A few days ago, the American Psychiatric Association released the new DSM-V, or Diagnostic Statistical Manual. This manual is used by physicians to diagnose mental illnesses, including everything from bipolar disorder and depression to autism and anorexia.

Some of the changes to DSM-V include brand new diagnoses, as well as changes to the names of several illnesses that are very familiar to parents:

• There is now one single diagnosis — autism spectrum disorder (ASD) — for what were previously four separately listed illnesses: autistic disorder (autism), Asperger’s disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder, and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PPD-NOS).  Asperger’s, CDD and PPD-NOS are no longer listed as diagnoses. ASD is characterized by 1) deficits in social communication and social interaction and 2) restricted repetitive behaviors, interests, and activities. Because both components are required for diagnosis of ASD.

• New disorders listed in the DSM-V include hoarding disorder and excoriation (skin-picking) disorder, as well as social communication disorder, for those who have difficulty communicating but do not display repetitive behaviors and thus would not meet the diagnosis of ASD.

• A new diagnosis called disruptive mood dysregulation disorder is included for children up to 18 years old who exhibit persistent irritability and frequent episodes of extreme lack of behavioral control. This diagnosis is meant to help reduce overdiagnosis and overtreatment of bipolar disorder in children.

• The term “mental retardation”, which was used in the most recent DSM-IV, officially has been replaced with “intellectual disability.” 

• Stuttering is now called childhood-onset fluency disorder.

Photo credit: © James Thew – Fotolia.com

My favorite Disney princess is Merida from “Brave.” She’s jaunty and interesting and independent and she’s got red hair like me — cha-ching! Her hair is never perfect and her body isn’t Barbie-dimensions. I love that about her and so does my daughter. It’s clear a lot of people feel the same way, so when a different drawing of Merida with a thinner waist, a sparklier dress and an amped up bosom was circulated recently, people were up in arms. Why’d ‘ya have to change her, Disney? Why?!

I had the fortune of being at the Disney Social Media Moms conference in Orlando last week and saw the coronation up close and personal. This is what I saw, through the lens of my own camera:

This princess was still the same jaunty, interesting girl. Her hair was every which way and her belt was askew. There were no sparkles, corsets or cleavage. And she was awesome.

I have seen an evolution in Disney’s princesses, and I’ve been glad to witness it because my daughter’s generation craves characters like Tiana from “The Princess and the Frog” or Merida from “Brave,” who represent girls with ideas, ambition, smarts and wherewithal and who don’t need a prince to come rescue them. While they appreciate the princesses of old, it’s the new ones they identify with and want more of. It didn’t surprise me when my seven-year-old daughter told me recently that the only Barbie she likes is the one of Katniss Everdeen from “The Hunger Games.” It doesn’t surprise me that she loves Merida. And it won’t surprise me if and more likely when Disney develops more female characters that girls can look to as role models for strength, perseverance, independence and beauty on the inside.

I agree that the changes made in that drawing were unfortunate. Disney has explained that it was created for very limited use, in particular for Merida’s official coronation invitation. They’ve also said Merida is and has always been and will continue to be the Merida we recognize.

Good. That image was not who we want Merida to be, nor is it who Merida needs to be. But I also think this whole dustup represents something — Disney/Pixar got her so right. She’s like Classic Coke already, and this other version of Merida was New Coke and no one wants New Coke because they love the original. Don’t add more sugar. We don’t need more sugar.

Merida is less sugar and more spice, and that’s what makes her so nice.

I believe the fact that I read aloud to my children is the single most important contributing factor to their success in school.

Just reading. Out loud. Every night. 

And here’s what I want you to know: You should definitely, absolutely, without any question read aloud to your kids. All the time. And not just when they’re little.

We are so obsessed with reading in my house that when we went on a Spring Break trip to New York City a couple of years ago we made sure to visit the Scholastic store in addition to the Statue of Liberty.  I might as well have Random House Children’s Books on speed dial. Barnes & Noble is among the three stores I frequent more than any other, and the vast majority of the money I spend there is on children’s books. In fact, I am so in love with reading that I want to make sure other children have things to read, too. Whenever we’re done with kids’ books at my house we either donate them to the local library or to my children’s school’s library. At our neighborhood-wide garage sale a few weeks ago, my kids handed out a free children’s book to every family that came by with kids.

