parenting
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The Painful Paradox of Successful Parenting
- July 12, 2019
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: parenting
7 Comments
I’ve had conversations – both virtual and face-to-face – with thousands of parents (mostly moms) since I began writing about empty nesting and midlife in 2011. Those parents range from exhausted first-time mothers to joyous and celebrating empty nesters. Each mother has her own parenting story to tell, her unique experience to share, her child
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Making Room for My Young Adults
- January 15, 2018
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: parenting
Young adults still need their parents. Those of us with 20-something children know this to be true. Some need us more, some need us far less than we’d like them to, but sooner or later, they will come to us—their older and wiser parents—with a problem too complicated or painful or expensive or dangerous to
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Is There a “Real” College Experience?
- October 1, 2017
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: parenting
My two kids both went away to college – one across the country and one an hour plane ride away. They didn’t have much choice – my husband and I had, from their earliest days in school, told them that we not only expected them to go to college but, in my husband’s words, expected
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How Dads React to the Empty Nest
- August 19, 2017
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: parenting
When I found out I was pregnant with my first child, it had been barely a month since my husband and I had walked down the aisle. This surprising – but wonderful – turn of events had quite an impact on my new marriage. Imagine this scene – a young husband, called to the phone
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Tale As Old As Time
- June 12, 2017
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: parenting
There was rarely a time when there wasn’t music playing in my house when my children were little. Whether it was the drive-me-crazy ditties playing on Barney the Dinosaur videos or the timeless pop of the Beatles, my kids and I did a lot of singing and dancing during those sometimes endlessly long toddler and pre-school
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Four Words You Should Never Say to Your Young Adult
- April 24, 2017
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: parenting
It’s so tempting, it could just about make you crazy – kind of like the carton of Rocky Road ice cream in the freezer, or the designer shoes now 25% off at your favorite store. It’s sitting there, on the tip of your tongue and you’re desperate to say it…but don’t. “I told you so.”
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How to Talk to Your Grown Kids
- January 16, 2017
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: parenting
It’s a fact of life as a parent that while you’re raising your children, you do an enormous amount of talking to them. When they’re babies, it’s considered a mistake to not talk to them as much as you can, as often as you can, as clearly as you can. I remember narrating every little thing
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Fix Yourself, Not Your Children
- January 2, 2017
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: parenting
Everyone has something. No matter how well-adjusted, mature, guilt-free, positive, kind or happy we are, there is something – or maybe even a few things – that just isn’t that great about each of us. I know, I know. You’ve worked so hard to be comfortable with your shortcomings, your weaknesses, your bad habits. You’ve fought anxiety,
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10 Things I Did Wrong When My Kids Applied to College
- September 26, 2016
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: parenting
What’s more stressful and anxiety-ridden for a parent than when your high school senior applies to college? Not much. At least, not much if you’re a parent like I was, who fretted and worried and stalked websites trying to calculate my children’s odds of getting into their top choice schools (slim-to-none, it turned out). It’s been
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The Big Dilemma for Parents of Young Adults and College Kids
- September 5, 2016
- Posted by: Sharon Greenthal
- Category: parenting
When you’re raising your children, you have a lot of ways to measure your success as a parent. On an almost daily basis, parents get feedback about their growing children. Report cards tell us how hard they’re working and how well they do homework and take tests; coaches let us know when they’re performing at