It’s Thanksgiving. Time to gather with loved ones, consume a lavish feast and count our blessings—and yet some of us can’t look forward to the celebration. The holidays can represent the bleakest time of year for many people, precisely because of our hopes and expectations about what this season should bring us. What if life doesn’t look like a Hallmark special right now? What if the feast is nothing more than canned soup? Or the turkey tastes like ashes in your mouth because a recent death or divorce has left you reeling? What if you’re too sick to get together with your loved Continue Reading
5 Ineffective Parenting Styles, and How to Walk a Better Path (Part 2)
It's that moment at Walmart. You're pushing your cart and gathering a few things for the homestead, when you hear a loud voice about three aisles over. “Hey, whadya think you’re doing? Git over here!” You wonder if this person brought their dog to the store. Surely they’re not addressing their child with this tone? Thus we encounter the fourth of five ineffective parenting styles. In a previous post, we talked about helicopter parents, minivan madness parents, and BFF parents. Briefly, Helicopter parents hover over their child. They take over their child’s projects and Continue Reading
Why I’m Glad When My Dreams Don’t Come True
I couldn’t believe what my husband was suggesting. Home school our three sons? That one was not on my radar. It conflicted with what I thought I wanted my life to look like. In my ideal life—my fantasy—I would send my darlings off to school and then settle in for a productive, creative, wonderful day of writing. When the boys returned in the afternoon, I would serve milk and cookies and ask how their day had gone. (Mine, of course, would have gone splendidly, with me well on my way to publishing a best seller.) So much for fantasies. In real life, after a couple of years of Continue Reading
5 Ineffective Parenting Styles, and How to Walk a Better Path (Part 1)
Comic Brian Regan reflects on a childhood memory of his grade school science fair, for which he simply put some soil in a paper cup and displayed it. "I call it cup o' dirt," he explained to those wandering by, wondering what his project was all about. "You should move along now." The kid next to him was more ambitious. He’d created an intricate model of the solar system and kept explaining enthusiastically, "The yellow one in the middle is the sun!" Thanks, Copernicus, Brian thought. Which brings me to the first of five ineffective parenting styles to avoid: Helicopter Continue Reading