#parenting

#parenting

My first assignment at the 2016 Summer Olympics was to deliver a package. My second was to find a food mart that sold bottled water. I wasn't working the event, though. My "job" was being the parent of an Olympic athlete. My daughter, Gwen Jorgensen, was set to compete in the women's triathlon, and our family had flown from Wisconsin to Rio de Janeiro to support her.

You can't do it all. And early on as a parent, I found that out by burning out completely while trying to be the perfect mother. One of the first things I abandoned to reestablish my sanity? Not trying to cook three from-scratch meals for my family every day while also trying to parent, work, and clean. Let's face it: if you're in the parenting business, you better have a few incredibly easy go-to meals up your sleeve

Kids have been telling their parents they're bored for as long as there have been parents. Nothing new there. But lately, it seems different. Many 21st-century kids, especially bright or neurodivergent kids, report being bored a lot. They're bored at school. They're bored on short car trips. They're bored when they're home and stuck inside without a friend. They're bored outside if there's nobody nearby to play with.

So before her 12-year-old started middle school last fall, she taught him how to make a frozen pizza. "His immediate response was, 'No, I don't want to,' Rosenbleeth recalls. After all, the oven is "hot and intimidating." And why would a tween want to make his own pizza when his mom was doing a perfectly fine job making it? "So I think we were working on two different skills," she says.

To me, the drama of has a lot of parallels with modern-day parenting. Sure, putting a Paw Patrol Band-Aid on your kid's scraped knee isn't exactly the same as treating a degloved foot (although judging by the screaming, you wouldn't know it). And betting on where a runaway ambulance will end up is higher stakes than betting on which child will crawl into your bed tonight.

My mom died when I was young, so I grew up spending summers with her mom in South Dakota. I loved that time with her, but I often only saw her that one time of year. I lived back in Florida with my dad for the rest of the year. When my grandma was older, she embraced the snowbird lifestyle and spent half the year in Florida to escape the Midwest winters.

"I've had people reach out about name regret with children up to 6 years old," baby name consultant Colleen Slagen tells TODAY.com.

I don't think worrying and letting him do his thing are your two alternatives. I imagine that you're going to continue to (kind of) worry-as parents tend to do when their teenage and young adult (and sometimes even older adult) children become involved in something they find weird or don't understand or that just gives them the ick.

Start with being completely honest with yourself: You do want to meddle. I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong to, despite the word's negative connotation. So let's call it, instead, "get involved," which is a bit more neutral. To get involved, begin the conversation at the first rung on the school ladder: with his classroom teacher. (If a regularly scheduled parent/teacher conference is coming up soon, save it for then; if there's nothing on the horizon, contact the teacher and ask for a private meeting.)

What these parents don't realize is that today's failure to launch is not always behavioral in nature. It can be due to cognitive constipation (bear with me on the Gastrointestinal metaphor; I am trying to make a point). Yes, that's right. It is those nasty doses of overthinking-the behind-the-scenes fuel-that crank up the hidden anxiety burning in your adult child's brain.

The moment I rise in the morning, I check my phone. Bad habit, to be sure. But I know I'm not the only one. There is a message from an editor marked "urgent," there is an email from the school reminding me it's parent-visit morning, and a text from a fellow soccer mom making sure I remembered the time change for Sunday's tournament. (I hadn't). The day had barely started, and I already felt hopelessly behind.

I can't even count the number of thoughts I have every single day, just bouncing around in my head like a ping pong ball. I think every mom feels the same way, which is why when you ask a mom what's on her mind, her response could range from something like "Oh, just thinking about my kid's new soccer team" to "The fall of democracy and the state of the world."

I think my personality definitely leaned Michelangelo, I still think TMNT is one of the greatest movies ever, too. I have two brothers and a sister, and the deal was that we had to be good in church for like a month to be able to go to the theater to see that movie. The last weekend, when we were supposed to go to the movies right after church, one of us got in trouble.

You are trying not to shiver while bundled up in a coat, scarf, hat and mittens. In the meantime, your child is wearing ... shorts. It's shocking. And confusing. And somehow personally upsetting. Jenna Bush Hager and Sheinelle Jones discuss the trend in the fourth hour of TODAY on Jan. 29. "Why is it that middle schoolers wear shorts, even in the bitter cold?" Sheinelle said, introducing a clip of Amy Poehler discussing the topic with actress Claire Danes on her "Good Hang" podcast.

"Your kids are two and four months...this isn't a note to your wife. It's a reminder that your focus is on them, and she needs to keep doing what she's already doing while you're gone and she's doing it solo," added u/Appropriate_Age_627.

A few weeks ago, our son's friend "Derek" came over for a sleepover and during the night somehow my son bruised his nose. We didn't know until he went home the next day and his parents texted us. Of course, we apologized and our son said it was an accident, but his friend's father refused to let him play anymore. Apparently the boy wanted to go home at 3am, but he didn't say so to us. (They were up late playing games).

Your husband did a pretty terrible thing. First, remind him that your mom's making a choice to not wear deodorant. It's an odd, kinda gross one, but it's her choice. Unless your mom is putting your husband in a headlock every time she visits, he has to learn to deal with it. But one way he can't deal with it is to use your 3-year-old child as an insult shield. That's just bad parenting-bad adulting, really.

I wanted a little baby girl or boy, whatever God gave, and God blessed me with three.

Now, some parenting experts say that paying kids to do chores is actually counterproductive in some way, and kids should help around the house without the expectation of financial compensation because, obviously, one day, they're going to grow up and have a house of their own. And as we all know, no one is paying us to make our beds when we're grown.

The term "naked mom" sounds like internet bait. In reality, it describes something far less dramatic: a mother moving through her own home without turning every day moments like showering or changing into a performance of modesty. Supporters see it as a way to strip shame from bodies and raise kids who aren't scandalized by anatomy. Critics, meanwhile, worry about boundaries, privacy and where comfort should - and shouldn't - begin inside a family.

I don't use the f word as often. My kids saw me swearing on YouTube videos. That doesn't exactly put me in a strong position at home when it comes to parenting, telling them what to say and what not to say. But if I get really angry, if we're being too 'arrogant' - we need to be confident in our own strength and what we can do, and we know that. But I don't like unnecessary arrogance,

The parent or adolescent needs to find a better alternative, and the adult needs to lead and show that way. After all,now is later, an adolescent is just an adult in training, and part of the parental responsibility is modeling and teaching habits of spoken communication that the young person will carry forward into significant relationships to come. Ensuring safe speech means managing unhappy emotional arousal that can betray them into saying what can inflict serious injury.