Perspectives in Parenting

Confession: It's summertime during a worldwide pandemic and I had no idea what to write for this blog post. It has been eating away at me this entire week. I cannot tell you how many times I stared at my blank screen, cursor judgmentally blinking away at me. "You've got nothing interesting to say, Heather. You go to work, wait tables, change diapers, keep up with your weekly chore chart, school's out and the kids go from video games to trampoline, to asking what's for dinner, to eating anything but ground beef (it's expensive right now!) for dinner, then it's off to bed at 9 pm, where maybe they'll go to sleep without asking for water, maybe you'll take a...

An Open Letter to All the Keyboard Warriors of this World: There's not much to unite us these days. Everyone takes a side on any matter at hand and is convinced that their side is the right one while the other is dead wrong. It doesn't matter how serious or how insignificant the topic is ... politics and religion are clearly hot topics, as is any topic in parenting, but even one's tastes in movies and TV shows can be a cause for division. And there is something about being behind a screen that creates a need to defend your opinion with a fervor that may not come out face to face. Behind the screen, you become brave to say things...

It is the beginning of June, and my summer looks nothing like I thought it would 6 months ago. Although we are in Phase 2 of reopening Louisiana and have several more options than we did in the spring, things are very far from normal. When the world seemed to turn upside down in March, I was in complete shock. As I learned that school was going to be out for weeks, my whole body went cold in disbelief. After the reality sunk in, I decided to power through the spring, giving it everything I had as a teacher and a mom. It is how I cope with the things that I can't control, to focus on what was right...

As, a former all-star, high school, and college cheerleader and current all-star cheer coach, when I heard Netflix was coming out with a docu-series on cheerleading, I CRINGED. This has been done before, and each time the "cheer world" has gotten so much backlash and criticism. In the past, it was always drama-filled series and showed a lot of negatives. But this time, Netflix got it right. I started all-star cheer in the 6th grade at Louisiana Cheer Force, right here in Baton Rouge and cheered with LACF, then cheered at St. Joseph's Academy until I went to college and continued my cheer "career" at Southeastern all while coaching at the gym that taught me everything I know. Netflix's Cheer...

Mommies, mothers, we feel all of the feelings. All of them. We literally feel our children’s bodies move inside of us and hear their heartbeats (thanks to the modern age) before we ever get to meet them.They hear ours, they beat together. This is not to knock fathers or deem them unimportant, my sons will be amazing fathers one day - but we mothers, though, we sacrifice for our little beings before we’ve met them ... no rules to follow ... before we know if they’ll even look anything like us. Sometimes, we love them before they’re a thought, when they're only just a dream. That's a powerful love. This is not to say that those mothers who choose to be mothers...