For my children, hearing, listening, following directions, and (oh, let me just say it) compliance with others is like pulling teeth.  (*Cringe*.)  There are many days when I feel like I’ve failed as a parent, and my kids are still so young.  When you throw in their ADHD (and mine) into the mix, it makes for some pretty difficult days. Read more »

“That’s not fair!” These are the words that are hurled over my 6-year-old son’s shoulder after learning he hasn’t won the cooking game.

We’re hosting a houseful of kids over the winter break and they’re taking over my kitchen, creating their own recipes and competing against each other, like on the popular cooking show Chopped.   Read more »

When I was younger my mother would regularly take to me to a nearby beach.  We would normally spend some of that time walking along the beach, picking and choosing some things to inspect more closely as we went.  One day I found a piece of seashell buried in the sand. I was expecting to discover that it was yet another fragment of a shell, but as I pulled on it, I felt resistance.  When it became completely dislodged, I was shocked to see that it was huge and beautiful.  I remember being so excited—in my 7-year-old mind I tied the uniqueness of my ocean treasure to me being special in some way.  I took it home and painted it blue and put the date on the bottom corner.  Show-and-tell time came at school, and I was sure my prized object would elicit many ooh’s and ahh’s from my classmates; yet, as I placed it on my desk in preparation to share it, some boys started horsing around and bumped into my desk. In an instant, my prized shell became like all the other fragmented shells on the beach.  I cried and cried, and no amount of reassurance made me feel better.

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