HILARY HAMBLIN

The trending question among parents of tweens is how old kids should be to get their own phone. Our family chose to add a cell phone line for our kids last summer. We’ve stressed the phone doesn’t belong to one or the other of our kids, but is to be used like a “house phone”. When I was a tween and teen, I had a phone in my room. Granted it wouldn’t do anything other than make and receive phone calls, but it served as my connection to my friends outside of school. It’s import

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

For the first time since April, cool weather descended on North Mississippi last week. Which means all our kids are either wearing pants an inch too short because we didn’t realize how much our kids grew over the summer or they are wearing pants an inch too long to account for some “growing room” this winter. Transplanting from shorts into pants means it’s officially time to weed through the kids’ closets, handing down the outgrown clothes and making room for the larger sizes

Last week after snow day #3 plus one school holiday I was done. It was past time for the kids to go back to school. My husband, whose work is less flexible than mine, took off for snow day #4 so I could get some semblance of work done. When the school called to say they would open on Friday a collective whoop echoed through the neighborhood. It’s not a bad thing to be ready for your kids to go back to school...or summer camp...or vacation Bible school...or grandma’s house. A