For the Mom Who is Taken For Granted (And the One Who Wishes She Was)
My son had his winter band concert last week. The night before he asked who was coming. I told him I’d be there. “But you’re always there, who else is coming?” My kids are the lucky ones who almost always have an entourage cheering them on through concerts, plays, awards shows, ball games, recitals and any number of other performances. If an event calls for an audience, my kids’ cheering section shows up. As a kid myself I didn’t realize how fortunate I was to have parents wh
Teaching Our Children to Fail Well
Last year both of my children came home with test papers labeled with a 67 in bold red ink. The competitive perfectionist inside me slipped quietly into panic mode, no, scratch that, she ran screaming into panic mode. Why in this world would intelligent children who have shown themselves to be capable of all As suddenly bring home this? Let me back up to say last school year was a bit of a mess. Six weeks into the school year we sold our house and moved in with my parents for
The Legacy of "Big Jim"
I’ve been thinking about this post all week. As we all say, life gets in the way. Now its Friday and I haven’t written a word of it. This week, our community laid to rest a man who supported us, cheered us on and believed in us. My first memories of Jim were probably somewhere around 20 years ago. When I was in high school, whenever my twin sister and I had to sell something for school we always started with Mr. Jim who worked at a local industry. You see, Jim supported the s
