the parenting files

Rooted, But Limitless

Our parenting needs to give our children the structure and safety they need to sprout and send out roots, without imposing limits on what they can accomplish. These things are rarely taught by words, but by action and experience. Many times we pass on our limiting beliefs to our children without realizing it. They come to accept mental box that we have put around our own lives and possibilities as true for them as well.

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The End of an Era

It was February 2001 when I became pregnant for the first time. That baby is now 17 years old, and probably leaving home in less than a year. Since that day in February when I first conceived I have been either breastfeeding, or pregnant, without any pauses, for 18 years. […]

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To my sixth child

Dear Pax, You are perfect! You are everything a little boy should be. You are strong and agile. You climb and jump and ride your little push bike all over the place. You use swords and guns and make little explosion sounds with with your mouth while dramatically dropping into […]

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It’s on me

He took me out for ice cream for my birthday, trying on phrases in the same way he’s trying on manhood for the first time this year. “It’s on me,” he says in the card. He’ll pay, with money he earned. “What can I get?” I ask him in the […]

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Of Beggars and Boys, and Becoming Men

Sunday night on our way home from the market the clutch went on our car. We pulled over at the first place that seemed like it might have some of the things we needed for a repair. We hadn’t eaten dinner yet, and it was getting late, and the car […]

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Growing up

He’s only half awake, angry, because he wet the bed, and he doesn’t usually but he’s been sick, and he’s so eager to be a big kid this week. I take him to the bathroom to shower off and he has to go potty first, sick tummies lead to many […]

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Dear Son, I want you to fail this year

Dear Boy, Twelve years ago today you made me a mother. It didn’t go at all as I had planned, and dreamed about, your birth, but there you were anyway, with a ridge in your forehead and a cone on the back of your head, and so, very, very fragile […]

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