It’s handy to have a 13 year old girl around.  No, I’m not being facetious.  This busy holiday season has opened my eyes to the benefits of having a teen in the family.  Among the perks I’ve recently enjoyed, my teen: Decorated the house with her siblings - including retrieving decorations from the basement.  Imagine my [...]

It started with a simple matching game.  My four year old daughter and I sat together in a pile of clean laundry on the bed.  “Let’s see who can find the most pair of socks that match.”  A chore turned into play.  Matching socks progressed to folding washcloths then to putting clothes in drawers and [...]

You may be familiar with the expression, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”  If this is true, I must be insane. Frequently, my husband and I pack up our family for weekends at a family camp.  We manage, most times, to remember everything and everyone. (The movie ‘Home Alone’ [...]

One of the worst insults I could receive as a young adult was “You’re so gullible.”  I despised being taken for a fool.  As a result, I learned to question everything I heard and read. Critical thinking is a skill worth honing and teaching to children.  It is the critical thinkers of the world who become inventors, problem [...]

Once upon a time, there was a boy who was stubborn.  He had his beliefs and was sticking to ‘em.  The boy believed he should be able to quit baseball mid-season.  He believed his parents should let him.  But the boy’s parents disagreed; they were stubborn too.  A power struggle – a tug of war – developed [...]