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Is it Really Worth it to Get All Up in What Your Kids Eat? Damn Straight.
My daughter, we’ll call her Max, was probably not quite four. Old enough to manage a fork and spoon and claim her own seat at the table, young enough to look tiny and adorable giggling from one of the black Windsors that surrounded it. It was one of the nights John would be home in… Read more
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Why Our Kids Need to See Us Loving Things
Monday, I was at my doctor’s office when I got into one of those casual conversations with a random stranger that turns suddenly and briefly authentic. My doctor’s assistant was chit chatting about her ten-year-old daughter while she took my blood pressure and verified my medical history. She’s a single mom and she was telling… Read more
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Before Your Child Sets Foot on a College Campus, Talk to Them about Something that will Probably Never Happen
You may not know this, but sometimes college kids, all hyped up on independence and strung out on freedom, sometimes they make . . . questionable decisions. Occasionally, they say or do, let’s say, irresponsible things. Once in a great while, they get into trouble at school. As a mom who’s also an attorney, I’ve been… Read more
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Sharing the Language of Character
Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am a huge lover of words. (Please ignore the gratuitous eyeroll.) English major. Lawyer. Bibliophile. Enthusiastic writer. Chatterbox. I own three dictionaries, four thesauruses, three books of quotations, a rhyming dictionary, a dictionary of idioms, a book on phraseology, and two copies of the inestimable Strunk… Read more
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How Recognizing and Accepting our Differences Helped me Give my Son the Party he Never Knew he Always Wanted
Birthdays were never a big thing in my house as a kid. I was the oldest of six born in seven years, our birthdays all between July and September. I think the party budget would have wiped out the two-weeks-in-Ocean City budget, and, well, we all gotta make choices. But I also think the lowballing… Read more
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Unstructured Play Time – and a Little Risk – Might Help your Kids Develop a Stronger Sense of Well-Being
If you’ve got really young kids, your kids’ childhood may not look so very different from your own. But it almost certainly looks very different from mine, and, scientifically speaking, mine may have been better. When I was growing up in the late 60’s and early 70’s, parents hovering over their kids was absolutely not a… Read more