Military Mom Almost Ruins Plans for Surprise Reunion With Daughter and We Totally Get It (VIDEO)

dinsdag 24 september 2013

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by Jeanne Sager 2 hours ago

I love a good military homecoming video. Who doesn't (no, really, who?)? But I've always wondered how it is that these moms and dads manage to keep themselves from blowing the surprise. If it were me just home from war, I don't know that I could contain myself. That's what I really love about the latest military mom surprising her kid at a football game.

Capt. JR Lund came home early from Afghanistan. She didn't tell her 13-year-old daughter ... so she could manage to surprise her at Saturday's Wisconsin vs. Purdue game. But from the looks of it, Mom almost didn't make it to the game!

Aww! Did you catch the part about how Mom just wanted to go run over and grab her daughter ... but she was trying her darndest to rein it in so she could make the surprise even more meaningful? She almost ruined her own surprise! Maybe it's because she's an Army Reservist that JR Lund is so much stronger than the rest of us?

Or at least stronger than me?

I don't know that I could do it. If I'm away from my kid just for a few days for a business trip, I come home and it's all I can do not to smother the poor thing with love and attention!

Not that JR Lund's daughter isn't getting plenty of that -- did you see the look on mother's and daughter's faces when they finally DID see each other?

Would you be able to hold out to surprise your kid or would you ruin your own surprise?

Image via Wisconsin Badgers/YouTube

Click "Like" if you love someone in the military! ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jeanne Sager

writes articles for The Stir by day, slays closet monsters and bounds through bedtime stories with her elementary schooler by night. The Phineas and Ferb soundtrack reverberates through her brain.

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Parents Found Guilty of Killing Adopted Daughter Despite Their 'Christian' Excuse

dinsdag 10 september 2013

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by Kiri Blakeley 2 hours ago

Religion is no excuse for killing your child. That's the message that abusive parents Larry and Carri Williams got when they were found guilty of first-degree manslaughter when they let their adopted child, Hana, die in their backyard from starvation and hypothermia after reportedly following tactics outlined in a Christian parenting book called To Train Up a Child. Hey, just because you label something Christian doesn't mean it is. What's that saying? Lipstick on a pig is still a pig. And beating and starving your child is not Christian.

Hana was adopted from Ethiopia and believed to be about 13 years old. Hana was forced to stay in the couple's backyard -- apparently as part of cruel parenting rules that the couple got from the book. She died of hypothermia aggravated by gastritis and malnutrition. Her body was rail thin, covered in bruises, her head was shaved and lumpy, and she had evidence of physical abuse.

The Williams' defense team called this "questionable parenting practices" and said they didn't necessarily equate to a crime.

WRONG.

Horrifyingly, the couple had seven other children in their home -- all have since been removed. One of their other adopted children, Immanuel, testified that the couple beat them with belts and switches. As punishment, they were hosed down, forced to sleep in closets, and made to listen to the Bible on tape and Christian music.

The level of hypocrisy here is obscene. Christianity, like all major religions, is founded on principles of love, caring, forgiveness, and treating others as you would like to be treated. Unfortunately, religion is often perverted and those basic tenets are bent and twisted into something grotesque and far from the original idea behind them.

Religion is never an excuse for abandoning your critical thinking, compassion, and basic humanity. And the justice system recognized this. You don't get to kill someone and then say, "These were just my ways of parenting." You don't get to torture someone and say, "That's my religion."

Mankind's basic religion is kindness and do unto others. Anything that deviates from that is just perversion of religion. Unfortunately, all of this comes too late for Hana. But her death allowed the other seven children living in this hellhole to escape.

Do you ever hear people perverting the ideas of religion?

Image via KIRO7

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Army Dad Surprises Daughter at School Dance and She Totally 'Freaks Out' (VIDEO)

vrijdag 30 augustus 2013

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by Emily Abbate 2 hours ago

Most 14-year-old girls wouldn't be ecstatic if their dad showed up unannounced to a school dance. But for Louisiana teen Tayla Carrigan, she couldn't have been more ecstatic when her dad, Army Sergeant Kelly Carrigan, surprised her at her back-to-school dance after being deployed for the past five months.

Sergeant Kelly, who left to go overseas in April, endured a serious knee injury that forced him to return home. While his daughter Tayla and her sister Logan thought he had been relocated to a base somewhere in Europe, Dad was really stationed just four hours away at Fort Polk. And as about 800 students sang "Proud to Be an American," Sergeant Carrigan surprised his daughter and she got the hug she's been waiting for for months.

Seriously, this is probably one of the best homecoming surprises I've seen in a while. Watch Sergeant Kelly Carrigan surprise his daughter, here:

How great is this?

Image via GFnews/YouTube

Click "Like" if you love someone in the military!
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Why I'm Telling My Daughter About My Eating Disorder

zondag 25 augustus 2013

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We adults spend a lot of time editing our life stories for our kids, making them child-friendly. Honesty is one thing, but kids don't need to know everything. And when it comes to little girls, they certainly don't need to hear their moms talking about weight issues.

Just about every study out there will tell you that's a surefire way to raise a daughter with an eating disorder. But how much editing should we really do? One expert says our daughters should hear absolutely nothing about weight matters, nothing about diets, nothing at all.

And yet, I'm going to tell my daughter about my eating disorder.

Not today. Not tomorrow. Probably not for awhile, in fact, but it will happen sooner rather than later.

