What is the strongest part of your family?
If you want to do something for your kids, do something to improve your marriage.” Dear Friend,15 years into my friend’s marriage, the relationship was no picnic. Being absorbed in the craziness of raising three kids, running their own businesses, and maintaining a household got the best of them. They had nothing left over for each other […]
How can we make sure our tweens and teens are OK?
Dear Friend, Kerry here. 🙂 A few years ago, I gathered a team of high school and college students and we went out and interviewed teens about their relationships with their parents. Here are a few things the teens had to say: YOUTH WANT THEIR PARENTS TO LISTEN.1 in 4 youth said that quality time spent […]
My 13-year old Can’t Stand Me
“Dear Kerry, I am in a really hard corner of parenting – my 13 year old daughter, who I have loved and adored since the day she was born – cannot stand me. Everything I say is met with eye rolls, every request I make is countered with a snarky “Why don’t you do it?” […]
Back to School Blues: Balancing Acts, Emotions, and Coffee Breaks.
How are you feeling this back to school season? It can be such a mix of joy, sadness, gratitude and worry as we send our kids back to school. We love watching them grow and enter into new seasons of life… that’s what we want for them! But it can also be hard to let […]
Lighter fluid and yogurt bowls
It was a calm, normal morning of getting ready for school with Palmer (13) and his little brother (8). All was well. It was a minute or two before we needed to leave. All of a sudden, Palmer could not STAND the way his brother was using that particular spoon to scrape the yogurt out of […]
Swore you’d never yell at your kids?
Before I had kids, I swore I would never yell as a parent. Well… I clearly didn’t realize what parenting teens would actually be like. It’s hard! There would be times I found myself throwing all my parenting skills out the window and yelling at my kids when I was overloaded with frustration. It felt […]
Homebase
Back to school time already? I’m not sure how this happened. What if I’m not ready to send my sweet stepdaughter off to Oregon? What if I don’t want to move my youngest son back to Boulder? Oh, right. Sometimes I forget. Our kids don’t wait for us to be ready. Life keeps marching on. […]
What to do when your teens are rude?
With six kids, I’ve heard my share of rudeness! Some phrases that got under my skin the most were those dismissive comments like, “Mom, stop” in a snarky tone. Or, “Bye, Mom” when I’m being dismissed from their room. What to do? Here’s something to experiment with: If you don’t like how you typically respond […]
Teen Rejection will Challenge our Parenting Skills
I hate to admit it, but when my kids were little, it was the first time I really felt popular. All the “mommy do it” felt great. It was sort of exhausting, but it was also so sweet and there was so much love from my boys. I also hate to admit how as they […]
Teens and tweens can be so many things
Since the emergence oTweens, teens and twenty somethings can be so many things. Some of those “things” can drive us nuts. But one of those “things” they can be is: FUN! FULL OF LIFE! They can be happy and vibrant and full of life and enthusiasm. Their laughter and happiness can be contagious. Last week […]