Name, Age: Troy, 36
Age(s) of Child: Fraternal twin girls (2 years, 4 months)
Parenting
Child(ish) Reads: The Type of Parent I Wanted to Be
If you read our first Childish Reads post on pregnancy books, you know that Bringing Up Bébé is one of my top recommendations for moms. I admit, I am a Francophile and having my daughters be prim and proper is a nice little fantasy. But, I didn’t want to pigeon-hole myself into thinking that one book was going to perfectly change my entire outlook on parenting.
To tip the scales in a different direction, I decided to read two additional and arguably polar opposite parenting titles. What could I take from all three of these books, and what could be chalked up to just parenting clickbait?
For this edition of Childish Reads, I’m giving you my takeaways of:
The Happiest Kids in the World: How Dutch Parents Help Their Kids (and Themselves) by Doing Less by Rina Mae Acosta and Michele Hutchison
Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua
Childish Reads: Planning
I’ve always been a planner. I remember wanting a date planner for homework…in elementary school…to go with my very adult Trapper Keeper. To-do lists, brainstorming, habit tracking: these are all my jams.
So after A&Z came home from the hospital, we used the BabyTracker app to get them on a concrete, fool-proof schedule. After six weeks, when Troy and I both had to go back to work, we had to find a way to adapt our daily schedule to theirs without having things fall through the cracks.
This scenario goes hand-in-hand with the first day of school, new jobs, or any big life change, like virtual schooling in a pandemic, maybe.
How can you best allocate your time without feeling exhausted?
How can you juggle everything without dropping anything?
The Non-Traditional Classroom: Your Virtual Learning Setup
School is back in session, and it’s something we’ve been anxious about all summer. Thanks to COVID, we’ve seen a ton of different back-to-school plans and after this past month, we’re starting to see which schools are working and which schools are back to the Zoom drawing board.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends in-person schooling for children as it provides social interaction, physical activity, and emotional aptitude. Face-to-face school also offers access to a variety of learning supports otherwise limited with online classrooms.
Continue readingMy Personal Parenting Life
Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them. – P.J. O’Rourke
When my son was born, I had many expectations on how I was going to raise him. Being a pediatric Occupational Therapist, I felt like I had an advantage. I assumed that the troubles and turmoil parents face could easily be solved with follow-through and consistency. I would often hear fellow colleagues tell me, “Wait until you have kids.”
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Child(ish) Advice 