I have read aloud to my children since they were little, and I continue to do so. I think that’s vitally important. I continue to read aloud with my 11-year-old when he’s not still buried under homework at bedtime. I won’t ever stop reading to him until he says he doesn’t want to anymore, and even then I’ll probably beg him to let me keep doing it anyway. We read books. We read magazines like Spider and National Geographic Kids for my daughter and National Geographic, the grownup version, for my son. They read on their iPads.

Also, every night I have my daughter read aloud to me for 15 minutes or so before I read to her. She’s seven years old, just finishing up first grade, and when she was tested a couple of weeks ago her reading level was at 5th grade. I’m convinced, beyond a doubt, that it’s because we make sure that reading is a focus at home and we don’t just leave it to the school to make it a priority. All it takes is a few minutes of a parent’s time to make a huge difference.

Reading to your kids is about so much more than simply teaching them to read in kindergarten or first grade. Here are seven great reasons why you should be obsessed with reading aloud daily to your children, no matter their age:

1. It’s time spent together. Reading time is time when you’re focusing on no one else and nothing else but them. It’s impossible to read to your kid and look at your smartphone or watch TV at the same time. I read to each of my children separately before bed. This lets me spend quality time with them individually. It makes for a longer bedtime ritual, but I don’t care because I love it.

2. It’s a conversation starter. Books always give us a reason to talk with each other, even if we don’t feel like we have anything to talk about. It keeps communication open.

3. It’s a great way to talk about emotional health. We talk about the things that happen in the stories, how we would feel if they happened to us, and how we might deal with such events the same or differently. Books have helped me broach topics that I might not have thought to raise if it weren’t for the subject matter in the story.

4. It’s a great way to honor the individuality in your children. I read different things to my daughter than I do to my son. We go to the bookstore and they pick out books about topics about which they are interested. Through paying attention to what they want to read, I can learn more about what their likes and dislikes are, including what they might want to be when they grow up.

5. You can open up new worlds for your kids. Reading allows you to introduce your kids to things that their school curriculum just doesn’t have the time or perhaps even the interest to cover. My 6th grader has recently expressed an interest in industrial design, so I’m on a hunt for cool books about the design of cars and about architecture. Dear publishers: Please publish more books for young readers about these things!! We don’t just need stories about zombies and vampires. 

6. You get a wealth of information on where your children might need help.  Through reading aloud to my children I’ve been able to teach them the meaning of words they still didn’t understand. They have better vocabularies. They have better comprehension skills and understanding of abstract concepts. And reading allows them to excel not just in language arts, but in all of their subjects. I’ve been able to see when my daughter was ready to read on her own — she started pushing me out of the way and reading the words herself — and also to see if and when she needs help.

7. It can lead to a lifelong love of reading in your kids. If you do it right, by reading like you mean it — which means getting into the story, changing your voice to reflect what is happening and not droning on like you hate what you’re reading — your children will learn to love reading on their own. My 11-year-old has now read more than 25,000 pages in his lifetime. How do I know this? For fun, together we created an Excel spreadsheet (OCD, anyone?) where we record the books he has read and how many pages were in them. He loves that little sheet, because it gives him a sense of accomplishment and he can look back on all that he has read and remember his favorites.

Reading is awesome, and even better, it’s accessible to all through our country’s public library system. So please, get out there and read to your babies and, most importantly, don’t quit.

Photo credit: © jannoon028 – Fotolia.com

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My awesome aunt Kit died of cancer. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in her thirties and had a mastectomy, and then lived for a decade in remission. Then that vile jerk cancer came back, and at the age of 49 she passed away.

I’m still pissed off about it.

Next Wednesday, May 22nd, is the 100th birthday of the American Cancer Society (ACS), and they need our support. As my friend and co-author of the book Minimalist Parenting, Christine Koh, explains, “Two out of three people currently survive cancer and ACS won’t rest until it’s three out of three; they want to finish the fight against cancer!”

