Sunday, March 24, 2013
Are we ever done parenting?
A few days ago when I told someone my children had been accepted to college, she exclaimed, “You’re done!” There is a tendency to feel a giant sense of relief. It’s as if some gigantic part of our parenting job is complete. But, is it? If you talk to any parent just beyond this point, you will hear all sorts of stories that make it quite clear, that we are nowhere done. We all worry that we are sending our children onto the next step without sufficient preparation. There was the story of someone calling mom from a highway, driving with some friends to ask how to pay a toll. The tollbooth was approaching and it seemed that no one had a Fast Lane pass. What to do? This question, by the way, from someone in an elite college who had scored …
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Don't believe everything you hear.
People are quick to malign “kids these days” for all sorts of things, and some of it is fair, but much of it is not. Kids are frequently criticized, along with their parents, for a failure to get outside and play unless there is a super structure, like a team. Parents are criticized for overbooking their children on teams and classes and not leaving enough time for spontaneous activities that children plan amongst themselves. Last week, just before the blizzard, there were cartoons on the Internet floating around equating the dinosaurs and fossils with the “neighborhood kid who shovels snow” and other extinct species. The problem with all these “urban legends” is that they are not true. Maybe they are true in some places, but here in …
Sunday, December 9, 2012
How will we know when we get there?
Every now and then the film “Race to Nowhere” surfaces and a discussion ensues about how we can prevent an entire generation of teens from getting too stressed out. We worry that our children are striving too hard for perfection and they worry too much about living their lives according to what they think admissions counselors want to see. They worry that one B on a test will ruin their lives. We worry they will burn out doing this and never find their true passions. It is certainly a problem and an awful lot can be said and written about this topic. But, that’s not what I am going to do. I am here to write about the opposite. Perhaps I should make a film about a different problem – The Slow and Not Very Straight Journey to Somewhere …
Sunday, October 28, 2012
How much advice to we need?
When my children were sent home from the hospital, the doctor in the nursery gave us some advice. “Just love them,” he said. He never said anything about what sort of stroller to use or whether to use cloth or disposable diapers. He didn’t even weigh in on formula versus breast milk and he certainly didn’t offer his opinions on organic baby food. A few weeks ago, I saw a coming attraction for the “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” movie which I have not seen. It brought back memories of how silly we all were when we were new parents. We all clung to the advice in the book with the same title. We ran to it if a situation confounded us. We worried so much about where children should sleep—alone or with us—and what sort of equipment we …
Sunday, July 8, 2012
At least they don't breathe in your space
A friend with two teenage children confided in a group of parents at a recent sporting event. It turns out her children don’t think she and her husband are cool. Her own children give the cool parent designations to their friends’ parents, but not to their own. Can you imagine? She was totally confused by this. She thought she was pretty cool and apparently some of her children’s friends think they are cool too. These very same friends think their own parents are dorks and so on. As she was telling this story, I could see others wondering. What do my kids think of me? There are any number of reasons why our own children don’t think we are cool. The biggest reason may be because we breathe. It turns out that other people’s parents don’t…
Sunday, June 24, 2012
We don't see their dirty laundry.
The good thing about other people's children is that they have clean rooms. They always wake up on time for school and they do all their homework without any reminders. Other people's children tend to have higher SAT scores and lower numbers of cavities. Or at least it seems that way. Other people's children tend to show their best side to everyone but their own parents. While our own children are rude to us, the children on the team we coach are polite. The children in the store where we buy our coffee are helpful. How did other people get these wonderful children? Where did we go wrong? Once in a while, someone might let a comment slip about their own child that is less than positive. We might learn that someone else's child stayed up …
Sunday, May 27, 2012
What I learned from a box of plastic wrap
When we bought our house in 1992, my mother-in-law arrived bearing gifts to stock our new pantry. One item was an industrial sized plastic wrap. By this, I mean the kind that requires two hands to plop on a counter, two hands to tear and could wrap the Tobin Bridge twice. While I thanked her politely, I chafed inside. I prefer the wrap that only requires one hand to hold and the other to tear. I wondered if I would ever use up this wrap and I wondered why she was foisting her ways on me. At the time, my mother-in-law's nest had recently emptied. The youngest of her four children married and moved out and her years of needing large quantities of everything had ended. She was not transitioning easily and still tended to run to B.J.'s for …
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Mural artist leads book-making program for children
Mural artist Yettie Frankel patiently prodded a collection of young children to write and illustrate their own five-page, accordion fold book Thursday afternoon in the Children’s Room at the Swampscott Public Library. Frankel’s own vibrant work is on prominent display at the Children’s Room, a montage to reading and imagination that graces one long wall, and she passed on some of her creative secrets to the 11 children who attended the workshop, which was funded by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, through the Swampscott Cultural Council. Each child wrote his or her own cinquain, which is a five line poem. Frankel explained what the poem is: the first line is a noun; the second is two adjectives, the third is three verbs; the fourth …
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Pat Gorham
10:29 pm on Monday, March 18, 2013
Phew. Now I don't feel so bad. I'm 52 years old and my mother is still offering advice to me! You can never get enough of mom's advice. more ›