Natalie Singer-Velush

Editor's Note: Science has shown that the early patterns we set can help or hinder our parenting for years beyond. Many new parents want the tools and support to help create a relationship of trust and attachment with their babies, and to learn to mindfully manage the stress and pressure that often comes with the world's toughest yet most rewarding job. As part of the launch of our new BabyMap portal, I spoke with facilitators from Listening Mothers (LM), an eight-week program of the Community of Mindful Parents that helps new parents reduce stress and increase well-being. We've assembled a Q & A that peeks into what this approach is all about, plus some tips that parents can use with children of any age.

Meet our virtual panel:

Rama Ronen, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist trained in Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy. She works at the Entelechy Wellness Center with expectant, new, and experienced mothers. "Mindfulness" is integrated throughout her practice.

"Wow, is it challenging to be a mom these days? Absolutely! As a mom of three and from listening to other moms I find it at time overwhelming to trust what is “right” and what is wrong. I would like to encourage all of us to become more familiar with that critical voice and practice being kind to one’s self and remember that we are doing the best that we can."

Gigi Wickwire is a mom to a new baby, a LM facilitator since 2011, a registered nurse with a master’s in clinical social work and a former doula.

“Being in baby time — going slower than the culture what might want us to go — is so complementary to a mindfulness practice. It’s made the world of different in my relationship with my son. There is something pretty exquisite when we pause and listen with our inner listening.”

Yaffa Maritz is a co-founder of Listening Mothers and clinical director of both Listening Mothers and Reflective Parenting, and she is founder and director of the Community of Mindful Parents. Maritz was born and trained in Israel as a clinical psychologist. She is also a licensed mental health counselor trained in infant mental health.

"We know from research that mother's touch enhances attachment between mother and her baby. It can signify security and can generate positive emotions. We especially encourage mothers to experiment with what we call "reflective touch," which follows the guidelines of our program and is a way of conveying a respectful, empathic, sensitive ways of relating."

Why are we so stressed today as parents?

In our competitive society today we all feel somehow less than adequate, and mothers instinctively want to be the best mothers they can be so that their child will thrive. But they are feeling great pressure both from the inside themselves and from the outside to perform in a certain “perfect” way. Because of that pressure, they end up with a barrage of self-doubt and self-judgment.

In our groups we help mothers develop skills to become more mindful so they can notice those judgmental and highly critical thoughts when they come and go and then understand that they, as mothers, are bigger and better than those crippling thoughts.

If you were to meet my daughters, chances are good you would either stifle a laugh, raise an eyebrow or experience a few seconds of silencing sensory overload. They are known for being … original in how they put together an outfit.

Now 6 and 8, they favor loud colors, big patterns, bold styles, historical throwbacks (no problem here going to the grocery store in a prairie outfit plus apron) and, above all else, some seriously good clashing. Somehow, they manage to often look really classy, too.

Many grown women would be envious of what my girls know so young. They choose unexpected outfits that please their inner creativity and wear them confidently, concerned only with how they feel and what they like.

But my daughters — especially the older one — are finally getting to the point where they want to have a say not only in the kind of clothes they wear (that’s been the case practically since toddlerhood, when they both refused to wear pants and have pretty much religiously shunned them ever since. “Hello, nice to meet you, we are members of the No Pants religious sect, can we give you some pamphlets?”) but in where we shop.

Suddenly, stores I’ve paid zero attention to since crossing the threshold into adulthood are demanding my attention.

Even before the official tween years begin, my kids are deftly able to identify which companies are a good match for their personal style tastes, thanks to the range of savvy-to-insidious techniques marketers are using to reach them, from game and app ads to billboard to commercials that have become so much a part of the American child’s media diet that kids don’t even realize the commercials are separate from the content.

My requirements for their dress so far have been simple: It has to be acceptable (read: it doesn’t look like Rihanna’s latest video ensemble), it has to be decent quality (I know they wear it out, but I can’t stand something falling apart after six washes) and it has to fit the budget.

I also get that they want to be inspired and delighted and amused by their clothes. I’m kind of a semi-reformed clotheshorse, so I honor that. They want the satisfaction of dress-up time to bleed over into daily life.

For now they are still dressing for themselves. But I know it’s precious few years until they begin to build their outfits — and, possibly, their whole public persona — based on what they think others want to see.

So far everyone’s needs have been easy to meet at a variety of kid-type stores we’ve been shopping at since they were toddling.