There is a handful of ways you can help ACS celebrate this monumental birthday and Finish the Fight:

1. Help create awareness by sending out a tweet sharing why you want to finish the fight against cancer. Use the hashtag #finishthefight. 
2. Take a moment to create a special Life List at the American Cancer Society’s Facebook page. If you’ve never made a life list, I highly recommend it. I created one for the first time last year and it really helped me see what I care about, and more importantly what I don’t need to waste time on. ACS fights against cancer so that everyone has the chance to complete his or her life list. 
3. Check out 100 Stories of Hope which features 100 stories of everyday people taking action to fight against cancer. 

Thank you, American Cancer Society, for persisting for these last 100 years! We are grateful for your work and for your dedication.

Did you have gestational diabetes? If you’re among the estimated 2 to 10% of all pregnant women who do get it, it’s important to know that you now have a higher risk than average of getting type 2 diabetes in your lifetime.

According to the National Diabetes Education Program, “Women with a history of gestational diabetes have a 35 to 60 percent chance of developing diabetes in the next 10 to 20 years, and should be tested for diabetes 6 to 12 weeks after their baby is born. If they do not have diabetes at that point, they continue to be at risk and should talk to their doctor about additional testing. It’s also important to note that the child from a pregnancy affected by gestational diabetes may also be at increased risk for obesity and type 2 diabetes in the future.”

The National Diabetes Education Program has created a tip sheet for women who have had gestational diabetes called “Did You Have Gestational Diabetes When You Were Pregnant? What You Need to Know” which offers information and action steps you and your family can take to prevent the development of type 2 diabetes. Be sure to check it out.

On Mother’s Day there were no bouquets of flowers. I didn’t get breakfast in bed. Nope. Not this mom. Instead, I got a bag of water.

My kids and I were in Orlando this weekend for the Disney Social Media Moms Conference. Because we were traveling, and also because my husband wasn’t able to be there, they made no specific plans for me this Mother’s Day. We weren’t going out to dinner, and the kids didn’t have any wrapped presents for me. They didn’t even have access to paper and crayons to make me their own cards.

Thoughtful as my kids are though, they put their heads together and came up with some things to give me to show their love and honor me on Mother’s Day. I had no idea what they were planning to do until my son emerged from our hotel room bathroom on Sunday afternoon, after a day of running around Epcot, and stacked these Disney hotel items for me on the bed.

One by one, he formally presented me two wash cloths, two water glasses, some Disney toiletries and a fresh roll of toilet paper. Two-ply, he was quick to point out.

My daughter elected to give me a bag filled with water.

I had to take pictures of both of them because I was so delighted. My children are funny, and creative, and they came up with a fun way to celebrate Mother’s Day without special flowers or cards. They used what they had. To be honest, I liked their “gifts” more than flowers and cards. I will cherish them always, even though I didn’t bring them home with me … no worries Disney, you aren’t short of any washcloths or glasses.

I feel so lucky to have gotten a bag of water for Mother’s Day. I feel even more lucky that this past weekend I got to focus on and have lots of playtime with my children, thanks to Disney. I love these two to pieces.

Photo credit: Katherine Stone

disclosure: I attended the Disney Social Media Moms Conference and received discounted rates and tickets to various events and attractions. All opinions are my own.

Mom with her grandkids at the beach. Photo credit: Katherine Stone

Dear Mom,

I think I was nine or ten when you took me on. You decided to get married to my dad and, with that, take the responsibility for his two children, children who had been through a lot and were very unsure.

You hadn’t ever had children, so to march right in to the lives of two elementary school kids with confidence and caring was quite something. Being a parent now I can see that.

You tried. You worked so hard. Even when we said we didn’t like the food you cooked because it wasn’t like our other mom’s, you kept on cooking. Even when we wouldn’t ride in the same canoe with you, both of us preferring to stay in our dad’s on a family trip because we just didn’t feel right with you yet, you kept on paddling. Even when it took a long time for us to get used to the idea of calling you mom, you kept on caring.

