“So, how’s your girlfriend?” I ask my son out of the blue. “Which one?” he says with a devious smile.
“The new one,” I say.
“Oh, her.” He shrugs. We both smile.
And that’s the end of our update on Jimmy’s dating life.
It’s all a joke, of course. Jimmy doesn’t have a dating life. The “girlfriend thing” remains […]

Pink now is the wardrobe essential for an entire generation of tween and teen girls, so it didn’t surprise me when a mom I know mentioned taking her daughters to the new Pink retail store at the mall.
What took me aback was when she said: “I absolutely hate the Pink store and I can’t stand […]

Fair warning - this column is going to be a rant. But bear with me because it’s possible you also saw [last] Sunday’s USA Weekend featuring tween icon Miley Cyrus on the cover with the headline, “Why You Can’t Ignore This Face.”
The story wasn’t about Miley, per se.
No, the article inside was titled, “The Secret […]

 I have to give my daughter credit. She’s persistent. Despite my repeated denials, emphatically delivered in my most characteristic “mom” voice, she pleads for a cell phone as if there is any chance on God’s green earth we will relent.
She’s tried every conceivable argument. “I’ll be safer,” she says. “Think of the convenience when you […]

The conversation on my neighbor’s front porch is so animated the mosquitoes have trouble lighting on us.
My daughter Katie and I have stopped while walking the dog to say hello to a friend, which seemed like a good idea before the possibility of malaria evinced itself.

Bug spray, anyone?
No matter. My neighbor, Lisa, has questions about […]

“Mom, those people are staring at us,” my daughter says as we prepare to leave the campground in our rented RV. “They’re starting to totally creep me out.”
When you’re a teenager, you’re easily creeped out. It happens when you open a Tupperware container of leftovers or when someone in your group (your mother) orders anchovies […]

Right away when I answer my cell phone, the sound of Amy’s teacher’s voice tells me this is going to be bad.
“Mrs. Hicks,” she said gravely, “we have a problem.”
“I have given your daughter several chances to complete her missing work and also to have you sign a slip saying she has told you that […]

I have been a parent for going on 19 years, which means I have read my fair share of books and magazines about how to raise healthy, happy, well-adjusted children. Through the years, in my effort to do a good job as a mom — or at least ensure I don’t scar my children for […]

No matter how many times I attempt it, I still haven’t figured out how to be in two places at one time. My problem isn’t that I feel the need to be with every child at every event. I’m long past the guilt and fear that I’ll send a message of favoritism to one child […]

The blue light from the TV casts a sleepy glow in my bedroom. I climb under the covers, easing my weary shoulders onto the two pillows that provide the perfect angle on which to doze while watching the news. I must be restless because on this night, it takes me almost a full five minutes […]

When I open the back door, I am greeted by my dog’s wagging tail and the unmistakable, pungent scent of overripe bananas. I close my eyes and breathe deeply, knowing fruit flies are swarming in my kitchen like locusts on the prairie.
Ah, home sweet home.
The kitchen is a four-day time capsule. There, squeezed against the […]

Do you have any idea how far a mother’s voice can carry in a designer shoe warehouse with 28-foot ceilings? Far. Really far. All the way from the dress shoes on the back wall of the store, off the vaulted tin ceilings and up to the sandal display near the front doors.
I discovered this as […]

“What’s your favorite music video?” one of the children at the lunch table asked. A flurry of titles and artists’ names was bandied about the sixth-grade section of the cafeteria.
My daughter didn’t know about any of them because all of the favorites aired on MTV. Instead, Katie mentioned a music video she had seen on […]

My friend Jen knows how to get a rise out of me. All she has to do is send an e-mail with a link to a news story about tweens.
Last week, she found an article about the new trend among tween girls to have professional hair treatments such as highlights, lowlights, chemical straighteners and permanent […]

If it's 9 p.m. Tuesday, it must be time for dinner. Now if only I had thought to get to the grocery store earlier in the day. Sigh.
The dinnertime challenge around our house isn't just figuring out what to feed the troops - although that's certainly part of it. I have teenagers who still think […]

A long line of pet owners already waits at the reception desk when I walk into the small-animal clinic, yet the two women behind the counter don't seem to be helping anyone. Instead, one secretary stands next to her chair looking helpless and waiting for direction, while the other one - obviously the alpha secretary - talks into the headset hooked around her ear.

"Raisins?" she asks. "How many?"

Silence. We all wait while the caller on the other end of the phone responds.

"What kind of chocolate?"

More silence. We're gradually getting the picture, knowing glances passing among the dog owners vying for service from the staff.

They say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. What happened in between this year was something like a fox, at least around my house.

Here are some March highlights in the life of Amy, my fifth-grader:

• Visited orthodontist

• Participated in science fair

• Learned what prostitutes do for a living

Thank you, Eliot Spitzer, for that last little educational nugget.

