parenting books

Child(ish) Reads: The Type of Parent I Wanted to Be

| Patti Webb

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

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Childish Reads: Planning

| Patti Webb

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?

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