It is a truth universally acknowledged that there are in fact two ideal circumstances in which to talk to your teen:

1. At 11:00 at night, usually a school/work night when you are tired but your teen is wide awake, and

2. Sitting side by side in the car, preferably when you (and not your teen) are driving so you can stare straight ahead and not make eye contact.

Over the past decade or so, I’ve made use of both of these times as much as possible, and it’s paid off. I found out in just this way that my oldest son was intending to enlist in the Marines. In fact, it was both 11:00 at night (coming back from seeing a musical together—yes, my former Marine still loves musicals, my work here is done) and we were sitting side by side in the car.

And when you spend time in cars with your teens, sometimes you end up enjoying music together. Sure enough, I bonded with my two oldest over music as I drove them back and forth to the learning center where they were taking classes. Around 2012, we discovered Imagine Dragons, and it became the first band (“alternative” band at that—bonus!) that we all loved. And I mean loved. We listened to their first album, Night Visions, until we knew the lyrics by heart, and eventually we started talking about them.

And, in true mom fashion, I started overthinking them. Or at least one of them.

continue reading

I’m a blue star mom. This banner on my house means that I have a close family member who is currently serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. It was on my house from 2014 to 2018, had a break for a couple of years, then went back up again in the summer of 2020.

It’s uncommon to have a son or daughter serving in the military. Only two percent of high schoolers choose to enlist or pursue officer training. Each spring, when the rounds of “So, what’s [your son/daughter] going to do after graduation?” begin among moms, if your answer is Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, or Coast Guard, whether officer or enlisted, eyes will open wider and jaws may drop.

Back in 2014, when I began telling people that our oldest son was planning to enlist in the Marines directly out of high school, the most common reaction I got from other moms surprised me. The look of concern, the furrowed brow, the leaning in to quietly ask, “And how do you feel about that?”

continue reading

Still polarizing after all these years.

I thought the controversy was over. I thought that surely by now, moms were no longer arguing over this book. I thought emotions had cooled, invectives were no longer flung about, and we were at peace with (or at perhaps had just forgotten about) this little children’s book.

But no. The debate rages on.

Love You Forever was written by Robert Munsch and first published in 1986. If you’ve ever seen it, you’re not likely to forget the image of the toddler on the cover, sitting next to an open toilet in the middle of a toddler-made mess, gleefully contemplating what to toss next into the commode. If you’ve read it to children, they’ve likely pointed out the toilet to you each time you’ve read it, while (depending on the child) giggling in embarrassment or snickering in naughty delight.

In short, it’s the story of a mom who sings her baby to sleep with a certain lullaby every night (“I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living my baby you’ll be”), and as that baby grows, she continues to love and sing to her son, even as he becomes a man with his own home and family. At the end of the book, when the mother is old and sick, the son sings the song back to her and then goes home and sings it to his own baby girl.

So from that brief synopsis, you can maybe see why Love You Forever is on its way to 35,000 Amazon ratings, 94% being five-star reviews. In 2001, fifteen years after it was first published, it was in its 63rd printing, and who knows how many times it’s been printed by now, 20 years later.

So people really like it. That is, except for the people who hate it. And I mean, HATE it.

continue reading