Over the last ten years at least 36 USA Team swimming coaches have been banned for life from the USA swimming organization. Not, to the best of my knowledge, convicted in the court of law — and not doing hard time for their crimes — just simply banned for life from coaching the USA Swim Team. Their crime? Allegedly molesting and secretly taping teen girls in locker rooms while the girls changed and showered. [Read more →]
I have a few very close friends that are pregnant right now. They are all actually due very soon; one in a few weeks, one in a month and another at the end of the Summer. I’m totally envious of them — not like jealous envious — just excited and overwhelmed for them and what they’re about to experience. I loved being pregnant. I know it’s hard for some people to believe, but despite the fact that I’m a foul mouthed, relatively too-cool-to-be-emotional kind of girl, I was completely in awe of the fact that a baby was growing inside of my body. I was a full blown Gaylord when it came to my pregnancy. I even made myself sick. [Read more →]
I’ve mentioned Lenore Skenazy once or twice before in my column. She’s an author, a columnist, a blogger and a mom who let her kid ride the subway by himself at the age of 9. Quick! Everybody gasp in horror. Her website Free-Range Kids is a must read/browse/love/hate — whatever — if you’re a parent, you have to check it out. Parents today are so afraid of losing their children at the park, the mall, whatever — that they’ve taken to literally attaching tracking devices to their children’s feet. Sensational Beginnings even makes it look cute and fuzzy so the kids will go for it.
It’s been a while since I’ve had time to write. I finally got a new job and being busy is a welcomed burden. When thinking about what I wanted to share with my friends who read WFTC, the unfolding of spring flowers and budding trees quickly lured me. I penned some flowery — all pun intended — prose about time change and season change and blah, blah, blah. I almost sounded bright-eyed and dreamy.
Thank God for cousins, co-workers, ice skates, and babies. I want to talk about parenting. [Read more →]
Yup. You read it correctly. Some wasted asshole actually put his baby in an oven and left him there overnight. Talk about giving new meaning to the phrase “bun in the oven.” Congratulations, Larry Long — you are officially our daddy douche of the week. [Read more →]
As you’re sitting in your office/cubicle right now, I am in Orlando, Florida — traipsing around Disney World trying to find Ariel in her stupid Grotto. What the hell is a Grotto, anyway? I had to google that shit so when I actually arrived on the “Disney Campus,” I sounded like I knew what I was talking about when I asked where to find that red-headed bimbo. I actually Wikipedia’d that shit so a bunch of wanna-be actors in costumes with over-sized craniums wouldn’t think that I was an idiot. So sad.
Is it me, or were snow days way more fun when we were kids? Now? Not so much.
I remember being a kid, growing up in Rockland County, NY — ya know, the place that gets all the snow the city hears about. We averaged 6 inches every time it snowed, at least — and that was nothing. I remember waking up at 6 in the morning on snow days — earlier than I ever woke up, including these days — just to turn on RKO radio — the AM station every kid gathered around the radio to listen to, fingers crossed, praying to hear their school’s name called out during the list of cancellations. Man, those were the days. Nothing beat a snow day… as a kid. As a parent? Fuck. That. Shit. [Read more →]
The headline from Salon.com reads “Tweeting an abortion: A blogger takes to Twitter and YouTube as she terminates her pregnancy, and women should thank her.”
Now, I’ll be honest. When I saw that, I had a mental image similar to that of the piece’s author (Tracey Clark-Flory), that of a woman laying there on the rock slab as they fired up the Dust-Buster and started vacuuming out her fallopian tubes. But it’s not quite “all that and a bag of chips.”
I understand that children can’t be sheltered forever and that they have to learn how things work in this world… even if those things are, on some level, disturbing. But what is the appropriate way to teach a kid about those things? Is it the way Headmistress, Mrs. Charman, chose to teach her kids where meat comes from? She had her students raise a lamb from birth; taught her kids to care for it, bottle-feed it, love it, and even named it Marcus — and then sent it off to be slaughtered.
