It's that time of the year…the kids are out of school, and they are going hog wild . I do not envy parents who stay home with their kids three days before Christmas. Their little bodies can barely hold so much anticipation, which leads to a lot of frantic energy coming your way. This time of year can be highly stressful, and there are very few things that can calm down kids who are so excited about Santa Claus. At the same time, there is something so special about having a couple of weeks to sp…

Why does putting the kids to bed have to be an Olympic sport every dang time??

To be a parent or to not be a parent. That is the question that so many twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings grapple with, and it's a lot harder to answer than you'd think. Of course, some people don't have a choice in whether they become parents. Babies sometimes just happen to people, and that's that. But for those with the privilege of family planning, it's all about the timing. Some people want to have kids as soon as possible, and some have to scramble toward the finish line, with the s…

As far as I can remember, I was a pretty easy kid to parent. All I wanted to do was to do good by the adults in my life, which, shockingly, doesn't make me the most rebellious kid. There are always exceptions to the “easy child” rule, and mine was during Christmastime of my 4th-grade year. I was hearing some rumblings at school about the realness of certain Christmas icons. I felt so angry at these rumors that I went to my dad several times and said, “everyone at school says Santa isn't real, b…

You love being a parent... But sometimes you need to hide in a closet and doom scroll through memes for a few minutes.

You survived thanksgiving and deserve all the memes for it.

Happy Thanksgiving, parents! Today might not be the most leisurely parenting day of the year, but I believe you all will get through it. You're about to enter prime “threatening your kids with Santa” season, and I support you all the way. Nothing will whip a kid into shape better than their fear of the naughty list.

You know it's going to be a good day when you're able to drink your coffee while it's still hot.

Not to brag, but my parents are extremely rad. I know that not everyone has great relationships with their parents and that some of the readers of this piece might be orphans, but I, for one, am in neither of those camps. My dad is literally one of the funniest people I know. He is a master songwriter and has been singing and writing his original jingles for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, I used to wake up at 5:30 in the morning to sit at the breakfast table and read the funnies w…

Good parenting etiquette definitely includes being able to laugh at parenting things.

One of the most prominent stereotypes about parents is that once someone has kids, something shifts in their brain that makes them feel like the most esoteric bearer of ancient, once unknown knowledge. They smugly remark on how different the world looks now that they've got kids, implying that they've got something far more important in their lives than anything a childless person could be doing. Although I understand how annoying this can be for those on the receiving end of these takes, I kin…

To love your child is to laugh at memes about your child.

Being a parent during the days following Halloween is an insane exercise in self-control. A bag or multiple bags of assorted candy is sitting dormant in your house at this very second. Surely, nobody would notice if you took one fun-sized Snickers bar , right? There's no way stealing some Dots would make you one of the worst parents in the world pertaining to the aftermath of Halloween. Parents out there make their kids give away all of their candy to the local dentist's office! There are paren…

Halloween is a difficult time to be a parent. One week, your kid wants to be a princess. The next week, they want to be a witch. By the time you get close to the 31st, they've come up with an idea for a costume so niche there is no way Spirit Halloween can provide it. Being a parent on Halloween is a difficult balance because you remember what it's like to be a kid on Halloween. You remember the struggle of your parents making you wear a winter coat over your costume, rendering the costume func…

An acquired taste of humor

One of the most interesting concepts I've learned about from being on the parenting side of social media is a little phenomenon called "mom shaming." Mom shaming occurs when someone criticizes a mom for how she chooses to raise her family. When I look at “mom shaming," I see it as a cyclical problem. We have moms posting