Because someone, somewhere, thinks that your parenting sucks. Might as well celebrate it.
Today, my kid starts school. She’s two and a half. And she’s ready. She’s very, very, very ready. She watches and thinks and learns, her little brain working furiously behind her eyes as she stares fixatedly at me whenever I try to thwart her plans for world domination. It’s time. She needs more than I [...]
Somebody asked me once why exactly it would be a good reason to have children. It’s a fair question. Having a kid is not exactly a trip to the spa. Kids are expensive and inconvenient and defiant and heartwrenching. And motherhood isn’t exactly the most respected of professions. (Oh sure, people SAY they think motherhood [...]
So on top of last week’s revelation that you’re a worse parent than you think, comes The Onion’s assertation that no matter how you parent, you suck. In study published last week, someone very smart determined that every style of parenting produces disturbed, miserable adults. And yes, it’s from the Onion so of course it’s [...]
So thanks to Laid Off Dad, along came this little article in to my twitter feed that listed a mere dozen ways that we’re effortlessly, gleefully screwing up our kids for life. Life, I tell you! Yes, they’ve gathered child psychologists! Psychiatrists! and OTHER EXPERTS (who’d they call? your mother-in-law?) to come up with this [...]
It was a beautiful sunny long-weekend afternoon. The roads were busy, but not abysmally so. When I drove past the first car on the side of the road that appeared to be having a toddler breakdown, I was sympathetic. The Daddy was holding the two year old up, hovering his naked butt a foot above [...]
OK, look. I know times, they change. I know that the style is no longer 90s grunge, where you wore everything three sizes too big. I know the style is short and sexy. But on children? Who then do suggestive, provocative, emulating-sex-moves-ative dance moves? Why? And yet, this is what they did on So You [...]
So a school in Virginia suspended a 6 year old last month. Did he act out? Shove his classmates? Bite someone? Steal lunches unashamedly? No. It was worse. So much worse. This degenerate child, obviously the product of horrible, neglectful, borderline abusive parents, parents who probably watch reality TV so you know they’re horrible, had [...]
My 5-year-old daughter has developed a fascination with jokes. Like most children her age, her jokes are bad. Really bad. It’s not that her jokes aren’t funny – although they are not funny, not at all. It’s that her jokes aren’t jokes. “Mom! Mom!” she’ll say, already breathless with anticipation of her impending zinger. “Have [...]
Actually, it isn’t ironic: it’s sarcastic and rhetorical. But that’s not the point: the point is that the kid understands, intuitively, what sarcasm, irony, hyperbole, and rhetorical questions are all about. Which, incidentally, isn’t all about pissing off their parents but an exercise in practicing non-literal communication. A study at the University of Montreal concluded [...]
Caillou. Caillou. Ugh. Just saying his name makes me want to spit. Caillou is pretty much my number one kiddie-related entertainment nemesis and not just because he’s a whiny little turd whose voice makes me want to stab myself in the ears. OK, that’s not true. It is his whiny little voice that makes detest [...]
Here’s kind of a curious story out of Ocala, Florida: Amber Ullman claims her two daughters were discharged from their pediatrician’s practice because she declined to answer a question about firearms in her home. She and her ped were going through some questions when he asked if she had any firearms in the house. She [...]
Kids fashion is admittedly tricky these days. Back in my parent’s day, kids didn’t really have ‘fashion’ as so much as they had ‘functional fabric coverings’ to keep their bodies modestly covered and insulated against the elements. Kids wore whatever the hell was on the racks that year and the term ‘fashion’ barely entered the [...]
Were you a thumb-sucker as a kid? Are you raising one now? I sucked my fingers religiously until I was maybe 7 or 8; it was my way of self-soothing. I knew it bothered my mother – she’d always tell me I was going to wreck my teeth and she was right, I needed braces [...]
Full disclosure: I don’t actually watch Glee. Please don’t berate me. I actually know very little about the show except the basic premise (I watched the first half of the first episode and then… I don’t what happened. Sawyer wasn’t on it, nor were Desmond and Sayid and Jack and I suppose that I found [...]
Toronto October 13 - 15