Giving New Meaning to Parenting

A while back I read a book review on the GNMparents blog about a book called Parenting With Love and Logic Teaching Children Responsibility by Foster Cline, M.D. and Jim Fay. The reviewer touted the book as helpful and a must read. After reading her post I ran out and bought a copy of it. [...]

I was reading here and here about the gajillion tonnes of plastic floating in the sea, and it’s FREAKING ME OUT, MAN! I mean, I am seriously having a crisis here.
I never really researched this before. We lived on a beautiful beach for years, and used to take a pack of garbage bags [...]

The mighty warlock raises his arms to the sky, thick sleeves on his enchanted robes sliding back as the air before his fingertips begins sparking. This intensifies and extends to the space before him into the area occupied by unwitting ogres fighting over the spoils from their raid into the nearby villages.
Ready to unleash a [...]

So there I was, proudly telling you all how we have managed to integrate the internet and internet games into our merry lives, being perfect parents with perfect children and so on.
HAH! It turned out that one of our children had been playing internet games, instead of doing homework. As in, “Have you done [...]

Do you ever feel powerless?  What can you do to change that?
Sometimes it means saying no.  Sometimes it means walking away.  Sometimes it means not engaging in a conflict.  Sometimes it means recognizing when you are getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop and deciding you are tired of that as well.
I had a fight [...]

In a family, who “owns” things?
Is it your house, our house- who takes ownership for it?
Who’s homework is it? The kids? How much help do you give before it also becomes yours?
With money issues, who owns the bills? Is everything split up according to consumption? Who spent what? [...]

It’s hard to believe, but next week marks the two-month anniversary of us being dog owners. Two years ago I certainly wasn’t interested in getting a dog at all, let alone a young puppy.
And yet? Here we are. Keely has become a member of the family. As I type she’s sitting [...]

We went out to a late dinner the other night, and as we walked into the restaurant, I asked our thirteen year-old daughter, Noelle, to ask for a table. She did not want to do this (she can, at times, be a little shy). I decided that this was a good opportunity to parent, so [...]

My children have started to ask us if they can get a pet.  We started out with fish, but fish are, well, boring. Plus, they are awfully fragile. We had three die in the span of the first two and a half weeks we had the tank going. Thankfully, all seems to have settled down [...]

We found out yesterday that Punk #1 has been accepted into the “REACH” program for next year. That’s our public school’s gifted program. Aidan’s been a part of the program since 1st grade. The big difference in fourth grade is that the program becomes a daily replacement for the classroom math and language [...]