Category: Parenting

I was shocked when my daughter came home and presented me with a science report that had a note from her teacher which read, “Isn’t your mom an editor? Have her look through this and resubmit.”

She then proceeded to tell me that all of her teachers feel like she should have perfectly polished papers, given that I edit textbooks for a living.

Really?!?
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“The baby across from me is clapping to the soundtrack in my earphones,” my friend writes. She’s in a cafe working, or should I say absorbing the present around her. And twittering.

It reminds me of an article I read recently about sabbaticals and the power of removing yourself from your daily routine in order to appreciate your daily routine. Funny how you have to disengage to re-engage.

But who has 4-12 months to take off on a sabbatical?!? Not your average joe… Read more…

Our culture and our time all impact us parents. We can no more step back to the 1950s than we can prepare our children for the inevitable eyelid embedded, thought reading iPhone of the future. We live in the here and now.

And that’s a good thing. Because A) who wants to re-live the 50s, really? And B) a thought reading iPhone – yeah, right?!?

But how does our past influence our current lives, even our future? Let’s look simply at language. Yes, I’m talking specific word choice. As in ‘use your words,’ a phrase you no doubt know. Hey, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right?

What words do you use to express yourself – are they productive or unproductive to little ears? Read more…

If you could look up bravery in the dictionary (OK, you can actually do this, but let’s pretend) you’d see a photo of a newborn baby with the words ’nuff said underneath.

Babies are among the most brave souls on this planet! “Someone turn down those lights!” only you can’t say that just yet so you simply squeeze your eyes closed. “What the hell are these things that flail about and hit me in the face?” only you don’t know yet that you have arms and hands, much less how to control them. “FEED ME!” and your mouth goes searching about, trying to suck on anything within mouthing distance.

The things babies have to deal with! And to think, newborn babyhood is probably the happiest any soul will ever be. The nuzzling, the breastfeeding. Oh la la.

So undertaking to teach a child bravery could be considered an exercise in redundancy. Or is it? Read more…

OK, fighting is a harsh way to say it. Discipline. Boundaries. Rules. When your child breaks them, and you’ve got not one nerve left to handle it calmly, what verbal weapons fly out of your mouth?

My mother’s go to arsenal was a mass of starving children in Africa and “just wait till your father comes home!” So, in my little brain I was surrounded by hungry eyes or I was quaking in fear till 6pm when Dad came home.

The thing is – and often we don’t realize this until we become parents ourselves – parents need a break. Only we don’t get one. So, mom, I’m just apologizing again for…well…everything, OK! Read more…

Spring has arrived, which is the perfect time to get outdoors with your kids and introduce them to gardening. The pride they will feel when they see their first tomato bloom or their first flower bud will be priceless.

For those of you who do not have a green thumb (like me) but want to introduce your children to this lovely past-time, I have found a fantastic resource for you – Kidsgardening.org. Read more…

When you become a first time parent you are faced with a ton of choices for how to go about raising your child. It can be overwhelming and seem like everyone has an opinion.

Well, they do.

But you can choose whether or not you pay attention to those opinions because ultimately, you have to decide what is best for you and your child. I am of the mindset that there isn’t one right way to do anything and I don’t think that anyone should tell you how to go about feeding your child as long as you’re not shoving Twinkies down their throat as their primary source of nutrition. Additionally, I’m sure this goes without saying, but if you choose to neglect your child altogether, I’m going to have something to say about that. Read more…

It’s so easy to become disconnected as a family. Between varying school, work and social schedules, it’s very easy for families to simply eat on the fly and never sit down at their table together for a meal. Some studies suggest that family dinners improve the communication and well being of family relationships.

So with that in mind, I encourage you to commit to family dinners on a regular basis using the five house rules below. These would, of course, be tweaked according to the age of your children. I have twins that are toddlers, so they would not be doing dishes just yet, but they could certainly sit at the table and enjoy the meal and bring their plastic plates into the sink when they are done. In short, adapt these rules accordingly.

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The first year is filled with sleepless nights, trial and error schedules and milestones we can’t help but brag about hitting. The first giggle, rolling over, the first time they sit up and crawl – those are momentous occasions we have barely a minute to jot down on a scrap of paper, but now all of them can be chronicled using the eBabytracker application on your handy dandy smartphone.

And I’m totally jealous. Read more…

At a parent’s night at my daughter’s preschool, a number of us were talking and the idea of a biography class came up. Biography not for writing books. Biography for looking at one’s own past. As in, arm chair psychology, kind of. Or crazy train. That, too.

This being California, a circle of us moms decided we’d all take this class together. Now, we don’t know each other more than, “hi” and “bye” in the mornings and afternoons. But we certainly are about to! I’m a little scared. I’m also a little excited.

Whatever comes up, I’ll have to have an open mind. And Kleenex. Read more…

Teaching your kids about money today can be a challenge when many of us simply swipe our credit cards and rarely balance a bank register. There is little handling of cash and breaking out the calculator to balance the “books” is becoming less frequent.

So, with that in mind, how do we teach our kids about the value of a dollar on a daily basis? How do we infuse money talk, and more importantly, fiscal responsibility into their lives? Read more…

My mother wasn’t much for the big “hurrahs!” and as a result, I’m probably over-the-top when it comes to that kind of stuff. I’ve talked before about how I’ve always overcompensated, especially in light of my divorce, and how overcompensating has likely set repercussions in motion that I never would have imagined.

Anyway, I’ve always tried to give my kids confidence. Sometimes via tough love, sometimes via profuse admiration.

So, how do I do it? It’s definitely not rocket science, I think sometimes parents forget that it’s the really easy stuff their kids actually love. And it’s these really simple things that build their solid foundations.
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It’s a thing most moms do: telling their birth story. Like an initiation ritual, or a right of passage. I was sharing mine with my daughter’s preschool teacher, going on about giving birth in a teaching hospital and the veritable audience in attendance when she told me she was in the hospital for 4 months. On bed rest. In the hospital. 4 months.

She carried her twins to full term – healthy boys – but from the outset it didn’t look like that would be a likely outcome. Hers is not my story to tell, so I can’t go into all of her details. But it got me to thinking about how our different baby experiences unite us on a continuum of shared smiles and tears, hormones and fears. Read more…