I did the best possible thing for my son recently: I took off. In the spirit of absence making the heart grow, yada yada, my husband and I fled to the backcountry for a few nights sans enfant. My 3 year old also vacationed, many miles away, with his grandparents.
Parenting is littered with paradox. In an age that preaches about the virtues of staying attached to children, I decided to become detached.
I'm a hoverer. I admit it. I'm coming out of the closet. I'm getting a T-shirt made. In this free-range age, being called a helicopter parent is anything but a compliment. In fact, it seems like supervising your kids and trying to keep them safe and secure is something to be ashamed of. But I'm not. Not at all.
For those affected by autism, it truly is the best and the worst of times.
As a mom who's only recently dipped her feet into the deep, often murky waters of this disorder, I am learning to laugh through my tears. With an estimated 1 in 88 children being diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorders (ASD), there is more awareness than ever. We are opening our eyes, digging our heads out the sand. And it's a wonderful, long overdue thing.
It takes a special kind of person to care for those at their most vulnerable. That kind of person isn’t me, but it’s my mother. A registered nurse for 25 years, she worked on virtually every ward, caring for virtually every kind of patient. In the years leading up to her retirement, she was based on post-surgical and palliative units.
It takes a village to raise a child. Or at the very least, one superhuman parent. Every now and then I don my cape and play that wonder woman. Like many moms out there, when my husband goes away on business, I unofficially become a ‘single parent.' And, also like most moms out there, it’s not an experience I relish.
I have a confession to make: I had a fat baby. And, no, not the, "Oh, look at those cheeks!" sort of fat, either. He was a genuine porker, which in the age of childhood obesity-or ‘globesity’-isn't exactly trendy. In fact, it's positively scandalous.
In a world where kids are starving to death, ours are literally eating their way to an early grave. We all know that obese children grow into obese adults with all kinds of health red alerts-from heart disease to diabetes and cancer.
When the ultrasound technician let slip that I was going to have a baby boy, my heart sank. What the hell did I know about boys? Yet the more I thought about it, the more relieved I was. Phew! I wouldn't have to raise a girl in a world that remains largely complicated and contradictory for the female of the species.
