Mommymoon at Terranea Resort, Rancho Palos Verdes

Terranea Resort

100 Terranea Way

Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90275

When Baby Makes More than Three, To Terranea Immediately Get Thee!

by Kelly Chang Rickert (mama)

Honeymoons: For newlyweds.

Babymoons: For couples expecting children.

Mommymoons. For moms. ALONE.

mommymoon [mom-mee-moon]

–noun:

1. A vacation taken by a mother expecting her second or any subsequent child;

2. A brief period characterized by uninterrupted tranquility, bliss, and/or pampering;

3. A much-needed and well-deserved escape from the chaos and responsibilities of home or work (or both), for a pregnant woman who is already caring for one or more kids.

Why is this necessary?

Sanity.

Seriously, ever since I became a mother, I have been away a total of only 5 nights away from my daughter and husband. And this is all due to work - court appearances in SF, out-of-town board meetings for the ACFLS, etc. They were all "excuse-able". They were not fun. I had to WORK. (thus, no guilt).

Sure, I've heard of the myth of "girls' weekends", "girls getaways", but honestly, if I ever went away with girlfriends, or my sister-in-law, just for a day to myself, I would never get over the guilt. As a working mother (divorce attorney), I am already away during work hours for most of the workweek, such that when the weekend comes, I have absolutely NO desire to be anywhere but attached to my baby.

This, of course, means, that between handling clients all week and managing a law office, and then being non-stop mama all weekend, I basically have no downtime.

With baby #2 due in about 8 weeks (and a NASTY divorce trial set 4 months after baby #2 arrives), I thought it was time that I finally carved aside some time to myself so I can finally take the lingering bubble bath I've longed for, for over 4 years.

So, I took my bubble bath, and 2 books, and spent one glorious night, and 1.5 days alone before my handsome husband and adorable 3-year-old joined me for the weekend.

And, I didn't work.

I just relaxed.

California moms, Terranea Resort is the BEST place in the world for a mommymoon. Here are reasons why:

1. ESCAPE, BUT BE CLOSE ENOUGH TO HOME FOR EMERGENCIES. First and foremost, a mommymoon must embody escape. This is your chance to NOT take calls, NOT answer emails, NOT grocery shop, NOT fold laundry, NOT cook, NOT play mama, wife, boss, manager, lawyer, whatever! ESCAPE AND DO NOTHING. And if you are neurotic like me, and fear emergencies - it is close enough that the main players in your life can still reach you. Terranea is only 45 minutes drive away, so I was close enough to be reached.

2. BE WITH WHAT GOD CREATED, AND STILL PAMPER YOURSELF ROTTEN. Nature is really good for your soul. Ocean, trees, rocks, mountains, beach. That's why people go camping. However, being 8 months pregnant, "roughing it" is somewhat masochistic. Enter Terranea - a serene place of absolute beauty. Seriously. Just look at the photos from: 1) right outside my suite, 2) a short walk down, and 3) lobby.

BEAUTY surrounds this place, ladies. Yes, unbelievable. Even the Garden of Eden had a evil serpent. I can absolutely, without reservations, tell you that Terranea is unflawed. Ever since they opened their doors in 2009, we have made Terranea Resort an annual destination (we are spoiled rotten). This is the THIRD time, and I have yet to find a minor imperfection in the amazing architecture and nature of this place.

Oh, and their spa? To die for. I am not ashamed to admit - I am a spa junkie. That's right, I am do my best work - litigation planning - when getting a rubdown. I also have discovered long ago that I simply cannot sleep or digest my food to nourish my 96-pound pre-pregnancy body without getting a massage every month. Others exercise, I get massaged.

Yes, they are very expensive. But they happened to be running an Autumn Special. For $150 (plus 20% added gratuity for a total of $180), you get a 50-minute massage or facial AND a mini-treatment: Moroccan hair treatment; eyebrow wax; or hand and foot treatment. I went crazy and had TWO. Even if they weren't running a special though, it is still worth it to pay $185 ($222 total) for a 60 minute pre-natal massage.

