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Yes, we let them climb on the playhouse in the backyard unsupervised! Sue us.

OK, OK, not abandon them per se. (Jeez, Jane, way to write a provocative and misleading headline just to get people to read the post.) But at what age is it appropriate for them to leave the confines of your house or backyard unsupervised? Seven? Nine? Fourteen?

As the fabulous Madeline Holler wrote about over on Strollerderby and as my fellow Babble Voices blogger Stefanie-Wilder Taylor discussed/debated last night on the Dr. Drew show, last Saturday was national “Take Our Children to the Park…And Leave Them There” Day, as declared by Lenore Skenazy, author of Free Range Kids.

Skenazy suggested that parents drop their kids aged 7 or older off at a local park and let them play with other kids, unsupervised, for a while, arguing that experiences like this are important for kids — to foster their independence and to let them create the kind of fond childhood memories many of us have of being on our own. No planned activities, no hovering parents. Read more »

Hello! Word is there’s been lots of mommy/ daddy warcrap over the past few weeks. How’s that coming along? Is is safe to come out yet?

The latest wave of weirdness is this new thing where parents have to tell you if they love their children more than their spouses, or vice versa. Because calibrating your love barometer is an important source of life data. Because you can apply a regression model to determine that love as a function of x, and then:

• extrapolate that love to predict ordinate love levels throughout the life of the abscissa;
• use the first derivative to determine the instantaneous rate of change of that love at any moment;
• use the second derivative to determine if your love has reached an inflection point (and it’s time to see a couples therapist); and
• integrate that love function to calculate the aggregate amount of love you have received.

If all this feels like complete nonsense, your table is waiting here in the Restaurant of Every Parent in the World.

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When I wrote 35 for 35: Things I have learned in my 35 years last August, I was just beginning a new chapter in my life. Gone was the insecurity of my twenties (thank goodness), and I was coming out of an obsessive workaholic first half of my thirties that left me exhausted, it was time to take a breath and start a new chapter.

I feared that I would one day look back on my life and see the trappings of modern success and regret that I hadn’t embraced more adventure and lived with more meaning. Could life  really be best spent worried about the latest Social Media tool, playground politics and what’s coming on TV? I was running through the days, going through the motions, and that busyness was beginning to lead to an overwhelmingly depressing feeling of emptiness. It was time to wean myself from my steady diet of distractions.

Change is always just a little painful.  I was determined to give the idea living differently a shot. I needed to clear my head and breathe deeply. I revisited my lifelist and realized I was on a journey…

Less Twitter, more books with pages. Less TV, more gardening. Less senseless drama, more meaningful conversations. Less need to impress, more whimsy and adventure.

At the same time, I was building my next start up- Picha Global. I began reading stories of need. Stories of individuals who lack food, clean water and access to living saving medication. I thought I knew what struggling was, but my mind could not comprehend what conditions millions suffer with daily.

The heart wrenching fact is that the only difference between orphans around the world and my children is only where they were born. The injustice of it all wrecked me. Again, I was on a journey…

The thing about journeys is they are never quite done, until *poof* they are, and then you look back and see the turning points and say, “Aha! That was a great part of the journey. It all makes sense now.” To grow, you have to be open and change things, right? Change surroundings, circumstances, perspectives and so forth.

As luck would have it, I made room in my life and change landed in my lap.

In the middle of my really-early-onset-mid-life-crisis I was invited to travel to Ethiopia to see first hand the work that Food for the Hungry is doing for the poor and most vulnerable. Food for the Hungry does work in many continents from disaster relief to micro-enterprise. If I went to Ethiopia I would be spending time learning exactly how this Nonprofit group works with individuals in Ethiopia and how small (Small in terms of our Western budgets) donations completely transform lives across the world.

My cynicism about the emptiness of modern western life and my wrecked heart for orphans were, at once, answered by the invitation to go.

I said yes to the new journey

I said yes to telling the stories I see, to helping orphans and the most vulnerable children in Ethiopia be sponsored. It’s such a small amount of money that is needed to provide food, healthcare, education and more… a breathtakingly small amount.

I’m on a journey.

A journey to find more purpose.

A journey to share the overflowing grace I’ve been shown.

A journey to make the world just a little better.

I hope you will join me on this journey. I’ll share my thoughts, pictures and experiences here with you from the other side of the world in less than two months. I’m excited, I’m nervous, I’m honored and I’m excited to embark on a project with real, and lasting, significance.

I’ve mentioned before that my style of parenting is somewhere between helicopter and free-range. I call it Satellite Parenting, because if there’s one thing I like, it’s making up terms for concepts that probably already have terms for them.

I grew up pretty free range, but because of addiction and single, working parent necessity rather than anything like a choice on my parents’ part. I turned out fine. Sure, I got hit by a van while riding my bike on a highway once, and sure, I fell through the ice into the St. Lawrence River once, and sure I…hmmm….

Actually, I was pretty lucky to survive being a Free Range Kid.

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The last day of school has arrived. Summer vacation starts next week.

Wait. Right there.

Stop and identify exactly how you felt when you read that notice. Did your heart lighten? Or did your stomach drop? A little of both?