Until now. I can see the precarious future already being mapped out.

Many mothers I know will be getting flowers, pancakes and precious homemade cards tomorrow for Mother’s Day. A few I know will also be receiving gift certificates to their favorite spa and shoe store, or a new book and the promise of peace and quiet while she reads it.

I even know one superbly lucky mom who receives a hall pass to her favorite pub, where she will go, kid-free, to relax and nurse her favorite beer.

Gifts are nice, absolutely, and cards and hugs from our darling children — even better. But a lot of moms I know would like something more for Mother’s Day, something that lasts beyond one Sunday in May and can heal far more than a much-needed beer at the end of a tough week.

They want an end to the gun violence that threatens our children and families every single day in this country.

We’re enraged, right? We are sick of the domestic violence and the loose safety laws and the “accidents” and the tragedies. We’re back pushing hard every day against any more gun violence, right?

Well, memories are long, but life is busy. We let it slide. Because it’s hard. It’s hard to deal with, the fragility and unpredictability of life. The fear for our children’s safety. The overwhelmingness of it.

It’s easy to forget, to think that gun violence won’t affect us, that it’s not something “we really have to deal with.”

But it is. Remember Café Racer? Aurora? Newtown? I could keep going, of course. It could fill the whole page.

Yet somehow, between the tragedies that shock us, that make us hold our children a little tighter for one, two, three weeks after they occur, we are able to forget.

Some of us. For others, the fear and anger and threats don’t fade. Those are the ones we need to listen to, especially on Mother’s Day.

We need to listen to people like Cheryl Stumbo, who on July 28, 2006 was working at her job at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle when gunman Naveed Haq burst into the building and shot six women, killing Pamela Waechter.

“The guns are in the closet and the whole topic is in the closet,” Stumbo said when I spoke to her this week.

“A lot of people are afraid to talk about it, it’s a taboo subject. They don’t want to out their family members who have guns. We don’t ask other people if they have guns in the home. It’s like we’re afraid we’re going to violate someone’s privacy more than we want to ensure our kids’ safety. We don’t talk about it like we talk about other dangerous things, like keeping poison out of the hands of children. Why?”

It's been a few days, but I still cannot get this thing off my mind. This week, I'm attending a conference for women and mothers in media and marketing.

Ooops, I mean a vodka-infused sorority-style pool party at a posh OC resort where I'll strut around in my best Tory Burch and then maybe pass out into the arms of a cabana boy. Or a fellow mommyblogger. Who knows, anything can happen when us domestic fraus tear off our aprons, bribe our slightly amused, slightly pissed hubbies to cover for us with a few days of babysitting, and, like, totally dare to escape the drudgery of our desperate, mac-and-cheese-encrusted lives.

Mmm hmm.

At least that's what the recent article in the Wall Street Journal about Mom 2.0, a social media, industry and brand conference in Laguna Niguel, would have us believe. That women who leave for a business trip that features networking and workshops on Social Media CPR, Turning Pitches Into Profit, and Empowering Your Small Business for Growth are really just trying to sneak away from their lives for an overindulgent liberation (libation, anyone?) because they cannot handle the job of being mothers.

Just the way daddies slackers men who head over to SXSW, E3 and CES are just trying to get out of mowing the lawn, right?

There have been some fantastic rebuttals and rebukes to the WSJ, outlining how silly it is, the outrage it caused, the head-scratching lack of a valid premise, so I won't repeat them here.

But this is my audience, and, dear readers, I cannot let this one go without making sure that instead of hanging our heads ashamedly and pretending that story and even more offensive accompanying cartoon never happened, we remind each other that it did. Mothers need the memories of elephants on this one.

It's hard to even know where to begin, there are so many legitimate arguments about why this article is so wrong. Because it patronizes mothers who are pursuing a career development and business networking opportunity the exact same way fathers (typically identified as men) do. Because there are hundreds, thousands, of events just like this every year catering to every professional, male and female both, from pipe-fitting union members to Wall Street traders to ad executives to medical residents to yoga instructors and mortuary owners (you know they must really belly up to the minibar).

Because being a parent and being a professional are not mutually exclusive. Because the writer, Katherine Rosman, is guilty of switch-and-bait bad journalism.

My older daughter is nearly 8. Not old enough for sleep-away camp yet (in my book) but getting close. I was 11 or 12 when I first went to camp, and I spent one or two months away from home every year after that until I was almost done with high school.