I’m sure it was frustrating and sometimes hurtful, yet you didn’t let that stop you. You continued to show us you loved us and you wanted us to be healthy and happy. You kept trying to prove that you were there for the long haul and that we could count on you, and oh how we needed someone to be able to count on.

You waited us out. You were patient and you never quit. You leaned in and held on tight and it worked. Thank you. Thank you for coming into our lives when you didn’t have to and being willing to love us as your own and for working so damn hard to convince us that we were, in fact, your own.

I am your own.

I love you. Happy Mother’s Day.

~ Katherine

We’re celebrating Mother’s Day by celebrating leaning in to motherhood, and by recognizing the extraordinary women that are our own mothers. We hope that it will inspire you to thank your own mother, or the mother who most inspires you. Find more letters and stories about leaning in to motherhood here. (Sheryl Sandberg’s letter is here.) And, of course, find your own Lean In inspiration at LeanIn.org.

I love seeing my fellow moms using their blogs and platforms to raise money to help others. I wanted to point out two such fabulous mamas this week: Mandy Morrison and Kelly Wickham.

Mandy has put together a team to walk in the March of Dimes Walk for Babies, with the goal of raising $5,000 for the March of Dimes. Not only that, but she’s holding a raffle on her fabulous blog, The Haps, to benefit the same organization. Donate just five bucks and you’ll be entered to win one of the fabulous prizes, including a gift certificate to Ruche or an Ergobaby carrier. It’s all great stuff for a great cause since the money raised will go to March of Dimes research and programs that help moms have full-term pregnancies and babies begin healthy lives.

Kelly is spending this week living below the line to raise awareness of worldwide hunger as part of the Live Below the Line campaign. She’ll be eating on just $1.50 per day for meals. Kelly is part of Team Mission List, which includes Dresden Shumaker and Heather Barmore, all three of whom also happen to write for Babble! For every $250 in donations they raise to support their week of living below the poverty line, at least when it comes to eating and drinking, that money will provide 1,000 school meals as part of the World Food Program USA. Thus far the team has raised more than $1,000 — so that’s at least 4,000 meals for kids who need them already!

Blogger and entrepreneur Liz Gumbinner and I, at an event while attending BlogHer. Liz is a mother and advertising exec, writes the blog Mom 101, and is also the co-founder of Cool Mom Picks and Cool Mom Tech. I wonder if she eats junk food on the floor of hotel rooms?

So I’m going to be in the Wall Street Journal talking about how I’m a work-at-home mom and why I attend events like blog conferences. Cool.

I can get with that because I love all the “mommyblogger” events I attend each year, like the Mom 2.0 Summit and the BlogHer conference. I love them because they have made an enormous positive impact on my work, because I am able to network and develop new ideas, and because I get to spend time with my tribe.

I never had a tribe until I started working in social media. I can’t begin to express how much it has enriched my life to know the fellow bloggers and entrepreneurs I now know just because I started a blog about postpartum depression nine years ago. I work in a quiet house all day between dropping the kids off and picking them up from the bus stop, but I’m never alone. A quick hop onto Twitter or Facebook and I’m conversing with some of the smartest, most clever, most funny people I know. I’m continually amazed at how much each has accomplished on her own.

When I was being interviewed for the Wall Street Journal story, I was in Washington DC as a Front Line Scholar at TEDMED. I spoke with the reporter about how I’ll be attending the Mom 2.0 Summit, BlogHer ’13 and this year’s Disney Social Media Moms Conference. I didn’t even mention the travel I’m doing for speeches and brand work. I’ve been traveling quite a bit, and what I tried to get across is that I love it because it’s a chance for me to further my work and have fun. I get to be with people who don’t live anywhere near me but are some of my dearest friends, people who I only get to see three or maybe four times a year if I’m lucky. I cherish that time.

This morning the story comes out. Instead of being about the importance of connection, it feels more to me that it’s about how we ladies “rarely get to escape the daily grind” and how we finally get control of the remote when we are lucky enough to be in a hotel room. Oh no.

And now I’m going to apologize. To everyone.

“Katherine Stone, a 43-year-old mother and wife from Atlanta, wants to leave her husband and children.”

