My Jenn-eration up on The Washington Post

I hope you’ll take a minute to hop on over to The Washington Post’s On Parenting page. This week I’m sharing my reflections and questions there on what makes a productive parent, and how do we distinguish between busy versus productive.

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Rachel Hollis' Instagram is The Bad Place

Women, mothers, pull up a chair. I wish to have a word with you about Rachel Hollis, toxic positivity, and women as a commodity. Do you know Rachel Hollis? She is a self proclaimed motivational speaker and life coach. She has nearly 2 million followers on Instagram, has published multiple NY Times bestsellers, and runs her own business, has a product line in Target, a clothing line on QVC, her own fitness app, and sells out large convention size stadiums where people pay $40 for a general ticket or up to $200 per person for a VIP pass that will give them things like “digital swag” (those two words together form a new one that has an unclear meaning to me), and video playback on all speakers. Rachel Hollis is a business and the thing that she is selling? Why that’s you. It wasn’t always this way. As one of the few bloggers still kicking around that started out nearly nine years ago, many of us old folks can tell you how quickly the landscape of personal essays and blog...

Distracted Living

Last week, I almost killed my daughter. It started off as really any other week ever does. My husband had been travelling pretty much non-stop for nearly the entire month. Whether we wanted to or not, we were all falling into a fairly regular rhythm without him, at least Monday-Friday. With school and activities and for better or worse, the days seemed to move rather quickly but by evening all three of us were stretched thin. Collectively, we all seemed to peek at maximum crabbiness somewhere around 6pm. It was shortly after this time last Wednesday night that I brought the kids upstairs to help them get washed up for bed. My daughter had an upset stomach for most of the day but I hadn’t thought much of it. She was otherwise happy and playing and generally herself. I did know that she was very tired. Still, we were a good hour and a half from her usual bedtime of around 8pm. I put her in the bath and let it start to fill and left the room to go start the shower for my...

Want to be a Digital Mentor For Your Kids? Step 1: Admit You Know Nothing

I’m scanning through my Facebook newsfeed during a 25 minute long episode of Dora in the City when the new AAP recommendations on screen time catch my eye. The guidelines include revised screen time recommendations for children ages 6 and up, from two hours a day to no official screen time limit. Rather, the panel recommends prioritizing homework, physical activity, extracurricular activities, family meal times, and after all that whatever is left can be dedicated to screen time. It makes an important distinction between media for educational use versus entertainment, and encourages families to seek and find their own balance with technology. Parents, it recommends, are to assume the role as “media mentor.” Toward this end, the panel made an additional recommendation specifically geared toward parents and their own technology use, reminding us to put down devices during meal time and parent child playtimes. The recommendations came out at the right time, as I had been turning ov...

My Jenn-eration

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