Month: August 2010

Being a Better Parent

Communication Breakdown? Start Writing…

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I’ve been thinking that the joke about “people texting each other inside the same house” might not be such a
bad idea. Or carrying around a white board. Or sticking notes in lunch bags. According to a study released last week from Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 1 in 5 teens now has at
least a slight hearing loss, due possibly to iPod volume. The study, conducted with almost 5,000 kids, showed slight hearing loss increasing in the past 15 years, …

Raising Teenagers

Table for Five

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I’ve written about surprises before—how parents of teens are often faced with “surprise” dilemmas, constantly having to make judgment calls about things they’ve never experienced before. The first
few days with our 16-year-old foreign exchange student, Cleo, have been filled with surprises, too—only the good kind. Gifts? Yes, she brought …

Travel With Kids

Road Trippin’

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Just got back from taking the kids (and the dog) on our annual summer road trip to Grandma’s (a 26-hour round trip) and while there, we
decided to rent a movie and teach Grandma how to use her DVD player. It’s hard to find a movie on which an 86-year-old, a 15-year-old, an 11-year-old and two 40-something parents
can agree, but at Allison’s suggestion we chose “RV”, a 2006 family road trip movie starring Robin Williams, Jeff Daniels, Kristin Chenowith, …

Being a Better Parent

Complaints and Compliments: Teaching Kids About Consumer Feedback

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The story in the news these days of Jet Blue flight attendant Steven Slater has me thinking—not just about the
straight-outta-the-movies way in which he quit his job, but about the onboard incident that preceded it, when a passenger reportedly cursed at him and cut Steven’s head with her suitcase, mad
because she was told to sit down until her arriving plane came to a complete stop. I wondered if that passenger had children watching. Yes, we’ve all been ticked off …

Raising Teenagers

The Annual Teen Summer Sleep-In…Maybe Not So “Natural” After All

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I remember it well. Being at my cousins’ house one summer when I was a kid and staying up until 2 a.m. for the
first time, then sleeping until at least 10 the next morning. Amazing! I felt so grown up. I was 9 or 10 and my cousins were both teens. It was an early taste of what would be a common occurrence
when I became a teen—sleeping late in the summer. Which is why I haven’t nagged (well, not …

Sharing Stories

Updates

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Time for an update on previous blog posts, especially in light of the “archived” post just published on
Mamapedia:

      Emmie has
decided to play an instrument in 6th grade band…and the instrument is…drumroll please (how appropriate)…drums! Well, actually “percussion”. Which means xylophone, several different kinds
of drums, tambourine, castanets, gong, washboards… —anything to fill out that “wall of sound”. Our exchange student may want to run and …