Growing Up

Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is a way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself. -William Martin - The time and place we are so fortunate to live in are truly extraordinary! Technological advancements alone would make the 19th century human cry witchcraft. The opulence of our lifestyle, even a middle class lifestyle, far surpasses that of the majority of the world. Our children stand to inherit...

Our society puts a lot of pressure and worth on physical appearance. How attractive we are to others can affect our success in life – our place among friends, all levels of schooling, mate selection, even our jobs. There is no getting around this societal norm – it has to be faced one way or the other, particularly for women and girls in my opinion. It’s likely something we have all encountered before, and for me it drives home in a major way when I think about my child and how physical appearance already affects her young life. I have always been comfortable in my own bare skin even before I became a mom. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy going glam...

My son was the first experience I had with potty training. I researched every book and webpage on the subject and decided that the 3-day naked potty training boot camp was the way to go. I started training him just before he was 2-years old. One morning, we took off the diaper and didn’t put one back on. Yikes! I had a training potty in the bathroom,  one in the living room, and one in the kitchen. My son walked around in just a t-shirt. We had many accidents! How many times can you clean up tee-tee from the floor? The sofa? The bar stools??? By the end of the three days, he was NOT potty trained. Eventually, we...

If you see me in public with my children, the odds are pretty good that my daughter, Ellen will be wearing a princess dress. It'll be poofy and glittery and girly - and not at all what I would have chosen for her. But it's not my job to choose for her anymore (not ALL the time, anyway). I didn't get to that place without a pretty entertaining internal fight. When I was pregnant with her, I made a big deal about decorating her room. I wanted it to be modern, but not too trendy. I wanted it to be beautiful but not girly and without reference to any established gender role. There was to be no pink, no frills....

It’s a common theme on blogs, in parenting magazines, in commercials: Mommy versus baby, parents vs. kids, surviving motherhood, etc., etc. It can often be comedic, and I know all parents feel like sometimes their kids are out to get them, but I think that mentality, even if it's mostly meant as a joke, can sometimes get in the way of resolving issues between children and their parents. My son has started throwing some tantrums. He’s 15 months old, and while he’s always been a kid who knows what he wants, he’s started getting very, ahem, peeved when he doesn’t get his way. It’s been new territory for me, because before this, if I had to take something away from him...