This is dedicated to all the kids whose caregivers are angry, addicted, crazy, ill, stressed-out, checked-out, abusive, and shrill. You keep on seeking. You can love you. I know you can make it because I did it too. You may not know me, we’ve never met, but we love you out here, please don’t forget. […]
Write Away: School mournings
Ugh. That morning school rush. We always arrive at the school gates at the same time, somewhere around rushed-but-can-still-make-it-o’clock. This year, I also have to get our baby ready to go in the morning. It seems like we’d never make it with those added responsibilities, but we do—and we get there at the same Almost […]
Write Away: I wanna hold your hand
Ever since Annabelle was a baby, Colin has wanted to hold her hand, saying her hands are so soft that he can’t resist them. This sounds sweet, but when Annabelle was an infant, she was very particular about what was okay and what wasn’t. In the “Okay Box” was Mommy holding and feeding and taking […]
Write Away: Boss Babies
We bought our baby an expensive, high tech robot bed. Whenever Carson is fussy, his bed is programmed to soothe him by rocking him and playing white noise to simulate his time in the womb. I purchased it from a friend who called it a miracle bed, saying it saved her marriage and sanity. It’s […]
Write Away: Generation Y Work?
Colin has never liked school, mostly because he feels he could use the time in better ways. I get that. School is a lot of hours, and Lego construction is shockingly absent from the new Common Core. Before he started, I naively thought he’d love school, but I should have realized he’d hate it. When […]
Write Away: Round three
We are expecting our third! (And, Andy says, our last.) It took a little convincing to get Andy on board for number three. I said that I didn’t know Annabelle was going to be our last one, so I wasn’t ready. He said he thought it was pretty clear, since we already have a boy […]
Write Away: Play it again, Sam…and again, and again
One of the greatest challenges of parenting is kiddie music. It’s just so high pitched. And repetitive. And nonsensical. But my kids love it. They perk up whenever it’s on, even if they’ve never heard the song before. It’s like they have some kind of built in radar for high pitched, asinine singing. Should that […]
Write Away: A pain in the neck
I woke up one morning with a terrible cramp in my neck that hung on for days. I tried to solve the problem by ignoring it, so for a while, whenever I wanted to look to my right, I had to turn my whole body. (Who says there isn’t always a workaround?) But eventually I […]
Write Away: Obsessions of a 3-year-old
My 3-year-old daughter is obsessed with “Paw Patrol.” It’s a Canadian show about a boy named Ryder who directs about 10 pups. Whenever there is a problem in town, the citizens call Ryder and his dogs to save them. They do this in lieu of funding a fire or police department. “Paw Patrol” was invented […]
Positively Parenting: Understanding the exceptional child, part 2
Editor’s note: Read part one by CLICKING HERE. MANY CHILDREN WITH ADHD ALSO HAVE a specific learning disability (“SLD”) that can manifest as having trouble with reading, math, writing or language. A small percentage of children have Tourette syndrome. Tourette symptoms come in the form of tics and other movements, like eye blinks or facial […]