Adventures in Parenting

You’ve heard the extremes.
Twelve-year-old dies after playing 12 hours of computer games.
“Grand Theft Auto” led teen to kill.
As parents, we worry over that kind of news, and know that it could happen.
But if we tell our kids those incidences as reasons to stop playing computer/video games, they’ll roll their eyes at us - Mom is [...]

Parents: Don’t be afraid to go with your gut feeling.
If you see your children spending too much time and obsessing over video games, and you feel something is wrong with that, you are probably right.
It’s time to get rid of the games.
Don’t second guess yourself: “That’s just what kids do nowadays, isn’t it?”, “It’s just [...]

Is playing computer/video games any worst than wasting time watching TV?
Yeah, we agree it’s a waste of time, but is that bad?
Do parents need be so concern about their kids playing computer/video games?
In Playstation Nation, Olivia and Kurt Bruner explain that watching TV is a passive activity. It serves as a distraction from real life. [...]

“If I keep asking and asking and asking, eventually my mom will give in.”
Kids have an innate ability to manipulate their parents to get what they want.
When it comes to allowing them to play computer/video games, we as parents are most vulnerable to giving in.
We set time limits and consequences, but somehow, our kids [...]

Did you ever “dream” life of being a mom would be like this?
Nina Frye and Cindi Schmitzer are two moms who are Living The Dream!
And they designed these cute shirts to show what that dream life is REALLY like - buried in laundry, managing the chaos of grocery shopping [...]

Are your children spending too much time on computer/video games and won’t stop playing?
Will an Internet Use Contract solve your problem?
When we draft such a contract, we want to make the kid promise to all kinds of restrictions - “I will not play more than 2 hours a day.  I will not chat with strangers. [...]

Gears of War, Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft…
These are just a few among hundreds of video and computer games that kids are playing, often playing late into the night when their parents are asleep.
Talk to a few parents and you will soon hear laments about their son spending too much time on [...]

I can relate to Sue Shellenbarger’s post in the Wall Street Journal blog. Speaking of college students who do not know how to do their own laundry, Shellenbarger says:
I too have stressed achievement, adventure and life outside the home with my kids over learning more mundane domestic duties.
I don’t like to clean the toilet and [...]

The cheapest bottled drinking water is Kirkland Costco brand for about 20 cents a bottle. You run through 10 bottles of those a day for a family and that’s over $700 a year…just for water!
Every drop of water in that bottle counts, I tell my kids. Don’t spill it, don’t wash your hands with it, [...]

There’s something wrong with the way American kids are being raised today.
Dr. Anne Pierce in her book Ships Without a Shore: America’s Undernurtured Children challenges commonly accepted notions about parenting such as nannys and daycare workers, hyper-structuring, and how Baby Boomers have affected the way we raise our children.
Dr. Pierce gives us good insights [...]

Today, my 19-year-old daughter Audrey is out with her little sister Amy for the day, to celebrate the little one’s 13th birthday.
As a present, Audrey is taking Amy to lunch, shopping at the mall, and then dinner. This present comes with $30 cash for Amy to spend at the mall!
Now that Audrey has a part-time [...]

I recorded 6 toothpick puzzles, just for fun. These puzzles are great for stimulating your mind and practice thinking out of the box.
Try them out with your children. Don’t forward too quickly to the solution.
Here is the first puzzle. Click here to see the other 5 puzzles. Forward it to your friends and see if [...]

Walk through the front door of my house and you will see that I am obviously not an organized person.
We have stacks of stuff on every horizontal surface, including the floor…
“Mom, where is my report card from last year?”
“Mom, where is my vaccination record?”
“Mom, when was the last time I had an eye exam?
How I [...]

“Mom, what can I have for breakfast?”
I yell from in front of the comfort of my computer screen: “There’s cereal. You can get it yourself.”
My 12-year-old is certainly old enough to get her own breakfast, why should I disturb my ease?
But there were nagging questions going on in my head:
1. Do I want to answer [...]