Mom’s Not Always There. And That’s Okay.
Small housekeeping note: Y’all might be accustomed to my post-writing pace of, what, a couple times a month? But brace yourself for the month of June. Better yet, tell all your mom friends to subscribe before June 1 (the subscribe button is right up at the top right, next to the blog header!), because I’ve joined the WordCount blog’s 2013 Blogathon, which means that, along with many, many other bloggers in a range of subjects, I’ll be putting up a new post EVERY DAY in June! You can click on the WordCount Blogathon icon over there on the right if …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
What Superstorm Sandy Taught Me About Parenting (That I Already Knew But a Reminder’s Always Nice)
When I was a young kid — surprise! — I was a big reader. I could read any time, anywhere, and I can’t recall a single moment of my childhood in which I was bored. Unlike my sister who was prone to carsickness, I could read in the car, so even a relatively short trip (say, the 45 minute drive to my grandparents’ homes) passed in a flash. I could read upside down, I could read sitting hunched on the floor until my butt fell asleep. After a while, trips to the library were utilitarian: My mom would drop me …Keep Reading
Settling Down: Thoughts on September
Since my last post was a sort of farewell (“here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?”) to August, I thought I’d check in with an I-love-September post. School has started. Despite a first September week plagued by high humidity and rain, it’s now my favorite, most energizing, soul-pleasing (not to mention hair-pleasing) weather of the year. It’s someplace between warm and cool, the air is crisp, the breezes ideal for sleeping, the sky as blue as it ever gets. For me, life speeds up in a pleasing way, after the doldrums that the summer ends on. My niece just got married …Keep Reading
Food From a Pouch: Space-age, or Scary?
Kids have been drinking out of pouches for a generation at least. It bears remembering that when many of us were in our juice-drinking days, juice boxes and pouches, as well as sippy cups, didn’t exist. Now, it’s more common in some circles for kids to drink out of so-called spillproof devices or disposable containers than to use cups. I get (and have availed myself of) the convenience factor, but there’s a point at which convenience far outweighs commonsense. And I think we may have arrived there. It occurs to me that drink pouches (and now food pouches, about which more in …Keep Reading
Book Giveaway! Debbie Koenig’s “Parents Need to Eat, Too”
A few weeks ago, my friend Sally and I were emailing about dinner ideas; she’d invited us to her house for a causal family dinner, and wondered what might be good for her to make, and for me to bring to help out. She wanted to make pulled pork in her slow cooker, at which suggestion my mouth immediately commenced watering. But what about the kids? Between my two and her two, we have varying levels of picky/mercurial. Pulled pork? Would they go for it, in the absence of a fall-back serving of mac-and-cheese or plain pasta or hot dogs? …Keep Reading
Le Mean Maman: Are French Moms Meaner (And Are Their Kids Better Behaved as a Result)?
Mon dieu! Some news (well, okay, not news so much as opinion) from across the pond: French moms are not just thinner than their American counterparts; they’re meaner, too. (And Amy Chua thought she had cornered the market on tough.) A friend just sent me this link, to a 2007 article in an U.K. paper (the Telegraph) by an American journalist married to a Frenchman. Janine diGiovanni may (inexplicably, to my ears) describe non-French mamans as “Anglo-Saxon” mothers (who, me, Anglo-Saxon? My people are from Sicily!), but she makes excellent observations (some of them uncomfortable to modern American parents’ …Keep Reading
