MSI Press Blog

Excerpt from  Clean Your Plate!  (Bayardelle)  -   Chapter 1 Do You Need Any Money?   The trope of Mom or Dad being a child’s ATM has gotten so common it’s not even a funny Internet meme anymore. (And if you’re at all familiar with the Internet, that’s really saying something.) Every parent knows that it’s probably bad just to hand their kid money whenever they want something, but that doesn’t mean we’re actually good at resisting the urge to do just that when the situation arises.  Why We Say It  If it helps assuage your parental guilt at all, this isn’t a bad impulse to have. You’ve spent the entirety of your child’s life trying to provide for all their needs, even trying to anticipate your child’s needs before they even occur so your little kidlet doesn’t have to want for anything. Do any of you moms out there have a purse whose sheer heft equals your body weight due to the abundance of granola bars, spare socks, and just in case toys?3 It’s because you want to make sure yo

  Parenting in a Pandemic (Bayardelle) will be available for free through Kindle promotions Sep 23-Sep 27. For more posts by and about Liz Bayardelle, click HERE . Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC? Check out information on  how to submit a proposal . Interested in receiving a free copy of this or any MSI Press LLC book  in exchange for  reviewing  a current or forthcoming MSI Press LLC book? Contact editor@msipress.com. Want an  author-signed copy  of this book? Purchase the book at 25% discount (use coupon code FF25) and concurrently send a written request to orders@msipress.com. Want to communicate with one of our authors? You can! Find their contact information on our  Authors' Pages .

  The following excerpt comes from Parenting in a Pandemic , an award-winning book by Liz Bayardelle. Although the pandemic is past, thankfully, at least for now, some of the topics in this book are generic and apply at any time. Chapter 3: Bouncer Parenting is filled with many moments of intense emotional connection. Other times you get to watch your precious little flower unfold as they learn new things and master new skills. There are other times when it’s really just crowd control. Don’t get me wrong, I firmly believe that parents should be as engaged as possible and attempt to make every moment into a learning experience, but show me a parent who swears they’ve never just wanted their kid to sit quietly for a few minutes, in one room, without wrecking anything and I’ll show you a darned liar. Newborns are stationary for a few blessed months, but after that kids are irritatingly mobile. Babies crawl everywhere and possess a mystical ability to find the single solitary lego left on

  Here is the back story behind Clean Your Plate! , provided by author Liz Bayardelle: It ’ s a common joke amongst parents to compare the parent you thought you were going to be (before you had kids) to the parent you actually end up being.  Things you thought you would never do or say become commonplace…because we parents say them for a reason.  When I became a parent and heard some of these things (things many well-meaning, truly good parents say) start coming out of my own mouth, I wanted to do a deep dive on the psychological impact of some of these common  ‘ parentisms ’ .  Why do we tell kids to clean their plate? What effect does telling a child to get straight A ’ s have on their academics?  I wanted to know the answer, and thus this book was born.   Each  chapter is about a different common  ‘parents’  and is presented like the  label on a bottle of prescription medication: you have the reason parents say that specific thing to their kids, what effect it’s  supposed  to have,

  Excerpt from Parenting in a Pandemic by Dr. Liz Bayardelle Chapter 2: Personal Trainer Exercise is important for everyone, but it’s even more important for kids. Kids who get at least some activity on a regular basis are less likely to be overweight, have lower risk for degenerative diseases, have more confidence, do better in school, and are more successful when they finally become adults. [1] Who doesn’t want this for their kids? That’s why we usually make sure they participate in PE class, put them in sports, ensure they have time to play at the park, let them run around with their friends, and do fun family activities like go to a trampoline park or some other playplace. But wait, due to the rampaging virus we can do exactly none of those things. Great. Even when all you want to do is hand your kid an iPad and get about your quarantine day, it’s important that we still ensure our kids are getting at least a baseline amount of exercise. Before I go into how to do that, let me in