Parenting Blog

Most senior citizens say they wished they had spent more time with their children, and that the years of child-raising, in retrospect, passed in the blink of any eye. Most fathers, and even more mothers, say that they want to spend more time with their children, especially in those tricky afterschool hours when kids could use supervision on their homework.   READ POST

A mom asked me this week, "What can parents do to raise great kids, given that babies and even older kids need us so much, but we need to work?"

There’s no perfect solution, but many parents are navigating a way through the maze of options, putting together a life that works for them and for their children.

1. Choose professions that offer more flexibility, even if less money.

2. Arrange for both partners work part-time while children are under six so that both share in early child raising.  Later, more flexibility and fewer hours than most fulltime jobs.

3. Use technology as a servant, not a master.  Carve out protected family time.

4. Pay conscious attention to who does the work at home.  Share it.

5. Prioritize relationship and ritual. (Choose dinner with friends the first Friday night of each month over the latest movie opening.)

6. Space children three years or more apart to maximize individual parent-child relationships.

7. Consciously create home as a calm, safe, warm refuge. (Resist over-scheduling, over-stimulation and stress.)

8. Live stated values. (No grand theft auto or shoot-em-up computer/video games.)

9. Embrace individuality and nurture individual passions, which are protective for kids in the face of cultural and peer pressure.

10. Nurture the family as a whole (do things together as the default.)  READ POST

Drop a frog into boiling water and it will jump out.  But put the frog in cold water  and gradually heat it to boiling, and the frog will stay in the water until it dies.  READ POST