Summer camp changed my life.

I still can’t say exactly what it was about camp that turned me into a different girl every summer. But somewhere between the sweaty city limits of my boring, urban childhood universe and the mountainous, leafy world of “Up North,” a switch flipped. Suddenly, I wasn’t a not-very-popular girl whose parents were divorced, laden down with homework and a mortifyingly uncool coat, waiting for the bus in the slushy, frigid winter.

I was free, mixing with a different crowd of kids from dozens of different schools. The usual cliques were nowhere to be seen. I had a duffel bag of awesome camp gear: desert boots, union-suit pajamas with a rear that unbuttoned (!), yellow raincoat, plaid lumber jackets, wool socks, all purchased on the cheap from an army surplus store.

The days stretched out from chilly, foggy mornings through hot afternoons and rain-stormy nights with nothing but fun activities and whom to dance with at the Saturday night social to worry about. And no parents for a couple hundred miles — the only authority was our counselor staff, just a few years older than us and so, so very cool.

It didn’t look like much when you first arrived, my camp: A weathered wooden archway, a dirt path, just wide enough to admit a maintenance truck, or an overheated school bus, its windows yanked down to circulate a warm summer breeze, the chatter of 70 kids (from the Northeast city of Montreal) flying out into the dusty country air.

There was no logic to its layout; even after several summers there I still couldn’t really find my way anywhere — how do you get to the farm again? (Is there a farm?)

But it didn’t matter. The snaking, foot-worn paths all converged eventually, so that if I stepped out of the far reaches of the Kinnerit girls’ section, leaving the ancient wooden bunks with their 50 years of peeling, camper paint behind, submerged myself into the minty, shaded forest, and trekked through swarms of nipping mosquitos and past bunches of possibly poisonous but still quaint-looking plants, I would eventually, somehow, emerge right where I wanted to be, in front of the pointing flagpole in time for morning call, or outside the round squat dining hall. Twenty years later I can still hear the clanking of metal camp cutlery and the slosh of industrial-sized pitchers of thirst-quenching “bug juice.”

I think I need to tattoo the word ‘Wanted’ on myself, preferably in some obvious place like my forehead. Just own up to it, right out loud.

People are practically hunting me down.

I have to hang my head when I go into my kids’ school these days because the PTA wants me (understandably; I joined the board last spring and then, after going back to work full time, all but abdicated my duties when life became overwhelming). The tax man is waiting to hear from me. My passport is four months expired. My dogs need a bath; my fridge needs a scrub. Holy cow, did I register my kid for the right school next year in time for the just-passed deadline? I seriously cannot remember. I pray that you don’t notice that I might be going a little bit crazy. Hey, look at that pretty bird over there!

Here’s the thing: I am working pretty hard. [Insert super positive and magically professional smiley face here.] (If you think this website is nifty in any way, could you send my boss a note that says, “Hey, that Natalie is sure doing a good job!”)

This duality of working parents, and to a larger extent, working humans, is what I’ve been mulling in my 30-seconds-a-day spare time since the whole Lean In movement thingy started making headlines: Being really good at something — devoting oneself to a project or job or passion — means diverting energy from other things. No matter how upbeat-tempo-optimistic-Superwoman you are, human beings have a finite amount of energy.

And we spend a lot of time, maybe rightly so, debating and analyzing how we divvy up that energy. Which one among us has the right recipe? Who’s got the secret sauce?

I think we need fewer secrets, though, less swagger, and more honesty.

My theory is this: In order to lean in toward something, you are going to leave other things in the lurch. In some area or another, you’re going to suck. Repeat after me: I suck at _________ and then fill in the blank. I’ll start:

I suck at laundry. I suck at renewing my passport. I suck at becoming a famous writer (so far, anyway). Last week I super-sucked at making it to my kindergartener’s special classroom “Fabric Day,” where lots of mommies (not me) sat patiently at sewing machines and helped make millions of little fabric dolls, bags, toys, scarves and all manner of creative goodness. I suck at staying calm indefinitely.

Sometimes, I suck really hard at some things.

I suck at those things so I can excel at others.

Uh oh. I said it. I broke confidence, smashed ranks. Don’t lambaste me as an anti-feminist naysayer so fast. It’s not only women who know that if we’re going to be really honest with ourselves, we must admit that we cannot do everything well all of the time.