Growing Up

Honor Roll Mom :: Keep Your Expectations Reasonable My oldest child is smart. Like mind-blowingly smart. At 14, I don’t remember a single time he ever had to study for a test. He’s able to remember vast amounts of knowledge and the adults in his life regularly look to him for guidance whenever they have a question about history or geography. He’s been on the honor roll ever since he was old enough to be on it and I’ve been the proud mom, sitting in the front row cheering him on every step of the way. With a child like this, you get used to seeing the A’s and as much as you don’t want to be “that parent," any time...

Barbie, Made For Mothers And Daughters "We girls can do anything, Right Barbie?" That was the slogan I would proudly sing aloud as a little girl playing with my Barbie dolls back in the mid-80’s. If you’re a young Gen X / elder Millennial Mom (a Xennial, if you will), you were probably singing along too.Barbie was not without controversy, but for many of us she symbolized what we hoped to be; beautiful, independent, successful, and happy. Luckily, for little Black girls at that time, Barbie could also be Black! Thanks to Mattel’s Chief Designer of Fashions and Doll Concepts, Louvenia (Kitty) Black Perkins, the first Black Barbie was created in 1979. Barbie was living her best life and she...

Books For Boots It was on a Monday in mid-March of 2023 when I got the call that no parent ever wants to get from their child. The call came from my oldest daughter Mackayla, just days after her 19th birthday. She was crying and it was hard to understand her until I finally made out “Mom … I’m hurt. They found something in the MRI … stress fractures in my hips …” The hardest part of being a parent is hearing your child cry, knowing they are hurt, and knowing there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Little did either of us know just how much that phone call would change our lives over the next few months. Towards...

Please Don't Runaway, Little One It’s happened twice now. Once when she was four, and most recently when she was six. I’ll be completely honest with you, I took it very personally. It hurt my feelings and I felt a sadness in the core of my heart. In both instances, as I tried to understand her logic and point of view, I failed to remind my face that I was a strong person, and tears laced my cheeks like a warm, inviting blanket. She was so serious, too. She carefully, but messily packed her clothes into a suitcase. While she packed her favorite stuffy, she not-so-quietly whispered to Baabaa, her stuffed cow that she thought was a lamb half her life,...

That's Enough Screen Time, Little One I am a middle child, through and through. Mischievous, attention-seeking, too smart for my own good, and always in trouble. I was a poster child for talking back, rolling eyes, and plotting everyone’s evil demise. In second grade, my family went to Disney World for a week, and I never saw the fireworks display because I was grounded every evening. That’s pretty much how most of my childhood went, punished and forced to entertain myself. But during all the time spent alone while punished, I developed an insatiable love for reading. I began to read like it was as essential as food and air. When I was seven, I remember sitting down with The Three Musketeers,...