Bottom line: I have frequented the best spas in the world, and with that experience, I STILL say Terranea is the best. The therapists are well-trained in pre-natal massage (Advice: NEVER go to an inexperienced parlor for a prenatal rub - it will hurt you, AND the baby.) And they have a RELAXATION ROOM on the second floor smack dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, complete with a fireplace.

3. TOP-NOTCH SERVICE. No kidding. From valet to housekeeping to restaurants and front desk - every single person there is ready to serve you. Example: I am clearly 32 weeks pregnant. I check in. I get spa'ed. I order room service. Knock, knock! Complimentary fruits and crackers for you! Example: I am clearly 32 weeks pregnant. At check-in, my favorite front desk person whom shall remain anonymous, because I don't want anyone else getting special treatment (but his initials are J.C.) gives me a complimentary upgrade to an ocean view suite so I can have more space while I am rapidly expanding.

<--------Kelly 32 weeks pregnant

Example: Housekeeping brings extra water (no charge), toothpaste, matches for my Diptyque candle within 5 minutes of calling. Example: Free shoe shine - just leave bag outside. ALL the amenities of a 5-star hotel, minus the snootiness. Everyone here is just happy from inside out and willing to serve you. Which is the WHOLE point of a mommymoon - because as a mom, you are used to serving everyone else.

4. DEFINITELY AFFORDABLE IF YOU ARE ATUNE TO DEALS; STILL CHEAPER THAN OTHER MOMMYMOON/BABYMOONS. I am the researching type. I spent several hours browing the net for mommymoon/babymoons. Basically, if you are looking to be pampered with a package that includes a retreat in a nice hotel, complete with spa treatments, and other special niceties, such as gift baskets, yoga classes, and ambiance, you are looking to pay at least $1500 for 3 nights, including flights, etc. I noticed that most mommymoons/babymoons are in Northern California. For example, there's the Barefoot and Pregnant Spa, located near San Jose and Napa. They advertise packages between $900 - $2800. This does not include the airfare for a flight up there. There is also Miraval in Tuscon, Arizona, which is an all-inclusive resort. So, for all meals paid, complete with all classes, housing, their rates range from $655 - $1090 a night. Terranea Resort ranges from $300 - $1250 a night, depending on room size, room view, etc. They frequently offer return guests deals. I had a Buy 2 nights, get 1 night deal - so the room was approximately $299 (plus $25 resort fee plus $30 valet per night). But I was upgraded to a suite, which is approximately $750 a night. The entire weekend, filled with fine dining, in-room spoiling, spa'ing, cost less than $2000. And I didn't have to pay for a flight. It is expensive, but worth it.

If you are interested in going, you may contact me for a deal code for a repeat customer. I would gladly call you my guest just to prove to you how amazing this place is.

5. PERFECT AMOUNT OF CHOICES SO YOU ARE NOT OVERWHELMED. There are a bazillion things to do at Miraval. I actually got stressed looking at their menu of activities. At Terranea, there isn't too much to do. There is a beautiful trail along the ocean where you can walk. There is a spa. which includes a salon, cafe, and shop. There are three restaurants: Mar'Sel; Catalina Kitchen and Nelsons. There is a Sea Beans cafe/coffeeshop. There is golf. There are tons of firepits where you can make S'Mores. There are 3 pools: main, spa, and adult. There's golf. And that's it, folks. This is a place where you can truly relax, instead of trying to experience all there is. You know what I did all weekend besides spa treatments? I ordered room service, and I read 2 excellent books: Heaven is for Real and The Help. This is incredible. The last 2 books I read were "Llama Llama misses Mama" and "Contempt Citations in Family Court". Mamas, you need to relax on a mommymoon, so you can recharge. It's not about being stimulated, it's about being situated.

