When my first child turned two years old I would hear all the horror stories of the “terrible twos”. I cringed while I listened to stories of children crying relentlessly as they turned purpled and fell to the ground with fists pounding on the pavement over a broken cookie. I felt ill prepared to deal with what sounded like a scene from The Exorcist. I looked at my sweet angel and could not imagine such wrath coming from her tiny fists. As the year passed I grew over confident that I had one of those rare children who never threw … Continue reading →

Do you have an unusual child? Everyone’s child is unique and wonderful and beautiful, but it is true that some children stand out more than others. Some stand out in ways that we find positive – they are beautiful or very verbal. Some stand out in ways that people find unusual – they wear superhero costumes everywhere or they are very tall or very petite. Some stand out in ways that people find challenging. I am the parent of an unusual child. She has white-blonde hair and she is very tall for her age. She’s five and she is the … Continue reading →

The night is done, the pumpkins are out, and the children are wrestling with sugar highs in their beds. The costume is all tucked snug into the dress up container, and everything is quiet. Ah. I’m sure that the candies are downstairs having their own little party, though. There are certainly a lot of them. We don’t tend to go for the binge mode here. Yes, of course we ate a lot of sweets today. It is Halloween, after all. However, we only overdid it just a little. The vegetables in dinner counteracted the sweets to make things feel slightly, … Continue reading →

I went away. In my five years of being a parent, this has never happened before. Sure, I have gone away for a long time during the day, and occasionally my husband has tucked my daughter in at night, but this has never, ever happened before. I had to go to a meeting out of town, and it was physically impossible for me to do so unless I stayed overnight. I tried to get out of it, really I did. However, I realized that I was going to have to go, so I started the advertising. My daughter would be … Continue reading →

Oh, the trials of preschool drop off. Last year at this time, my daughter was suffering from a full-blown case of separation anxiety. I ended up making a very, very gradual transition into preschool, staying at her side, then in the room, then downstairs, and finally leaving. I really do not want to go through that sort of intense experience again. Today, I drop her off at kindergarten for the first time. We’ve had a gradual entry for a few weeks and this is the week that she is officially registered. Of course, there were a fair number of tears … Continue reading →

We have a pool in our townhouse complex, and my daughter visits it nearly every day during the five month long pool season. This year, she’s managed to learn how to move across the pool without a flotation device. This is a great accomplishment, but a little scary. She now feels like she knows how to swim. Every summer, we also take swimming lessons down the street from our house. The lessons are very strict, but the kids do learn how to swim well. Everyone from our neighborhood goes. Last year, the first lesson met with a lot of tears … Continue reading →

The day finally arrived. The little girls were all playing on the lawn, one of them with a tub of Barbies that they could almost sit in, another with a fold-out Barbie house. My daughter was playing with them. She came in and declared, “I want a Barbie!” As someone who struggled on the edge of an eating disorder in my teens, I want to foster a good body image in my daughter. Then again, I don’t believe in making certain toys off limits, because I believe that will lead to a child who covets that toy. I had simply … Continue reading →

There is a food monster in our house. At some point during my daughter’s second year, it began to creep into our meal times and steal away some of the vegetables that she liked. By the time she was four, she was down to just a few preferred vegetables and nothing more. What happened to her love of vegetables, to the baby who adored yams and avocadoes and was the pride of her grandparents, who said that they’d never seen a child more enthusiastic about vegetables? I was doing everything right. That is, until she turned three and developed the … Continue reading →

As parents, we all lose it sometimes, especially when we are parents of preschoolers. I know that we’ve all watched other people lose it, and inwardly we say, “No way would I do that. I wouldn’t drag my kid out of the store by her (insert body part here).” And then one dark day, you do. My trigger is constant whining, and my daughter seems to be perfecting the art as of late. After four days of solo parenting in the summer heat and four days of nearly constant whining, my daughter was screaming at my from the bedroom upstairs. … Continue reading →