Category: Parenting
Are you an early school-prepper?
Even before the calendar flipped to August — and by “flipped” I mean metaphorically, of course, because we’re a digital household — it seemed like everybody was talking about back-to-school shopping. One neighbour came home with new backpacks, water bottles and plastic lunch containers….
Summer brain melt is a real thing
The humidity has been out of control for weeks — maybe a month, who even knows anymore. My hair is twice its normal size, and I have big hair so that’s really saying something. Everyone’s hot and sticky all the time. Our house doesn’t…
And so it begins
We’re not even a week into summer vacation, and already school feels like it ended months ago. Was it really LAST FRIDAY — not even one week ago — they got off the bus for the last time? REALLY? Our weeks of summer camp have…
Summer needs some structure
If my kids were left to their own devices this summer, they would not leave those devices — electronic devices, that is. They would alternate between the iPhone, iPad and PS4 until their eyeballs fell out of their heads and rolled across my Wayfair…
Kids and junk food
I admit it — my husband and I are junk food junkies. We have been long before we got together in Grade 11, and our earliest dates centered around McDonald’s. (This was back in the “good old days” when a $5 bill covered one…
Protecting your child from sexual abuse
We thought we had done everything right. We’d read and re-read The Berenstain Bears Learn About Strangers, including the section about how “your body is your own personal property, and nobody else’s business — especially the private parts.” We’d talked about public bathrooms and…
The high cost of kids’ activities
She just didn’t understand it. To her, it made perfect sense. If she took dance one afternoon, cheerleading another afternoon and gymnastics on a third afternoon, that still left an afternoon free for taekwondo. Plus, you know, a fifth weekday afternoon would be completely…
Taekwondo teaches kids respect, instills pride
I didn’t know much about taekwondo, but I kept hearing the same rave review from other parents: “It’s so good for teaching them respect.” Sold! I mean, who doesn’t want respectful kids? We signed up our son last year, when he started Grade 1,…
March Break? March Broken.
Happy March Break! This is a truly magical time of year when absolutely nothing lives up to anyone’s expectations for nine whole days. You think you know how you’d like to spend it, and somewhere around Wednesday — possibly as early as Tuesday —…
Our family’s lice scare
Scratch, scratch, scratch. Is it all in my head? Am I just being paranoid or is my head really itchy? (Just try to read this column to the end without scratching your own head. Shudder.) I may not have to worry about pregnancy scares…
#MomConfession: I made a Minecraft mistake
Want to hear a parenting lesson I never expected to learn? It’s to research a video game before you agree to let your child buy it. I’m not talking about anything that’s clearly inappropriate, like Grand Theft Auto where they’re stealing cars and beating…
Let’s get rid of ALL THE STUFF
Every year when I’m taking down the Christmas tree and packing away the decorations, it feels like a treat to get the house back to normal. “This is MY Christmas!” I’ll caption a photo of my clean, clutter-free living room when all of those…
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