Ahhhh, how I absolutely love Terranea. If I had a million dollars, I would find someone else who had a million dollars, and we could buy and share a 3-bedroom villa there. It is the perfect place for a busy mother trying to escape noise in her life. It is also a perfect place for a family get-together. Or a babymoon. It is, in one word, perfect. We will continue to go, every year.

But moms, if you are in your third trimester, and you can afford it, I highly recommend going to Terranea to recharge for a weekend. Your baby and you deserve it.

TERRANEA LOVE OVER THE YEARS

2009

2010

2011

Bi-Lingual Babies

Hearing Bilingual: How Babies Sort Out Language

By PERRI KLASS, M.D.


Once, experts feared that young children exposed to more than one language would suffer “language confusion,” which might delay their speech development. Today, parents often are urged to capitalize on that early knack for acquiring language.

Upscale schools market themselves with promises of deep immersion in Spanish — or Mandarin — for everyone, starting in kindergarten or even before. Yet while many parents recognize the utility of a second language, families bringing up children in non-English-speaking households, or trying to juggle two languages at home, are often desperate for information.

And while the study of bilingual development has refuted those early fears about confusion and delay, there aren’t many research-based guidelines about the very early years and the best strategies for producing a happily bilingual child.

But there is more and more research to draw on, reaching back to infancy and even to the womb. As the relatively new science of bilingualism pushes back to the origins of speech and language, scientists are teasing out the earliest differences between brains exposed to one language and brains exposed to two.

Researchers have found ways to analyze infant behavior — where babies turn their gazes, how long they pay attention — to help figure out infant perceptions of sounds and words and languages, of what is familiar and what is unfamiliar to them. Now, analyzing the neurologic activity of babies’ brains as they hear language, and then comparing those early responses with the words that those children learn as they get older, is helping explain not just how the early brain listens to language, but how listening shapes the early brain.

Recently, researchers at the University of Washington used measures of electrical brain responses to compare so-called monolingual infants, from homes in which one language was spoken, to bilingual infants exposed to two languages. Of course, since the subjects of the study, adorable in their infant-size EEG caps, ranged from 6 months to 12 months of age, they weren’t producing many words in any language. Still, the researchers found that at 6 months, the monolingual infants could discriminate between phonetic sounds, whether they were uttered in the language they were used to hearing or in another language not spoken in their homes. By 10 to 12 months, however, monolingual babies were no longer detecting sounds in the second language, only in the language they usually heard. The researchers suggested that this represents a process of “neural commitment,” in which the infant brain wires itself to understand one language and its sounds. In contrast, the bilingual infants followed a different developmental trajectory. At 6 to 9 months, they did not detect differences in phonetic sounds in either language, but when they were older — 10 to 12 months — they were able to discriminate sounds in both. “What the study demonstrates is that the variability in bilingual babies’ experience keeps them open,” said Dr. Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington and one of the authors of the study. “They do not show the perceptual narrowing as soon as monolingual babies do. It’s another piece of evidence that what you experience shapes the brain.”

The learning of language — and the effects on the brain of the language we hear — may begin even earlier than 6 months of age. Janet Werker, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, studies how babies perceive language and how that shapes their learning. Even in the womb, she said, babies are exposed to the rhythms and sounds of language, and newborns have been shown to prefer languages rhythmically similar to the one they’ve heard during fetal development. In one recent study, Dr. Werker and her collaborators showed that babies born to bilingual mothers not only prefer both of those languages over others — but are also able to register that the two languages are different. In addition to this ability to use rhythmic sound to discriminate between languages, Dr. Werker has studied other strategies that infants use as they grow, showing how their brains use different kinds of perception to learn languages, and also to keep them separate. In a study of older infants shown silent videotapes of adults speaking, 4-month-olds could distinguish different languages visually by watching mouth and facial motions and responded with interest when the language changed. By 8 months, though, the monolingual infants were no longer responding to the difference in languages in these silent movies, while the bilingual infants continued to be engaged. “For a baby who’s growing up bilingual, it’s like, ‘Hey, this is important information,’ ” Dr. Werker said.

