Giving New Meaning to Parenting

The kids are busy, I get that. They have school, homework, soccer, etc. But I still want them to contribute to the house and its upkeep. Yet getting them to do chores is like asking them to swallow hot coals. Still, I needed to solve this problem. Parenting advisers say, “Pick Your Battles.” Well, this [...]

My 4 boys have never really valued cleanliness, especially when it comes to the family van. Generally speaking they seem to believe it’s some sort of closet on wheels. Today, however, I think we made a breakthrough. I am not kidding when I tell you that in the space of 2 minutes, [...]

Things are back to normal here after my younger son’s (YS) surgery. Well, maybe I should clarify that. While he was officially cleared this morning and my MIL left last week, we are attempting to get back into our daily schedule. Except that there’s one not so small problem: the bad [...]

As my two kids get older, I find myself with reduced stress. The kids are growing into fine adults. They are helpful, they are considerate, they are, best of all, more able to meet their own needs! They no longer ask for a glass of water or for me to carry them or any of [...]

Confession: when I ask my boys to clean their bedroom it usually ends in a huge weeping pile of me. After hours without progress and constantly breaking down tasks and repeat repeat repeating myself I am left wanting never to face this challenge again. So I wait and wait and then rinse and [...]

I’ll never forget a drawing Ben made of me when he was in kindergarten. It showed me vacuuming the floor. The caption read, “My mom likes to… vacuum.” When the picture came home in Ben’s backpack, I stared at it. I laughed. And then I cried.
No, I didn’t cry. [...]

I’ve written about chores here before. In the spirit of being honest, I have to tell you we abandoned Chore Wars shortly after trying it. There were 3 problems: 1) –Me. I hate having to log in separately for each boy to keep track of his tasks; heck, I hate tracking [...]