Talk to any mom on a heart-level about parenting and you’ll quickly find this: to raise children is to live in the tension of joy and grief. It’s often between the lines, but it’s there. They are in no way mutually exclusive I’ve come to find, and, as a mother, I see myself swinging between the two on any given day. Read More
The Best Gift You Can Give Your Kids? Play Time
Playing with your children, and even wrestling with them is one of the best ways to raise a great kid. Read More
One Easy Way to Improve Your Relationship with Your Kid
If you own a smartphone, chances are, you love it. You take pictures of your kids, stay in touch with friends and family, keep up with the news, and text your spouse reminders to pick up milk. It’s likely never more than an arm’s reach away, and it probably even journeys into the bathroom with you. It’s 2016, and that’s totally normal. Read More
Letting My Daughter React to Stares and Questions
I wanted to insert myself into the conversation happening a few feet away from me, to explain and to defend, but I held back. Read More
5 Ways Social Media Owns Our Kids
I can still hear my mom’s voice from the other room, yelling that I only had five more minutes to be online… Read More
Just Walk Out The Door: The Importance of Mom Friends
If there is one survival tip I can relay to new mothers who are struggling, it’s this: find your people. Having mom friends has made me a different mom. I have often called them my lifelines, because I truly don’t know what raising my children up until this point would have looked like without them. Read More
Why I Cut Out Social Media for a Month
During the most recent holiday season, I personally decided to go on a different sort of diet… Read More
In Defense of Public Flailing and Tantruming
Somewhere along the line it became taboo to take your children out with you in public. As if it were expected that, once a couple has children, they stop wanting and needing to go out together. Moms like staying in their homes all day with their kids….right? Where did the prevailing mindset that public places are only for adults come from? Read More
Screen-Time Limits for Parents?
Distracted parenting has been a hot topic recently. Some experts link the rise in smartphone ownership to a spike in emergency room visits for kids under 5… Read More
I Want My Daughter To Be a Beacon and a Light
Before both of our children were born, my husband and I found ourselves in an intentional discussion about who we hoped they would grow to be. We, of course, recognize that some of the things we discussed are out of our hands; but we also realize that many of them we are able to demonstrate and nurture in our time parenting them through their youth. If I could somehow will one thing into my daughter, my first-born, it would be this: a heart that is compassionate. Read More