Here’s my most recent column. (If you’re bored and looking for a laugh, check out some of the kooky comments it got over on Greenville Online!)

As most parents with half a brain understand, children need to be spoken to in order to learn how to speak. And the more words a child hears in his early years, the better he is likely to read and perform in school.

Research has even pinpointed an ideal number of words children should hear before the age of 4: 25 million, or 17,000 per day.

Of course, numbers like this have been largely useless to parents, most of whom don’t exactly have a lot of spare time for tracking how much language they’ve exposed their children to on any given day.

It would take a pretty fast hand and a large sheet of paper to tally up all the words you utter. Especially if your household is like mine, punctuated with a steady stream of Mom-ese: “William, please keep your fingers out of there. Hey, who put peanut butter in my pen cap? Owen, markers are for drawing on paper, not your tongue.”

So how’s a busy mom supposed to find the time to add up those words to make sure she’s providing an optimal environment for verbal and social development?

Enter the Lena system. Short for Language ENvironment Analysis, LENA is a device you plant in your child’s chest pocket — the system comes with specially designed overalls — which then monitors conversation between parent and child.

At the end of the day, parents analyze the data using LENA software to find out just how they measure up.

According to the LENA Web site (LENAbaby.com), “Research shows that parents overestimate how much they talk to their children. By using the LENA system, you know exactly how much language experience your child is receiving. LENA provides peace of mind that your child is developing at an optimal level.”

I’m all for talking to my kids (as evidenced by the fact that they all seem unable to shut up). But do we really need a $700 device (sale price is $400 if you act now!) to give us a basic idea of how we’re doing?

Isn’t this just one more example in the long line of “enrichment” products that we suckers — er, parents — are being pressured into purchasing using tactics like fear, guilt and anxiety over providing our children with that elusive “optimal development environment?”

Pamela Paul, mother of two and author of the new book Parenting, Inc., took a hard look at the “parenting industry” and found that not only are the companies creating and marketing these products actively play on parental fears, but we parents have readily bought into the hype.

“In the last 15 years, but particularly in the past five years, parenting has become professionalized and industrialized,” Paul says. “It’s led to the commercialization of child-rearing.”

Fear over economic instability and the desire to give our own children every possible edge has led to a high-pressure, high-stakes parenting culture, Paul says. “We are supposed to optimize and maximize every moment we have with our kids.” Paul stresses that she’s not critical of all products and services. For example, “Hiring a sleep consultant makes a lot more sense than buying a $1,000 designer crib that your baby screams in all night.”

Paying somebody else to teach your child to ride a bike? Not such a great investment, she points out. And overall, the number of products and services we seek out has ballooned out of control.

The result? Stressed-out parents who buy and do too much for their kids in order to give them as much opportunity as possible; and the nurturing of an ever-more materialistic consumer culture as kids get showered with expensive gear and playthings (the average American child, she reports, gets 70 new toys each year) as Mom and Dad seek out spendy services that will make them better, “more optimal” parents.

And though we all like to think we have more common sense than that, Paul points out that parents have bought into the idea that we can purchase our child’s health, happiness and well-being more than we’d like to admit.

She may be right. Even as I scoffed at the LENA system, somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered if I should take advantage of its 30-day money-back guarantee.just to see if our household’s “language environment” is as “optimal” as I’d like to believe.

Since I don’t have an extra $400 lying around, though, I think I’ll just throw out a few extra three-syllable words and call it a day.

Perhaps we’re not optimal, but I figure we’re at least above-average. And most days, that’s good enough for me.

This month at largerfamilies.com, we’re talking about FOOD. Budgeting, menu planning, meals that can be doubled or tripled and frozen, once-a-month cooking, stocking the pantry…and so on, and so forth. Head on over and find out how you can win a free copy of my book!

this post is adapted from an entry I wrote for the on-hiatus website From Diapers to Deadlines, which Toni and I collaborated on a while back. The site is down for now, but we had a ton of great content in the archives, and I thought some of my readers who are interested in freelancing might enjoy reading it…so I’ll be re-posting selected entries. If you have a burning question about writing or balancing freelance or at-home work and motherhood, drop me a line–I’ll respond here, or maybe dig up an old post that covered the issue in-depth.

Now, on to the post…

How many times have you done one of the following?

