Friday, January 25, 2013
A Patch blogger's post about not helping her children on the slide is being debated across the country.
A Patch blog from Alameda, CA, called “Please Don’t Help My Kids” has struck a nerve with readers across the country. Posted in September, the blog has taken off over the past few weeks as it has found a second life through social media sharing. The blog has 124,000 Facebook recommendations and 833 people have tweeted the blog. The blog is an open letter to other parents at the playground. The blogger Kate Bassford Baker’s basic request is for parents to not help her daughters on the slide. She wrote that she wants her daughters to do things and learn things on their own. Learning to walk up the slide’s ladder is the first step to learning new things and overcoming obstacles, she wrote. “Because, as they grow up, the ladders will only get…
Thursday, August 23, 2012
List-Mania: Recent rankings score Boston high for young and old alike, making it a fine place to live for a long time.
The flow of frozen-yogurt seekers kept the door of the Allston shop in near-constant motion. With the skies already dark, for our little kids spooning into their scoops, it was late. But not for the customers coming in: With school yet to start, the relaxed, homework-free summer faces and bodies around us were uniformly young, as befits a neighborhood of students. We were with friends who were visiting Boston to tour colleges with their high schooler and two younger children. As the other mom at our table turned slightly to see the crowd, a bit of a shudder passed through her. “I can’t be around so many people this age,” she said, smiling and shaking her head. She was thinking of all the parenting she’d done, and all that was left to do. I…
Thursday, July 12, 2012
"One child broke a bowl carrying her dinner dishes to the kitchen. One burned herself in three places with that first-world, post-Martha Stewart version of a necessary household tool, the hot-glue gun."
I’m being terrorized by a machete-wielding, three-year-old child: There are pictures of him in my head, working in his Amazon habitat, helping around the house, practicing cutting wood. His six-year-old neighbor is there too. She’s on an expedition away from her own family; cleaning camp, fishing for dinner, and preparing meals for an entire group of people. These accomplished children are the latest images of childhood competing with my own family, leaving me breathless as I discover what parenting mistakes I’m making today. Should I be a Chinese Tiger Mom? Or more Français? Am I overparenting and being overprotective? Depriving my kids of nature, a dog, or just sunscreen? All are topics covered in the latest health and parenting news, …
Matthew
4:52 pm on Friday, January 25, 2013
This is ridiculous. Parents today are equally ridiculous. With so many issues facing kids and parents nowadays, I hardly think PLAYGROUNDS are the most important issue we should be dealing with. We're so into micro managing every aspect of kids' lives that we've now arrived in the land of the asinine. P.S. i livd in the Bay Area for years. This is the kind of ridiculous crap they preoccupy … more ›