Because I disagree with Dr. Leslie Sim, clinical director of Mayo Clinic's eating disorders program and a child psychologist, when she says that the answer to raising a healthy daughter is:

Zero talk about dieting, zero talk about weight.

Never acknowledging the elephant in the room can be just as dangerous as moaning about your weight.

Take it from me, a recovering bulimic whose parents never mentioned the long hours I'd spend in the bathroom, the retching noises. Maybe they never noticed; I don't know. 

But they also never talked about eating disorders with me, never warned me against them. I won't make that mistake with my daughter.

More From The Stir: 7 Truths About Eating Disorders Every Parent Needs to Know

She needs to know that she is beautiful and that her body is perfect. She needs to know about eating healthy foods and exercising. But she also needs to know the truth about eating disorders.

Because she will hear about them. I did. I had friends with whom I bonded in no small part because we shared a secret -- we threw up our meals. We would exchange tips about throwing up. And although I was smart enough to know I probably shouldn't be doing it, there was no one telling me why, no one with any authority presenting a convincing argument against bulimia.

This is my duty to my daughter: to prevent her from making the mistakes I made as a kid, to be the voice of reason on all matters rather than letting her take another kid's advice (because we all remember getting some particularly bad advice on the school bus, don't we?).

We talk about other issues with our kids, other things they shouldn't do. We warn them against the dangers of drugs and alcohol, warn them not to smoke cigarettes or ride in a car without a seatbelt. And we start it all pretty young. Thanks to an uncle who smokes, my daughter was getting the "no cancer sticks" talk when she was a mere toddler.

So why not talk to her about eating disorders? Because they relate to weight, and weight is a no-no?

Unfortunately, weight exists, and kids talk about it.

And at times in a girl's life, your weight changes. You want to know why, you want reassurance. You want to know what to do about it -- if you have to do anything. 

Right now my daughter is 8, all slim hips and non-existent thighs. But she's getting so close to puberty, that I went out and bought her one of those books on a girl's changing body to prepare her for what will happen -- for acne and body odor, for her period.

I don't want her to be alarmed or scared. I don't want her making poor choices -- such as skipping the deodorant or pretending that blood isn't real, mistakes that are easy to make when you're a kid who doesn't understand why these things are happening and just wants to go back to the way things were. Nor do I want her to feel bad about the weight that often packs on as you gain hips and breasts, to do something drastic to try to reverse it.

This is why I'll talk to my daughter about my eating disorder. So she knows that it's the wrong choice but also so that she knows she's not alone as her body changes.

How do you talk to your daughters about weight? Do you have a 0 weight talk policy or do you talk about some things?

Image by Jeanne Sager

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Farrah Abraham Is Trying to Keep Her Daughter Sophia Away From Her Grandma -- Not Cool

dinsdag 13 augustus 2013

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by Adriana Velez 13 hours ago

Watch out, Farrah Abraham -- it looks like Grandma Stormie is trying to get her hands on Sophia again. The mother of Sophia's dead father, Derek Underwood, sued Farrah for visitation rights in 2010, but the court ruled against her. Last week in an interview, Stormie Clark questioned Farrah's fitness as a parent and said she wanted at the little girl. But now she's clarifying that. NO, she is not suing for custody. (Yet.) All Stormie wants is the right to visit her granddaughter, she says.

After the rumors flared up last week, Stormie took to the comments section of WetPaint to set the record straight. And by the way, there goes her credibility as a rational, mature person if she's using the comments section to get her story out, but I'll overlook that for now. Apparently her strategy worked, because here I am, writing about it. Anyhoo! This is what Stormie says.

I would like to clear a few things up here. First and foremost, all I care about is Sophia's well being. There are always two sides to every story, and unfortunately my side of the truth has purposely not been aired.

I did not, and never would keep money from my own granddaughter. I am not profiting off of this article, and I could care less about being in ‘the limelight.’

I am not trying to get custody of Sophia. I am just very concerned for her well being. Sophia is all that we have left of Derek, and while still grieving his loss, we would like to be able to see his only child. Derek, not knowingly, left behind such a precious gift from God.

So there you go. For now, anyway, Stormie is not plotting a custody battle. All she wants is access to her granddaughter because by the look of things, time with Grandma Stormie might actually be an improvement over whatever Farrah calls parenting these days. I don't know, just because you're a sex worker doesn't mean your a lousy mother -- can we just acknowledge that? But I get what Stormie is saying.

She is, after all, the mother of Sophie's father. Sophie should grow up knowing something about that side of her family. It is sad that she lost her son and doesn't have contact with her granddaughter. And honestly, how crazy is Stormie's crazy compared with Farrah's and her parents' crazy? I kind of think it's bananas everywhere you look for these folks, so what's the difference? Farrah is in no position to judge -- she should go ahead and let Sophie bond with her grandma.

But I think Stormie might be a little more persuasive if she could make her case without insulting Farrah's parenting as she did in her earlier comments. Obviously Farrah's making some questionable choices in her life -- that's not lost on anyone. But pointing that out is just going to put Farrah on the defensive -- and in turn, that will make her less receptive to Stormie's request. Grandma needs to make this just about her relationship with Sophie, not about making up for Farrah's crappy parenting.

Do you think Stormie should get visitation rights to Sophie?

Image via Farrah Abraham/Twitter

Click "Like" for the latest on the Teen Moms. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Adriana Velez

is a staff writer who dabbles in food, parenting, news, entertainment, molecular biology, and anything else that that pops into her head. She lives with her elementary school-aged son in Brooklyn, land of urban farms and artisan everything.  

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