Put off getting childcare you desperately need to work because you can’t justify the cost. No, you’ll just find a way to write that 2,000-word article (or whatever your freelance job requires you to produce) after everyone’s gone to bed, when your eyelids are hovering at half-mast

Found yourself interrupting your work to tend to requests for snacks or break up a squabble–when your spouse is also in the house, watching TV or reading the newspaper

Apologized to your spouse for asking him or her to watch the kids while you make a deadline

I’d like to tell you something I learned the hard way: nobody is going to take your work seriously until you take it seriously yourself. Not your husband or wife or partner, not your kids, not your mother, and certainly not the editor or client you’re trying to impress.

It can be really difficult to do this, whether we’re just starting out or have been established for years. When we aren’t widely published or making a lot of money freelancing, it’s hard to justify the time we spend working on it. Sometimes, even when we are well-established, it can feel like we’re letting somebody down if we’re taking time away from family needs to work–even when we’re squeezing writing into the hours nobody else wants from us (usually sometime after midnight). Hiring child care or household help can seem like a luxury we neither need nor deserve. Asking the spouse to help out in the off-hours just seems unfair. After all, doesn’t he (or she) deserve a break, too?

But here’s the thing–if you’re serious about having a freelance career, it’s illogical to try to cram work in after every other commitment in your life. It simply won’t fit. There has to be an investment made in your role as a freelancer, whether it’s financial, or time, or even emotional–the mindset that you deserve to have it and that it’s valuable not just to you but the whole family. Think of it this way: if you were working outside of the home, it’s not as though you’d look at childcare, or a work wardrobe, or a business-related trip as an expense you couldn’t justify. And I’ve never heard of a single mother expecting her husband to tote a toddler to the office with him.

I’m not arguing that every writer or web designer or (fill in the blank) needs or has to have child care when they’re just getting started. I didn’t for a while, for a variety of reasons. Often, money is so tight that the budget simply won’t allow for child care expenses, no matter how badly you want a sitter. In those cases, you have to improvise for a while. Some people make a commitment to keeping their children at home while they work, and I respect and admire that (and have been that person until quite recently). But if they’re going to gain momentum–without completely losing their minds and burning out after a few months–there’s still going to have to be compromises made in some other area. It’s not about child care, specifically–what you really need is a mindset that your work gets priority–not necessarily before family or kids, but just…somewhere in the top ten. If it’s shoved to the bottom of the list somewhere after vacuuming the drapes, it’s not going to get very far. If that means you have to get somebody else to vacuum the drapes, so be it. If you don’t want to use a sitter, then your partner or spouse might have to take over for you in the evenings and on weekends so you can work. Don’t apologize for it. Your career is not unimportant, and it’s not selfish. Even if you aren’t making money yet, the time you’re putting in now is building a solid foundation for income later. That’s what owning your own small business–and really, being a freelancer is running a small business–is all about. You put in a lot of hours at the beginning for a payoff down the road.

It’s not always easy to convince the people in our lives that what we’re doing is important and valuable and that there will be a return on investment later. That’s why you have to convince yourself first. If you aren’t certain that you deserve or need the family to invest in your career, fake it until you make it. Don’t apologize for your work. Don’t grovel or beg for scraps of time. Figure out what you absolutely need and arrange to make it happen. Expect some resistance, but don’t give in. Just re-state what you need over and over until it sinks in.

Take yourself seriously. Start right now. What is one thing you can do to invest in yourself and your work? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Cross-posted from the Chicago Moms Blog

When I became a mom over ten years ago, I had guilt. Plenty of guilt.

I’m not going to try to pretend like I’m beyond all that guilt stuff now that I’ve been at this parenting gig for a while. Now my guilt tends to be over different issues, like schooling, or whether I’m ruining my kids by letting them play video games.

But I really don’t remember what I felt guilty about back then, because I think it wasn’t all the same stuff parents are feeling guilty about now.

See, there were different books out then.

I run a new mom’s group here in Chicago, and at first I was amazed by the number of times two issues come up: sleep training and "tummy time". Of course people had opinions about sleep issues when my first son was born, but I don’t think the debate was anywhere near the same intensity as it is now. And tummy time? I don’t even think that phrase had entered my vernacular ten years ago. Certainly I didn’t worry that my newborn’s head would become misshapen if I didn’t put him face down on the floor for the requisite ten to twenty minutes each day (whether he liked it or not.)

So I was puzzled at first over why these issues kept coming up over and over–but then I took a trip to the bookstore. Glancing at the magazine rack, I counted a staggering number of coverlines (you know, those teasers on the magazine cover created to entice you to pick up the mag) that dealt with sleep: is your baby getting enough?  Should you let him cry it out? Is it safe to sleep with your baby? What about SIDS? Is your baby sleep deprived? Is your baby napping enough? Heck, I’d even written one of them.

