Life in a Pinball Machine
I am standing in the kitchen getting breakfast ready for my family… Palmer (6) is banging on the counter with an action figure while he asks for a drink. Landon (2) is playing on the floor at my feet with his new and very noisy digger, saying “Play, mommy!” Keaton (9) is downstairs hollering at […]
Didn’t I Tell You What I Don’t Want?
Imagine this: you’re sitting in a restaurant and when the waitress asks for your friend’s order, your friend goes through the whole menu of what she DOESN’T want… “I don’t want the burrito and I don’t want the tacos and I don’t want the chimichanga.” How likely is she to end up getting what she […]
Want to Stop Yelling at Your Kids?
Bless my kids and their cranky days. If my 3 boys were perfect and delightful all the time, I’d have no credibility as a parenting instructor. Lucky for me, I don’t have that problem! Just the other morning, I was tempted to yell. I came right to the brink when two of them were participating […]
Don’t You Know You’re Supposed to Behave Today?
For many years now, my children have unwittingly been actors in a drama… the play could be titled “Kerry’s Fantasies.” These fantasies consist of dreams and stories created by a much younger me in which my children are happy and well adjusted, squeaky clean and smiling. In this dream, there is an act by the […]
This is Not a Dress Rehearsal
On my kids’ first day of school this year, I first dropped off my high schooler. Gasp. How can I have a kid that old? I always thought being the parent of a high schooler was for grownups! Heck, I remember when I thought that having a child in elementary school was for grownups. As […]
Summertime Can Mean Bright Days but Parenting Blues!
Here are some ideas to manage the sibling bickering that can wear us down during long summer days. Bicker Jar When my kids bicker, they each have to draw a slip of paper from the “Bicker Jar.” The slips have various forms of distraction written on them, from chores (you should see how clean my […]
