Month: January 2008

Categories
Random

Rainy days and Mondays

So all last week I was pretty much a couch potato. We did venture out a couple times in the below-freezing weather, but mostly Hayden and I just stayed in.

I wasn’t going to let this week get started the same way. Last night before bed, I made sure to get things ready for the day. I picked out clothes; I even thought about where we could go to get out of the house.

And then, over breakfast today, I saw it. Great white gobs of snow falling from the sky. And it just kept coming. As I type this, I see the sun beginning to shine through the clouds for the first time all day.

So, Hayden watched a little PBS and I watched a little several inches of snow falling in the back yard.

Good thing we don’t need any groceries. But some days you just can’t win!

Categories
MetaBlogging

Use FeedBurner? Check it out!

Are you using FeedBurner to manage subscriptions to your blog? Check out your subscriber numbers today—they could be a lot higher. There appears to be a glitch today affecting many blogs, sending up feed counts by as much as tens of thousands!

Sadly, the counts probably aren’t correct. The problem looks to be FeedBlitz. They’ve acknowledged the error on their blog.

How can you tell if your popularity has grown or if there’s just a mistake? Go to FeedBurner to your feed’s dashboard. Click the “See more about your subscribers” link below the Feed Subscribers chart. If the pie graph that appears has a big piece for FeedBlitz (especially when compared to the day before), your counts will probably be back to “normal” tomorrow.

Not all blogs have been affected. Mine isn’t (too bad). So, while the error will be corrected soon, why not celebrate your current all-time high?

Categories
MetaBlogging

Handling negative comments

Table of contents for Blog comments

I haven’t had to do this on here very often, but pretty regularly on my work blog, I have people comment who are . . . well . . . less than nice, we’ll say (or just wrong). While sometimes it’s pretty easy to handle comments I don’t really appreciate over there (often with more facts to back up my story), it’s a lot harder to do that in the realm of mom blogging.

If you’re posting about how cute your kids are or how you’re struggling with this behavior or how you’ve come to a self-discovery, it’s more than just annoying to have someone contradict you or treat you unkindly. It’s a bit of a personal affront—sometimes even an attack on your children or your parenting!

There are a few ways you can handle this. The best ways (the ways you would tell your children to handle this):

  1. Ignore it. If you’re really lucky, your bloggy friends will even come to your defense. Just the other day, I saw a friend of mine share a personal story and someone called her out for being unchristlike. I was the first person there after that comment was left, and I vehemently (but hopefully respectfully) disagreed. Several subsequent commenters did the same.
  2. Settle it privately. If your blogging platform allows, email the person directly. You could explain that, while you don’t particularly appreciate the way that they’ve phrased their concerns, you’d like to know if there’s something you could do better in your blogging (or parenting, if you’re really feeling generous) in the future.
  3. Use concrete facts. If the person is disagreeing with a factual assertion (instead of just your opinion), you can provide more information on the facts you’re citing, such as their sources.
  4. Point to your blog comment policy. If you’ve already written one, and this comment violates the guidelines you’ve set forth, inform the commenter privately (via email) or publicly (via the comments on that post). Take whatever action you say you will in your policy (deleting the comment, banning the commenter, etc.)

Possibly less productive:

  1. Call them out. In the very next comment you make, point out that they’ve been unkind, that that kind of behavior would be unacceptable from your children, and it’s unacceptable on your blog.

Downright counterproductive:

  1. Tit for tat. Reflect everything they’ve said back on them in your next comment or, worse yet, track down their blog and make a similar comment.

There are a few other solutions that I’m not sure what category to put them in:

  1. Play the martyr. Face it, we’re moms: we can do this with the best of them. As we should all remember from being children, guilt trips and the martyr card don’t really solve anything though.
  2. Delete it. If your comment policy says you’ll delete abusive comments, or negative comments, do it. If you don’t have a comment policy, the general bloggy community shuns deleting comments just because they disagree with you. However, on a personal blog—it’s your blog.
  3. Block that commenter. Depending on the nature of the comment, it may take only one comment to warrant blocking them, especially if it’s in your comment policy. Even if it’s not, it’s your blog, your family and you. Protect them if you feel you need to.

What do you do when you receive a negative comment? What has worked for you? What hasn’t?

More WFMW.

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Categories
Random

I’m molasses in January

We’re still recovering from traveling (read: digging out from a lot of laundry and staring at the suitcases in the family room) and just not quite getting back into the routine around here.

Glad I haven’t gotten around to writing down those New Year’s Resolutions yet!

Anybody else having a slow start to the year?

Categories
Kids/Parenting

Sometimes it really is just by example

We’ve been working for months on getting Hayden to say “please” and “thank you.” (“Please” was just a sign until a couple weeks ago, when he started saying “p’eece”!) He’s picked up the words and signs pretty well, but almost always has to be prompted to say “Please”—and by ‘prompted,’ I don’t mean asking “What do you say?” I mean telling him, “Say please.”

The few times he does spontaneously use please have usually been when I’ve said no to something he wants (or he thinks I’m saying no). Then it seems like he thinks “please” (which is done in perfect desperation) is a guarantee that he’ll get what he wants.

“Thank you” has (thankfully) met a bit more success. He’s come to understand that when someone gives him something, he should say “thank you” (or, for him “dootoo”). He also likes to thank me when he gives me something, but I’ll take it.

This morning, however, I discovered that he has one courtesy that I don’t remember teaching him. I may have told him this once or twice, but from what I recall, this is something he must have learned from example:

I sneezed. He said “b’eh doo.” For those of you not fluent in pretoddler (or Hayden), that’s “Bless you.” And this wasn’t just once; it was at least three times today.

I certainly feel blessed! 😉

Categories
Kids/Parenting

What works for you?

While I stand by my statement that Hayden has been all kinds of cute lately, he’s also been all kinds of trouble. Well, not all kinds, really—the big problems right now are hitting, biting, throwing things and tantrums.

Hitting, biting and throwing I class together. He generally does them just for a reaction, it seems, or maybe because it amuses him to do it. Sometimes, though, he does it out of frustration (gee, I wonder where he gets that from . . . ?).

Tantrums aren’t new, of course, and we’ve been working on them for a long time. I tell ya, though, the kid’s tenacious. Distraction has to be mighty good for it to get him off that subject.

So, any good advice in these areas? (As a reminder, and for first timers, Hayden is not quite two years old.)

Part of Works-for-me Wednesday, Backwards Edition