I was on a flight from to L.A. the other day. A mom with three three kids sat across from me, with one next to her and two in front of her.

Jason Kotecki said something over at Dumb Little Man (Tips for Life) the other day that really caught my attention:

The real world reveals the truth about quality time. A number of fathers could tell you about spending an entire day fishing with their child. You enjoy a great lunch on the boat, share some good laughs, soak in some sunshine, and even catch a few bluegill. But it’s only in the last ten minutes — as you’re turning into the driveway — when your kid finally opens up about getting bullied at school.

Your kids need quantity time out of the relationship with you. It’s not their job to be able to fit all of their stories and questions and hopes and dreams and fears into the sliver of time you’ve carved out as “quality time.”

Sometimes a meaningful interaction only takes five minutes. But sometimes you need five hours to get to that five minutes.

Kotecki makes so much sense here, and he says it so well. Check out the entire post and let me know what you think. We always-busy parents have been reminded of this for years, but rarely has anyone, in my experience, been so on the mark. Thanks, Jason.

I was talking with a friend who works in an orthodontist’s office recently, and the subject of retainers came up. I mentioned that Matt, my son, will get nagged to wear his retainers, which we picked up today. And then I said “but you probably hear that from all the parents, right?”

“You’d be surprised,” she said, and she went on to describe moms who say things like “Well, I can’t make her wear it. It’s her mouth.”

(Insert screeching-tire sound here.)

Wait a minute. Who’s the mom? Who’s the kid? Who is paying for those braces, that roof over the kid’s head, etc.? Who is supposed to be the mature adult who knows more and who is in charge of making good decisions for the sake of this kid’s health and future?

Do I sound a little fed up? Good.

I see so much of this in my community, and I can only assume that the “kids-in-charge” trend is spreading across the land:

“My kid will only eat fast food.”

“My three kids like three different things, so I have to make three different meals at dinner.”

“My kid won’t go to bed on time. I explain to her that she needs sleep, but she just won’t.”

Seriously?

Your kid has enough friends. He doesn’t need you to be his buddy — despite how much you don’t want him to be mad at you for acting like a parent. He doesn’t need you to never frustrate him. To tip-toe around and make three dinners every night and pay the ortho bill while that retainer sits on the bathroom counter.

He needs a parent. Be one. He’ll fuss and fight and complain. But secretly? He’ll be glad that you care enough to be the adult, the person who helps set him on the right path in life.

And when he looks in the mirror when he’s 25? He might even see straight teeth.

As the mom of a 14 year old, there’s always pressure to enroll my kid in the latest “enrichment” activity… Summer reading, music lessons, sports lessons… Fortunately, after a few years, you realize there are only so many hours in a day — and so many dollars in a budget — and you find a happy balance.

But woe to the soon-to-be new parents out there, who are now being told they need to enrich their child before he even has a chance to take his first breath. Take the BabyPlus Prenatal Education System, a product that straps onto Mom’s bulging belly, emitting 16 varied sounds that resemble a mother’s heartbeat.

For $149, your unborn baby has class twice a day for an hour, and the sonic pattern introduces her to a sequential learning process, based on the natural rhythms of the womb. (So the natural rhythms of the womb aren’t enough?) The rhythms of the sounds increase incrementally as the pregnancy progresses. Until what? The baby pops out snapping his fingers, doing calculus and demanding an iPod?

(more…)

Note to any parent who is thinking that taking their kids to a “swine flu party” is a dandy idea: I wish you could have seen my then-13-year-old son in early November. (Matt gave me his OK to talk about his bout with H1N1 because he thinks purposely exposing a child to this virus is the craziest thing he’s ever heard of.)

My healthy, baseball-playing, junior-lifeguard son was fine one day and had a fever of 102.5 the next. (Full disclosure: Matt did get the H1N1 vaccination, but it takes about two weeks to be fully effective, according to his doctor, and he got sick before it became fully effective.)

He got so sick he developed a form of vertigo that was so severe he couldn’t roll over in bed without the room spinning. He ended up in the ER with pneumonia. He missed almost two weeks of school. Taking your listless child to the ER is as scary thing. Seeing him hooked up to IVs with fluids and antibiotics isn’t fun, either. (more…)

Yep, I know, I look like a dweeb going for a walk with a fanny pack. But sometimes I have so much little stuff with me when I walk:  iPod, keys, cell, lip balm…

Then I received a free sample, for review, of a new product called SPIBELT (Small Personal Item Belt). The compartment looks too tiny to hold much of anything, but it’s stretchy (and actually holds all my necessities) and it also doesn’t bounce around when I walk — a major improvement.

There are several different styles, starting at $19.95. As a busy mom, I’m always looking for ways to make life easier. This definitely does the trick when I’m walking the dog in the morning, and it would make a great holiday gift for a parent, teen or tween.

