Because sometimes being a parent means doing what’s hard.
Posted in discipline, family life, modern families, parenting, parenting controversies on Jan 17th, 2012
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. [...]
Posted in discipline, family life, holiday on Dec 15th, 2011
Who’s afraid of saying “no” to their children? Just this morning, literally five minutes after watching me pack his and his brother’s lunchboxes for school, my seven-year-old asked me, “Can I buy lunch today?” Now, I could have looked at him, and realized in that split second that saying “No, honey, not today, Mommy already [...]
Posted in discipline, family life, guest posts on Jun 13th, 2011
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 [...]
Posted in birthday parties, discipline, family life, humor, kids and food, school on Jun 6th, 2011
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 [...]
Posted in discipline, family life, Mean Mom's Question Time on Mar 17th, 2011
This morning, I got to talking to a woman at my gym. Normally, I don’t talk much at the gym (too focused on getting in, working out, and getting out!), but as it happens we were hanging around waiting for a Zumba instructor who never showed up! (Grrr… does she not know that I only [...]
Posted in discipline, family life, modern families, Moms on moms, other parents, parenting on Jan 28th, 2011
Since I wrote my post last week on The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, the parenting memoir by Yale University Law professor and writer Amy Chua, it’s gotten even more press — good, bad, backpedaling, explaining. I’ve read a lot of it, not all of it — but I did read the book, as [...]
Posted in discipline, young kids and self-esteem on Jan 13th, 2011
Last week, an article in the Wall Street Journal caused a major stir in the parenting world. Amy Chua, a law professor, author, and mother just published a book called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, and the blogosphere is having spasms over her and her stories of forcing her daughters to practice piano for [...]
Posted in bad parents in fiction, discipline, family life, humor, modern families on Jan 7th, 2011
You know what’s funny? It’s not most sitcoms (ba-da-bum!). What’s funny is that after the last time I wrote about the CBS TV sitcom “The Middle,” my friend Sally wrote to agree with me, and also to wonder how it was that I even managed to sit down for an 8pm show. Sally and I [...]
Posted in bullying, discipline, family life, humor, modern families, other parents, parenting, TV Moms (and Dads) on Dec 23rd, 2010
I’ve now been writing Confessions since May of 2009, when I tapped out my first post, The Birth of a Mean Mom. In reading over random past posts this morning, I felt the urge to re-read a couple of favorites, just to see if I still agree with myself (for those of you who are [...]
Posted in bullying, discipline, other parents, parenting, school on Oct 14th, 2010
So I was just reading this article in the Sunday NY Times this morning, by Pamela Paul, about the phenomenon of bullying drifting down into younger and younger ages. Like kindergarten. Of course, bullying is a huge topic right now, given the rise in attention paid to the tragic stories of bullying leading to suicide [...]
