Browsing all posts in February, 2009.
How Not to Raise a Responsible Child
Rules for how NOT to raise a responsible child. 1. Set rules and limits and fail to follow through. 2. Always run up to the school with whatever your child forgot…
The Rules Don’t Apply to Her!
These are the women who think that signs, warnings, and rules of the road are guidelines. Suggestions, really.
We’ve all met them. We’ve all fumed about them.
The women who zoom past the entire carpool line and let their kids out in the “No loading/unloading” zone. ‘Cause that just applies to cargo, right? Not kids? Not THEIR [...]
All Last Minute Requests Must Be Submitted in Triplicate
Some of you who follow me on Twitter (tmhmom, ’cause The Mother was apparently already stolen by some blackguard) got to listen to my hissy fit last week when the Goth announced that he needed twelve dozen cookies for tomorrow.
This is a classic parenting dilemma, affectionately referred to as, “The Last Minute Request,” but usually [...]
You’re Trying to Make My Life Miserable!
How many times have you wanted to scream that at someone? We don’t, of course, ’cause we’re ADULTS and we’re all supposed to be able to handle the average social situation without screeching like a raving lunatic.
No, we don’t get to say it. But we DO get to hear it. Often. Loudly. Generally hurled in [...]
My Name is Mom, and my Son is an Addict
After years of actively scoffing at women who somehow didn’t know that their children were building bombs int their basements, I have to say “Mea culpa.”
You’d think I’d have picked up on the warning signs:
Lack of interest in family activities.
Tendency to stay behind closed bedroom door.
Mediocre performance in school.
Lack of eye contact during scoldings.
But, NO.
You’d [...]
Little Old Ladies
LOL with CHF in NAD.
Regardless of what LOL has come to mean in the internet generation, for those of us who speak medical, it means Little Old Lady. And it’s NOT a term of endearment.
(Complete translation: little old lady with congestive heart failure in no acute distress. Come on, you haven’t read The House of [...]
Don’t Have a (Sacred) Cow!
Two weeks ago, Brain Dunning wrote an article for SkepticBlog entitled, “What’s Your Sacred Cow?” He says that, as a skeptologist, he frequently gets hit with comments like, “I really enjoy your posts debunking all that paranormal/superstitious/bad science stuff, but you were absolutely wrong about….”
This is the Sacred Cow. The thing we believe in so [...]
Let Me Introduce You to My Little Friend…
According to recent research, as many as two out of every three children has at least one imaginary friend. Some children have quite a few. They actually seem to be good for kids, because those with imaginary friends tend to have better verbal and social skills than those without.
In my experience, the actual incidence of [...]
The Dummy Daddy Decade
A woman from the UK named Rachel Cooke wrote an article a few days ago called “The Dummy Mummy Decade” for The Observer, which bills itself as the oldest Sunday paper in the world. In it, she argues that there exists now a generation of women who talk about nothing but motherhood and children, and [...]
No Mother is Allowed to be Sick Alone
In this cold and flu season, I feel as though my kids are passing viruses back and forth, and I’m the monkey-in-the-middle. Except, I always seem to actually catch it.
(Twenty years ago, one of the theories of why the HLA antigen system—that pesky set of cell markers that makes transplants reject—evolved was that it kept [...]
