How do you talk to your kids about shoplifting?
My eighteen-year-old niece regularly watches my six-year-old daughter, and one recent outing included a trip to a local mall. My niece noticed that my daughter was playing with nail polish, but didn’t think much of it — until they returned home two hours later and the nail polish was in my daughter’s pocket.
My six-year-old is totally a gamer
My daughter is six years old and she’s a gamer. Right now she is a level 22 wood elf in Skyrim. She smiths, making her own steel armor to match Lydia, her house carl, and prefers one-handed weapons and magic along with a dwarven bow. She’s part of the Thieves Guild, a Companion, a Werewolf and the Arch Mage of the College of Winterhold. Basically, she owns that shit.
How to talk to little boys
Wondering what the best thing to talk to little boys about is? READING. Daughters are thriving and sons are flailing, and it seems like one solution might be to pick up a book and let your kid see you read for fun.
Whether your kid has lazy eye or wants to be a pirate, this DIY eye patch is rad
My son has inherited lazy eye from his dad and I. I created this snazzy eye patch for him so he can rock it instead of feeling self-conscious, and it’s totally doing the trick.
19 tips for raising a trans kid
Reader LJ recently sent us this piece from Autostraddle: 19 Terribly Interesting Tips on Raising a Trans Kid (from a Trans Kid) written by M., the blogger behind translabyrinth.
I helped boost my eight-year-old’s self esteem with a jar of nice notes
I did not grow up often hearing that I was smart (although I was) or that I was pretty (I had my good days). In fact, I did not know my worth at all until I thought I could find it in boys. BIG MISTAKE. Unfortunately, it’s an all too common one. There was no way I wanted my daughter to follow that same path, so from a very early age I built her foundation of worth with a continuous flow of positive words — none of which focused solely on her obvious beauty.
My favorite Goosebumps books and how they relate to my life
Did you guys ever read Goosebumps? The series of sixty-two books was published in 1992 to 1997 to give younger readers a chance to get creeped out by R.L. Stine before their time, and I was TOTALLY ON BOARD. While I eventually graduated to the Fear Street series (and was subsequently so terrorized I was told to stop reading the books), my heart has always had a special place for Goosebumps and the bizarre-ness it holds.
On liberating ourselves from worrying about our kids
My kids are perfect the way they are. Every parent says this — well, maybe not every, but enough. We might even believe it when we say it (or a part of us does). But the same parent worries, too: my children aren’t getting enough to really develop into their full potential. I’m not doing enough to give them the best start in life.