Our house has recently suffered a monster infestation. Apparently, there are monsters in the garage, monsters in the bathroom, even monsters in the living room. Or so our two-year-old tells me. She is deeply afraid. Every time she exclaims,”but there’s a monster!” and refuses to go into a room (or refuses to be left alone in one), the nice, pat…
If you had told me when E was just born–and I hardly knew how to make it through Seth’s 12-hour shifts alone by myself–that I would one day be watching three children aged two and under all by myself for a week, repeatedly, I would have told you you were crazy. (Primarily because I was a brand-new mom with no…
We tell our children stories–bedtime stories, childhood stories, true stories, moral stories, all kinds of stories. One of my favorite quotes in the context of parenting is of G.K. Chesterton: “Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” There’s an important role for fairy…