Browsing Tag

parenting

Parenting Differently than My Parents

Not Your Parents’ Parenting

FAM, kids By June 27, 2016 Tags: , , , , , , No Comments

My parents were great—no complaints at all, but as a kid I remember that there were certain house rules that made me repeatedly think: I will never do that to my kids. I will certainly be parenting differently than my parents.

Of course, looking back, my parents weren’t that bad and for the most part, they were pretty logical.

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Dads Are Not Babysitters

baby, FAM, kids By April 18, 2016 Tags: , , , , , 3 Comments

Society generally portrays dads as having it pretty easy. I am not going to lie – sometimes I think they do too. Raise your hand if you don’t think you occasionally do more than your partner, and I will personally nominate you for sainthood.

I am the default parent of our daughter in that I look after snack-day, what needs to be in her daily backpack, or when it’s time for her next shots. This is not because I am the mother, but because my partner has a memory like a sieve and the poor kids at daycare would never get their cupcakes.

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Under Pressure: Mothering in The Age of Perfection

baby, FAM, self By April 9, 2016 Tags: , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

There are more than a few reasons I am happy I waited until my mid-30’s to have a baby (and a few reasons I am not, but that’s for another post), and when I did give birth at 37 and decided to hit some of the mom-and-baby library groups, it became abundantly clear what exactly had made waiting right for me.

Being a people watcher and an armchair psychologist, I had a good look around. The moms were all younger than me; I wasn’t the oldest, thankfully, due to the grandmother unsuccessfully wrangling her grandchildren to the circle and the elderly librarian trying to grab their attention.

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Spanking Does Not Equal Discipline, or Respect

FAM, kids By April 6, 2016 Tags: , , , No Comments

When I first found out my Wife was pregnant with our son, I was over-the-moon excited.  I had always wanted to be a parent for as long as I can remember and while we were actively trying to get pregnant I couldn’t help but be excited as if it were a complete surprise to me.  I had always had these grand ideas of how I was going to be a great parent, mostly because my parents were such poor examples.  I would simply do everything opposite of them.  How could I fail?

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5 Things I’ve Learned From Raising a Girl

FAM, kids, self By January 19, 2016 Tags: , , 11 Comments

I am a determined, independent woman with strong opinions (sometimes to my detriment, to be sure) but I have (mostly) learned along my 40-year journey when to bare my teeth and when to turn my back. And then I had a daughter. I had to think about raising a girl. All of a sudden, I felt the weight of having to teach her how to be all of those things that I wanted to be, too, while still making sure she didn’t choke on grapes or fall out of the stroller.

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