If Not His Hands and Feet, Then What?
I set up a blue, borrowed card table and tried to steady it on the uneven dirt of Highland Park in Brooklyn, NYC. The dollar store puzzles were opened and ready for my first batch of seven-year-olds…
Silent Yelling and the Myth of Being Unprepared
"Mom, there were about twenty different ways you could have handled that." Although my preteen son got a scolding for saying so, he was much too right. I had just given my kids a Silent Yellin…
What My Daughter and I Saw in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp
The green, three-wheeled taxis drove confidently into the sloping west side of the Kutupalong camp in Bangladesh. My daughter, my team and I drove passed large food distribution centers and a few el…
Six Little Things Teens Need for Successful Relationships
I don't write very much about raising teenagers, even though by this fall I will have five of them under my jurisdiction. Yeah, I know. Five is a lot. The reason for this writing hole? My lack of p…
Parents Versus Google
I slipped into the quiet room filled with rocking chairs and slung my thirty gallon diaper bag off of my shoulder. The bag will shrink with each child until it resembles a lone diaper tossed under t…
Book List 2018: Parenting and Otherwise
Who has time to read? This busy parent does. Yes, it is wedged between after school activities and homework. It is interrupted countless times. It is done next to looming piles of I-should-be-clean…
Adoption Stories: Not My Child’s Savior
“You have the million-dollar family,” he drawled, “one girl, one boy.” His well-intentioned assessment of our family of four felt like a small stone in my shoe. Each step brought a blistering chafe th…
Adoption Stories: And Birth Mom Makes Eight
This guest blogger is my childhood best friend, Andrea Esh. Chill to the core and one of my favorite people in the world. Here is her adoption story. Birth mother. To some that word strikes fear…
Adoption Stories: Stepping over Fear
They walked into the restaurant alone, with no kids to corral or scrape off the floor. Jeff and Angie have agreed to meet me for lunch. I was expecting their youngest son to join us, as today was a…
Those Kids Who Aren’t Ours
The first time I looked at him, he was grayish and wasn't doing his one job very well. Our first baby needed extra oxygen and a short stay in the NICU before coming home to live with us, his under-pr…