While it wasn’t, technically, hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk recently, it was hot enough to bring a screeching halt to our typical summer activities. Ordinarily, my daughter does lots of outdoorsy things like track camp, pool, lemonade stands and just plain old playing with the other members of our neighborhood gang. But the heat wave brought an end to outdoor fun. Even track camp was cancelled as the temperature topped 100.  Like most of my friends, we don’t have an unlimited entertainment budget, so spending the week at the pool or in the movie theater was out of the question. …

I drove my children home from Centennial Beach naked. Once. Allow me to explain. They were taking swimming lessons that summer. Every morning, I packed their beach bags with dry clothes and a fresh towel and set the bags by the garage door. They wore their suits to the lesson, then changed into dry clothes for the ride home. Despite being reminded, they continually forgot their bags so I made sure the bags made it to the car along with the kids. One day, I decided I had too much on my plate and made the kids responsible for getting their bags to the car. The first day, they forgot. I refused …

I see them everywhere. Little girls playing soccer, running, doing gymnastics, playing baseball. In short, little girls doing sports. When I was a girl, the only reason I had for being behind homeplate was to catch the practice pitches my little brother threw.  I wasn’t the only girl watching from the sidelines while the boys participated in sports. In fact, most of us were on the bench . . . in the bleachers. This month marks the 40th anniversary of legislation that changed the face of American athletics.Title IX made it illegal for educational programs and activities to discriminate against…

The days of summer are supposed to be lazy, hazy and crazy. I’m not sure if our weather could be termed hazy, but with the brain-frying temperatures we have had it’s certainly crazy. And that’s my problem. We’ve had an abundance of crazy since school let out and just about zero lazy. I don’t think my kids are over-booked. My son plays guitar and drums. My daughter does gymnastics for recreation and fun. So, our schedule is pretty low-key during the school year. This summer, the girl decided to add track so I’m feeling the pain that soccer moms and dads must feel year ‘round. Between track …

If I were a different kind of parent, my life would be so much easier. I would set the rules and my children would follow them, mostly. Instead, my husband and I decided to allow our children a say in the decisions that most affected them, sort of “no parenting without representation,” if you will. We’ve always required that they state their case convincingly, backing it up with more than just their own vehemently stated desires. Now, of course, we are living with a severe case of "Be Careful What You Wish For." Children capable of formulating a sound logical argument are not to be trifled …

Brave may be Disney’s latest movie, but it’s the corporation’s latest move that draws applause from me. Last week, Disney put its considerable corporate weight behind efforts to fight disturbing trends in childhood obesity, announcing it would no longer accept ads marketing junk food to kids. You can download Disney’s healthy food guidelines here. With nearly one-third of American children obese, Bravo! to Disney for recognizing that marketing unhealthful foods to kids is a contributing factor, as the Institute of Medicine reported to Congress in 2006. One company likely to be impacted by …

My first car was a Ford Pinto. It was traffic-sign yellow and had a stick shift transmission so I couldn’t even drive it home after buying it. But it was mine, all mine, bought with $500 of my own hard-earned cash. I had it painted bright blue and spent a weekend learning to drive it. I was just out of my freshman year in college. It makes me feel like an old crank, but I’m amazed at how many of my son’s friends have been given brand new cars. These are kids who just got their driver’s licenses. In other words, 16-year-old children with little more than 60 hours behind the wheel are getting …

School’s going to be out for summer soon. My kids will be packing away the backpacks and sleeping in late but, with apologies to Alice Cooper, they will still be hitting the books. The slides at Centennial Beach aren’t the only ones our kids experience during summer breaks. Two months without schooling leads to the “Summer Slide,” the phenomenon that sees our children losing academic ground over the summer.  In the fall, teachers spend as much as a month getting students back up to speed. In the recent past, I’ve attempted to stop the slide with my own kids by using a variety of techniques, …

As soon as I heard about it, I had to check it out. I’m a hands on kind of gal, so though I’d heard the picture was unsettling, I had to see it for myself. While I’ll admit the TIME cover of a three-year-old boy nursing was visually startling, it wasn’t the photo that I found offensive. What set me off was the headline: “Are You Mom Enough?” As if moms need more fuel for maternal self-doubt, TIME serves up a beautiful woman and her equally beautiful child, obviously thriving on his mother’s milk, and asks us all if we measure up. But what’s truly most disgusting about the cover is that the …

I felt like I’d traveled back in time when I overhead the following conversation in one of my classes. A male student said he’d seen “The Avengers.” A girl in the class said, “Oh, I loved that movie!” Did the boys say, “Cool! Me, too”? Nope. They laughed. Why? Because, as they said, “The Avengers is a movie for boys.” When I was in grade school, Gloria Steinem was an active participant in history, not just a historical figure. I understand that no bras were really burned back then, but if they had been, I’d have seen it. So, when I heard, “The Avengers” is for boys, my feminist brain exploded…

