Because sometimes being a parent means doing what’s hard.
Posted in family finances, family life, learning, summer, vacation on Aug 10th, 2010
So, last weekend my family and I were up in the Catskill Mountains, in upstate New York, at a family-style resort we’ve been going to, on and off, my whole life (my dad used to go there as a teen, that’s how long we’ve been patrons of this particular spot). By “family” I mean a [...]
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 Uncategorized, family life, humor, parenting, school, summer on Jul 7th, 2010
My second son, James, is bewildering and bedeviling in shifting measures, like all offspring, but I have been feeling for a while lately that, while he’s as capable as his big brother of winning or crushing my heart, I understand him better. To put it in actorly terms, I have flashes of brilliance and insight, [...]
Posted in family life, parenting, parenting research on Jun 23rd, 2010
Here’s a case where being a Mean Mom works in your favor: When you have a big family. It’s obvious, right? You can’t coddle and hover over 14 kids; no one’s arms are that big. Even with four or five kids helicoptering and over-parenting is a stretch. (And four or five is, by today’s standards [...]
Posted in babycare, family life, humor, mom bloggers on May 10th, 2010
As readers can tell by perusing my last post, I’m not on board with junking up emotions surrounding motherhood with borrowed words or treacly sentiment. I’m all about the reality, kiddos. I’ve also never been, since becoming a mom, about abandoning my own hard-won instincts in order to follow any crowd into a place that [...]
Posted in family life, holiday, mommy guilt on May 7th, 2010
Sigh. Facebook is at it again. well, not Facebook itself, but the community of FBers. As I type, with a day and a half until Mother’s Day descends upon us again, one of those “copy and paste this and put it in your status line if you’re a Mom!” thingies is virusing its way around. [...]
Posted in Mean Mom's Question Time, family life, kids' TV on May 4th, 2010
Starting this week (and hopefully continuing because it turns out to be wildly successful!), I’m instituting Mean Mom’s Question Time. Because I got to thinking: I can write (and write, and write, and write), but I’d rather discuss sometimes. So. Here’s the topic for Week One of Mean Mom’s Question Time: How much TV do [...]
Posted in family life, spirituality on Apr 13th, 2010
I was thinking a couple of weeks ago about a post I wrote back in November, which for reasons I didn’t articulate at the time, I titled Having Faith: The Spiritual Education of Mommy, Part I. Why Part I? At the time I typed without thinking about it. I must have figured I’d have more [...]
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 babies, family life on Mar 5th, 2010
OK, so Pam and Jim had their baby on The Office last night. (And if you’ve got it DVR’d and haven’t watched yet, go away now and come back later, because spoilers are ahead). They had a girl. I want a girl. I really, really do. And for all the ridiculous reasons — the clothes [...]