Category - Monday TakeAway

The star of today’s episode (besides you & me, of course :-)) is the timeless Little Black Dress (LBD). The secret behind its huge success will help you get your kids of any age to WANT to be around you. But let’s talk pre-teens and teenagers for a moment. If you’ve already bought into the convention that they keep to themselves and don’t talk much, and that you need to pluck your words with tweezers around them, I invite you to take another look. It’s enough to look at their interactions with their peers to realize that it’s not entirely true:[…]

Friday night last week I shared an idea I had for UpsideDown Parenting with my husband, who is also my partner in UP. My husband, who is usually eager to hear about anything I come up with, was clearly impatient this time. When I was done talking, he told me a parable about a chicken who runs back and forth between two neighboring farms, and can’t seem to decide where she belongs. The chicken, of course, represents me in this case. And the 2 farms are the hustle and bustle of the weekdays vs. the “weekend”. It was his gentle[…]

The other day I was looking online for hearty, simple recipes to add to my kids’ lunch menu. I came across a whole category titled “Cook With Only Five Ingredients”, which I happily clicked on. Turns out that even in the field of free, online recipes you need to look for the “small letters” on the bottom. Because almost every recipe called for no less than 6 ingredients. It was those naughty “Pantry Staples”- the salt & spices, the oil, the lemon and vinegar. Yes, in the cooking world some things just go without saying. And I sat there wondering—what[…]