No I don’t. I apologize to you, my darling husband and children, because that lede and the following paragraphs infer that I toil away mightily at home, only to be lucky to escape from you every so often. As you know, I have no interest in ditching you. If I gave that impression to the reporter, I’m horrified. I’m lucky to be married to a guy who, even though he travels for work quite a bit of the time, is fully involved in parenting and cooking and cleaning the house too. A guy who takes time off from his job that he can hardly afford to take because of his leadership responsibilities there so that I can go where I need to go. A guy who works his ass off so that I could leave my high-paying job in the corporate world and commit full time to advocacy work. I love you and am grateful for you. I’m lucky to have two of the world’s most fabulous children.

And just so everyone knows, I’m generally the one in control of the remote in our house.

“Kids? What Kids? Her children’s school bus came 20 minutes ago. For once, that’s someone else’s problem.”

While the main portion of my apology is directed to my own husband, I also apologize to all the husbands and partners who this article infers are uninvolved but will now get their comeuppance when they have to take the kids to the bus stop for once.

“Parents who travel frequently take for granted the simple joy of not needing to set a good nutritional example.”

I apologize to all the women who feel minimized and condescended to by the piece, in particular the graphics that accompany it. I know we all don’t lay around in our hotel rooms on the ground gorging ourselves on crap. In fact I’ve racked my brain to think if I’ve ever laid on the floor of a hotel room for any reason, and I can’t come up with a single instance.

FYI, I eat snacks at home too.

“Ms. Stone and other Mom 2.0 attendees will sit in on seminars like ‘How to Keep Blogging After It’s All Been Blogged’ and ‘Help! My 9 Year Old Wants To Be On Instagram!”

And also “Building Community Through Cross-Channel Presence” and “Empowering your Small Business for Growth” and “Creative Collaborations: Building a Dream Team and Balancing Your Strengths” and “The Power of Saying No: The Ultimate Guide to Getting Paid What You’re Worth.” But let’s not mention those because it might make us bloggers look like serious women.

I don’t attend the Mom 2.0 Summit because the organizers are making an effort to make the expo look like a French market, as the article highlighted. In fact, I didn’t know that was even happening. I attend because of the super high caliber of people who attend. I go because it’s a great event. I go because I know I will always come away with a handful of action items that will make the work I do better. AND I go to have a blast.

I appreciate national press coverage, and I appreciate the publicity that BlogHer and Mom 2.0 Summit are getting for the fact that they have created national events that women want to go to. Perhaps it will encourage more brands to become involved in supporting these events, which would be a great thing. They should. They’d be smart to pay for access to a group of highly influential people. I’m just not sure decision-makers will come away from this piece with much respect for what we do. Please, dear PR and marketing people, don’t think that showing up, handing out a few tchotchkes and asking us to write about your products for free will do your brand equity or our brand equity any good.

I have wanted to crawl under a rock all day, but I’m trying to resist the urge. Meantime, please know that I cherish all of you and I cherish this social media industry within which we work.  It has allowed me to help hundreds of thousands of women with postpartum depression, a job that is a true avocation. It has given me more than I will ever give it.

I know, because I have seen it with my own eyes, how amazing all of you are. How you deserve respect and admiration. I’m just sorry that didn’t come across.

More on Babble:

• What You Should REALLY Expect from Blogging Conferences 

• Hall of Shame: Publications That Have Burned Parenting Bloggers With Sensationalist “Spin”

• Wall Street Journal Has No Idea Who Mom Bloggers Really Are or What We Do

• Wall Street Journal Insults Mom Bloggers, Again

• A Man’s Defense of Mommy Bloggers

• Mommies Just Like to Party!

• Social Media Conferences Are Business Trips — Period

• A Reminder That Non-parents Can Attend Blog Conferences, Too

• How Are Mommy Business Trips Different Than a Businessman’s?

Last week I went to Washington DC for four days to attend TEDMED, the health and medicine version of the very popular TED Conference. I arrived early in DC on Tuesday and headed to a comfy spot in a cafe before the conference started so I could get some work done, only to find that I had already lost an important component of my cell phone charger. You know the part that plugs into the wall? Yeah, that one. I had just made it into the first few hours of a long trip and I was already unable to charge my phone, which by noon was at 20% battery.

