Raising Future Adults

My ex husband was raised by extremely dysfunctional people who probably themselves have a backstory as to why they are such nutters, so I'm really not trying to talk trash about him. After getting to know the in-laws, I was like "Ooh, cut him more slack. He's trying extremely extremely hard here." But he was raised by nutters and these people had trouble keeping food in the house -- he had eating habits, such as hiding his food, like someone literally born and raised in a concentration camp -- BUT they always had money for stupid shit like a hidden Easter basket FROM the Easter Bunny (on top of the Easter basket they made with the kids, or so I gather), money from the Tooth Faerie and presents from Santa. It's a wonder my ex was functional AT ALL. Because he and I were always cash strapped, he made the mistake of waiting until our oldest was five to do presents "from Santa." Our oldest is extremely bright and REMEMBERED previous Christmases, so he didn...

I don't know how to write this blog because I have no objective evidence that what I did actually works, that my kids really were as difficult as I say they were, etc. You don't know my kids and didn't know them when they were younger and horribly difficult. The people who could potentially testify that I'm not making this up chose to burn me many years ago for reasons I don't understand and probably cannot ever comprehend because I just don't treat people that way. I've considered trying to write fiction to try to accomplish my goals and that doesn't seem to fly either. I've tried various provisos over the years, like "For entertainment purposes ONLY," and nothing seems to really do the trick. I don't see myself as "an authority" with some right to tell you what to do and handing out edicts for other people I've never met isn't my thing anyway. Good decisions require substantial context, so I'm not qualified to ma...

The Stones Analogy  is the best explanation I've seen for trying to help people understand what face blindness is and what it's like to live with it. I learned one of my kids and likely my (now ex) husband have issues with this when I expressed sympathy and support for a woman online whose child was face blind and had multiple other issues. My first parenting site was called Kids Like Mine because this conversation was typical of my efforts to be supportive of others, where I said "My kids don't have that BUT..." and told some anecdote and then got directed to information on the topic. No, my son isn't face blind but it's not normal to have trouble recognizing your own mother. I kept the same haircut for years because he used to get upset if I changed it and tell me "You don't look like you." He was several years older than this woman's child and she had a PhD. I let him and her exchange emails via my email address and they both learned a...

I was blonde as a child and had wavy hair. My mother liked my blonde curls and called me Shirley Temple and fairly often curled my hair to emphasize that look. She's a very kind, considerate woman and extremely smart, so she curled my hair without torturing me to do it. We had a shoebox full of sponge curlers (let me recommend you update that to a plastic storage box) and she removed the plastic doohickie that closed the curlers and replaced it with a loop of nylon cloth made by cutting up nylon pantyhose because nylon doesn't unravel. So at bedtime, she put curlers in my hair and pulled the loop of nylon over each opposite end to keep the curlers in. That way I could comfortably sleep in curlers and it only took a few minutes at bedtime to put them in, a few minutes when I got up to remove them and it gave me outrageous curls all day long without pain or chemicals or curling irons. Footnote   I would shower or bathe in the evening, she typically curled it while it was still we...