I am the type of person who ranks honesty as one of my top values. I’m the type of person who doesn’t pussyfoot around any subject, even those like vaginas, penes, and death. I’ve tried to parent the same way, being open, honest, and answering my children’s questions as age-appropriately as I could. I’ve been direct in letting them know … Read More
Explosions of Light and Laughter
There are too many moments that brightened my minutes this past week. Once you begin noticing the fleeting joy in your life, those instances are a bit like Lay’s™ potato chips, it’s almost impossible to pick just one. Here are a few of the highlights… This was taken in my work parking lot, at the end of a pretty grueling … Read More
Cooking Up a Little Happiness
Peanut, my fifteen-year-old son who is expected to be six-foot-two, loves a hearty breakfast. A home-cooked spread of meat, eggs, fruit, bread, milk and/or juice will draw a smile to that boy’s face any day of the week and any hour of the day. And I love whipping up some of his favorites on those lazy mornings when Duty isn’t … Read More
Raging Hormones and Controlling Boyfriends
Every two or three days, for the past four months, a Google search with the words Daughter, Controlling, and Boyfriend, lead to this post on my site. I find this equally discomforting and comforting. Discomforting that parents are finding their daughters in controlling situations. Comforting that these same parents not only recognize a pattern of behavior, they are reaching out … Read More
How Do You Want to be Remembered?
“I’m just gonna ride him, ‘cause that’s what I do.” That’s what a father of one of the boys on my son’s team said to me. About the fifteenth insult he hurled onto the field, I found myself gritting my teeth. Around the twentieth slur, I had a flashback of the time I accidently spilled my ice water on a … Read More
Digging for the Light, Excerpt 1
My last post was about hummingbirds and was included in the Happy Happenssegment of this blog.The following excerpt relates to the day after my Gavin’s first birthday, my second Mother’s Day. * * * The date was Sunday, May 12, 1991. Mother’s Day. I spent that day, the one that should have been my second Mother’s Day, weeping.Over a … Read More
Teaching Our Children to Fish
I’ve always called a spade a spade.A vagina a vagina. And a penis a penis. This morning I stumbled across a mother’s forum where a woman asks for pet names to call her children’s privates. She states that she always felt awkward when her mom used the word vagina, and she didn’t want to put her daughter through that discomfort. Oh, … Read More
Family Minus One…and Counting
Two years ago I went on a two day journey to take my oldest son to college. Today, I am wishing my daughter all the best as she begins the next chapter of her life. I thought she and I had everything covered, all the items she’d need–save for some food items–purchased. HA! We made one trip to the local … Read More
My Daughter’s Boyfriend Has a Controlling Family
My daughter is involved in a controlling relationship with her boyfriend’s family. And sometimes it really bothers me. Like now. Like when they secretly met with her during our family vacation. Yeah. Honestly, though, it’s not quite as surreptitious as that makes it sound, but it’s bad enough. In the winter we told our daughter she could bring a friend … Read More
Talking About Sex, Teens, Bedrooms (and Raising Sexual Beings)
My college kid’s girlfriend recently came to visit. “That’s fine,” I said, “We’d love to meet her.” “But there’s one stipulation: You can’t share a bedroom.” Now, I’m not naïve. I know many young adults have sex, and these two will soon be twenty-one. Hey, I was once young myself. But I have two teenagers still at home. And one … Read More