When you look back at how often you apologize to your kids, does it make you feel bad?

It had already started. Monday afternoon at 3:40pm, in the back seat of my car. Two children, already bickering and crying.

Usually we don’t get there until later in the week, Wednesday maybe, when the getting up early and the homework and the responsibilities and the staying up too late because of this practice or that Boy Scouts meeting starts getting to everyone.  Here it was, Monday, and the recriminations were already at fever pitch.

I shouted as I looked in the rearview mirror, which I hate.  What is shouting other than adding to the cacophony and making it worse? Continue reading »

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Who do you trust to raise your kids?

I’ve heard of some couples who travel on planes separately so that in case one of them dies in a crash, one will still be left to raise the children. This always struck me as a bit odd considering your chances of a plane crash are next to nothing. I mean, if that’s your method of operation you better start meeting each other at the movies, restaurants and all the other places couples usually travel to together.

But okay, for the sake of this article – POP QUIZ: let’s just say your plane does go down on your way to Jamaica or Europe or wherever you were headed – who will raise your children? And if you did answer that question within five seconds, have you legally made it so? Continue reading »

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Does your marriage have a nagging problem? You know, the kind where one of you keeps pestering the other to do some simple tasks that never seem to get done. The more you nag, the more your partner dawdles and blows off your requests. Which leads to more nagging.

A recent Wall Street Journal article called this problem potentially as toxic as adultery. It’s a pattern that has certainly caused some chaos in my own marriage, and I’ve watched it corrode intimacy between friends. Nagging can be a vicious cycle, with both partners feeling like they’re being pitted against each other over things they should be on the same side about. You both want the dishes to be done and the bills to be paid. Why are you fighting about these things?

Amanda Marcotte has a great solution over on XX.  Continue reading »

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Bet you didn't know this was in your hamburgers.

In my recent story on what modern moms are grateful for, drive-thrus were mentioned more than once. What parent hasn’t been pressed for time and decided, what the heck, let’s just go to McDonald’s?

I don’t take my kids to McDonald’s that often, but if we’re on a road trip or running between school and practice and they’re starving we’ll take a quick detour through the golden arches. And then I read this headline this morning: McDonald’s Removes Pink Slime From Its Hamburgers.

I’m sorry. Did you just say pink slime? Continue reading »

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Would you let this man babysit your child? If your answer is no, you're missing out on a very qualified caregiver.

It’s a hot topic on the internet today.

Lisa Belkin over at the Huffington Post calls it Dadophobia.  I call it what it is:  Dad Descrimination.

What happened was this:  someone asked a question in the advice column over on Parenting.com.  A mom was uncomfortable letting her daughter have a sleepover at the home of a divorced father.  The advice given by Tina Paone, Ph.D., a therapist, mother of three, and founder of Counseling Center at Heritage, in Pennsylvania: “Call and say ‘I’m sorry, and this is about me and not you, but I just don’t feel comfortable with a man supervising an overnighter.’”

WHAT?  That’s what a woman with a Ph.D. has to say?

In the words of the great Joey Lawrence:  WHOA. Continue reading »

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Will my daughter need medication for attention deficit disorder?

When my daughter was just two years old, her Montessori teacher told my husband and I that something was going on. She wasn’t sure what it was, but based on her decades of teaching she could see that my sweet girl wasn’t interacting in the classroom the way other 2-year-olds did. Rather than getting her hands into everything, making a mess, touching and manipulating things, she’d head off to the far corner of the room and bury her face in a book.

It’s hard to know exactly what is going on with a two-year-old girl who isn’t quite able to express her frustrations or feelings. What we did know was that Madden had always had trouble sleeping, was fairly restrictive with her eating, and avoided doing anything that required fine motor work. She wasn’t interested in scribbling or using utensils or anything of the sort.  At first I thought she was just quirky, but when her teacher shared her concerns, it was time to find out more.

We took Madden to see an expert developmental psychiatrist who spent time observing her and said she did not have autism or Asperger’s, but that it was likely she did have sensory processing disorder. The psychiatrist said that our daughter needed occupational therapy, and that we would have to wait until she grew older to see if there were any other issues we’d need to pay attention to. Continue reading »

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The Publix rotisserie chicken to go has saved my butt on more than one occasion.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how grateful I am to be a modern mother. I don’t have to churn butter or darn socks or walk 12 miles barefoot and uphill both ways to pick up my kids from school. Unless I want to, of course, because modern moms can do whatever they damn well please!

A lot of things have been invented in the last hundred years. In the second decade of the 1900s, telephones, traffic lights and refrigerators were invented, and most moms didn’t have access to these or many other modern conveniences. There are so many things we now have for which I have undying gratitude. Like women’s-sized baseball caps and sunglasses — which weren’t invented until 1929 — that hide my bleary-eyed, un-madeup face and unwashed hair at the bus stop. Or ready-to-eat rotisserie chickens at the grocery store, which save my ass when I haven’t come up with a plan for dinner.

I asked a few mom blogger friends to share their modern mom gratitude list with me. What things do they love that mothers didn’t have in 1912?  You may notice a trend in their responses, including the mention of Netflix and DVRs more than once. Here’s what they said:

[Be sure to tell us what you are grateful for, too. We'd love to know.] Continue reading »

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