Now if it would only pick up the dog poop!

American Idol semi-finalist Danny Gokey tweeted this yesterday:

“I just got my teeth cleaned & now their getting whitened. This whitening is long over due! Btw I’m also on invisalign. Its a mouth makeover”

OK, spelling issues aside… People, isn’t this just a bit TOO MUCH INFORMATION? I guess I like a bit of mystery in my pop idols, actors, etc.

Made me wonder what it would have been like to see Elvis on Twitter:

@TheKing Eating a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. Yum. Just shot another TV. That Ricky Ricardo made me crazy. LMAO!

If you’re a parenting blogger like me, you may not think you need to know all that much about marketing. But author Shiv Singh has something for all of us in his new book, Social Media Marketing for Dummies.

You’ll learn how to better reach your audience via Facebook and Twitter, you’ll learn about online influencers and you’ll figure out how to make the most of YouTube. That’s just for starters.

Is this book aimed squarely at parenting bloggers? Nope. But there are definitely some gold nuggets in this book with your name on them. Check it out.

Somewhere in your parents' spare bedroom, up on a closet shelf — or in your grandmother's attic, in a dusty cardboard box — is your life.

The shot of you, your little brother and the world's best pup in a sea-green fishing boat.

The photographic proof that your grandpa once sat on the floor with you and your brother and played Tiddlywinks. 

The picture of you winning a beauty contest. (True, in my case it was winning "Miss Laurel Drive" when I was 9 years old. And the crown was made from aluminum foil. But still.)

Of course, those memories become increasingly fuzzy as the years go by, as that beloved Grandpa passes away, as your own child or grandchild enters first grade, as you try to remember, "Did we go to the Grand Canyon before or after we got the dog?"

When my parents entrusted me with three metal boxes full of slides a number of years ago, I carefully put them on a closet shelf — and then worried about them from time to time. If we had a fire, hundreds of family memories would be gone. Poof.

Plus, we really weren't enjoying the photos. Who had time to look at them, one by one, in my crummy little slide viewer? And who has a slide projector these days?

So there they sat.

Then I discovered a wonderful El Segundo, Calif. company, ScanDigital. They scanned my slides on their state-of-the art equipment, and created a DVD containing beautiful .jpg photos.

What a treasure it is to have these digital photos! In fact, my husband, son and I got to bed waaay too late last night because we couldn't stop looking at the photos. (And certain people had entirely too much fun having a giggle over my fashion choices at age 13.)

It's easy to do. Just gather your photos, slides or negatives. Organize, pack and ship them to ScanDigital. (They will send you shipping materials and instructions.)

They'll scan, crop and color-correct the photos. Then they'll create a CD or DVD containing your photos at no additional
cost and they'll ship your original photos back to you. (In the Los Angeles area, you can drop them off or have them picked up.)

You can also purchase
additional CDs or DVDs for family and friends. (By the way, in this photo, that's me in the yellow dress and white sweater, boarding the school bus for the first day of first grade. Thanks, Mom, for taking that picture!)

Prices start at $0.48 each for 300-dpi paper photos. Negatives and slides are slightly higher. The quality is terrific, especially when you're talking about starting off with slides or photos that have, in many cases, been sitting around for decades.

ScanDigital also creates an online gallery for your photos at no extra charge. I love the idea that there's an electronic copy of my photos securely stored somewhere outside my home. (For free!)

You can also organize photos online, create albums, share them with friends and family, and purchase reprints and other photo items like t-shirts, mousepads, calendars and photo books.

If you want to do this for the holidays, you'll need to move quickly. The deadline for holiday orders is Dec. 15. You can also give ScanDigital gift cards. The deadline for those Dec. 19.

I'm hoping my parents don't read this post… because this Christmas they'll be getting two kids in a boat with one very happy dog, a little girl riding her first bike, a trip to the Grand Canyon, and a hot game of Tiddlywinks — all courtesy of Miss Laurel Drive.

When our son, Matthew, was born, my husband and I had so many questions. Car seats, in particular, were confusing. What to get? Where to look for safety ratings? Would a particular car seat work in our car? Sheesh! Just the kind of hassles sleepless parents need, right?

Well, that whole thing just got a bit easier. A new government rating system grades child-safety seats on ease of installation. U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have released ratings for 78 child-safety seats currently available.

NHTSA says 7 out of 10 child-safety seats are either the wrong size for the child or are seriously misused, reducing their effectiveness in a crash. (When properly used, child-restraint systems reduce fatal injury by 71 percent for infants and 54 percent for toddlers in passenger cars. In light trucks, fatal injuries are reduced by 58 percent for infants and 59 percent for toddlers.)

For a complete list of the new rankings, visit www.nhtsa.gov and click on “Child Seat Ease of Use Ratings” under “Quick Clicks.”

Wish this had been around back in the day!