Because sometimes being a parent means doing what’s hard.
Posted in Uncategorized, discipline, family life, parenting, parenting research on Jul 15th, 2010
Okay, here we go again, with another flurry of conversation swirling around the topic of parents, children, and happiness. Specifically: Does becoming a parent increase or decrease happiness? Do kids make you happy? Are parents happier than non-parents? And my personal favorite: Why do we all work so hard at this parenting stuff without it [...]
Posted in discipline, school on Apr 6th, 2010
Like any parent, I’m appalled and saddened and horrified in equal measure when I hear stories like the one about Phoebe Prince, the Irish girl who, after moving with her family to South Hadley, Massachusetts, was so mercilessly teased–both in the halls of her high school and online–that she committed suicide. Like any parent, I [...]
Posted in discipline, family life, humor, school on Mar 24th, 2010
Over at Mommasaid.net, my friend and colleague Jen Singer lists some of the reasons parenting teens is harder now than it used to be (exhibit A: sexting. Shudder). Jen actually has a newly-minted, real-life teenage son. I do not, yet (though I do sometimes stare at the welter of kid-size sneakers, boots, and soccer cleats [...]
Posted in discipline, kids and food on Feb 11th, 2010
My boys are completely normal American children, which is to say, if you sit them down in front of a bag of potato chips, they’ll plow through them. If you give them a bucket of Halloween candy, they’ll dig right in. If you make a cake and offer them mixer beaters coated with chocolate frosting, [...]
Posted in discipline on Jan 28th, 2010
Spoiling. Wow, what a hotbutton topic. Right now, as I type, I’m listening to the Brian Lehrer show, on my local NPR radio station (WNYC; I listen to it streaming live on WNYC.org). He’s talking to Rufus Griscom, the founder of the parenting website Babble.com. Babble has a column called “Bad Parent,” and he’s been [...]
Posted in discipline, family finances, humor on Jan 5th, 2010
We had quite the day on New Year’s Eve. We woke to a snowstorm, which we drove through, slipping and sliding, for an hour to reach a lawyer’s office in a town that’s normally a 20-minute drive away. We were closing on a refinance of our home mortgage, a process that had taken many frustrating [...]
Posted in discipline, family life on Nov 24th, 2009
Did anyone see this article in the New York Times’ Style section the other day? It’s by Alex Williams, it’s titled Becoming the Alpha Dog in Your Own Home, and woo, boy did I get a good laugh over it. In a good way, I assure you! The story is about how some parents today [...]
Posted in babies, discipline, family life, kids and food on Aug 26th, 2009
Years and years ago, well before I had kids, I was hanging around in my sister’s newly refinished basement, playing some board games with two of her kids and my dad. My niece and nephew, Tara and Nick, were drinking juice out of those foil pouches, like Capri Sun (which now, by the way, are [...]
Posted in discipline on Jul 22nd, 2009
Couple things happened recently that got linked up in my head in one of those classic lightbulb moments. The first thing was a conversation overheard in James’ preschool classroom on the last day of school. A mom of a girl in Jamie’s class was chatting with the teacher about how she was taking her daughter [...]
Posted in discipline, family life on May 26th, 2009
My boys and I had quite a day this past Friday. I’d known for months that May 22 would be a big day: my niece, my beautiful Tara, would be graduating from Marymount Manhattan College. I had to be there, no question about it. Tara was born when I was a senior in college, and [...]