Yan's Parenting Diary
Facing Your Kids’ Fear of the Dark and Fear of Death
Facing our kids’ fears can be a challenge. We try as parents to protect our kids and to keep them happy all the time, so I guess when they start to develop things like a fear of death – subjects that we adults have still not figured out – what are we supposed to tell…
Normalizing Kids’ Screen Time
Screen time for kids is always a sensitive issue in parenting. But sometimes I think we look at it all wrong; Humanity is ever-changing, and parenting should precede our evolution. I remember sitting outside Music Class waiting for my kids on a pre-CoVID-19 weekend. I was talking to another parent and we somehow got to…
Covid-19: A Guide for the Socially-Anxious
Shame, embarrassment, shyness, fear of rejection: these are the components that have been putting me in quarantine long before it was “in fashion.” On the other side of the boxing ring lies the fear of missing out and the desire to have meaningful and true friendships. Who wins this fight? For years I’ve been struggling…
“Daddy, I peed on my hand”
There’s a super annoying YouTube video that our kids love to watch about this little cartoon girl who nags her dad, “Daddy! Daddy! DaddyDaddyDaddyDaddy!” The father, who’s reading his newspaper finally answers angrily “WHAT?!” Never mind what happens later in the video (the girl tells him that she found a poop in the back yard…
Musical Beds
How, for heaven’s sake, did I find myself fighting over sleeping space with our dog, folded like a magician’s assistant inside a slice box, in a 5-foot toddler bed at 2am?As we go through the “coming to daddies bed” phase every night, I struggle endlessly for my basic human right to sleep… somewhere for the…
How We Failed Toilet Training
I don’t know what it’s like in your families, but where I come from it seems as if our value as parents is measured exclusively by how advanced our kids are. It’s all ‘Push them! Push them!’ attitude: ‘Get them to sit up by 3 months!’ ‘Get them to walk by 9 months!’ ‘What?! They…
On strict and Consistent Schedules and Knowing When to Break Them
Some parents will disagree, but having a consistent schedule–and especially night time schedule–for the kids, is not only healthy for everybody, it also makes parenting so much easier. My late aunt Rachel was a sort of magician with children. Never having children of her own, she karmically compensated by working her entire life as a…
That Time When We Had a Huge Fight in Front of the Kids
Yes, we fight. We’re not the picture perfect couple. Sometimes we even fight in front of the kids. And when we do — we also kiss and make up in front of them. Alex and I don’t fight a lot. We fight, but since we started couples therapy it’s been so much better. I think…
This Parent is Broken: There Are Days When You Just Want to Return Them
I had a great idea for a blog post. It’s been circling around my head for a few days now. But just as I opened a new document and was about to type in the first word there was a knock on my home office door. It was our nanny. “Hi, sorry to bother you…
How We Kept Our Sanity After Babies Were Born
There’s a growing theory by celebrity gossip-lovers that celebrities getting pregnant with twins is no coincidence. Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez, Rebecca Romijn are on the twins list, and then there’s the recent celebration of Beyoncé and George Clooney’s (separate, of course) twins announcements. That’s an awful lot of twins. The theory banging around is that…
A New Generation of Gay Dads
We’re the first generation of gays who can get married and have biological children in this way – and we don’t have to do everything exactly like the straight couples are doing. We can find our own way. Until I had children, every time I saw someone else’s – either in pictures or in person…