Someone Else’s Kids

When parents tell stories about “the old days,” especially about how much snow they had to trudge through (uphill) [both ways] to get to school, most kids tune out.
However, old pictures hold a great fascination for kids. When we were young, my cousin and I loved to look through the old photo albums, many […]

How many parents out there allow their children to call them by their first names?
I can certainly see that happening when a child reaches young adult stage, but there is something jarring about seeing a five year old refer to a parent by first name. I was at the mall the other day and […]

I mentioned in a previous post how one of my fish is sick. One of the medicines is gel which is comprised of an antibiotic mixed with food. The directions actually say not to offer any other food for 24 hours before attempting to feed the gel. Clearly, like medicine for people, […]

I know this debate is as old as the hills, but since the issue still arises daily, it seems to deserve another airing.
Why do people bring screaming babies to restaurants? Yes, I feel bad for parents when they are stuck at home with the children all the time and yes, they deserve a nice […]

I’m going to ask the questions right up front on this one. Do you care about the ratings of movies your kids want to see? Do you even know the ratings of the movies they want to see?
If you are not the one who is physically sitting in the movie theater with your […]

Creativity in kids is a double-edged sword. We like it when it means that kids can write well, make music, paint beautifully, or draw nicely. Creativity also causes non-conformance, that old “march to the beat of a different drummer” issue. We don’t look too highly on creativity when someone creatively finds ways to get a […]

Is sledding a lost art?
When I was a kid, we sometimes made our own mounds of snow in the yard to go sledding. (Yes, they were kind of sad.) A much better alternative was to walk down the street to the local shopping center. The plows would push the snow to the ends of the […]

I was reading something the other day that mentioned that kids don’t read anymore. Clearly, that isn’t true. They read when they are motivated to do so. J.K. Rowling did not singlehandedly purchase all 13.5 million copies of the latest Harry Potter book.
Why this persistent argument that they don’t read? Probably because they spend such […]