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 [...]

The Fear of Failing as a Parent

It is the things I say when I am exhausted and under stress that I must remember later and pay close attention to. Those are the moments when my guard is down and I can finally hear the fears that lie so deep that I’m unwilling to admit they exist when I am in a [...]

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 [...]

Snapshots of the Tayler Household Today

I sat on the couch next to Kiki, her legs draped across my lap as she told me about her friends. Kiki loves them and worries for them, but is not sure how to help them as they struggle. I listened to Kiki and tried to give her good advice, but mostly just to listen [...]

Small Changes in Parenting Tactics

It often doesn’t take a very large parenting shift to make a big difference in a family dynamic. Some recent examples: In mid-February Link was feeling neglected and unloved at home. He saw all the things we were doing for other kids, but wasn’t recognizing things we did for him. This was in part because [...]

Normality, Denial, and Parenting

Humans are inherently social creatures, even those of us who are happiest when we have significant quantities of time alone. Some people are checking around to make sure they fit in, others are checking to make sure that they stand out, but we’re all looking around to see where we stand in relation to others [...]

Hard Things, Anxiety, Schools, and Hope

Sometimes, in the middle of a hard thing, all I can do is remember that I once believed it was possible and keep going. I tweeted those words yesterday, because yesterday and Monday I could not feel hope. I could logically think through the steps we’re going to take in the next few weeks; the [...]

Meeting at the School

It is never fun to have an hour long meeting including the principal, two teachers, and the school psychologist when the subject of the meeting is “How do we help your child cope with school in a way that does not place a huge burden on already overburdened school staff.” Short term interventions are still [...]

Things I need to tell myself while facing diagnosis for a child

First: Realize that you have a battle to fight with denial. You really want to be imagining things. Any time things are normal for a while, you will doubt the diagnosis, doubt the need to seek treatment, decide to just let it all slide for a bit. Second: You will grieve when you finally hear [...]

Afternoon Parenting Battles

First there was the battle of the Mythology assignment. Link gave me many reasons for why he didn’t need to do it: talking about Greek gods made him uncomfortable, the deadline was today, he’d already done enough work to rescue his grade from an F. I listened to his reasons and recognized them as “Do [...]