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Published: 14 December 2009

Created: 14 December 2009

Last Updated: 14 December 2009

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Life coach, personal trainer and Scarsdale mom Lorraine Esposito is a burst of positive energy.  Her beautiful blue eyes, poise and self-assurance strike you immediately – and after five minutes you want to tell her everything on your mind and seek her advice.  Luckily for us, she’s well aware of her gift for personal counseling and has written a book, The Morning Peacemaker, to share her secrets.

Though her work deals specifically with raising independent children, it’s clear that her step-by-step approach to child rearing can be applied to everything we do.How did she come to design a behavioral training process and author a book about it?  Esposito is the mother of two school age boys and like many parents she found the simple act of getting the children ready for school and out the door to be a real challenge.  Furthermore, her older son had attention issues that exacerbated the morning routine as well as the day that followed.

Wanting to make it right she went to countless therapists and physicians to seek answers on how to raise happy, independent children.  Yet the time and money spent with these “experts” just yielded further frustration.  Though many could identify the signs and symptoms, no one had a method to tackle the problem.  For example, as a Mom she could see why her son had no friends…. but how could she help her son to become the kid that others wanted to play with?  In practical terms, what could she do to change his behavior and empower him to take charge of his own actions?

In her new book, Esposito analyzes the interactions between parent and child to discern what patterns trip us up and defeat our good intentions.  From there she helps us to set objectives and goals so that we’re clear on where we want to go. In the all-important next step, she shows the reader how to design a process that will make the child responsible for their own routine and free parents from nagging and conflict.

But the devil is in the details.  To truly understand the process, and benefit from it, read some of Lorraine Esposito’s own words below:

“The devil is finding a practical and simple method to bridge the gap between a child’s dependence on his or her parents and their successful independence. The transition is very similar to the transition kids go through when they first learn to ride a bicycle. We all expect a child to fall a few times while he practices balancing on the bike, right? Like most parents, I used training wheels and helmets to ensure that my boys were safe and felt supported in their efforts—even when they fell. Those tools made it possible for me to let go because I knew I had provided a safety net. To let go of them otherwise would have felt unnatural because I, like you, am programmed to protect my children. Yet I had to let go so that they could learn.

But where are the training wheels for the independence transition? Before now, it seemed our only options for teaching children to make beds and ready backpacks in the morning were either a nagging voice (no thank you) or to simply let go and allow them to fail (close, but still too scary). There is a feeling of danger in letting go and I believe that is why parents find it hard to remain consistent; it feels unnatural to let your child fall without a safety net. The problem is that, just like riding the bike, we have to let go for children to learn. The devil previously unavailable in parenting books was a practical method to empower independence while providing a safe and supported environment. The Morning Peacemaker provides parents with specific easy to follow instructions for creating the training wheels needed so that letting go and teaching your children to be responsible feels safe for everyone. With the supported empowerment now available, a child can practice responsibility, accountability and independence early so that he or she is ready to hit the ground running when the time comes.”

Intrigued? If you would like to purchase your own copy of The Morning Peacemaker, just click here to go to The Morning Peacemaker website. When you order, enter “10583” in the promo code, and you’ll receive a discount.

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Published: 14 December 2009

Created: 14 December 2009

Last Updated: 14 December 2009

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Scarsdale’s making national headlines again this weekend…and this time it’s due to the delivery of twins in a highly unusual setting.  According to the Daily News , Greenacres resident Elizabeth Brew, gave birth to the first in a set of twins in her car on Fifth Avenue, parked in front of Mt. Sinai Hospital on Friday April 24th.

Ms. Brew and her husband Tim were en route to the hospital entrance when the first baby was ready to make her entrance into the world.  A nurse manager at the hospital heard Ms. Brew’s screams, quickly gathered a team of nurses, doctors and anesthesiologists and rushed outside. They assisted the Mom in giving birth to a 4 lb. 13 oz. baby girl from the seat of the family SUV.  

The mother was then rushed into the hospital where a 5 lb 5oz. baby boy was delivered. As she was only 33 weeks into the pregnancy, the babies are a bit premature and will remain in the hospital for several weeks. Ms. Brew, already the mother of two older children, will stay in the hospital to recuperate.

Congratulations to the Brews of Brewster Road!

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Published: 14 December 2009

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Last Updated: 14 December 2009

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This is not one of life’s transitions that sneaks up on you. You see it coming as soon as your youngest child starts high school, almost instantaneously gets her driver’s license, then five seconds later visits colleges, breaks her curfew, packs, and leaves. You might even prepare for it, as I did, by going back to school for a career changing graduate degree and starting down a new path. Yet, it doesn’t seem to matter that you have seen this day coming and figured out how to ease the pain, when the last one flies away, you drop to the ground as if a baseball bat has connected with the back of your head.