I generally tend to go off in my blogs. I love picking on parents, their kids and all the stupid things they do both together and on their own. I guess I just have a knack for being obnoxious and judgmental — even though ironically, up until I had a kid, I didn’t think I was remotely judgmental. Now? Pshht. I totally am. It’s impossible not to be when it comes to parenting. It’s like the minute you squeeze out that kid, you start looking around at other people and their kids and think to yourself, “I can’t believe that mother is letting her son stand on top of the monkey bars. What a reckless moron.” It just happens. Just like your boobs become all engorged with milk whether you’re going to breast feed or not — the minute you have a kid, you instantly start thinking everyone else around you is doing something wrong. [Read more →]
Apparently, early childhood testing is becoming more and more common. This article in New York Magazine is a must read for anyone with children. Whether you plan on enrolling your kids in private school or not, it’s an incredibly insightful and interesting look inside the world of testing children at a young age and the implications of allowing those tests to further determine the future of these kids. [Read more →]
What? That’s not normal? Apparently, to Lynn Middlebrooks Geter, it is. She forced her son to kill his hamster as punishment for receiving poor grades in school. What happened to time outs? Or no Play Station for a week? Kill your hamster? Really? I wonder at what point Lynn’s head imploded and she thought to herself, “I know. I’ll make the little bastard kill his hamster with a hammer. That’ll teach him to fail social studies!” [Read more →]
Sometime later this year the Supreme Court will probably rule, by a narrow margin and on narrow grounds, to uphold Proposition 8, the California law enacted last year that bans gay marriage in the state. It will slow, not end, the inexorable progress of this country toward justice on this issue. But meanwhile, we have a dilly of a trial going on in San Francisco, Perry v. Schwartzenegger, with David Boies and Theodore Olson, from opposite sides of Bush v. Gore, ganging up against the marriage-is-just-for-boys-and-girls crowd. [Read more →]
What kind of a parent does their kids’ homework for them? Like, actually does it for them, not helps. It seems to be an ongoing struggle for parents these days. I read an interesting piece by Sue Shellenbarger on The Juggle last week. I guess it’s kind of like this whole Keeping Up with the Steins mentality. Parents want their children to succeed, and heaven forbid they aren’t holding their own against their peers. So one parent starts and another gets wind of it and before you know it, you’ve got a bunch of 40-year-olds sitting at the kitchen table with rubber cement, a shoe box, modeling clay and construction paper — while their kids are in the den playing Grand Theft Auto on PS3. Yeah. That’ll get ’em into college. [Read more →]
Up until a few weeks ago we had a Safety 1st Grip ‘n Twist Door Knob Cover on my 3-year-old’s doorknob so she couldn’t get out of her room at night. For me, it was the fear of her roaming around our apartment in the middle of the night and hurting herself, opening the front door, finding her way to the knife drawer — normal things we parents worry about — that led me to put it on her door. Once we put her in a bed, the thought of her having free rein in our apartment caused me complete anxiety. I’m Jewish, what do you want from me? [Read more →]
I wrote a blog last year that centered around growing up as a Jewish kid during Christmas and how to now handle my daughter during this time of year. You can read it here. I used to think it was pretty funny; I kept it light and to the point. But now I don’t think it’s that funny. I’ve been finding people’s assumption that saying “Merry Christmas” to everyone is totally normal and acceptable to be pretty fucking presumptuous and rude. [Read more →]
Raising a kid can be expensive. There are diapers and formula when they are babies, and as they get older they get pickier about their toys and their clothes (not to mention you still need to feed them!). Plus, maybe there is a certain bike they want or there is a new Wii game that is out. And in this economy, buying any holiday gifts at all may be a difficult expense for some people. Needless to say, I was intrigued when the other day, a friend “invited” me to donate to her daughter Ashtyn’s bike fund through Facebook. [Read more →]
I’ve been busy basking in the tanning bed glow of my latest television obsession, Jersey Shore on MTV. The brain trust on Jersey Shore is all about alcohol fueled sex, one night stands, and boyfriends who are married. And while I’ve been waiting for poor Snooki to get punched in the face by some a-hole on tonight’s episode, MTV has been quietly airing a show that portrays life far away from the drunken antics in New Jersey. Teen Mom is as sobering as it gets. [Read more →]
I was going to title this “Van Gets a Divorce.” But then I thought that sounded like an ending. I’d rather we were getting round to the beginning. So, let’s get on with things. I feel required to apologize to the three people who read my previous blogs regularly. I am sorry. I will try really hard to avoid a future block-creating crisis in my life that will cause long absences from the computer. Really hard. Really, really hard, for the sake of all four of us. Thanks in advance for not commenting below with any sort of apologies for the current crisis.
I have been separated since the beginning of September (emotionally before physically). [Read more →]
My daughter is 3 1/2 years old. Although you would never know it now, she was a late talker. By late, of course, I mean that at 1 1/2 she was only saying a few words, ya know the way most 1 1/2-year-olds are. My girlfriend works for the Early Intervention program so when she saw my daughter having fits and struggling to express herself, she immediately had her evaluated for speech therapy, which she qualified for. To not have her evaluated would have been like a dentist letting his teenage son walk around with an overbite and a snaggle-tooth. There’s nothing to talk about. You slap braces on that kid’s ugly mouth. [Read more →]
