Tales from a Mid-Lifer

Category: Parenting

  • Mom, were you EVER a kid?!

    Whenever I don’t laugh at something my 16-year old son thinks is funny, he asks me if I was EVER a kid.  Just last week he told a friend that he believes Grandma delivered me as a “grown up”. The truth is, somewhere along the parenting-teens years, I have admittedly…

  • There ARE Honest People Out There!

    My girls and I took a road trip to see the extraordinarily talented and kind  Taylor Swift in Philadelphia last weekend.  After a 2-hour rain delay, we were wowed by her excellent performance.  Since my son and husband often travel for hockey, we called this our “hockey weekend”. After a…

  • A Teenager’s Crisis of Faith

    Recently, my three children and I ran into a lovely Mom and her 16-year old daughter.  My twins and her daughter attended the same small Christian school together from Kindergarten through 3rd grade. We hadn’t seen each other in about 6 years, so we caught up on each other’s happenings and…

  • Choose My Battles?

    Last week my husband suggested that I more carefully “choose battles” with my twin 16-year olds.  Spending so much time together during the summer apparently had me criticizing them about “stupid things”. While I might have dismissed my husband’s comment ;), I was convicted while reading a statement from Ruth…

  • Is College Worth It?

    There are two dominant themes throughout the book Is College Worth It? by William J. Bennett and David Wilezol:  1) overpriced higher education and 2) considering the heights of underemployment and unemployment currently rampant among recent college graduates – a questionable return on students’ investment. Bennett and Wilezol provide an…

  • My Empty-Bucket List

    For many years, I’ve conducted an activity with my college students, asking them to create their own version of the famous “Bucket List”.  I warn them that the list should not include professional goals necessarily, but rather focus upon the “really neat”, “exciting”, “extraordinary”, places, events, activities, etc., that they…

  • My face through my son’s hockey helmet…

    My son’s wide, blue eyes beamed through the cage of his hockey helmet, and I noticed he was really looking at me.  I was standing over him in the Emergency Room, as he lay on a stretcher, still in full uniform from the concussion he suffered an hour earlier.  He…

  • Moms of Teen Boys: Be Encouraged!

    I got longer than most Moms.  More hugs, more “I love you’s”, more devotion from my son than any other Mom I know.  That was, until he turned 14 years and two months old.  In one overnight sleep from Tuesday to Wednesday, an uneventful week by anyone’s standards, my son…

  • Desensitize my Kids?!

    I was participating in a women’s prayer meeting at a church where I was relatively new. Until that day, I regularly offered prayer for others, but rarely requested any for myself.  As my children began Middle School, I realized that it would take the proverbial village to protect my kids…

  • Is It Fair That We Are Judged By How We Look?

    This is a question that I have asked my college students over the years.  Inevitably, they will argue that it is absolutely “not fair!” and without my intervention, end up sharing countless examples of when they, themselves immediately judged by physical appearance.  Therefore, determining that while “unfair”, it is unequivocally,…

  • The Teen Boys Sleepover

    Half of my 16 year-old son’s hockey team slept over last week.  With one eye on Iron Man 2 and the other checking their Instagram feed, they laid throughout the family room, with potato chips and soda bottles strewn everywhere.  Unlike when my daughters’ have girlfriends sleep over, I was…

  • Post Vacation Reality Check

    I had just survived a 22-hour car ride home with three teenagers in the backseat.  My bottom surely expanded another two inches from the countless hours of idleness.  Despite these truths and the annoying grunting by my family as they finally exited the minivan, I was mentally renewed, well-rested and…