Lately I tell myself that I’ll start to eat healthier. I won’t finish my children’s meals. I won’t pick off their plates, like a mother vulture. By Kelly Niebergall
kids
Every fertility journey is different. You never really know what somebody else is going through. By Amy Klein
Let your children see you trying. Let them see you cry. By Kaci Curtis
My kids are used to my loud, Jewish-mom complaining—but not this unkindness. Not this anxiety-fueled rage. By Hannah Grieco
When children feel pressured to perform well in the public realm, they have a hard time recognizing what really matters to them. By Dr. Madeline Levine
I told my kids in McDonald’s. Because when you’re about to drop that kind of bomb, really you want them to be eating french fries. By Lauren Apfel
It’s all about the details, the sillier the better. By Lori Orlinsky
When Finn took his first steps and my husband was on another continent, I couldn’t help but wonder, “How could you miss this?” By Kaci Curtis
What if birth certificates reflected reality? I imagined three spaces, one for our daughter’s biological mother and two for us. By Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser
They all took turns as babies, then toddlers, riding in the stroller’s deep reclining seat, casually enjoying Cheerios or clutching a favorite toy as I bounced behind. By Cara McDonough
I’d been craving more one-on-one time with my kids for so long and now, thanks to those pesky parasites, I had it. By Kate Lemery
Cell phones do not work here, and on a good day it takes only ten minutes to open email. By Mindy R. Roll
“No offense Mom,” my oldest said to me a few years ago. “But you could have been so much more.” By Laura Pochintesta
We had a ritual that I honored until she outgrew the need for it. It occurs to me now that I needed it just as much as she did. By Tracy Tambosso
My parents grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust. Neither one of them knew how to tell me what had happened, so instead they said nothing. By Elissa Jacobs
I didn’t have my therapist hat on when my son went through his grief—I was just his mom, muddling through it alongside him. By Lori Gottlieb
We asked, you answered. In three words.
Kisses really mean love. When we kiss you goodnight, we told her, it leaves your cheek and travels straight into your heart. By Rosanne Ullman
I want my son to see the value in committing to something because it’s beautiful and worthwhile, not because he’s certain to succeed. By Daisy Alpert Florin
I’m a third grade teacher. No amount of cursive writing instruction is going to bridge literacy gaps or resolve comprehension deficits. By Michelle Riddell
Every day she’d come home and say, “today my friends called me peanut, and it makes me sad.” By Lori Orlinksy
“Baby, it might be a mistake,” my mother said. “Sometimes they accidentally send these things out to the wrong people.” By Rebecca Potter
It doesn’t seem quite right to just toss these pearly whites in the trash (no matter how much I thanked them, with all due respect to Ms. Kondo). By Anne Brinser Shelton
YouTube, Apple Music, Netflix. Kids seldom watch, listen to, or read anything these days they didn’t select themselves—or that wasn’t suggested by an anxious-to-please algorithm. By Mary Janevic
I was 10. I loved my cat, Gizmo. And I killed him. By Michael Gentry