Being Ageless – Resilience!
by Aleta St. James
Recently, I’ve been focusing on inspiring people to Be Ageless. Many of you may imagine that’s about exercise, vitamins, and green-tinted healthy shakes — and it partially is — but one of the greatest keys to agelessness might surprise you: resilience. […]
Older Mom, Growing Older
by Barbara Herel
The average life expectancy for women in the U.S. is anywhere from 73.5 to 86 years of age. As the 48-year-old mother of a three-year-old, if I kick when I am 73.5, I’m going to be pissed.
That said, I always knew I’d be an older mom. When my college friends were getting pregnant, in their twenties and thirties, I never felt I was missing out. It was only after marrying Tony that I caught “baby fever,” and by then I was 40. […]
An Interview with Karen Quinn, Creator of TestingMom.com
by Cyma Shapiro
Q: Thank you for giving us your time, today. I think the world of the “gifted and talented” remains elusive and out of reach for many parents who will never experience this with their children. Please tell me a little about the impetus for founding such a program/company?
A: It’s actually quite an interesting story! After writing The Ivy Chronicles and Testing for Kindergarten, I was in the process of creating IQ Fun Park, a board game designed to help prepare kids for testing. I stumbled on a blog about NYC’s gifted and talented programs and was impressed by the breadth and depth of its content. I eventually reached out to the blog’s author, and we talked about how there was no comprehensive online resource for parents preparing their kids for G&T or private school exams — which we thought was surprising and also really unfortunate!
Ultimately, we decided to create TestingMom.com for that very purpose — to help parents busy parents who want fun and readily-accessible test prep materials for their children. That was in 2010, and so far it’s been a fascinating and really rewarding experience building the site and hearing from parents who have used our services. […]
A Mother In The Middle
by Ellie Stoneley
(C) 2013 Paul Clarke – All Rights Reserved
March has two events of note, firstly, in the UK (and I know it’s different in the USA) there’s Mothering Sunday, and secondly, the Ides of March … and it struck me that ultimately both are about trust. One, the greatest kind of trust – that of a child of its mother, and the other – the betrayal of trust.
Reflecting on my own situation, I was an elderly primagravida and now I’m a geriatric first- time mother! I am sitting here having tucked my 14-month-old daughter into bed after bidding good night to my own mother, now eighty something and it sort of struck me that I am not just a midlife mother, but I really am a mother in the middle ( and generally a mother in a muddle too!). Trusting and trusted. […]
Traditions
Cyma Shapiro
As another Passover approaches, I can’t help but think back wistfully to my childhood with Eastern European grandparents and all that it held for me – the incessant Yiddish conversations, the Yiddish radio broadcasts; a home that smelled from a mixture of fish, moth balls and sometimes sweat. The odors that emanated from the kitchen during Chanukah, Rosh Hashanah and Passover, all of which have stayed with me to this day. The ever-present small Russian shot-glasses rimmed with “gold” are missing, except for the imprint they’ve left in my mind. Most of all, I remember the laughter and large tables filled with food, surrounded by extended family. […]
The Childcare Dilemma
Andrea Lynn
The one clear benefit of being late to motherhood is that many of my friends have older children, and I have a glimpse of the future.
This week is March Break here – the kids out of school and the parents on vacation or scrambling for childcare. The morning subway was emptier than usual all week so it was a bit of a surprise to run into a friend on the dawn run downtown. She was heading to the gym before work, I was on the early shift. And her two girls? Edging into their teens, they had March-break jobs – providing before-and-after care at a dance camp for kids. Instead of having to find someone – a camp, a babysitter, a grandparent, a neighbour – to watch her girls during the week’s break from school, my friend for the first time could just relax and go to work, unhassled by the relentless school calendar, with its PA Days and Snow Days, holiday and vacation weeks, early dismissals and shortened weeks. […]
A Midlife Mother Defines Success (A Commentary)
by Jane Samuel
All the recent media-hype about Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg’s new book Lean In has got me thinking again. Thinking like I did last year when Anne-Marie Slaughter’s piece
“Why Women Still Can’t Have it All” (Atlantic July/August 2012) hit the newsstands and the airwaves like an IED. Thinking like I did years ago when another, more senior, female partner tried to dissuade me from dropping to part-time status after the birth of my first child, arguing in part, “the men won’t like that.” Thinking again about my daughters, about their pasts when I put aside work to nurture them and their futures when they may or may not have a chance to lean in and have it all. Thinking again about the ultimate thing to think about: what it means in life to “have it all,” to be “successful” and to be a woman and a mother. […]
Mom On Demand
by Lori Pelikan Strobel
I am standing at my new desk, a desk that can be raised to a standing height or lowered to a sitting height. I love it! The room that this desk stands in is my office. It has been in a bit of transformation lately; just like my life. The walls are painted the softest of green. A small but dazzling crystal chandelier light hangs from the center of the room. It is pleasant here alone with my own thoughts.
Suddenly I hear the garage door open and footsteps. “Mom, I’m home!” yells my daughter from the kitchen as she loudly drops her book bag, coat and whatnot that I envision in a trail on the floor. My peacefulness is broken by her voice and I am suddenly transported back ten years ago when she would come home from school with the same declaration. Although times have changed, things have a way of staying the same. I am still here whether or not she is. […]
