<![CDATA[Jezebel: mama drama]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/jezebel.com.png <![CDATA[Jezebel: mama drama]]> http://jezebel.com/tag/mamadrama http://jezebel.com/tag/mamadrama <![CDATA["She Is A Constant Reminder Of The Fact That My Youth Is Slipping Away"]]> Sibel Mehmet is jealous of her 17-year-old daughter, Yasmin. "At 38," she writes, "I'm finding it incredibly difficult to accept the fact that my 17-year-old daughter is the focus of the admiring looks I used to attract."

Mehmet, 38, spends the majority of the piece discussing her own beauty; how her mother, a beautician, pushed her to focus on her appearance, how she began using makeup at 12, and how these efforts eventually led to a career as a part-time model. It's evident from the get-go that Mehmet's self-worth is directly tied to her appearance, which casts a sad shadow over the rest of the piece, which reads, quite honestly, as someone having a slightly tortured conversation with herself.

Mehmet admits that she's jealous of her 17-year-old daughter, who is now "blossoming into womanhood." Yasmin is young and pretty and, according to her mother, a dead ringer for Mehmet herself in her younger days, which complicates her jealousy and resentment even further: "And although she was oblivious of all this, I couldn't help resenting her for it," Mehmet writes of her daughter's coming-of-age, "I began to make comparisons all the time, and a terror of getting old and losing my looks enveloped me."

The first time I read this piece, I was so irritated (it is the Daily Mail, after all) that my first instinct was to write a headline like "Mom Realizes She Is Not 18 Anymore, Calls Dina Lohan For Advice On How To Fix Situation," but after reading it a few more times, I realized the piece is just sad, really, in that Mehmet really doesn't seem to be able to let go of the idea that she is worth more than her looks, and that true beauty and happiness are not, despite what the magazines and the media might tell you, about trying to look 18 when you're 38.

I do feel a certain sympathy for her, as obnoxious as the article reads at times, in that I think it's normal for people to feel pangs of envy or jealousy when they realize certain points in their lives are behind them. The entire article is a sad commentary on the increasingly obnoxious values we place on youth and beauty, and the most disturbing aspect is that Mehmet doesn't seem to understand that she's just setting up her daughter to feel the same pangs of worthlessness and jealousy by constantly placing such a value on her child's looks.

Instead of trying to keep up with her daughter, or comparing herself with her daughter, Mehmet should find her own path and attempt to show her kid that life doesn't end at 18 (unless you're a member of Menudo, and then you are so out of there) and that true beauty has no age limit and that living in the past is a surefire way to miss the really great things happening in the present and waiting in the future. Yasmin claims that "we all get old, and to my mind there's so much more to life than looks. In 20 or 30 years, if I have a daughter, I'm sure I'll be confident enough to be glad that she's more gorgeous than me. I'll have had my time, and I'll definitely be ready to grow old gracefully. If only Mum could see it that way." If only both of them could see that there's so much more to "their time" than being the most gorgeous one in the house.

I Used To Be The One Who Turned Men's Heads, But Now It's My Teenage Daughter [DailyMail]

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<![CDATA["After My First Baby, I Felt No Desire For Sex"]]> Sometimes the mom blogosphere seems like an international conspiracy to halt the human race. Like the most recent episode of the video blog Momversations, in which four mom bloggers talk about sex after having a baby. "It took a really long time for me to feel like a woman…maybe a year, maybe more, maybe a couple years," says Nataly Kogan. Dooce's own Heather Armstrong admits that she didn't have sex for seven months after her daughter was born, and in an interesting analogy, Mindy Roberts says, "I've never seen a kitchen that turned out anything that was worth eating that didn't get all messy and icky in the process."

Even though the panelists are depressing in their honesty, the commenters offer a ray of hope in a post-baby sex world. A commenter named greysons_mom says:

After an episiotomy and additional tearing, I could barely walk, let alone think of sex. But within two weeks, I was climbing the walls, trying to seduce my husband. He literally had to pull me off of him. I never made it to 6 weeks. I got him to cave at around 4 1/2.

Another commenter named Alex says:

I have found that the baby has increased our creativity - location and timing has become extra interesting. I credit my increased sexual desire to being confident in my body, although it has returned to pre pregnancy size, I still have war wounds - stretch marks (which I am learning to accept). I also credit my desire to a supportive and loving partner. I do think that this is different for every woman.

But then some of the comments were even more depressing than the video:

Here's some brutal honesty: after my first baby, I felt no desire for sex. Like many of you, I thought 'WHOA! Something's wrong with me.'

