“How do I stay close to my daughter?” wrote a worried father. He shared with me how much he loves his 16 month old toddler. To care for her and provide for his family, he commutes an hour and a half each way to and from work every day. But when he arrives home from work, eager to see her, this toddler keeps rejecting her father.
Continue reading “A Toddler Dismisses Her Dad”What if I Mess My Kids Up for Life?
What Effective Parents Do Differently.
The ShouldStorm we face as parents draws its power from hidden beliefs. One of the most problematic of those untrue beliefs is the idea that if we make a mistake we are going to mess our kids up for life. We particularly feel this if we make a mistake consistently.
Continue reading “What if I Mess My Kids Up for Life?”Parenting Toolkit or Parenting Worries?
Turning The Shoulds That Burden You Into Tools You Can Use.
The ShouldStorm in parenting is the swirling mass of advice and criticism we experience as parents, that drives us to feel anxious and overparent. Sometimes it is the advice itself that’s the problem, because it reinforces the basic ideas that create perfectionism and anxiety. But sometimes it’s not the advice at all. It’s how we hear it, or how we use it. We get to choose: parenting worries or parenting toolkit?
Continue reading “Parenting Toolkit or Parenting Worries?”At the Crack of Dawn: What does it mean to have an early riser?
It’s the crack of dawn, and your kids are up. AGAIN. What does it mean to have an early riser? Some kids get up as early as 430am every day, frustrating their tired parents. How do you deal with early risers?
Continue reading “At the Crack of Dawn: What does it mean to have an early riser?”Mother’s Day: Receiving Generously.
We hear a lot about how we mom’s struggle with putting our families first so much that we neglect ourselves. We do it because we feel we need to, we don’t see another option or we don’t see how it will all get done otherwise. Questions of our own worthiness pester us as we focus on raising our families. We all know that in the craziness we are trying so hard to give them what they need, but is it enough? Are we enough?
Continue reading “Mother’s Day: Receiving Generously.”The Dread of Waiting in Lines at Disney
Waiting in Lines on Family Vacation
Despite hours of waiting at lines at Disney World, there is no way around it: Disney is one of my favorite family trips. That’s because Disney is just different. The grounds are clean, and so is the language people use. There are very few people pushing, you are surrounded by people who are generally reasonably happy and enjoying time with family.
Continue reading “The Dread of Waiting in Lines at Disney”Mission NASA: Family Vacation
We drove an hour from our hotel to get to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Our younger son had spontaneously come up with what must be this generation’s version of “Are we there yet?” He kept asking “How many miles left?” He was keeping count and insisted I check the GPS to give him an accurate number. It was both cute and irritating.
Continue reading “Mission NASA: Family Vacation”Never Fear, the Switch Witch is Here
Trick-or-treat! It’s a few days after Halloween and your adorable fairy-princess-witch-super-Star Wars-ninja just collected a pillow case full of Halloween candy. You know how bad all that sugar is. What is a responsible parent to do?
Continue reading “Never Fear, the Switch Witch is Here”The Summer of No TV
Creativity and Boredom
Where we grew up, there were still lots of older homes with no central air conditioning. The summers were hot and humid. There were a few activities you could sign up for at the middle school, but they weren’t all day camps. There were morning swimming lessons in the freezing cold community pool, but after that there was not much to do. The kids that were around did tend to spend a lot of time inside using their Nintendo’s. We already knew our mom was a little different from the other moms. She made us eat whole-grain bread and natural peanut butter, and our snacks were pieces of cheese and fruit. We didn’t get free access to hostess cakes like our friends did. Our TV time was limited, and we had never owned a Nintendo.
Continue reading “The Summer of No TV”Swooping Seagulls
Nature Teaches Kids with Natural Consequences
“The seagulls sure are beautiful, Mom,” said one of my kids on our first evening at the beach in Florida. “Yeah, they are pretty cool,” said the other. “It’s like Finding Nemo!” The two of them started chirping: “Mine Mine Mine Mine.”
Continue reading “Swooping Seagulls”