Sigh.

I'm sure the former governor of New York, once a crusader for morality, didn't mean to steal my daughter's innocence like a fox in a … henhouse. How was he to know she would go on the computer to care for her Webkinz on the very day reports of his trysts with a call girl would be the featured headline on our Web browser's home page?

"Homework?" I ask as Amy settles into the van and clicks her seat belt.

"Math and English. And I have to color a page for social studies."

I figure these tasks will consume roughly a half-hour of my daughter's afternoon — just the right amount of time to support the day's lessons, but not so much that she'll still be sitting at the kitchen table hovering over her books when it's time for the rest of us to assemble there for dinner.

"Sounds easy," I say.

"Mom, it's math," she says.

Say no more. I feel Amy's pain with respect to math because this subject presented my most difficult academic challenges. As I'm fond of admitting, I could sooner write an essay about an algebra problem than solve one. (Maybe this also was true for the person who invented story problems).

There was a time when my family practically had our own exam room at the pediatrician's office. Four children meant we had four sets of ears to infect, four sets of tonsils that eventually had to come out and four bodies to measure, mend and medicate.
Winters blew in with wind, ice, snow and viruses. I […]

My eyelids get heavier by the moment, but there's no way I'm turning out the light to fall asleep.

It's 10:30 on a Sunday night, a good 30 minutes past the time I expected to hear from my daughter that her plane had landed. She spent the weekend in Florida with her grandparents, enjoying a brief reprieve from dorm life and winter weather.

The trip was wonderful, except for the parts where she had to travel. Between flight delays, surly airline employees and storm fronts, she had her fill of stress. Plus, I forgot to tell her to have cash on hand for a snack on the plane. ("They charge for pretzels? What is our world coming to?")

"I just saw something really upsetting on TV," Betsy says. "It made me realize there are people who will do absolutely anything for money."
I can't tell if my daughter has been watching the World Wrestling Federation or the latest update on political fundraising, but she seems genuinely disturbed.
Her comment piques my curiosity, not to mention […]

Did you hear that woman screeching in the stands?" my girlfriend asks. We're lingering on the bleachers after a basketball game in which our sons and their teammates' valiant effort couldn't overcome a 15-point deficit.
"Yeah," I said. "You have to wonder what she's thinking."

"I don't think we have to wonder," my friend said. "She didn't […]

My daughter saunters into the kitchen, her head wrapped in a wet towel, her body swaddled in an oversized fleece bathrobe. "What are you thinking?" I say. "Your date for the dance is going to be here any minute."
Looking at the clock, she bolts upstairs to brush her teeth while I plug in the iron […]

The thing about caller ID is that it tells you only where a call originates, not what it's about. So when the phone rings and the name of my children's school appears on the handset, I have no choice but to answer it.
Suppose someone is sick? Or hurt? Or in trouble with the assistant principal?
Maybe […]

In a world where every sort of behavior and character flaw earns a medical diagnosis and a whole episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show," I feel my particular disorder has been widely ignored.
We have all heard about the spike in ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder) among school-age children, a phenomenon that has inspired untold titles on […]

A few years ago, my son needed an X-ray of his foot to explain some chronic pain. The doctor wanted to rule out a hairline fracture. The film came back negative, and the diagnosis was something akin to "growing pain" caused by the body's insistent stretching of the tendon. (There's a technical term for this […]

"Open it," Theresa said as she handed me my Christmas gift, "but don't freak out when you see the box."
This could have meant a lot of things. My friend Theresa loves to surprise people with unique and sometimes expensive gifts. There was no telling what she had done to make my Christmas present a special […]

I would like to blame the snowstorm for making us late for church, but that would be a lie.
We are late because there are six of us and there's a limit to the number of hot showers you can take in a half hour and because Betsy didn't like the first three or four sweaters […]

I spent a lot of time just thinking about them before I ever bought a single gift. I considered what I knew about each child and what sorts of activities they might enjoy. I mulled over the new gadgets and toys that might elicit a wide-eyed, wonder-filled response when the wrapping paper is ripped away.
I […]

She is not the same girl my husband and I left on the college quad back in August when we moved our daughter into her freshman dorm room.
She's not even the same girl I put on a plane a month ago after a long weekend at home.
In fact, what strikes me most as Katie emerges […]

For the record, I won the battle of the new winter jacket.
It was a hard-fought contest - me on one side, arguing that temperatures hovering around 30 degrees call for a warm outer layer, even for the brief walk from the car to the school's front doors; Betsy on the other side, rolling her eyes […]

"Mom, I want to tell you about something," Amy says as she settles into the van after school. "It's about a story from our Scholastic News."
In case your children have matriculated beyond grade school and you've forgotten, Scholastic News is the digest of current events presented in a weekly newsletter for children by the Scholastic […]

