Category: Parenting Teenagers
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~Life is Not a Fairytale
Dear Lacey, Between your busy social calendar, rigorous gymnastics training schedule, drill team practices, and keeping up in school, it’s common for you to be very hungry and very tired by the end of every day. After Thursday practice you mysteriously turned down Cane’s Chicken Fingers, insistent you needed to get home and finish schoolwork.…
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Storm is Coming
Dear Hallie, I love books! And there is nothing quite like sharing good books with the people I love, especially my children! I still have a basket full of our favorite board books (including Snuggle Puppy and Pajama Time) waiting to be read to my grandchildren. No hurries, please! As my babies got a little…
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More to the Story
Dear Hallie, I can’t believe we’ve managed to keep you alive for 16 years. I believed I was a great mom until you were born, realizing I just had two somewhat predictable children before you – your older sister eager to impress and your older brother eager for peace. You were born the unpredictable third…
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A Weary World Rejoices
Dear Cade, Nothing about December 2022 has felt Christmassy. Maybe it was starting the month missing you and your sister as you finished your first semesters of college. Or maybe it’s Dad’s job demanding more of him than any of us like to spare. And then there was my bright idea to trade in rogue…
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It’s Not That Deep
Dear Hallie, Today is Mother’s Day and just like every other second Sunday in May for the last ten years, I find myself experiencing a tidal wave of grief mingled gladness. It’s difficult to believe I’ve survived ten Mother’s Days without my mom around to share in the joys and burdens of my own motherhood…
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The Things that Matter Most
Dear Cade, You challenge me! You challenge me in ways all 16-year-olds challenge their mothers, but it’s so much more than that! You also challenge me in ways only an absent-minded professor challenges and confounds everyone they meet. While you miss obvious and practical realities staring you in the face, you’re more awake to the…
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Grocery Stores and Dirty Floors
Dear Kori Jane, In the two years between Daddy and I’s wedding day and you crashing our party, I used to love going to the grocery store. Perhaps because I’d lived with my own mom right up until that very moment, so the thrill of being in charge of filling a refrigerator and pantry with…
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Dinner Table Conversations
Dear Lacey, I’m constantly wavering between guilt and thankfulness as I watch you grow up in the chaos and shadow of your three older siblings. One guilt, for example, is there are significantly fewer evenings all of us happen to be home and ready to eat at the same hour. And even fewer evenings I…
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Sports, Space, Racecars, and Excavators
Dear Cade, Daddy and I both, for different reasons, hoped that our first child would be a boy. I’d always dreamed of an older brother, so I thought it would be ideal for my oldest to be male, but for your sports loving Daddy he dreamed of shooting hoops and playing catch with his son…
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Junior Year
Dear Kori Jane, You are 16. A high school junior. In fact, you’ve just started the second semester of your junior year. We were warned junior year would be brutal, and right about now you’d be ready to throw in the towel. You are no doubt just as sleep deprived, over committed, under nourished, and…