If you knew that this Thanksgiving would be the last time you were surrounded by all those you love best, would you be able to savor it? To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping […]
When antiquated gender roles no longer fit the family dynamic, someone’s got to break tradition. Of all the holidays that I bemoan, Thanksgiving is the one in which I play my Pick Your Battles card and allow myself to enjoy without too much inner turmoil. In spite of the holiday’s history, for me it prevails […]
This originally appeared on Fem2.0. Republished here with permission. I was born on April 20th, 1984. On June 5th, nearly two months after being placed on an adoption list in Montreal, I met my parents and became Kathleen. I can’t be sure what occurred during the two month gap between my birth and the introduction […]
In an ideal world, your kids would come to you before they have sex, but that’s unlikely. So you may have to beat them to the punch. A common question I hear parents asking is how to give their teenage children access to birth control even if they do not want them having sex yet. […]
Sometimes a single parent is the only parent a whole family needs. Last night, my children took their first music lesson with a lovely, talented young trumpet player and music educator. As I watched them connect to his kind teaching and the music, my eyes welled up. Their dad, a musician, should’ve been the one […]
Loving kids and going through a pregnancy are not the same thing. “So let me get this straight,” my girlfriend said to me. “You coo at literally every child under 10 that you encounter. You have picked out names for your children, decided which books you’ll read them, and are currently debating homeschooling versus Montessori. […]
Kate Abbott finally decided to get help for her postpartum depression at the Happiest Place on Earth. Eight months postpartum, I knew something was wrong with me, but I was still determined to fix myself on my own, without doctors or drugs or therapists. I thought all I really needed was a vacation. We would […]
This originally appeared on the Princess Free Zone. Republished here with permission. Having a kid means understanding that anytime or anywhere you might find yourself in the middle of a very serious and deep conversation. In my experience, one minute you can be talking about a new toy, and the next whether or not you […]
No matter how much you try to protect your children, there will always be things you can not control. Last week, two young children, Leo and Lulu Krim, were allegedly stabbed to death by their nanny in their home in Manhattan. The children’s mother discovered the bodies as Yoselyn Ortega, the nanny, began to hack […]
This originally appeared on Mamamia. Republished here with permission. Dear Mom, You are so gay. Not in the derogatory 15-year-old boy sense of the word—you literally are so gay. But I don’t need to tell you that, do I? Obviously you’ve known for quite some time. You told me when I was 9 and I’m […]
When someone you admire criticizes your parenting, what should you do? One of the first things we learn as a parents is that everyone has an opinion on how we do or have done our job as parents, and almost everyone, from our friends to strangers in a grocery store, feels free to express that […]
How do you gain your children’s trust from an authoritarian parenting perch? Imagine the Gilmore Girls, if Rory had a brother and Lorelei was actually married to Luke. That is sort of our family. We all genuinely like each other’s company. Our conversations are often fast-paced banter that mixes information about our lives with humorous […]
