Browsing all posts in Children.

I’ll Be Home for Christmas (When I Wander In…)

My eldest drives home from college for the winter (Christmas? Hanukkah? Solstice? Mithra’s Birthday?) break. It’s a fifteen hour drive, as long as he avoids rush hours in any of the big cities he must drive through, and as long as they haven’t prepared in advance for all that holiday traffic by taking the ship [...]

Kids and Phone Etiquette

If you ever want to find out the age of a child in a household, make a phone call. You can peg a child’s age by how he deals with a phone. Really.
Here is my guide:
Newborn to fifteen months: Every time the phone rings, the child wakes up. Mother dashes to phone, answers within a [...]

The Mother’s Guide to Men’s Restroom Etiquette

Dear Abby, Thursday August 13. Moms write in worried about sending their 7 year old sons into men’s bathrooms alone. Tone of each letter talks about how anything can and does happen to these poor children. Suggestions range from two way radios, to going into said bathroom to make sure it’s empty, to standing outside  [...]

The Mother’s 12 Step, Back to School Program

The summer took a lot out of us moms. The kids are about to go back to school. That’s good, right?
Wrong. Back to school can be equally stressful. But if you follow The Mother’s 12 step, back to school program, you will at least not cave under the pressure.
Step #1: Refill the kid’s lunch money [...]

The Noisy Toy Wars

Anyone ever play this game with a relative? It’s such a hoot.
As the first family in our generation to produce progeny, we were the recipients of the first salvo. And the next forty. It’s hard to launch a counterattack when you can’t locate a target.
When the Engineer was about four, and the Grouch was one, [...]

How Not to Send Your Kids to Camp

Since it’s summer camp season, and I have done a whole lot of those, I have a few suggestions. But as usual, mine might not be the same as most of the other ones out there.
How NOT to send your kids to camp:
1) Don’t pack for them. What do they learn if you pack for [...]

Here’s $200. Lose my Kid.

Anyone else following the Continental airlines snafu?
In one week, Continental managed to lose TWO, count ‘em, TWO unaccompanied minors. They were both placed on the wrong planes. Their luggage got there, but not the children.
I’m having a blast.
(Continental is having a bad week. They also lost a pilot, mid-flight, over the Atlantic. Not lost, as [...]

Apples to Eyeballs

One word of advice:
DON’T play “Apples to Apples” with my kids. You could lose an eye.
In my early parenting days, I was the product of the psychology classes I took in the early eighties. That was the time period when the whole coddle-your-children thing started. Self esteem was THE most important thing. If your child  [...]

The Six O’Clock Parent (Mother’s Day Special Rehash)

You’ve had a really bad day. One child is sick, the other three are getting there. Little ones who are about to be sick are easy to spot—they’re the ones who are completely out of control. They don’t feel good, you see, so they take it out on you.
By six o’clock, you are at your [...]

Crotchety Old Men (Sunday Rehash)

Every parent who has been out of the house with her children has run into a Crotchety Old Man (COM). These are the retirees who are so old that they don’t remember what it was like to be a parent, let alone a kid.