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, 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, 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 …
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 ›