If your kids think you're cool, you must be doing something wrong…
Double-bear mum top. Is there really
a mum in there?
North Texas parents of young kids, start saving your money now if you want your child to “fit in” in high school. And if your child happens to be a girl, take out a second mortgage on your
house. Because if high …
Shaun Cassidy, 2005
I heard on the radio this morning that Shaun Cassidy turns 52 today. They played part of one of his tunes and it took me back. It also made me think
about the whole phenomenon of teen idols. I guess ever since the invention of movies, records, and fan magazines, there have been teen …
I’ve never thought of myself as a domestic diva, but I think I’m at least a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, between
“Barely Knows How To Boil Water” and “While Homemade Bread is Baking In Perfectly Cleaned Oven, She Hand-Paints Her Own Gift Wrap And Coordinating Tags On A Table She’s Refinished All By
Herself.” I mean I did major in journalism and Home Economics. I was in 4-H for six years as a teenager, sewing and cooking …
When parents have a bone to pick with a teacher or a school, it’s definitely a whole different ballgame than
everyday consumer complaints. Many things race through your head when trying to decide if you should speak out or not. Will the teacher take it out on my child in the classroom if I complain? Will
my complaint really make a difference? Will they laugh at me after I leave? You know there are those parents who are in the principal’s …
Just watched a sneak preview of the new ABC TV show, No Ordinary Family, about a family who discovers they each
have a superpower after surviving a plane crash. And I must say, while I know a lot of people are into superheroes these days, I thought the best parts of the show were the ordinary moments. The
moments that people can relate to, where they can say, yeah, I know someone like that, or wow, they act just like my …
Are other parents with school-aged kids feeling the crush of back-to-school paperwork this year, or is it just
me? That was the question on my mind last Thursday afternoon when I got an email asking me to fill out what seemed like the 50th (or was it the 60th) “form” I’ve had to
fill out since the start of school. I put the question to Barb, a mother of two, ages 10 and 13, who was at the elementary school that …
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, …
I carried them for nine months and nursed them for at least as long; went through morning sickness, nausea, a C-section, VBAC, migraine headaches, and major sleep loss for them; got carpal tunnel
syndrome and had to completely change my wardrobe —you’d think my kids could at least look like me …
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 …
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, …