Category: Parenting
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Save the Journals or Burn Them…?
Although New Year’s Day is often a day to toss out the “old”, the January 1st purging of my home office was not planned. I just happened to smell a fire brewing outside and discovered my husband burning some Christmas wrap and nonsense snail mail. I was sitting in…
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Our Many Characteristics
My youngest called from college, distressed about boy #1 talking to boy #2 on her behalf. She did not approve. She believes that any young man worth dating in the future would need to personally get to know her – through her. The conversation progressed into fully analyzing the words…
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We are Parenting PIONEERS
“We” would be those of us who were the very first average citizens to log on to the new thing called aol.com back in the late 1990s on our clunky PCs. “We” are largely in our late 40s and early 50s with teenagers or young adult children. “We” are those…
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Unlike Most People, I’m Glad It’s Monday
It’s seven weeks into the semester and I’m profoundly feeling the effects of the empty-nest. The weekends are the worst, especially Sunday evenings. Some Moms get through this easier than others, but I’m struggling. Saturdays were always slow mornings, since we went to church on Sundays. Breakfast, hanging out in…
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Assuming Her Life Must Be Easy, But Really, It’s Not
One of my friends (we’ll call her Hannah) has been slightly overweight all of her adult life. We never discussed it much as she never felt hindered by it, nor expressed desire to change it. Then, unexpectedly one day Hannah admitted to me that she had admired one woman in…
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Why We Struggle to Respect Others’ Parenting Health Care Decisions-Microchipping is One Reason
Why do we struggle to respect the health care choices other parents make for their children? I think the answer is: because “their decisions” potentially affect our own children. Several years ago, one of my students gave a presentation arguing against the use of VeriChip, which are microchip implants placed…
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About This Mama Duck…
Well, first, the “duck” title is a metaphor for being the leader of my nest (a home on a few acres of land that is in need of updating but with three ducks in college, we’re keeping the outdated kitchen!). The duck metaphor also represents the protector of the babies…
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Trying to get the perfect photo of your moody teens? Graduation? Christmas?
My twins who are the oldest of my three kids were entering the really annoying “teen stage” at about 13 years old. They were still very good kids, but one thing in particular became very difficult for about a year: taking family photos with happy faces! It was November and…
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Enough
The world tells me to just be me But then it says my shirt isn’t tight enough My skirt isn’t short enough My waist isn’t tiny enough. Politicians tell me to vote with my head and my heart Then they claim I’m not pro-murder enough I’m not woman-enough Not…
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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,…
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The Difference in One Year THEN and The Difference in One Year NOW…
Between birth and one year of age, my kids: Rolled over, crawled, pulled up and walked by 9 months Ate solid food Said all family names Eventually spoke in choppy sentences Followed book pages with their eyes and hands Always toddled toward Mama and Dada. Between 16 and 17 years of…
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Stuff Mom’s don’t want to say out loud. Sometimes we do, but many times we don’t… :)
Well, our pre-Mom lives certainly didn’t always look like the photo to the left, and our post-Mom lives certainly don’t always look like the photo to the right. But, wow, sometimes it does get crazy, right?! (Photo courtesy momtastic.com.) Stuff Moms sometimes say out loud, but more often, we don’t: Is…
Tales from a Mid-Lifer 