Flipping through some magazines I saw plenty of mentions of tummy time, how important it is and how you should do it. I also saw many products advertised in the pages, designed to encourage tummy time or give your baby something to do during tummy time.

I walked to the parenting section and again, noticed that there were a large number of books dealing with sleep. Why you should sleep train, why you shouldn’t sleep train, how to sleep train, how to get a good night’s sleep even if you don’t sleep train, and so on and so forth. I don’t remember there being nearly as many sleep titles back when I had my first child. And by the time it became the hot new issue, I’d already figured sleep out for our family, for better or worse.

NOW it made sense. When you’re reading about something every time you open a magazine or browse at the bookstore, of course it’s going to rise in importance in your mind. And the more magazine covers and book titles are devoted to a specific topic, the more parents are going to talk about it, and the more they’ll start asking their pediatricians about it, and the more those pediatricians will start forming their own opinions (and perhaps write their own books) about it, and so on and so forth. A trend is born, the books continue to sell and make lots of money for the publishers, who in turn publish more books on the same topic, which leads to more magazine articles, and so on and so forth. And the unfortunate side effect is mommy/parent guilt, a lot of it unnecessary. 

I think a certain amount of guilt is necessary. It can act as a powerful motivator to let us know when something is off in our parenting, relationships,or other parts of our life. It’s okay not to be a supermom or an earth mother, but we all need some standards. Though I do believe that any number of choices can work and result in happy, healthy kids, I don’t believe all choices are equal and I think we’re fooling ourselves if we try to pretend that "whatever is easiest at the time" is an effective parenting philosophy. Hey, I fall into it sometimes, as do all moms, I think, and there’s certainly no point in beating myself up. But that little twinge of guilt is often what I need to get back on track.

At the same time, we need to realize that today’s hot new topic is probably not as fraught with importance as it’s been made to seem. We need to understand that the reason it seems like all the parents around us are anxious about the same things around the same time has a lot to do with what we’re being sold (whether it’s books, magazine articles or products) at any given time. You think that information you’re getting from a magazine article or book is totally unbiased? Take it from somebody who writes them–it’s not. Magazine articles often base their information on press releases, new studies (which will be refuted in two months by another study) and experts with an agenda. Very often, books receive little to no fact-checking and are based on those same studies and agendas. Again, there are some gems and good, solid information out there, and as an author and writer I’d be out of a job if everybody suddenly stopped reading parenting books and articles, so I’m not suggesting that you do that (goodness no! Then I’d have something else to feel guilty about!) but a heavy dose of skepticism is always in order, no matter what is is you’re reading.

It’s also important to keep in mind that when a health or medical organization comes out with a recommendation, they aren’t necessarily talking directly to you. They are talking to the public at large. Something can be important from a public health perspective, but not be a matter of life or death if it doesn’t work out for your particular family or baby. I’m thinking especially of tummy time, here. How many babies do you know, in your circle of mom friends, who spend all their time on their backs? When I’m with a group of moms, I see those mothers holding their babies face-down across their laps, walking to and fro with the baby tummy-down on a forearm, or letting the baby lean on her chest (again, tummy down). I see babies learning to exert control over their heads and necks and explore the space around them. Sure, if your baby spends most of his day laying in a crib or reclining in a seat, maybe this is something you need to worry about. Otherwise, is it worth feeling guilty over?

I tend to think not. Take it from me: authors don’t know everything (they’re humans with opinions just like anyone else), magazines don’t know everything (at many of the top parenting magazines, plenty of the editors aren’t even parents. That doesn’t mean they aren’t good at their jobs, of course, but I have seen how it can bias the way they choose and edit the stories that make it into their publications). Journalists and reporters don’t know everything, and we come to stories with our own biases and sometimes flawed information. Studies aren’t infallible. Parenting is too complicated for a set of inflexible rules.

We can’t get it right all of the time, but if we get it right even most of the time, our kids will be fine in the end. Or maybe they won’t, but even then it’s probably not something we could have prevented. As Andrea O’Reilly once told me in an interview, "Motherhood is the only job where you can do everything right, everything by the book, and still fail in the end." Depressing, maybe, but also freeing. The decisions we make from day to day maybe aren’t quite as crucial as we think they are. We aren’t doing the right thing as parents because we’re hoping for a specific outcome, but because it feels like the right thing to do.

