalist and had interviewed a motorcycle gang quite a few years ago, and offered to send me the text.  When I gave her my contact information, she slooowllly looked up at me, and practically sneered my name:  “YOU are Dr. Laura?”  I said: “Yup.”  She immediately said, “I don’t agree with most of what you have to say.”  I responded:  “See my husband over there?  He doesn’t agree with everything I have to say either…but he still loves me.”

She looked at him, then looked at me, and a smile crept onto her face.

She sent me her article.  I invited her to dinner.  She accepted, and wrote back that most everyone who knew her would be shocked to learn we might become friends.  She came to dinner, and the first thing out of her mouth was to tell me she’d walked out of a talk I’d given a few years back.  I said nothing in response.  She then said (and this was even before bread and salad!) I seemed so different in person and so mean otherwise.  Again, I said nothing in response.  I did, however, pass the margarine.

I’m convinced too much of the time it has become more natural to dislike the person whose message is counter to your preference than it is to simply agree to disagree, or congenially debate without hate.  However, hate has become the current means of dealing with differences of opinion.

I give her lots of props, because she decided to go past the knee-jerk reaction of “shooting the messenger” to form her own opinion.

It was a pleasant evening after that.  She’s a world traveler and has met some of the most incredible people (good and bad) in history.  Her stories were fascinating.  After two hours, she left with an invitation to dinner at her home.  I’m looking forward to it. 

I don’t agree with most of what she supports either, but she is an open, charming, delightful woman, and I do hope we can become friends.  If we limit our interactions to the “choir,” life becomes quite dull.

Disregard for Hands-On Parenting

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There appears to be a growing disregard for actual eyeball-to-eyeball hands-on parenting.

Christine, a new stay-at-home parent to a two-month-old daughter, emailed me immediately when she saw an article from Parenting magazine by Melissa Balmain posted on CNN.com about the deaths of infants forgotten in cars. I read the article and share her disgust.

The main story is about two people, married, with a comfortable house in Virginia, and two well-paying full-time jobs.  On top of that, they decided to adopt two babies from Guatemala.  According to this report, “..the end of August and start of September, 2007 had been stressful.  Twenty-three-month old Juan and his four-year-old brother had been sick on and off.  The mother’s days and been blurs of work, day care, doctors, business trips, visits with relatives and anxiety.”

The story then goes on that the older boy was home with the dad and the mother was supposed to drop an ill younger child off in day care.  She went to work, had a “normal day,” talked with her supervisor, ate lunch at her desk, drove to the supermarket and shopped for dinner and continued on to the day care center to pick the younger boy up.  That’s when the child was found dead in the back seat, having literally cooked to death in the heat of the locked car. 

Now, I don’t have sympathy for the parents.  I just don’t.  I don’t agree with the article that whitewashes these incidents by saying it is normal to forget things when you’re in your habit rhythm - a lapse in memory that you’re a parent only occurs when being a parent is an accessory rather than the main deal.  Let’s look at her stressful month of September:  business trips, day care, work, visits with relatives and anxiety.  How many of those factors would have been eliminated if she was a stay-at-home mom?  Answer:  ALL OF THEM,  and the child would likely be alive.

I wonder if it is accidental that all the stories I’ve read about babies cooking to death in the back of their parents’ car are the result of parents forgetting to drop them off at day care on the way to work.  Fobbing off one’s sacred responsibility of child-rearing and protecting to hired help tends to make one not have focus on that child.  Just sayin’.

The article talks about the “reptilian” or most ancient part of the brain which directs our habits, and habits dominate over short-term plans which are ordered by the more advanced brain regions.  If that excuse is so, then parents should put their reptilian brain into parenting and not business trips, work, and day care drops and pick ups.

The article ends up giving suggestions so you won’t forget your kid to die in your back seat while you are busy with what is more important.

1. Put something that really matters to you - like your cell phone - in the back seat with the child.  Do you realize that means that your cell phone is more important than your child?

2. Keep a teddy bear in the baby car seat.  When you put your kid in the seat, put the teddy in front, so you’ll see it and remember you have a child.  After all, you’re a “busy employee.”

3. Ask your child’s child-care provider to call you on your cell phone if your kid doesn’t get there.  Oh, so now the day care, minimum-wage worker is more responsible for your kid than you are?

4.  Put visual cues in your office and home reminding you to check the car seat.  Gee, I thought parental love and bonding did that.  Guess not.

My bottom line?  Don’t have ‘em if you won’t raise ‘em.

If I were in charge of adoptions, no one without a spouse at home would be allowed to adopt a child.  Children are not accessories.  They should be the main deal.

To Grandmother’s House We Go

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If you were lucky enough to grow up with loving grandparents, you know how valuable they were to your personal development.  Then why are some grandparents now shunning that role?

Or watch other videos at youtube.com/DrLaura.

Read transcript here.

RELAX!!

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Some of you don’t have the slightest clue how to STOP and check out the roses…or plant some…or arrange some in a vase.

According to The Wall Street Journal, only 52% of working Americans say they come back from vacation feeling rested and rejuvenated; the rest anxiously cram in too many activities, stay plugged into BlackBerrys, cellphones, iPads, pagers, computers, emails, cell phones - you get the idea.

Attempting to relax even makes some people sick:  including fatigue, muscle pain, nausea, flu-like symptoms and weekend migraines.

For some folks, stopping work means having an actual physical/psychological withdrawal reaction complete with mood swings!  These are most likely the ones who gravitate to high-pressure jobs or those who arrange to be pressured by procrastination and taking on too much that is too difficult.  People do that when they have found this means of dealing with other personal anxieties which become masked by work and work stress.  In other words, if someone feels inadequate, the adrenaline rush of frenzied work is a form of self-medication.

For most of us, it is probably just habit.  Too many wives work themselves out of feeling loving and sexy.  Too many husbands work themselves out of feeling loving and sexy.  The result?  Arguments about nothing and a mutual feeling of having “grown apart.”

My opinion is that the body and mind can only take so much before neither works properly.  Those of you who are churchgoers have an edge on the rest:  a religiously forced “day of rest.”  Very smart.  When my family practiced Orthodox Judaism, we couldn’t work from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.  At first, it was horrific for us.  After a while, I even began to look forward to my Shabbos nap on Saturday.  Frankly, it was very good for the whole family that we had to pray and chill.

While we are no longer in that community and lifestyle, I still make sure weekends are free to motorcycle over beautiful terrain for lunch, to fiddle with hobbies, to commune with friends, and for us to put up our feet, have a glass of wine, and watch a classic movie.

Whatever your personal anxieties are, you’d better face them or they will eat you (and your relationships) alive.

So, start by picking an hour every day during which you do nothing, and disconnect from all technology.

Try something new.

Get physical.

Get into the moment.

Stop being a human DOING and start being a human BEING.

Quote of the Week

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The family is the most basic unit of government.  As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society’s most basic values.
               - Charles Caleb Colton
                  British sportsman and writer
                  1780-1832