Regret Having Kids? Never! (Well, Maybe Sometimes…) TV Show Opportunity!
At the end of this post, you’ll see a link to a new TV show’s website. It’s called Lifechangers, and it’s with Dr. Drew Pinsky, and I’m writing this post because I was asked, by the show’s producers, to help them find a mom willing to come on the show and talk — honestly — about any regret they may feel about having children. What got me was not the “regret” part, but the “honesty” part. When it comes to parenting, both are hard to admit to. I’ve been pretty stubborn, in my eight-and-three-quarters-years of being a parent, about …Keep Reading
Are Our Kids Bored By Playgrounds?
Last summer, we met our friends Sally and Mike and their kids in a nearby harbor town to let the kids play on a playground, walk around a bit, and get some dinner. Typical late-weekend-afternoon-in-the-summer stuff here on Long Island’s bucolic North Shore. I’d been to this town many times before, but not with my kids, so I didn’t remember the playground, and I figured it would look more or less like every playground I’ve seen in the last eight-and-three-quarter (almost!) years of being a parent. You know the kind. Carefully planned. Almost too carefully planned, really, with one …Keep Reading
The Connection Between the Casey Anthony Case and “Teen Mom” Shows
Since the Casey Anthony “not guilty” verdict came in from Central Florida yesterday afternoon, my Facebook wall and Twitter feed have been clogged with “no way!” and “disgraceful!” and “No justice for Caylee!”, to the point where I want to go back in time to an era when social media didn’t dominate. I also avoided news about the Anthony case. For a bunch of reasons: I don’t watch cable TV news ever (the only time I see snippets of CNN, FOX News, or MSNBC, it’s because Jon Stewart’s called them out on The Daily Show. I also don’t watch …Keep Reading
Guest Post: Author Phoebe Lee on Raising a More Grateful Child
One major thing I struggle with is teaching my sons to be grateful for what they have. It’s not easy — as I’m sure many of you would agree with. It’s hard to just say “be grateful!” Reminds me of a story my mother used to tell about how her own mom would prod her to eat up her dinner (my mother didn’t like anything and would subsist on milk alone if she could; she didn’t even like sweets), saying, “Be glad you have this food! There are children starving in India!” To which my mother would, quite naturally …Keep Reading
Confessions of an Impatient Mother
Well, the title says it, eh? I’m confessing: I’m horribly impatient. (Those of you who know me are, I realize, sitting there rolling your eyes, like, duh.) I want to be started with things, and then I want things done. When I wanted to become pregnant, I wanted it to happen pronto, and quickly became frustrated and upset when it took longer than immediately (6 months, for the record). I was sure we’d never find a house we liked and could afford (it took 3 months, for the record, though the closing process dragged for another 5 months until …Keep Reading
Grading the Parents: How Much School Involvement is Enough (or Too Much)?
A long while ago, I wrote a post about how much more involved parents of my generation are in our kids’ schooling and schools than my parents — well meaning as they were — ever were in mine. As my kids have progressed through more school since then, it’s naturally remained on my mind. Just the other day, my third-grader brought home a book-report project with glowing reviews from the teacher. It was neat! It was comprehensive! It was clearly written! The accompanying diorama of the Titanic was fun and detailed! So where’s my grade? Admission time: I made …Keep Reading
The Original Mean Mommy: Why Being the Only Mother You Know How to Be is the Best Lesson My Mother Never Thought She Was Teaching Me
Confession time: The whole mean mommy thing? I stole the idea. Stole. It. But it’s okay, because I stole it from my mother, the Original Mean Mommy: I think I may have written this in my first-ever post on this blog, but it’s an anecdote that bears repeating. When I was newly married but not yet a mother, I was musing aloud to my cousins about what kind of mother I thought I might be. “I have a feeling,” I said, “that I’ll be a lot like my mom.” And my cousin Julia (herself then also a newlywed with no …Keep Reading
Q&A With “The Happiest Mom” Author Meagan Francis. Win Her New Book Here!
I first “met” writer and mom Meagan Francis on an online forum for writers. She was awaiting the overdue delivery of her fourth son. Since then, we’ve become friends on- and off-board, and have met in person at more than one writer’s conference (which tend to include margaritas at some point in the weekend, which I bring up only to prove that, yes, she is a happy mom!). In that time, she’s produced a handful of books (not to mention a fifth child, a daughter) and many hundreds of magazine articles and blog posts on her very popular, very accessible …Keep Reading
Parenting isn’t for Sissies. Or for Sisyphus.
I’m going to be honest here: I haven’t been having the greatest time lately, as a parent. As a friend of mine has said more than once (and she may have borrowed it from someone else): Parenting isn’t for sissies. My boys are going through tough stages. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but I have heard that first grade and third grade (and the odd grades in general) are harder to get through. But they seem stressed out about school even though they’re both doing well. The little one’s mood is on its usual hair-trigger: the same things …Keep Reading
Piano Lessons Plus Pizza Plus Soccer: Why Extracurricular Overload is a Bad Idea
My sons don’t do a lot. That is, they don’t do a lot of extra-curricular activities, at least not by today’s standards. Both boys play soccer (using the word “play” loosely here; James may end up being more instinctively athletic, but rest assured no one in this house is going to college on a sports scholarship), and they seem to enjoy it. Both take piano lessons, because I like it. Seriously, that’s why. I always wanted to have learned a musical instrument, and never did. So when a second-hand piano became available to us for next to nothing, I grabbed …Keep Reading
