One Cobble at a Time

Pondering the Months to Come

The school year draws to a close in just a few weeks. The teachers from my kids’ elementary school have begun sending home notes with the last lists of things to accomplish before the year ends. I am glad, because this year has exhausted me. I’m ready for it to be over. Yet I haven’t [...]

Learning Anxiety Management

We sat in the therapist’s office with nothing to discuss. Three weeks and there had been no meltdowns we could talk through, no major stress episodes, no panic. It was as if the troubles ceased the moment we attempted to observe them. Whatever the reasons for the vanished anxiety, there did not seem to be [...]

Spring Fever

Kiki is just a few weeks away from her high school graduation, but her brain is ready to run off to college. As she described it to me, she’ll walk into the front room and sit on the couch. Then her head fills up with thoughts like: I wonder what the couches will be like [...]

Homework Consequences

I’m sitting here typing on my laptop while my ten year old son is crying over his homework. This is not the sort of moment that gets immortalized in photos or regaled over Thanksgiving dinner. It is not a moment that makes me feel like a good mother, but it is exactly this sort of [...]

School Projects

The teacher assigns a project to my child who then explains it to me. The communication chain seems simple, particularly when it is also facilitated by a note directly from the teacher to parents. I am very grateful for those notes, because projects tend to transform inside my children’s heads. Patch is supposed to research [...]

Telling Kids About Bad Things

Howard and I spent most of the weekend avoiding the news. We checked in for updates, but only read them in text. We watched no video and tried to keep to bare facts as much as possible. We certainly did not turn on broadcast news in our family room and let our kids watch with [...]

Parent Teacher Conferences and Praise

In Elementary school, parent teacher conferences are simple: one teacher, one appointment. Junior high is more complicated and the school seeks to solve this issue by a sort of open house conference night. Sometimes they have all the teachers seated at tables in the commons area and the families form lines in front of those [...]

Homework Hour

“Children!” my voice was pitched loud so that it could be heard over their chatter and pierce their internal imaginations. “I have two children with two projects and we have about two hours before bedtime. There is only one of me and I’m going to need you to follow instructions.” My declaration came at the [...]

Observations on a College Campus

I am old. Not old lady old, but mom old. Everywhere we went there were young people and they were all open and ready to engage, meet new friends, maybe find someone particularly special. …and I don’t fit with that anymore. I remember fitting. I remember belonging to the crazy energy of an apartment of [...]

Contemplating College for Kiki

Kiki filled out her first college application while I was away at the writer’s retreat. The first I knew about it was when the college emailed me saying that she’d applied and that all they needed were her ACT scores and a transcript. She took the ACT a month ago and her scores arrived last [...]