Nature versus nurture: it’s a question as old as time. Why do people do what they do? How does a child’s personality develop? Is it something they are born with or can a child be parented into being this way or that? Scholars, parents, and everyone in between have been asking this question for hundreds of years and the
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If you haven’t joined your local Buy Nothing group on Facebook yet, here’s why you NEED to. (Especially if you are a mom.) But first, what is a Buy Nothing group? Buy Nothing groups are local Facebook groups that allow members to post stuff they want to get rid of (usually labeled “GIFT” in the post), or items they would
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We’ve had kind of a rough summer so far. I’ve always said three-and-a-half is the hardest age. Magda Pecsenye of the blog Ask Moxie put it best, in my opinion: I say often that age 3.5 is the nadir of humanity, and I’m not actually joking. This age is demoralizing and confusing to the parent, because the child just can’t
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June 17th was supposed to be our son’s last day of school. But instead of spending the day having extra recess and signing yearbooks, most of the kids in our local public school systems stayed home. A crazy storm blasted through Central Virginia the night before, uprooting trees, knocking out power, and setting our city and the surrounding areas into
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When my youngest cousin was little,* he called me Ballerina. My name is Valerie, and that initial V sound can be tricky for some really young kids. So, you know, Balerie…Ballerina–it was a logical jump for a toddler to make. I spent the summer after my junior year of college working as a nanny for a little boy** who was
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