So think things through, use you common sense and best judgment, and take it easy on yourself when you realize that a decision you made maybe wasn’t the best. It happens to us all, over and over again–the important thing is that we can admit (if only to ourselves, and maybe our kids) when we’re wrong and try to make a better choice next time. When you hear that guilty little voice, take a moment to listen to it, decide if it’s got a strong enough point, and if not, ignore it.

And if you’re a mom who’s worried about sleep or tummy time, take it from me: You can relax. In five years, everyone will be worried about something else entirely. Maybe we’ll be back to orthopedic shoes?

right now all four of them are in the bathtub. Okay, only three (10, 8, and 2) are actually in the tub, and the four-year-old is playing next to the tub. The older two are keeping up a steady stream of chatter about random school events and other things, and Owen, the two-year-old, is repeating over and over again: “What you guys TALKING about? What you guys TALKING about?”

This is why I find having four sons tiresome…as soon as I typed that, Owen decided to throw a large cup of water at my (fully-clothed) four-year-old.

So where did we leave off? Ah yes, my last video game post told the lovely tale of how this techno-skeptic mama wound up with a house full of screen junkies. Now, the bazillion-dollar question: How to stuff that cat back in the bag?

I tried the obvious route: setting limits. I really did. But my kids’ widely varying personalities made this nearly impossible. First you’ve got Jacob, the “Rules Were Made To Be Broken” kid. Set a rule, and he’ll try to find 101 ways of weaseling out of it, getting around it, or outsmarting it. For instance, I set a rule that the kids could play video games for a half-hour each day, and I got a constant stream of this from Jacob:

“Mom, I got on at 3:40, but then it took two minutes for the game to load, so can I get an extra two minutes?”
“Mom, I had to go to the bathroom and that took three minutes, does it count?”
“Mom, I let Isaac play my guy to get me out of the swamp; shouldn’t that count as his time instead of mine?”

Of course, to me, the 30-minute-rule was really just an estimate–I wasn’t timing him with a stopwatch. So I didn’t much care about his bathroom breaks…but it’s not like I could tell HIM that or else my credibility would have gone right down the drain. Thus, he drove me completely insane with his constant badgering.

Isaac, on the other hand, ONLY responds to rules. So if he’s on the XBox and it seems like he’s been on a little too long, I can’t just say “Isaac, shut it off now” without a fight. He’ll look shocked and genuinely confused. “But why?” he’ll say, looking completely befuddled. Set a timer for Isaac and he’ll follow it. Of course, you can’t set a timer for one kid and let the other go on the “when Mom thinks you’ve had enough” rule for the other without a huge fuss, as I came to find out.

William, my four-year-old, has entered a phase in his life where he’s getting smarter, more independent, and, well, bossy. Not only does he not really understand the concept of how long 30 minutes is, but every time I’d try to set a limit, he’d launch a debate, hands on hips, with threats like “If I don’t get to play I’m going to be really ANGRY!” (okay, son….go for it.)

Soon it felt like my life was being ruled by video games: There was the begging to become a “member” on some Internet role-playing game. There was the begging for one more minute, Mom, please? The squabbles over who got to get on the laptop first. Bickering over which game to play on the XBox. Fights over whom was going to give who various weaponry and gold within the game. And then, when I’d had enoughand made them turn it off, I got to listen to them talking about the game, rehashing all their glorious battles and quests. I think the last straw was when William, had a semi-meltdown because we couldn’t log into Club Penguin (which is really a very cute and innocent game…but not worthy of tears and tantrums). At some point, I just lost it and said ENOUGH!

I’m tired of looking at the top of my kid’s head over a laptop screen at the dining-room table!
I’m tired of seeing blank stares!
I’m tired of our world revolving around whose turn it is to play which games next!

So our solution, for now, is as follows:
No video or computer games during the school week, period.
Friday night and Saturday, knock yourselves out.
Sunday is family day, so depending on what’s going on that day, there will be time limits. If there is any arguing over the time limits…if I so much as hear a single word about them…the games are turned off that day, period.

My hope is that Saturdays, we’ll have enough to do that the kids won’t actually sit in front of the games all day. However, I do want them to feel like they are getting a chance to indulge one day a week–because it’ll be nice for me to have a day off from my Mean Old Curmudgeon role.

I’ll keep ya posted as to how this expermient turns out…and move on to Disconnect #2: Distracted Parents next.