Over the past decade, Ellen Bialystok, a distinguished research professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, has shown that bilingual children develop crucial skills in addition to their double vocabularies, learning different ways to solve logic problems or to handle multitasking, skills that are often considered part of the brain’s so-called executive function. These higher-level cognitive abilities are localized to the frontal and prefrontal cortex in the brain.

“Overwhelmingly, children who are bilingual from early on have precocious development of executive function,” Dr. Bialystok said. Dr. Kuhl calls bilingual babies “more cognitively flexible” than monolingual infants.

Her research group is examining infant brains with an even newer imaging device, magnetoencephalography, or MEG, which combines an M.R.I. scan with a recording of magnetic field changes as the brain transmits information. Dr. Kuhl describes the device as looking like a “hair dryer from Mars,” and she hopes that it will help explore the question of why babies learn language from people, but not from screens. Previous research by her group showed that exposing English-language infants in Seattle to someone speaking to them in Mandarin helped those babies preserve the ability to discriminate Chinese language sounds, but when the same “dose” of Mandarin was delivered by a television program or an audiotape, the babies learned nothing. “This special mapping that babies seem to do with language happens in a social setting,” Dr. Kuhl said. “They need to be face to face, interacting with other people. The brain is turned on in a unique way.”

Why Chinese Mothers are Superior

Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

Can a regimen of no playdates, no TV, no computer games and hours of music practice create happy kids? And what happens when they fight back?


By AMY CHUA




A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

.• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.

I'm using the term "Chinese mother" loosely. I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.

All the same, even when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough.

Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and quantifiable differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mothers said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun." By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting," and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents "were not doing their job." Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something—whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet—he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.

Chinese parents can get away with things that Western parents can't. Once when I was young—maybe more than once—when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage.

As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophia, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest named Marcy got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend Susan, the host, tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests.

The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable—even legally actionable—to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "Hey fatty—lose some weight." By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image. (I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her "beautiful and incredibly competent." She later told me that made her feel like garbage.)

Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say, "You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you." By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they're not disappointed about how their kids turned out.

I've thought long and hard about how Chinese parents can get away with what they do. I think there are three big differences between the Chinese and Western parental mind-sets.


First, I've noticed that Western parents are extremely anxious about their children's self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words, Western parents are concerned about their children's psyches. Chinese parents aren't. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.

For example, if a child comes home with an A-minus on a test, a Western parent will most likely praise the child. The Chinese mother will gasp in horror and ask what went wrong. If the child comes home with a B on the test, some Western parents will still praise the child. Other Western parents will sit their child down and express disapproval, but they will be careful not to make their child feel inadequate or insecure, and they will not call their child "stupid," "worthless" or "a disgrace." Privately, the Western parents may worry that their child does not test well or have aptitude in the subject or that there is something wrong with the curriculum and possibly the whole school. If the child's grades do not improve, they may eventually schedule a meeting with the school principal to challenge the way the subject is being taught or to call into question the teacher's credentials.

If a Chinese child gets a B—which would never happen—there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion. The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A.

Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn't get them, the Chinese parent assumes it's because the child didn't work hard enough. That's why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it. (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)

Second, Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything. The reason for this is a little unclear, but it's probably a combination of Confucian filial piety and the fact that the parents have sacrificed and done so much for their children. (And it's true that Chinese mothers get in the trenches, putting in long grueling hours personally tutoring, training, interrogating and spying on their kids.) Anyway, the understanding is that Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.

By contrast, I don't think most Westerners have the same view of children being permanently indebted to their parents. My husband, Jed, actually has the opposite view. "Children don't choose their parents," he once said to me. "They don't even choose to be born. It's parents who foist life on their kids, so it's the parents' responsibility to provide for them. Kids don't owe their parents anything. Their duty will be to their own kids." This strikes me as a terrible deal for the Western parent.

