In The Toilet

Today, while many prepare for the most glamorous event of the year (the Oscars), I’ve got my head in the toilet. The advice I’m reading on the web about potty training makes me want to scream!  Potty training in 3 days? One day? Tips and tricks? People, have a little respect.  Potty training is not something we do to a child, or ask the child to do to please us.  Children are human beings, not puppies to...

This May Hurt (Baby’s Doctor Visits)

I have had many surprises since becoming a mom. I found out that children under the age of six never walk down a hallway when they can run; that corn kernels pass through the body whole; and that boys have a testosterone-powered impulse to test the breaking point of everything, especially new toys, with predictable results. But the biggest surprise of all was the discovery that babies and toddlers can actually...

The Easily Forgotten Gift – Real Attention

I know the gift all children want most — we all want it — but it’s a hard one to remember. I’ve forgotten it for days, even weeks at a time. Sometimes it takes a desperate situation to remind me. Once, I remembered it when my independent ten-year-old went through a phase in which she saw no reason to bathe. Days would pass. She would come up with excuses. I would let her off the hook and then forget...

Smelling Roses (Taking Babies on Errands)

I can relate to babies. I get over-stimulated in the supermarket the way babies do. I have a strange aversion to making lists and always believe I will be able to take a few minutes to march down each aisle, recognizing all I need to buy. Twenty minutes later, I’m in a zombie trance and have covered less than half the store. (The hidden benefit to this is that my husband now prefers to get-it-and-go himself,...

Blue Sky Thinking

“Take the mobile off the bed, take care of their needs, and leave them alone.” This odd sentence was my introduction to Magda Gerber and the child care philosophy that would become my passion. I had given birth a few months before reading this quotation, the only one by Gerber, in an article in L.A. Parent magazine about raising a creative child. I remember nothing else about the article, but I could not get...