You just never know what will get some people good and fired up. My snow day column, of all things, has gotten me a few critical comments now, and one of them definitely has a point. A reader took me to task for making a generalization about how snow days can often throw off a working mom’s schedule, but, as he pointed out, in his office there are two men who are first in line for “snow day” duty.

So, I generalized, and for that I apologize. Of course, I should have said working parent.

At first I was feeling really guilty, thnking I was a hypocrite for poking fun at my disgruntled e-mailer the other day when it turned out I’d done the same thing (made a sexist assumption). But here’s the difference, as I see it: “Ben” was making an assumption about my specific home life based on, well, based on nothing, since if he’d read a few more of my columns he would know I was a working mom. I was generalizing about a group of people based on my experiences–still not okay, necessarily, but in any generalization there is some–sometimes much–truth. And the truth is, in the vast majority of families I know, the mother is the one who takes on the most responsibility for snow days and sick days–regardless of whether she’s working or not.

Even in our household, where we have a pretty even partnership, it’s generally assumed that I’m the one who will make it work if one of the kids has to stay home. Now, part of that is because I work mostly from home, which you can technically do with kids in the house. Technically–but it doesn’t always work out that way, especially if a child is sick and needy. But if I have a big deadline on the day that school’s cancelled or snot is flowing, I would have to ask my husband to take the day off, and though he’d probably do it, there would be some grumbling and gnashing of teeth first.

What about you? In your family, who is the automatic stay-home-on-sick-and-snow-days parent? Do you take turns? Work it out depending on who’s got more going on that day? Or does one parent or the other stay home most of the time? If that’s the case, did you set it up that way by design…or default? If you’re an at-home parent, then what about the dual-working couples you know?

A few days ago, in my “values, meet reality” post , I shared that lately it hasn’t felt like the reality of our lives matches up with my most strongly-held values and ideals about family life. And disconnect #1 is definitely the prominence of video games, internet, television and other technology in our day-to-day lives. Before I go into my plan to stomp out some of the technical imbalance around here, I’d like to share with you my journey from how we went from a no-cable, one computer, no-game-station, one-smallish-television home to the–uh, proud (?) owners of an XBox, XBox 360, Playstation, assorted GameBoys, a biggish TV in the bedroom and an even bigger HDTV in the family room, three laptops and enough laptop parts floating around to assemble laptops for the whole family. Including the baby.

See, my husband is a lover of technology. It’s his thing. He reads up on all the latest gadgets and gear, and since he works in computers, he has access to lots of great deals on computers, software and all the fixings.

I, on the other hand, only watch TV if it’s right in front of me. If it’s not, I forget it exists. I never, ever play video games…in fact, I think I have a video game learning disability, because I can’t even get the people on the screen to run in the right direction. The only video game that remotely interests me is Rock Band, and let’s admit it–that’s just because it gives me an excuse to hold a microphone and belt out Boston tunes. I could care less about winning. I admire high-def televisions when I’m looking at them, but don’t really notice the lack of definition on older sets. I forget to charge my cell phone, so it’s non-functioning for weeks at a time. The only technology I care for at all is my own computer and Internet connection, which I tried to get rid of once, but it turns out it’s pretty hard to conduct research and write articles during a half-hour time slot at the library.

When my kids were little, I was adamant about not having video games in the house. “Those things rot your brain!” I’d protest to my husband, whose brain, I figured, must be at least three-quarters rotted. I wasn’t entirely rational or scientific in my protest against gaming–my only evidence was a gut feeling that there was something really wrong about the look that came over a kid’s (and, okay, my husband’s) face when they were deeply involved in an on-screen battle or quest.

But somehow, we’ve managed to go from there to, well, here. It crept up on me, really…first my husband wanted to get them a game machine “so we can all play together”, and he painted such a blissful picture of father-son togetherness, how could I resist? And then of course, that one was old hat, so we had to get the newer model…and so on, and so forth. And at some point I looked around my house and realized that the technology had gotten completely out of control. Which is why I now advise other parents not to give in to that first game system…it’s a lot harder to stuff the cat back in the bag than it is to just leave it in there to begin with.

So that’s where we are now. A father who lives and breathes technology, a mother who gave in, and four kids who have been increasingly falling under the spell of the screen…but no more. The computer has been unplugged; the XBox is on a shelf, the TV shows are limited. I’d post more tonight, but as it turns out, parenting your kids without the use of techie babysitters is even more exhausting than it is with them. Maybe that’s why we started relying on them more and more in the first place?