Third, Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences. That's why Chinese daughters can't have boyfriends in high school and why Chinese kids can't go to sleepaway camp. It's also why no Chinese kid would ever dare say to their mother, "I got a part in the school play! I'm Villager Number Six. I'll have to stay after school for rehearsal every day from 3:00 to 7:00, and I'll also need a ride on weekends." God help any Chinese kid who tried that one.

Don't get me wrong: It's not that Chinese parents don't care about their children. Just the opposite. They would give up anything for their children. It's just an entirely different parenting model.

Here's a story in favor of coercion, Chinese-style. Lulu was about 7, still playing two instruments, and working on a piano piece called "The Little White Donkey" by the French composer Jacques Ibert. The piece is really cute—you can just imagine a little donkey ambling along a country road with its master—but it's also incredibly difficult for young players because the two hands have to keep schizophrenically different rhythms.

Lulu couldn't do it. We worked on it nonstop for a week, drilling each of her hands separately, over and over. But whenever we tried putting the hands together, one always morphed into the other, and everything fell apart. Finally, the day before her lesson, Lulu announced in exasperation that she was giving up and stomped off.

"Get back to the piano now," I ordered.

"You can't make me."

"Oh yes, I can."

Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu's dollhouse to the car and told her I'd donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn't have "The Little White Donkey" perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, "I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?" I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn't do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.

Jed took me aside. He told me to stop insulting Lulu—which I wasn't even doing, I was just motivating her—and that he didn't think threatening Lulu was helpful. Also, he said, maybe Lulu really just couldn't do the technique—perhaps she didn't have the coordination yet—had I considered that possibility?

"You just don't believe in her," I accused.

"That's ridiculous," Jed said scornfully. "Of course I do."

"Sophia could play the piece when she was this age."

"But Lulu and Sophia are different people," Jed pointed out.

"Oh no, not this," I said, rolling my eyes. "Everyone is special in their special own way," I mimicked sarcastically. "Even losers are special in their own special way. Well don't worry, you don't have to lift a finger. I'm willing to put in as long as it takes, and I'm happy to be the one hated. And you can be the one they adore because you make them pancakes and take them to Yankees games."

I rolled up my sleeves and went back to Lulu. I used every weapon and tactic I could think of. We worked right through dinner into the night, and I wouldn't let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, and I lost my voice yelling, but still there seemed to be only negative progress, and even I began to have doubts.

Then, out of the blue, Lulu did it. Her hands suddenly came together—her right and left hands each doing their own imperturbable thing—just like that.

Lulu realized it the same time I did. I held my breath. She tried it tentatively again. Then she played it more confidently and faster, and still the rhythm held. A moment later, she was beaming.

"Mommy, look—it's easy!" After that, she wanted to play the piece over and over and wouldn't leave the piano. That night, she came to sleep in my bed, and we snuggled and hugged, cracking each other up. When she performed "The Little White Donkey" at a recital a few weeks later, parents came up to me and said, "What a perfect piece for Lulu—it's so spunky and so her."

Even Jed gave me credit for that one. Western parents worry a lot about their children's self-esteem. But as a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child's self-esteem is to let them give up. On the flip side, there's nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn't.

There are all these new books out there portraying Asian mothers as scheming, callous, overdriven people indifferent to their kids' true interests. For their part, many Chinese secretly believe that they care more about their children and are willing to sacrifice much more for them than Westerners, who seem perfectly content to let their children turn out badly. I think it's a misunderstanding on both sides. All decent parents want to do what's best for their children. The Chinese just have a totally different idea of how to do that.

Western parents try to respect their children's individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they're capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away.

—Amy Chua is a professor at Yale Law School and author of "Day of Empire" and "World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability." This essay is excerpted from "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua, to be published Tuesday by the Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © 2011 by Amy Chua.