Parenting | PulseonParenting

Kids Behaving Badly = Bad Parenting?

Sep 01 2015

“SHUT UP!” As a kid I marveled at how two words like shut and up, harmless when they stand separately, could join up to become so hurtful. Like when hydrogen and oxygen come together, these words become something very different from their component parts. And when my son bellowed “SHUT UP!” to an acquaintance, mortification didn’t begin to describe our reaction. It seemed the world stopped spinning. Proverbial crickets chirped so loud that our ears were ringing. The stunning paralytic effect of those two words kept us from swooping in and immediately rectifying what had gone terribly wrong. Our reaction, or…

It’s Time to Return to School: Should I Vaccinate My Children?

Aug 11 2015

It’s hard to believe it’s time for our kids to return to school. Today was “Fall Check-In Day” (aka Registration Day) for my kids. Not being Kindergarteners, or otherwise new to the school, our paperwork process was pretty straightforward. But for new families, registration can be a seemingly insurmountable pile of blank forms and information. I remember those days…especially when I had three sets of vaccination records to dig up and then transcribe to official school documents! But I’m taking a long time to get to my point. Given it’s that time of year to get school health records in order, and given…

Physical or a Feeling. What is Truly a Home?

Aug 06 2015

Your house is small and dirty. (So there.) That statement was the trump card another child played in his argument with my oldest son (apparently over legos). The six-year-old couldn’t have understood the “grown up” interpretation of his words, the comparisons made by adults in attempt to “win” in the material world and therefore life itself. But neither could my 10-year-old son comprehend such craziness. He was, not surprisingly, hurt by the critique. Small and dirty implied his world was inadequate, that the place his father and mother provided for him was, well, small and dirty. When my son told me…

Jun 24 2015

When my husband told me that video games are good for hand-eye coordination (and therefore improving his career skills), I figured he was just vying for a Wii (or was it an Xbox? I’m pretty clueless on the difference). I didn’t buy it, literally or figuratively. Because I still can’t tie a sailor’s knot despite my hours of playing Pong and Pac Man back in-the-day. And yet, yet, despite that skepticism on the positive value of playing video games, I allow my kids to have daily access to their iPods. Is there guilt? Yes. Do I allow them more time than I…

Jun 16 2015

It’s summer. The local library has reading programs for toddlers, high schoolers and everyone in between. We parents know our kids should practice their reading skills for cognitive development, vocabulary expansion, and fluency . But the people who, believe it or not, study, the benefits of reading have much more to say about why not just our kids, but also adults, should indulge in a good read. Real Simple published an article in 2014 about this very topic, just in time for those summer reading programs. Some of the details may surprise you: 1) Ahhh, Oohhmm. Reading for just six minutes a day…

Hooray for Summer (Exclamation Point): Steps to a Successful Break (Question Mark)

Jun 02 2015

A year ago, as the school year drew to an end, I wrote a post that received some flak. In Hooray for Summer? (In retrospect, Horrors, It’s Summer! would have been a fun title…) I described the difficult transition for parents, myself wholeheartedly included, to having the kiddos home for three months. I outlined my plan to keep us all from going crazy, which, it ends up, was a near-total flop. Disappointing, to say the least…I needed a solid strategy because I was really not looking forward to the loss of (forgive me) my freedom. But this year? I am…

Apr 22 2015

I am in awe of the transformation. I am a little sad, too. My younger son, born breech at barely five pounds, is becoming a man. At age 12 he is hands-down taller than me, with a cracking voice, acne and, um, hair (more on that below…). It boggles my mind, a glimpse into what is in store for his twin brother, who has yet to join him in this journey. I decided to repost What to Expect When Your Son Starts Puberty from April, 2015, to help us Moms (and Dads, of course) navigate these changes, changes in our little boys that…

Category - Parenting

Kids Behaving Badly = Bad Parenting?

It’s Time to Return to School: Should I Vaccinate My Children?

Physical or a Feeling. What is Truly a Home?

Video Games, the Priming Effect, and Kids

Why We Need to Read

Hooray for Summer (Exclamation Point): Steps to a Successful Break (Question Mark)

What to Expect When Your Son Starts Puberty