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Check out this essay, “Helicopter Moms, Heading for a Crash,” from Sunday’sWashington Post . It’s by Margaret Nelson, author of Parenting Out of Control,and it basically says that by the time you have watched TV with your kids (to make sure it’s appropriate, and discuss relevant issues) and done homework with your kids (to help and guide them) and played with your kids and driven your kids
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It is said that 80% of new mothers experience some sort of postnatal mood disorder after the birth of their child. I can count myself in that statistic twice. I am a Post-Partum depression survivor two times over. Pregnant with my third child I do have some concerns that I will be hit by this “disorder” once again and have two other children to care for in addition to the brand new one. Oh, and myself. I can’t forget that the I will need to take care of myself as well.
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Ever since I was 14 years old and all the other girls in gym class were able to wear “real” bras to my trainers, I wanted boobs. In high school I got made fun of for being flat (and a redhead and for being so short, but that comes with the territory when you have the trifecta of bully magnets.) Some boys would put tissues in my locker, insinuating that I stuff my bra. Not entirely false, as I saved up all my money to buy a wonder bra.
I was talking to my friend the other day and she told me that she had already received three playdate solicitations for her son who is entering kindergarten in the fall. The school had just held an orientation for the incoming students and already the parents were jockeying for position, clearly trying to secure friendships for their children and allowing four months for those friendships to marinate and take hold before the first day of school come September.
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Parenthood, like politics, is a completely partisan endeavor. George Lakoff, the Linguistics Professor who wrote “Moral Politics,” says that Republicans are like paternalistic, tough-love, corporal punishment-doling dads who think their kids should act responsibly and pull themselves up by their own boot straps, and never ever ask anyone for a hand-out, and that Democrats on the other hand are like compassionate, gentle, earth-mothering moms
I’m a pacifist at heart and I have no desire to see guns in the school. But I also have no desire to see a boy told he cannot wear the hat he decorated with toy soldiers because the soldiers are carrying — guess what? Toy guns.
Ooh! How terrifying! You can find me under the desk!
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Being in the right place at the right time is a long time accepted principle of success in life. This can also be true when trying to achieve success in the parenting world. From getting the registration into the soccer club on time and scoring that preferred Monday versus Sunday timeslot, to producing a child who doesn’t land in the overcrowded kindergarten class because you delivered two days after January 1st, there are some things we can
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I’ve been playing video games for as long as I can remember. It started one fateful evening when my family went out to dinner and there was this new machine at the restaurant, and it wasn’t a pinball machine. It had two long blocks and the goal was to knock the smaller block past the other player’s larger block. Yes, it was 1972 and the game was PONG, I was mesmerized at the time like a teenager watching Charlie’s Angels, and soon the video game industry was born.
I’m having what’s known as a personal crisis. Since you’re human, I’m pretty sure you can relate. It all started when I read a father’s blog post about his wife going back to work. I found myself leaving this comment: “It gets easier, I promise.”
Afterward, I thought about the lie I’d just told. It doesn’t get easier—at least for me it hasn’t. If you want to spend time with your child and your situation doesn’t allow for that, you will contemplate calling in sick every day. You will cry in your car on the way to work. You might even consider letting your house go into foreclosure so you can see your child more.
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Perhaps you read the other day that now even baby slings are regarded as “risky” by the Consumer Products Safety Commission. This because, over the course of 20 years, there have been a reported 13 baby sling-related deaths. It is really hard to write “death” in any story about children without sounding cavalier when adding, “Does that really mean a product is risky?” But still, that’s what I have to write.