More tomorrow. Tonight, I sleep. Well, I sleep, but only after an episode of Reno 911 on Comedy Central. Hey, everything in moderation, right?

(an adapted version of this post will appear on the Chicago Moms Blog.)

Every now and then I get non-fan mail, whether it’s from somebody who disagrees with my opinion, dislikes my writing style, or just seems to despise me in general. Usually I just shrug and move on, but today I got a nasty-gram with a big glaring assumption in it that made my eyes roll back so far in my head I nearly saw my own brains. Here’s the e-mail, in a reaction to my latest column about snow days, which was meant to be humorous but apparently didn’t come across that way to all readers.

“Ben” of the Lansing, MI area says (emphasis mine, just to point out glaring sexist assumption):

Meagan,

I just read your article in the LSJ about how snow days are stressful for you. I would like to make a suggestion. Perhaps it would be more beneficial for the readers to read about ways to keep kids entertained and satiated rather than whining about how stressful it is to keep them occupied. What really gets me is when you mentioned that you were going to request that your spouse stay home with the kids on the next snow day. Your spouse… who works full time so that you can stay home with the kids. Come on. Get with the program. We (the readers) need to have intelligent, productive materials in our media. Not a play-by-play of unruly children.

Um. Not quite. I couldn’t help but respond:

Hi Ben,

Actually, I am a work at home mom, and juggle my family responsibilities while also earning the other half of our family’s income. Like any other parent, my life is a balance of fun and stress, and I try to reflect that reality in my column, which varies widely in topic from week to week. I can appreciate if the column isn’t your cup of tea, but must correct your assumption about my work life. If you have never yet, please try taking four kids to your place of work sometime and see how you feel by the end of the day. My guess is you might do a bit of whining yourself.

Of course, it really doesn’t matter whether I’m an at-home mom, a working outside the home mom, or a mix of the two: the fact is, parenting is stressful, and straying from the usual routine (like on a snow day) can add another layer of stress. But I love how he just had to stand up for my tortured, overworked husband there. I’m such an ingrate! I think I’ll forward his e-mail to my husband just so he knows somebody’s on his side, poor guy.

Ben, and all the Bens of the world, I’m going to use your own words: Come on, man. Get with the program.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my values, hopes and wishes for my family and how they match (or don’t) up with the reality I’m helping to create for them.

A lot of that, of course, is just the normal relaxation of standards that can and probably should happen as your kids get older. After all, we aren’t living on an organic banana farm grinding our own wheat and avoiding all commercial media like I once dreamed we’d be doing, and that’s more than okay by me. A lot of the standards I created for myself when my kids were little just weren’t realistic or sustainable or even all that suited to my personality.

But it’s possible to relax your standards too much, and realize one day that the values you hold dear–the things that really matter and are important to you about how your family members eat, spend their time, interact, live, play–are worlds apart from the reality, and the biggest thing standing in the way is you.

There’s a big difference, after all, between letting your kids occasionally use the TV as a babysitter, and realizing one day that they’re averaging 2-3 hours a day of TV because it’s easier for you to let them than it is to make them turn it off and listen to the whining and “Mom, I’m bored!” complaints.

Mind you, I say “you” but I really mean “me”. Your values and my values are probably different; and our comfort level with TV, computer games, or whatever is likely different too, and that’s just fine. I truly am not judging anyone else’s lifestyle when I say that I don’t feel good when I let my own personal standards relax too much. It’s not a false feeling of guilt–after ten years of parenthood I’ve gotten pretty good at recognizing false guilt and chucking it to the curb. It’s more like a realization that something is out of whack, and that my life doesn’t much resemble what I think my priorities should be. Everybody slips up, and everybody’s life gets too chaotic or out of balance at times, and there’s no use feeling bad about it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth taking a closer look and figuring out how to get back on track.

Maybe it’s just the February blahs talking, but I feel like I’ve reached one of those points, and it just doesn’t feel good. My kids have spent far too much time on the computer, bickering over the computer or talking about being on the computer lately. Not enough time outdoors, not enough time spent together. I’ve been inefficient with my babysitting time, meaning I’ve had to use more and more kids-at-home time for work. And maybe it’s the fact that my eldest is ten-going-on-eleven, but I’m starting to feel a sense of urgency about the time we all have left living under one roof. It seems more precious lately, and I’m more determined to make the most of it.

I think this is a thread that’s going to weave through a lot of my writing and reading in the weeks to come. I know I can’t be alone in doing this every-so-often re-adjustment of priorities. Anyone else out there want to weigh in?