Help for your questions about parenting, sleep, discipline, education and the teen years.
Another in the then-four-year-old (now 20!) Reeve’s Number Series: “A 3 sitting in a chair waiting for its friend Alex (It went to get some water from the stream. . .)” # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Tags: alex, child's view, drawing, number, reeve This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at... read more
Off the topic of Valentine’s Day, my poor friend Kathy Pape received this anonymous note today. She lives in a place where it was 64 degrees and she was holding her son in her arms the whole time. Oh, the in-humanity! Subscribe to the Mothering.com Blogs Feed This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 7:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. read more
Late-Night Call to Mom, Saturday, 2:35 a.m. Reeve (calling from El Paso where he just finished the first day of a voice competition, now wandering the halls of the hotel where he’s staying in a room with five other voice students, three to a bed, all of whom have to compete again the next day): “Mom, I can’t sleep. . .” Late-Night Call to Dad, Wednesday, 12:45 a.m. Reeve (calling from his room in the apartment he shares with his good friend Evan, post-late night opera rehearsal and pre-bed): “Dad, have you heard of Malt-o-Meal cereal? I... read more
College boy Reeve came home last night for a short visit (has a voice competition in Albuquerque today), ostensibly to see us, but I’m guessing the fact that we have two-week-old kittens here didn’t hurt. It’s wonderful to see him, or, more accurately, to hug him. In this day and age of Skype and email and Facebook and cell phones, we’re usually in pretty close touch. But electronic communication, though immediate, and definitely a good thing, is no substitute for everyday interaction, lovely moments of low-key hangout time, and the very real physical... read more
It’s been a long week. A boy at my 10-year-old son’s school has been calling him “stupid,” “dummy,” and “idiot.” This would not be nice for any kid, but for my son these words hurt deeply. As I mentioned in my second post on this blog, Jacob is severely dyslexic. “Stupid” is a label he lives with every day. I hesitate to use the word dyslexic because most people do not have a clue what dyslexia is. I know I didn’t until five years ago when at the end of Jacob’s first grade his tutor told me she thought he was dyslexic. I thought being dyslexic meant... read more
I had a profound moment today that I’d like to share with you. As I got onto the metro this morning with my son a mother in our neighborhood shouts out: “Hi you guys!” It’s my son’s friend’s mother, a woman I don’t know well but I do know that when we moved here just over a year ago she talked alot about how much she loved her job. It was one of those dream jobs where she was director of a department responsible for using creative methods to bridge the gap between liberals and conservatives in America and create a more peaceful... read more
Happy customers buy kale at the Ashland Food Co-op “Did you hear about the embezzlement at the Co-op?” I asked James, who came back from taking care of his dad on Wednesday night. “I heard about it at the Buffalo Co-op,” James said. “When I was checking out. I said I’m a member of the Ashland Co-op and they said they were planning to review their safety measures because of what happened. What happened?” I wish I could answer that. The Ashland Food Co-op is one of the most popular stores in our town of some 20,000 people. It sells a... read more
I awoke last night to darkness. Not the room, in this case, but my sense of things. You know that dark night of the soul feeling you can get in the wee hours when you’re sure* that all is lost and you’re alone, inadequate, a failure, etc? Times like this I long for reassurance from someone who knows more than I do, someone I can trust to tell me everything is OK. I want Mom. But not my mom. (For starters, I wouldn’t want to freak her out with my freakout.) It’s more like I want the idea of Mom.** When we talk about the empty nest, we tend to focus on... read more
This coming Sunday the 18th, starting at 2 pm PST / 5 pm EST, I'll be hosting a Firedoglake Book Salon for Naomi Cahn and June Carbone and their new book, Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture: Red Families v. Blue Families identifies a new family model geared for the post-industrial economy. Rooted in the urban middle class, the coasts and the "blue states" in the last three presidential elections, the Blue Family Paradigm emphasizes the importance of women's as well as men's workforce participation, egalitarian gender roles,... read more
A few changes I’ve noticed in myself over the year and a half that our son, Reeve, has been away at school: 1. I can’t seem to go to sleep before midnight. I just really get going right about the time that everybody else is heading to bed. 2. I can’t seem to get out of bed until at least an hour after the alarm first goes off.* Though I used to leap out of bed and spring into my running clothes and out the door in mere minutes.** 3. My diet consists of way too many spoonfuls of peanut butter and honey straight off the spoon. And lots of Cheetos.... read more
