Credit cards for college kids
Just before kids turn 18 and prepare to leave home, credit card companies swoop in. It’s not fair, particularly for those who don’t have a good grasp on money and budget, who haven’t been carefully putting quarters into jars, dollars into envelopes and checks into the bank since they were young children, and who haven’t…
Springfield awakens to creative play
Susan Clause remembers using a strange chant to awaken her young son from his slumber: erg-A-doo, erg-A-doo, erg-A-doo. These memorable words resonated with Clause and her husband, Stephen Briggs, 15 years ago when they were searching for a name for their new educational resource store. The name stuck. ErgAdoo, just off South Grand Avenue…
Families that eat together are more together
Until recently, families that routinely sat down together for meals were the norm. But for several decades family meals have become increasingly rare as life’s pace and pressures have become increasingly frenetic. Two-career households, kids with a bewildering array of activities and distractions, plus the ease and availability of fast food, seemed poised to plunge…
These ain’t your momma’s cloth diapers
The RN takes a pause from charting notes on his computer and wheels his stool over to my 2-year-old daughter, Anna, who is sitting on an exam table pantless after being rushed from our house in a partial state of undress to get a wound stitched. “Oh, that’s a cloth diaper!” I explain to him…
Teen risk-taking is nothing new
A while back, a friend’s 14-year-old daughter sent inappropriate images and texts of herself to her boyfriend. The images were not the worst one might imagine – she was clothed – but her mother was horrified nonetheless. As a parent myself, I was shocked with what she had done, not just because I felt she…
