Do you recall being spanked as a child? My mother claims we were never spanked, but a haze of nostalgia must cloud her memory.
Cut to my grandparents’ log cabin during extended-family vacation, when after-dinner rough-housing pushed my father to his limit. Typically loving and silly, my father roared like a grizzly when angered, thundering upstairs [...]
Entries Tagged as 'preschooler'
On Love and Discipline
January 11th, 2010 1 Comment
Tags: behavior problems · discipline · John Rosemund · Parenting · preschooler · spanking
Ho Ho Hoax
December 27th, 2009 2 Comments
I don’t know what to do about Santa.
At age 4, Ava has fully grasped what happens on Christmas. The anticipation of presents has whipped her into a Christmas frenzy, nearly equal to my own holiday stress.
While I worry about shopping, spending, wrapping, decorating, and not baking enough cookies, my daughter writes out party invitations and [...]
Tags: Christmas · preschooler · Santa Claus
The Dark Season
October 18th, 2009 1 Comment
Give me October in Vermont and I’ll give you apple-picking, leaf-raking, and blazing orange-red hills.
I’ll also give you 35 degrees and raining. This morning I manhandled A. into her winter parka and physically pushed her out the door. She was refusing to go outside due to the cold, and I was having an anxiety-inducing [...]
Tags: daylight saving time · Parenting · preschooler · winter
Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself
April 10th, 2009 No Comments
You can call me Diana Whitney, the poet formerly known as Diana Sabot. My 3-and -a-half year old daughter, whom I’ll refer to as A., now calls me “Diana” too. As in, “Hey Diana? You know my friend Hello Kitty?”
Sometimes she still calls me “Mommy”, but we’ve entered a new phase of self-expression [...]
Tags: preschooler