I’m a little torn. I know everyone does it, but is it good to use gifts as an incentive? It is the holiday season and I hear people saying, “You need to be good to get a gift. Be on your best behavior.” Is this ok? Whenever I hear phrases like that, I do cringe […]
Tag: Relationships
We all need human connection, although we don’t always do our best to cultivate and foster the relationships we value so much. Stable relationships form in infancy. A child’s earliest relationships with caregivers and family members shape her future connections. Read from the Mommybites Relationships archive. From advice for new moms, to marital relations, to relationships within an extended family, you’re sure to find something beneficial.
Ask Dr. Gramma Karen: The Gift of a Gap Year
Dear readers, This is an unabridged column I wrote for GRAND Magazine. An administrator at an elite college with 17 years experience has observed a decline in what she calls college readiness: “Our students are academically talented, but over the years I have found them to be less and less emotionally and behaviorally prepared for […]
Speaking With Children About Frightening News
Last Friday night, my husband and I boarded an overnight flight to London. We used to live there for many years (our older son was actually born there and has duel citizenship), and we were headed back to visit with friends and some of the teachers I used to teach with there. By the time […]
Ask Dr. Gramma Karen: Aunt Feels Pulled Into A Family Problem
I am a single aunt with no kids, but I have been party to conflict and tension between my brother and my mother. My mother helps my brother and his family quite often with babysitting, overnights, transportation, and caring for his kids when my brother and his wife are out of town. My mother attends […]
Ask Dr. Gramma Karen: Preserving Family History and Memories
At 93 years old, Aunt Dora was the last of her seven siblings. Spry and mentally alert, she acted as “Communications Central” for her grown seven nieces and nephews, with each calling on a different day a week to check in with her. As each person called Dora on his/her assigned day, she proved to […]
Fight Club, Vegas and Parenting
The Mommybites Team and I just got back from a “business trip” to Las Vegas for the ABC Kids Expo. You all know the famous saying, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” So, say for example, one was in Vegas and wore a bedazzled Green Bay Packer’s shirt and sang Journey at the Bourbon […]
Homemade Food Makes a House a Home
As a writer on a parenting blog, I’m what you might call a sleeper candidate. My children like to joke that I’m a “slug mom” – as in, the opposite of the infamous “Tiger Mom” type. My laissez-faire parenting attitude springs from a cocktail that’s one part nostalgia for my casual Midwestern 1970’s childhood, one […]
Ask Dr. Gramma Karen: The Gogos of Swaziland
Dear readers, As we in the United States celebrate National Grandparents Day on Sunday, September 13, I thought this would be an appropriate time for my friend, Hannah Laufer-Rottman, to talk about the important role the grandmothers, known as the Gogos, are playing in Swaziland, a country in Africa. (Gogo is an honorific title that is […]