MSI Press Blog

  Just released --  Clean Your Plate! b y Liz Bayardelle: Parents mean well, we really do. We want our kids to get good grades, stop hitting their siblings, and, yes, clean their plate at dinnertime. It shouldn't be that hard, right? Wrong. Sometimes these harmless sounding statements don't work. Even worse, they often backfire to cause unexpected and unwelcome side effects for us and for our kids. (Just like your prescription for headache medicine may accidentally cause vomiting or make you spontaneously sprout a leathery tail.) This book takes 13 of the most common parent-isms and walks you through the ways they can go wrong, why they could negatively impact your kids, and what you should say instead. Includes parental greatest hits like: - Do You Need Any Money? - Get Straight A's - Don't Be a Quitter - Don't Talk Back (to Your Elders) - Waste Not, Want Not - Be Nice to Your Friends - Give Your Aunt a Hug - Win Your Game Today - Finish Your Homework - Don't H

  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  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

  Chapter 2: Get Straight As This one has come out of the mouth of almost every parent ever. I’m sure cave parents back in the stone ages groused to their kids about how little Ugg in the next cave over brought down a bigger bison than they did and why can’t they practice hunting more. Once your kid enters school, the obvious goal on everyone’s mind is getting good grades. However, just like all of these sayings, the way you deliver the message can make all the difference. Why We Say It In 2011, Amy Chua came out with her extremely popular book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. [1] If for some reason you spent that year hiding under a rock (or in the North Korea style media blackout that accompanies the attempt to parent any child under four), it’s basically a love letter to the strict discipline the author accredits to a traditional Chinese upbringing. It includes rules such as kids aren’t allowed to play any instruments other than the piano or the violin, they aren’t allowed

  Excerpt from Clean Your Plate!  Be Nice to Your Friends [ILLUSTRATION 6, CHAPTER 6 WARNING GOES HERE] As anyone who has ever talked to a toddler can tell you, toddlers can be brutal. Like, soul-crushingly, life-ruiningly frank. There’s a lot of truth to the Internet meme that says “if a woman calls you ugly, she’s jealous; if a man calls you ugly, she’s flirting, but if a kid calls you ugly...you’re ugly.” Kids have absolutely no sense of social niceties. They also occasionally spaz out with small bursts of poorly-controlled demonic meanness of unknown origin. (No, it’s not just your kids. It’s all of them.) Why We Say It The fact that parents across the globe tell their kids to be nice to their friends is entirely unsurprising. We’re terrified our little monsters will alienate their peers and doom themselves to a life of social isolation and misery (sticking us with the therapy bills). However well-meaning this parental plea for our kids to exercise their still-developin