He's now two, and sadly, the mojo has not yet returned. I thought this was supposed to be my sexual prime! I am beginning to think I'm an outlier on the sexual bell curve. While it's reassuring to know that some other women are also experiencing a lag in a return to their pre-baby sex drives, I fear mine may be gone for good. I know that can't possibly be true, but it's been TWO YEARS, and we've only had sex maybe ten times! I seem to have lost even the ability to fantasize.

However, at the end of the day, it seems that this mom has the correct idea when she says, "It's different for every one, and every baby, just do what feels comfortable for your body."

Sex After Baby [Momversation]
Sex After Baby: "Objects Shift During Flight" [Babble]

Earlier: What Should Jezebels Really Expect After They're Expecting: Sex Edition

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<![CDATA[Lynne Spears: Through The Storm And "We're Looking At The Sunshine"]]> Lynne Spears was on Today this morning discussing her new book Through the Storm, in which she talks about raising her kids under an intense spotlight. Predictably, during her interview, a lot of her answers to uncomfortable questions involved "prayer," "praying," and "God." As far as Britney's disastrous 2007 VMAs, Lynne says that a lot of the scrutiny came from the fact that the "bar has been raised too high" for her daughter, which is probably true. The most interesting tidbit was when Lynne answered questions about Sam Lutfi (who, BTW, is alternately called "Lufti," including in this segment). You can tell that she's not a fan of his. With regards to teen daughter Jamie Lynn's pregnancy, Lynne basically had a "shit happens" response. Clip above.

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<![CDATA[Your Toddler's Temper Tantrum Is Totes Not Your Fault]]> I vividly remember Judd Apatow's Slate diary from two years ago in which he described his 2-year-old daughter Iris's meltdown at a mall, because it so epitomizes what it's like to be around a toddler. "Iris had such a knipshit (as we used to say) — a total meltdown — that I thought I was going to get arrested by cops who thought that I had kidnapped her. All I did was tell her that we already owned Shrek when she asked if we could buy it. Sometimes that is all it takes. She sat down in the video store and screamed at me, 'Get out of the store!' about 50 times." It goes on from there, but Apatow's vignette proves what any toddler-wrangler already knows: they're all little stinkers.

A new study from Lehigh University, which shows that mothers argue with their toddlers an average of 20-25 times per hour, proves the stinkerness of toddlers beyond a shadow of a doubt. But toddler moms should not despair, according to CBS News. "Those conflicts were more likely to get resolved without major drama if the kids had a good relationship with their mother and weren't especially temperamental, active, or impulsive, according to surveys completed by the moms," it reports. "Such conflicts are normal and frequent during the toddler and early preschool years," Laible's team writes.

But what if your child remains difficult beyond the terrible twos? Today's Washington Post summarizes two books about dealing with tantrum prone offspring, Effective Parenting for the Hard-to-Manage Child by D.C. area psychologists Georgia DeGangi and Anne Kendall, and The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child With No Pills, No Therapy and No Contest of Wills, by Yale professor Alan Kazdin (with Carlo Rotella). Both books essentially suggest using behavioral modification techniques on children to calm them down. (P.S., behavioral modification is what animal trainers use on their charges, and also what "Shamu" writer Amy Sutherland advocates use of on husbands.)

Kazdin recommends "ABCs of behaviorism: antecedent, behavior and consequence," to parents, and here's the example he gives of the ABC's:

At home during a calm period, tell the child you're going to play a game. "You say, 'I'm going to pretend to say no and you're going to have a tantrum, but you're not going to hit or throw things. If you can do that, we're going to walk over to the refrigerator and put a star up on your chart,' " which can be turned in for a reward, such as a favorite food or TV time. You remind the child it's pretend and then do it. If a child complies, you say, 'I can't believe it, you just stood there when I said no and didn't throw things.' Then you say, 'I bet you can't do it again.' And when the child does, you praise and give another star. If the child fails, you say calmly, 'Okay, no star this time because you threw things. We'll try again later.' "
That sounds complicated! The other thing that the collected shrinks talked about was modeling behavior. According to Kendall and DeGangi, if you're always disorganized, that might be part of the reason why your child always hands his or her homework in late, Or you know, instead of being a good role model or doing this complicated behavioral stuff, you could bury yourself under an avalanche of Scotch until the kid turns 18. That sounds much, much easier.


Study: Moms, Tots Argue 20 Times An Hour [CBS News]
Diary Of Judd Apatow [Slate]
Take My Kid, Please! [Washington Post]

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