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Parent Teacher Conferences and Praise

In Elementary school, parent teacher conferences are simple: one teacher, one appointment. Junior high is more complicated and the school seeks to solve this issue by a sort of open house conference...

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Building a Family Culture for a Happy Holiday Season

It is December 5th and we only have two wrapped Christmas gifts under our tree. They were deposited there by my sister who visited last weekend. Usually the tree starts to accumulate presents within a...

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In the Aftermath

Some days I read the news and I have to put my heart into a box for a while. 26 people dead. Shot at an Elementary school in Connecticut. 20 of them children. It is the second worst school shooting in...

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Telling Kids About Bad Things

Howard and I spent most of the weekend avoiding the news. We checked in for updates, but only read them in text. We watched no video and tried to keep to bare facts as much as possible. We certainly...

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The End Game of Motherhood

The endgame of motherhood is to make yourself obsolete. This is how you know you’ve succeeded, when they launch into their own lives and no longer need you. It is a hard thing. It is why I find myself...

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Taylers and Their Screens

It is Sunday afternoon and the kids have been watching Phineas and Ferb for hours. Howard and I have watched snatches of the show as well, because the cleverness reaches out and grabs us as we pass...

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Adventures in Social Media

I want to fund a picture book, The Strength of Wild Horses, and the obvious choice for that is to run a Kickstarter drive. However those who are wise in the ways of Kickstarter have advised me that the...

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Insomnia and My Almost Teen

It was 11pm and Gleek was awake. I’d turned out her lights at 9, right on schedule. Then there was quiet, until she called me to ask a question. Thirty minutes after that there was a snack request....

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The Developmental Stages of Teens

On my One Cobble communities on Facebook and Google+ I’ve begun running a weekly feature where I post a Re-Cobble. It is a link to one of my earlier blog entries with commentary. As I was noodling...

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Gleek and the Science Fair

During my freshman year of college I took a class called Human Development. I’m pretty sure I picked it to fill a general education requirement, but I think things I learned there have been pretty...

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Choosing Between Professional Events and Family Needs

It was not a good day for reasons that I’d been unable to discern. I tried to manage it with willpower and then an application of caffeine, yet I couldn’t seem to get started on important tasks. Time...

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A Quick Thought on Family Relationships

Much mention is made of the “family unit” which usually means two parents and a number of children. This grouping is then treated as a single entity. There is truth in this, particularly in the early...

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Too Many Parenting Things for One Day

Funny how I can come to the end of a day knowing I filled it with important things and yet still be buried under thoughts of how I could do better. Last weekend was one in which all my children burst...

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Stepping Up My Parenting Game

Life comes in cycles of wax and wane, ebb and flow. I take the same approach to parenting. Sometimes I’m sticking close to my kids, helping them with homework, actively teaching, enforcing chores, etc....

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Afternoon Parenting Battles

First there was the battle of the Mythology assignment. Link gave me many reasons for why he didn’t need to do it: talking about Greek gods made him uncomfortable, the deadline was today, he’d already...

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Things I need to tell myself while facing diagnosis for a child

First: Realize that you have a battle to fight with denial. You really want to be imagining things. Any time things are normal for a while, you will doubt the diagnosis, doubt the need to seek...

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Meeting at the School

It is never fun to have an hour long meeting including the principal, two teachers, and the school psychologist when the subject of the meeting is “How do we help your child cope with school in a way...

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Hard Things, Anxiety, Schools, and Hope

Sometimes, in the middle of a hard thing, all I can do is remember that I once believed it was possible and keep going. I tweeted those words yesterday, because yesterday and Monday I could not feel...

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Normality, Denial, and Parenting

Humans are inherently social creatures, even those of us who are happiest when we have significant quantities of time alone. Some people are checking around to make sure they fit in, others are...

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Small Changes in Parenting Tactics

It often doesn’t take a very large parenting shift to make a big difference in a family dynamic. Some recent examples: In mid-February Link was feeling neglected and unloved at home. He saw all the...

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