My heart absolutely lightened. And then my stomach dropped.

We are standing at the edge of a water sprinkler, glorious sun warming our skin, lighting up the water droplets as they fly through the air, and all I can think is that I have work to do. I want to jump right in (yes! let’s do it!) but then I’d have to dry off and get dressed all over again and, just ugh.

I love summer at home with my kids. I realize that not all parents feel this way. I’m not, then, one of those parents that dread the kids being home. We do all we can to embrace every day off, deliberately spinning moments into memories lest the entire summer slip away. That’s the thing – if I didn’t stop myself and appreciate the gift of time we’ve been handed, the entire summer would evaporate with nothing but lots of hours on the couch to show for it.

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On SDL’s Facebook Page, I posted a simple question. “What is something you’ve found yourself saying to a child that you never thought you would?” The answers that came in have had me rolling on the floor ever since. Here are a few of them for your uninhibited laughing pleasure. Also, be sure to read the previous installments of You Said WHAT to your kid?

• When we draw a picture of someone, it is not necessary to draw their peepees as well.
• Boys! Take the frogs out of your mouths, put your swim trunks back on, and come inside for dinner!
• Stop licking the coffee table and eat your breakfast!
• Yes my boobies are big and soft. Yes they are good to use for pillows.
• Me: “Did I say lay down quietly and go to sleep? Or did I say jump back and forth from each others’ beds until one of you falls off and cries??” 5 year old: “Um..I think it was the second one but I’m not sure.”
• Stop licking the floor and get back in the tub!
• Take your underwear out of your mouth and put it on.
• Get your head out of the dog’s mouth.
• No, you can’t eat the dead spider.
• We don’t eat our friends!
• Why is there poop on your face?
• It’s probably not a good idea to lay in the dog’s bed after taking a shower!
• Don’t let the dog put his tongue in your mouth!
• Our peanut butter sandwiches do not go in the VCR.
• NO! Urinal cakes are not for eating!
• Do not lick your brothers bum!
• We don’t chew on batteries.
• We don’t use our poop to paint pictures.

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See how awesome I am, even in this ridiculous paper hat?

Yeah that’s right. You heard me.

As of last night, I am such an awesome mom that Michelle Obama is going to start calling herself “Second Mom” instead of “First Mom.” So awesome that “Parenting” Magazine is going to change its name to “Jane Roper Magazine.” So amazingly incredibly awesome that the editors of TIME magazine called me to personally apologize for even suggesting that I wasn’t “mom enough” on their recent cover. (“I hope you know we intended the question for everyone but you!” they said. And offered me a free year’s subscription; I declined.)

OK. Perhaps I am exaggerating a little.

OK, OK, I’m exaggerating *completely.* But do you ever have one of those moments when you feel like, damn, I rock at this parenting thing? When you feel like you’re in complete control and handling things exactly right? I’ve had approximately four of those moments since my children were born five years ago. And they’ve all been lovely.

The most recent one, which happened last night, went like this: Read more »

One of my daughters was born two pounds at almost 34 weeks gestation. I had something called IUGR which stands for Intrauterine Growth Restriction which can produce a baby who is SGA or small for gestational age. Sadie is four and a half years old and weighs twenty-eight pounds –when weighed at night, on a full stomach, with socks on. She’s also a full head shorter than her twin sister Matilda and Matilda weighs forty-two pounds (in the morning, naked -if that gives you a better comparison).

What I’m saying is that if you don’t know Sadie, she can seem startlingly tiny. But Sadie is my child so when I see her, I see so much more than her small packaging. I see her curly, silly haircut (grown out from a DIY job she did after some alone time with a pair of safety scissors). I see her smile and her attitude and usually some stray glitter.

This kid has been through a lot: NICU, a bijillion doctor visits not to mention a g-tube for a year and a half, severe reflux, and almost daily therapy. Let’s just say we’ve traveled the bumpy highway of medical issues and we carry the road rash to prove it. But, we’ve moved beyond her size – so why can’t everyone else?

When I’m out with my twins, I have never been able to avoid people’s comments. Standing together, the girls look so much alike in hair, eyes and coloring but possibly eighteen-months to two years apart in age. And when people find out they’re twins, chaos ensues. Read more »

“Are you mom enough?” seems to be the question of the week. The Time Magazine cover this week had all us all listing the ways we aren’t good enough in our minds.

Well this Mother’s Day I will tell you that you are mom enough and so am I.

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Back in December, I was saddened to read the story of Michal Lura Friedman, who died just hours after giving birth to healthy boy-girl twins, as a result of complications following her C-section.

As a mom of twins myself, I couldn’t help identifying with her, and as someone who knows what an immense challenge it is to parent newborn (infant, toddler, etc.) twins, my heart went out to her husband, who would be (and still is) doing it on his own while also dealing with the horrible grief of having lost his children’s mother.

When something hits close to home, and when you can identify with the people involved, it’s easy to feel the full weight of the tragedy. It’s harder to conjure up the same kind of sympathy when you hear about death in the abstract. But this Mother’s Day, I’m trying to. Read more »