No problem, I thought. I have a Mophie, so I’ll be able to use that to keep my phone charged. Only it kept running out of juice as well. Okay, Katherine, let’s try option C. Just use your USB plug and plug it into your computer while you sleep. Nope, that didn’t work either. Moving on to option D, I decided I’d simply hang out by the conference’s charging stations each day and use my USB plug there. Except so many people were using those stations, probably because they had all already lost their chargers like me, that the stations weren’t charging anything. You might think, just forget it, who needs a phone? We lived for eons without them! True, but my kids were at home for four days with a new babysitter. My husband was traveling. What if one of them needed me? What if the school called? What if there was an emergency? As a working mom, my cellphone is my lifeline, not just a tool for my job.

It wasn’t just my lack of operational phone that was a problem, either. There were so many people at the conference that no one could get on the wireless network, so even if my phone had worked most of the time there was no signal inside the Kennedy Center and no wireless to be had. And then there was the issue of pollen, which made my nose run nonstop, and which I would have blown if I’d had any Kleenex but I didn’t. And also, I had to drive from DC to Rockville, Maryland, every night, in the dark, without the cell phone I was going to use for navigation, so I had to wing it to find my way back and forth.  You should have heard the awesome new swear word combinations I made up during those hair-raising trips.

In the end, the TEDMED conference was fantastic, but I was not. I was a lost, snotty woman in a sound-proof booth, unable to communicate out or receive messages in.

I realize these are first-world problems but I’m a first-world working mom and I’ve decided I’ve got to do a better job preparing for trips. I’ve created a list of what I’m going to bring with me when I travel for work henceforth.

Personal items to be packed in 1-gallon Ziploc #1:

1. Small packs of Kleenex — for allergy emergencies
2. Band-Aids — for the blisters I get from wearing fun new shoes to conferences
3. Via — the coffee at the events I attend generally stinks, so I’m going to bring those little packets of Starbucks Via so I can have a decent cup of joe
4. Mints — to mask my permanent coffee breath
5. Earplugs — for those roommates who snore (and no, I’m not talking about you, recent bunkmate) and for the college students in the next hotel room who insist on partying until 4am
6. Extra medication — so that when I forget the bottle on my bedside I have backup
7. Snacks — there’s never enough food at these events, so I’m going to pack a few bags of almonds and maybe some Kind bars so that I can avoid the temptation to chew my arm off by midday of conference day two
8. Makeup — I almost always forget to pack at least one makeup item, usually an important one like foundation or mascara — my eyelashes are blond, y’all — so I’m going to keep backups of some of those key items in the bag too
9. Hair elastics — because all those plans I have to get up early and give myself a blowout each morning invariably get thrown out the window so I can sleep in, which means I’ll need to rock a ponytail

Work items to be packed in 1-gallon Ziploc #2:

1. My own wifi — because I’ve given up on ever being able to get access to the free wifi offered at conferences, which doesn’t actually exist but is a figment of our collective imagination
2. A car charger — it has taken me a while to figure this out, but if I’m going to be driving a rental I’m going to need a way to charge my phone in the car, DUH
3. Business cards — time to order extra and make sure there is always a supply in the bag because I invariably forget to pack them
4. A backup phone charger — for when it takes me less than an hour to lose the first one
5. Mophie — I already own one of these backup power packs, and let me tell you, it saves my butt all the time

I’m going to keep all this stuff in Ziplocs so that I can easily transfer the bags from an overnight bag to my computer bag to my suitcase, depending on where I’m going. This is my plan. I just know I can do this.

What’s in your travel case, briefcase or purse that is essential for travel? What do you always forget? Let’s share with each other to benefit the common welfare. Help me. HELLLLP MEEEEEE.

Photo credit: © sokolovsky – Fotolia.com

Katherine Stone writes here at Babble as well as at her blog on postpartum depression, called Postpartum Progress. You can also follow her on Twitter as she tweets inane things about her day, or learn more about her at her Fierce blog here.