As a parent, I’m something of a puzzlement to my children’s friends. I make funny faces and strange noises, causing my daughter’s best friend to decide I’m weird, “but in a good way.” My son’s friends are always taken aback by how honest we generally are in our household. But nothing confounds his friends more than the fact that we don’t blow a gasket when he swears, particularly when he drops an F-bomb into the middle of a conversation. Even more perplexing to my son’s friends is the fact that while we tolerate the F-word, I get seriously angry with him when he uses “gay” as an insult. To …

Some parenting decisions are easy to make. Breastfeeding was a no-brainer. And even though it proved to be a lot harder than advertised, I’d do it again. No question. On the other hand, I’ll never again succumb to my children’s pleas for another pet when we already have a perfectly good one at home. Most parenting calls aren’t quite so easily made. To snoop or not to snoop, for instance. A year ago, I would have said, “Nope. Not gonna do it. Kids deserve some amount of privacy.” I would have believed every word of what I said, too. That was last year. This year, I snooped. And I’d do it again…

The kerfuffle over Ann Romney and Hilary Rosen really hit home for me. Not because I don’t think stay-at-home moms work very hard. I know they do. Not because Hilary Rosen thinks Ann Romney can’t speak for working moms. Frankly, I’d feel more comfortable if it were Mitt listening to moms’ concerns, but I’m pretty sure Ann is a good listener. She’d have to be to raise five kids. No, what hit home for me is the idea that, because she adopted her children, Hilary Rosen is less of a mother than Ann Romney. Witness this Tweet from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights: “Lesbian Dem …

Quick! Go outside and dig yourself a hole. Use a big shovel. Make the hole really deep. Step back and assess your work. Got that hole nice and deep? Good. Now, fill it back in with a teaspoon. You’re probably thinking something like, “There’s no way!” or “That’ll take forever!” Now you know how a kid who’s dug himself a hole in his grades feels. Just one zero requires two perfect scores to pull the average above failing. When the zeros pile up the student loses hope of ever catching up and the cycle continues. It’s a scenario I’m intimately familiar with; we saw it in our son before he was …

I never thought the opening of a fertility clinic would have any bearing on my life. I’ve built my family and am concentrating on raising the kids I’ve got. Still, the controversy surrounding the clinic to be developed by Dr. Randy Morris in downtown Naperville resonates with me.  While I had difficulty getting pregnant, I did eventually have a son without fertility treatments. In IVF, a number of embryos are created; only some are used. What to do with the remainder leaves many people deeply conflicted. Some people leave them frozen, paying for their storage year after year. Others donate …

I like to think my son is unique, that there’s no one else exactly like him. But when it comes to reading, I’m afraid he’s a pretty typical boy: he doesn’t like it. Not liking reading has a significant impact on boys’ ability to read. Since 1992, more boys score below the proficiency level than girls on the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. The boy-girl gap is found in every socio-economic and ethnic category. All over America, girls have it all over boys in reading. Getting our son to read has been a lifelong challenge. We’ve done everything from setting a good …

Kids do some really crazy things, but I think the craziest thing I’ve heard lately is “Am I Ugly or Pretty” videos. Young girls are making videos of themselves then posting them on YouTube and asking viewers to declare the girl “ugly” or “pretty.” I hope it comes as no surprise that the girls generally get a lot of positive comments but just as many that are mean and abusive. Some of the comments I’ve read should land the commenter in jail. Experts call the phenomenon normal tween behavior. Young girls, the logic goes, have low self-esteem and are insecure about their appearance so look for …

I’m fairly wise to the ways of the world, so I usually know when someone is trying to pull a fast one on me. When I got the paperwork prior to my son’s annual IEP review and planning session, I realized his school wasn’t planning on doing any planning. They planned to boot him out of special education all together. I was stunned. We had just received a report noting his—and their—failure to meet the goals set in last year’s planning session. How, I thought, could they justify reviewing his eligibility for services when they hadn’t met their goals? I was ready to raise hell. I’ve gotten pretty…

Senator Olympia Snowe is calling it quits. After 33 years of service to her state and her country, she’s packing it in, even though she most likely would have been elected to a fourth term. What does one senator’s decision to leave congress have to do with parenting in Naperville? A lot, as far as I’m concerned. Sen. Snowe isn’t leaving the senate to retire and crochet doilies. She’s leaving because she doesn’t want to be part of “the atmosphere of polarization and ‘my way or the highway’ ideologies” that have come to mark the American legislative landscape. That an experienced and respected …

Few things make me crankier than a visit to Toys R Us. I prefer small, independent stores with imaginative inventory and thoughtful customer service. But my daughter wanted to give her friend a birthday gift that could only be purchased at Toys R Us. So, I sucked up my distaste and off we went. My daughter found the gift she wanted, picked out a gift bag and card and we were in the check out line. Then, the wailing began—high-pitched, loud, insistent. Everyone in the check out line turned to discover the source. There, standing between his parents, was a little boy in full-on toddler tantrum …