Ages + Stages

Teacher Appreciation Week is coming up May 7-11, 2018. In my 7th year of being a room parent, this is one of the easiest events to plan. Teachers work hard inspiring my kids all year long, and I take pride...

Collectively, we do not want to talk about sex with our kids, and they don't want to talk to us. But, here's the deal: they're already talking about it. My daughter is ten. Her classmate is offering "health class"...

It took exchanging more text messages than usual to find a window of time to connect for our monthly phone chat. Juggling schedules and kids is always a bit of a dance, but the back and forth of this...

I had a lot of grand ideas about what I planned to do with my kid once he could walk. The outdoor actuality with a toddler was not yet realized, the anticipation was still fully intact. The great outdoors...

It is not uncommon for one of my kids to ask me to define a word for them. It happens daily. Their vocabulary is rapidly growing, but often words are used without understanding the definition. The other afternoon I...

We try not to have the news on when our kids are around. They have enough to think about without adding sex scandals, kidnappings, and athletes beating their girlfriends to the list. However, when last month's shooting at Marjory...

When I went back to work after my first daughter was born, my grad student husband and my mom were able cover most of our childcare needs. And then we moved away from family to Portland. With Nana no...

"I can't believe you failed me! I worked hard in this class and I deserve a passing grade." My student emailed me this message recently after she discovered her final grade at the end of the term. This student had...

I did not set out to fail. I set out to be a no-nonsense, strong mama bear who would stand for her children and herself and be a beacon of feminism and maternity. I was planning on being a...

So apparently my daughter knows the F-word. Come to find out, she also knows a lot of other swear words as well. She’s not alone, though. In the same conversation where she revealed her expanding vocabulary, it was also...