"Where's the paper?" Jimmy asks intently. "I need to check something."
Given the onset of the college basketball season, Jimmy typically would be hunting down yesterday's NCAA scoreboard. But since this is the weekend when roughly 327 pounds of advertising circulars are included in our Sunday paper, it's more likely my teenage son wants to know […]

Perhaps I'm dating myself here, but does it strike anyone else as perverse that Bruce Springsteen – the Boss – was recently outpaced in concert ticket sales by child star Miley Cyrus? In fact, scalpers are fetching upward of $1,000 for tickets to see Miley onstage.
This should come as no surprise to me. I live with a […]

"Mom, can you bring me some Motrin?" Betsy asks. "I have a superbad headache."
I probe with a few diagnostic questions: Where does it hurt? Is this really a headache, or did you forget you have a test this afternoon?
Betsy reassures me she's not faking a headache for academic purposes and describes the classic symptoms of […]

It was the night before auditions for the middle school musical, and Jimmy needed a shot of confidence. So I did what I always do. I took him to my closet.
There, nestled between sweaters and pants and dresses, the weight of fabric absorbing the sound within, Jimmy belted out a verse of "New York, New […]

As if we needed one more television show to further undermine the authority and prestige of parents in homes across America, the Fox network gives us Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
As anyone raising a fifth-grader will admit, there's a lot of material in the curriculum that we adults never covered — or at […]

It's official. As of yesterday, my husband and I successfully have raised up our first full-fledged adult.
Eighteen years ago, Katie ushered in a long list of responsibilities and worries. We knew her tiny life depended on our constant attention and supervision. We were awed by the responsibility as well as the magnitude of our potential […]

This is why we are losing the culture war: I'm working the apparel concession stand at a college football game as part of a fundraiser for my daughter's high school. I spot a college student wearing a shirt emblazoned with a profane suggestion for his team's rival — a suggestion that includes a word variously […]

Far be it from me to criticize another mom, especially one I've never met, so I'll say this carefully: Um… Michelle Ebbert? If it were my daughter who had been reprimanded by the flight staff of a Southwest Airlines crew for dressing so inappropriately that her attire was deemed offensive, I don't think I'd be […]

I blew it. All this time, I had the makings of a successful reality show right under my own roof. All I had to do was turn on a few strategically placed video cameras, shout, "Every kid for himself," leave town for six weeks and — viola — I'd be sitting pretty with a debut […]

Suburban Mom Nirvana is different from the states of enlightenment or freedom from suffering associated with Eastern religions. You can't achieve it by learning some universal truths or developing some sort of karmic understanding.
In fact, Suburban Mom Nirvana is an elusive state of consciousness. Although no one has ever actually achieved this feeling of bliss, […]

According to the schedule for move-in day sent to us by the dean of freshmen, we have 6½ hours to park our car on campus, unload her belongings, cart them to her room, unpack what we can, attend two parent meetings, eat ice cream en masse with the assembled students and parents of the class […]

The speakers on the plane click and crackle as the pilot clears his throat, readying his obligatory Southern drawl in preparation for an announcement.
"Good evening ladies and gentlemen," he says. "As you may know, this airplane is equipped with three engines, but unfortunately, one of ours just doesn't want to start."
I listen intently as he […]

"I feel like someone has ripped out my very soul," my eldest daughter says, flinging herself on the floor of my home office.
Lucky thing she's not too dramatic; otherwise she'd scare me.
I breathe deeply, bracing myself for an onslaught of emotion — or an unexpected expense. Soul-ripping typically costs me time or money — or […]

"Mom," Amy asks, "this year can I get a new backpack?"
"What's wrong with the old one?" I ask.
"It's old," comes the reply. "I've had that one for two years, and I'm sick of pink," my daughter explains. "Pink is so fourth grade."
"But there's nothing wrong with it," I say. "We don't just go out and […]

I guess I have to accept that it was a compliment. It was a compliment. I know it was meant to be, anyway. But still.
There's a certain sting when a single, professional woman of about 30 gushes, "Oh, my gosh, you're 46? Wow. I hope I look half as good as you do when I'm […]

The silence is deafening around here. No bickering. No SpongeBob blaring from the TV in the den. No slamming doors. The phone hasn't rung all day. It's so quiet you'd think there was a power outage.
Just what did I do to achieve such a level of peace and quiet?
No, I did not ply my children […]

Sitting here contemplating Jimmy's upcoming 13th birthday, you might think I'm wistfully recalling the moment of his birth back in 1994. He arrived a month ahead of schedule after a grueling and tenuous pregnancy, so every year I allow myself a brief reflection of the arrival of my only son.
But no, that's not what's on […]

First of all, if you happened to drive past my van the other day while it was parked on the shoulder of the expressway, yes, that was me, and yes, I was yelling at my teenage daughter.
This may sound like a moment of extreme parenting, but we can't always choose our teachable moments. They come […]