The Problem (I Have) With Mother’s Day
This Mother’s Day, we are having both sides of our family over to our house for brunch. We’ve done it a few times before, and it works pretty well as a way for both my husband and me to see our mothers, as well as our sisters (who are also mothers) and their families. Everyone brings stuff, we all eat and talk, and that’s that. But here’s what I’ve heard: why do that!? Then you have to clean before and clean up after, and then it’s not mother’s day for you. Well, yeah. But so what? I get a little …Keep Reading
Sweet Success: Being Honest About Sugary Yogurt
My kids love yogurt. They always have. But I now realize, looking back at the trajectory from their early, plain-yogurt-slurping days to now, when they pilfer my private stash of Greek yogurt in between sucking down squeeze yogurts, that I let too much sugar into the system. And once you go sweet, can you go back? To this? That’s James, currently addicted to any kind of yogurt that comes in a tube or is perceived to be Mommy’s, when he was just under a year old (dig how he swipes the back of the spoon on the bowl, the way …Keep Reading
We All Need a Little Help
I’ve been watching Call the Midwife, a British series about a group of young nurse/midwives in London’s East End in the 1950s, and I’m hooked. I tell my husband (who leaves the room when it’s on) that it’s not like those silly childbirth “stories” I used to watch on TLC when I was pregnant. What hooks me about this show (beyond it’s being wonderfully written, acted, and produced) is that shows women being supportive of other women going through labor and birth. You’re asking now, I know it, “why is she talking about childbirth right now?” Because this whole notion …Keep Reading
Who Has Daddy Issues: How My Parents Spared the Praise and Didn’t Spoil the Child
As I do every few days, I checked Mean Moms Rule’s Amazon rankings and sales stats this morning (this is down from last year, when the book came out and I was checking multiple times per day!). I noticed that I had a new review, and I read it. This reader gave the book three stars (average, I guess), and said that it had “potential,” but she didn’t seem to like the book very much. Or, really, didn’t seem to like me as a writer very much. Now, I’ve been a professional writer for a very long time. Sometimes people …Keep Reading
Do Childless Folks Have a Valid Opinion About Parenting?
Okay, taking fun photos with the webcam aside, how would you answer the question of whether childless folks — your sister, your friend, the checkout lady at the market, a New York Times writer — have opinions about childrearing you should take to heart? It’s a tough question. Have you looked back — with honesty — about the things you thought, assumed, presumed about parenting before you had kids? Can you replay a little film in your head, a montage of times you said things to parents you knew at the time that you cringe at now? On the other …Keep Reading
IPhones are a Privilege, Not a Right (or, my ode to the mom who created an iPhone contract for her son)
Did you hear about the mom who, when she gave her 13-year-old son an iPhone for Christmas last year, followed up the gift with a 18-point contract that he had to sign in order to use his phone? It was aaaall over the Internet at the time, and the mom, a writer named Janell Burley Hofmann, was all over TV, along with her son. It was as though they were (the best kind of) circus attraction; so out of the ordinary as to draw oohing and ahhing crowds. So fascinating! How did she do that? My feeling at the time …Keep Reading
Living with Less: How Much Stuff Does a Family Need?
Last spring, at the height of weekend garage sale season, my older boy asked me, “Mom, do people all over the world have garage sales?” How I answered will be revealed at the end of this post. But I thought about our conversation after reading this opinion piece in the Sunday New York Times, about why we all have so much stuff and what we can do about it. It’s by a serial Internet entrepreneur named Graham Hill who realized, when a series of life changes first compelled him to buy and fill up a 3,600-square-foot Seattle house and, then, …Keep Reading
It’s Okay Not to Share: A Q&A With Author Heather Shumaker
I have to say, when I read the title of Heather Shumaker’s new (and terrific!) book It’s Okay Not to Share…and Other Renegade Rules for Raising Competent and Compassionate Kids (Jeremy Tarcher/Penguin), I breathed a sigh of relief. Because to be honest, when my kids were very little, I couldn’t bear the sharing emphasis. Good heavens, two-year-olds are just not able to share! And then when they get older, they may know sharing is right, but still, they have to negotiate and figure out their own needs before they just hand over a toy because some adult told them to. …Keep Reading
Shut Your Mouth, Mom! An Interview and Podcast with Duct Tape Parenting author Vicki Hoefle
Last Friday, as the rain and sleet that had been falling since early morning turned to swirls of snow and strong winds — the beginnings of the Northeast’s so-called Winter Storm Nemo (don’t get me started!) — I was on the phone with parent educator, author and mother of five Vicki Hoefle. I don’t know if it was the threatening weather outside my window or her charming laugh, but I seriously wished we were chatting in person over hot cocoa. By the end of our talk, I also kinda wished she could come over and, you know, help me raise …Keep Reading
The Hardest Part of Being a Mean Mom? I’d Have to Say the Repetition (And Then I’d Have to Say it Again!)
My kids don’t think I’m mean! And yet, I am — at least, by my definition, which is that this whole long-haul-parenting gig is hard, in large part because it’s so darned repetitive. You don’t get to say things one time. If you believe it, you have to stick to it. Like exercise: Just once, and you’re simply sore. Not at all, and you’re just flabby. But to be firm? It’s over, and over. And over and over. And over. But back to the kids: The other night, I read from Mean Moms Rule and signed copies for 60 to …Keep Reading
