I had a perm in kindergarten. Every morning my mother diligently primped my hair with her curling iron to perfect it before school. (Never mind that she also had my two-year-old brother to care for at the time.) One morning, probably in a rush to do all the things, my mother accidentally singed the top…
“I want to kill you,” I overheard my four-year-old say in the other room. Uh-oh, I thought. How am I going to deal with this one? It brought me back to another recent parenting dilemma. My son and I were at the park with friends. He was with boys around his age, and I was…
While my family was living on a tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic (my husband was in the Air Force at the time, and we were stationed there), my two little boys started taking tennis lessons. They were four and five. Very little. But we thought it was a good opportunity. We wanted…
“Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33 NIV) A few weeks ago, I talked with my daughter in her bedroom as bedtime drew near. Many children like to read stories as part of a nightly routine, but Josie likes to draw and…
Chances are if you’re the parent of a school-aged child, that child is involved in something: Soccer. Basketball. Academic teams. Boy Scouts. Playing an instrument. Ballet. The list of possibilities is endless, and the time commitments are usually significant. How does one mother get four children to two activities each over the course of one week?…
My six-year-old daughter recently professed that she believes Jesus is her personal savior, that he died on the cross for the forgiveness of her sins, and that she wants to follow him for the rest of her life. To my cautious mother-mind, this was big stuff. I made a point of bringing up the subject…