And then you stand up and think about what it all means.

One of the weirdest changes happens in the grocery store. My hand hovers over glistening green grapes but no grapes make it to the check out counter. What’s the point? The kid who ate them like candy won’t be home again until they have withered and turned powdery blue in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator.

At lunch recently I asked my friends Susan and Karen, whose children are a few years older than mine, if they still cook when it’s only they and their husbands at home. Susan looked sideways at me, slightly smiling though I couldn’t tell if she was amused or melancholy or both, and said, “Define cook.” Hmm. That’s a tough one since like most words in the English language it appears to have evolved over the last few decades in my house. It used to mean chicken fingers, mac and cheese, pasta with butter, grilled cheese, and the occasional tuna noodle casserole. I weighed too much during that era.

Eventually, it expanded to seared tuna, asparagus risotto, balsamic glazed chicken, beef bourguignon, herbed sautéed shrimp, and for a while everybody was happy. I was reasonably careful with the fats and the oils in those recipes and got to buy new clothes. Then, having daughters, food snapped back to salads with no dressing, Weight Watchers bagels, Kashi Go Lean cereal with no sugar and less taste, and Smart Balance light buttery spread. It wasn’t as much fun and my husband – but not I – got alarmingly thin.

If I have to define what it means to cook, I think it will take me a while to figure it out. The Scarsdale Farmers Market is a wonderful social occasion. I see women whose kids were kindergartners with mine. My dog gets to nose other friendly canines. But my hand still hovers over the selections. What is the right amount of salad greens for two people, especially two who are now free to decide, without worries about finding baby sitters or avoiding unchaperoned house parties, to eat out and eat out again?

The problem with being an empty nester is not just the food; it’s the air around me. The house is too big, too neat, too quiet. Who expects to miss the two a.m. knock on the bedroom door when your child wakes you up to tell you she’s home? My neighbor Debbie tells me to enjoy what I’m missing. Her 23 year old has boomeranged back into the house while she holds down a temp job in a recessionary market. Now Debbie finds herself sitting up at two in the morning, swinging her foot wildly, waiting for her daughter’s car to pull into the driveway. Sorry, Debbie, so far, I don’t enjoy the empty air. It isn’t just that my suburban house seems to require a critical mass of living, breathing, noisy, messy creatures inside to justify itself, it’s that I’ve haven’t been without a child in my life since the day I started dating my husband, who came to the relationship with a living, breathing, noisy, messy teenage son, courtesy of whom I now have three living, breathing, noisy, messy young grandchildren. But what good does that do me right now in all this pristine silence? Peter and his family live in Dallas; Izzy is at Colgate; Nell is at Brown. I’ve walked the dog, emptied the dishwasher, made the bed, and no one is going to disturb the air here until dinnertime.

However disconcerting these changes are, they are nothing compared to the real brain concussion caused by the empty nest: the stunning speed of light with which whole decades of life have shot by, leaving me centuries older than the moms walking their kids to Fox Meadow school, while I’m walking Tommy my cockapoo and trying not to regain weight now that the dieters have left town. I am staggered by how much has come to an end – the anxiety of being a travel soccer parent of a lower end player on the team, the emergency trips to Staples for poster board for the project due tomorrow, the parenting group meetings, the play dates, the carpools, and the proms. I don’t recognize the face that looks back at me when I brush my teeth. I rejoiced in birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, concerts, back to school nights, tennis matches, moving up ceremonies, graduations, camp visiting days, and the removal of casts. But it was so busy, hectic, motion filled, energized and exhausting that I didn’t notice until they all left that I am a lot older than I was the day David and I started dating and my nest filled up.

I first met my husband 29 years ago. I am worried that the next three decades won’t be as busy, meaningful, rewarding, or fun as the last three have been. I am worried that the years will continue to fly by with unsettling, unstoppable speed. Meanwhile, I talked with Izzy five times yesterday as I walked her through the steps of making asparagus risotto in her sorority house kitchen, then explained to Nell how to check her bank balance on the ATM machine, and debated whether she should take Egyptian Art and Archeology pass/fail. David and I have seen two movies in two weeks, which beats any record in our married lives. We’re heading to Texas to watch our nine-year old grandson play in his first season of tackle football. Did his parents not read the statistics about NFL players and dementia? And I’m writing again.

Stacey Brodsky has practiced law, been a stay-at-home mother, and taught middle school English over the course of the 17 years she has lived in Scarsdale with her husband, daughters, and a succession of dogs.

Copyright 2009 Stacey Brodsky