Paige and her dads: a newborn session in black and white
If you need me today, I’ll be busy swooning over these photos of newborn Paige and her dads. Seattle photog Jenny Jimenez is creating magic again, y’all.
How do you prepare your kids to stand up for themselves — and for other kids?
If my kid ever witnesses another child being bullied (or is the child being bullied), my hope is that she will stand up for the child and for herself. How are you talking to your kids about defending others?
Talking to tweens about sex and masturbation: keep calm and spank on
Parents face a potential challenge that will likely rear its head sometime in the tween years: how do you talk to your kids about masturbation and sex without the conversation making everyone uncomfortable? Nicole from Moms Who Drink and Swear recently had to face the convo with her twelve-year-old head on, and here’s how it went.
Halloween costumes for kids who use wheelchairs
Carter has Spina bifida, so his dad built him this outfit so he could roll around on Halloween with the rest of the kids.
When your 7-year-old announces, ‘I’m gay’
I was on the phone with a relative who had just discovered that I was blogging on The Huffington Post and openly discussing my son’s crush on Blaine. I was in another room alone (I thought), explaining, “We’re not saying he’s straight, and we’re not saying he’s gay. We’re saying we love who he is,” when my son’s voice piped up behind me. “Yes, I am.”
How do you avoid passing down your own phobias to your kids?
I’ve also spent almost my entire life terrified — and I mean TERRIFIED — of bugs. I’m planning to become a mom in the next couple of years, and now I’m worried that this fear will make it hard to be a good mom. How do offbeat mamas balance their paralyzing fear of things with the need to take care of their little ones?
On saying no to a second foster child
For weeks now, I’ve been feeling this slow and steady ache growing — the feeling that I am not doing enough, can never do enough. I know, rationally that most of us only have the time and resources to do a very little bit. But the idea that there are 16,000 foster children in NYC alone, each as unique and precious as my foster son, each needing stable, loving homes both temporary and permanent, actually hurts me when I think about it, makes it hard to breathe. I can do so, so little.
“How can I talk to my kid about _______?”
We love our questions posts, and we’ve noticed that a lot of them tend to be about talking about a particularly challenging topic with your kids. We’ve also noticed that even though the topic changes, the advice is usually similar — so it seems that it would be helpful to collect some of our favorite, most relevant bits of advice in one place.