My 7 rules for being a responsible stoner parent
Candyland is so much more fun baked when you’re an adult. In fact, marijuana makes a lot of things more bearable and even fun. Pot can make you patient and relaxed. I get it, and so does a sizable portion of society. That being said, there are some rules I choose to follow as a pot-smoking parent….
Odd parent out: how it feels when your kid isn’t anything like you at all
Isn’t it interesting how we struggle with our own identities through our children? We want them to be like us. By that, I mean, our vision of who we are — you know, all the good stuff. I know that as my own daughter has grown and developed her unique sense of self, her individuality, her very strong-willed personality, I have always looked for those moments of me in her.
Six tips for creating awesome care-packages for children away from home
While I was growing up, I spent a lot of time away from home. I can tell you now, whether I was away for school, camp, high school summer jobs or even when I moved on to university, nothing helped my homesickness and general well-being better than when I received a care package from home. I was recently helping a friend put together a package for her high school aged child studying abroad when I realized that not everyone was in situations growing up where they were receiving care-packages.
Because hitting your friends isn’t nice: how we’re gently disciplining our daughter
A few weeks ago, my daughter Charlotte hit her friend at the park. Twice. With a stick. I was mortified. I knelt down to her level, grabbed her hands, and asked her to look at my eyes, please. She looked at the sky, at the bushes, at her feet, but refused to look at me. “Charlotte,” I repeated. “I need you to look at me please.”
What I’ve learned in two years of bicycling with my child + front-mounted kid seats we love
Back in 2010 I wrote about picking a bicycle seat for our then-one-and-a-half-year-old. That toddler has now grown into a full-fledged kid (he’ll be three soon! You guys!), and also recently graduated from his bicycle seat (we’ve been using the Bobike Mini Seat). We’ve spent the last few weeks looking for something new, and here are my favorites of the options we saw and a few things I’ve learned about bicycling with our child on-board.
Losing a sibling as a teen changed my feelings about parenthood
My thoughts about parenting have generally existed in a continuum that ranges from, “I definitely don’t want kids” to “Kids seem like this fantasy thing” all the way to “If I have kids, I’ll do this …” But no where in those ricocheting and often short-lived conceptions of potential parenting has there ever been a moment where I’ve thought, “Yes, I’ll have kids.” Mostly, I’ve been wading about in the gray for a long time. And for the most part, the question-and-answer game of my parenting or non-parenting future exists in a way that is anxious, but non-pressing. And a great deal of it, I now realize, stems from my most well-known observations of parenting, a lifetime spent watching my own amazing, instinctive, and infinitely nurturing mother raise her two children, and then watching her lose and grieve one.
8 tips for coming to terms with “bad” genetic testing results
At 16 weeks pregnant, I had a (fairly) routine blood test done. Two days later, my midwife called and said that based on the results, the baby I was carrying had an elevated risk of having Down’s syndrome. We scheduled a sonogram with fetal and maternal health specialists and a genetic counselor for two days later. Nothing was found, but they asked us to come back a month later because they were having difficulty getting good images of the baby’s heart. We leave happy that our risk has been downgraded, and come back a month later.
What to expect when you’re the first of your friends to have kids
Throughout my pregnancy I’d sit with my friends, often at a bar, sipping Orange Juice and Seven-Up and suspiciously eyeing my other female friends who weren’t drinking. I hopefully watched drinking patterns to see whether or not I could “score” a maternity leave buddy for at least part of my year as a stay at home mom. Although I have many close friends who often act as designated driver no one was pregnant while I was, and at this point no one will have more than a few weeks of overlap time at home with me unless they are very cleverly hiding five months of pregnancy. I have a handful of mom friends who are at home right now, but they all live outside of the city and on average are a fifty-three minute drive away.