When I picked up A. this afternoon, she was in a pretty rotten mood. She was standing in a different part of the outdoor porch, her head hung down. She didn't want to tell me anything was wrong, but I eventually got out of her that she ended up going to the vice principal's office today because she needed a time-away -- she wasn't in trouble, but ...

A. struggled a bit with her homework last night. It was an understandable struggle -- A. had been sent home early on Tuesday because she threw up in the cafeteria (even though she apparently just choked on some apple juice which is what caused the problem, and she was perfectly fine after I brought her home) and she fell a little behind in science ...

I have a lot of wonderful stories to tell -- about our wonderful vacation, about A.'s continuing success and emerging challenges at school -- but, tonight, I want to focus on an event that happened this evening, which really helped me put things into perspective, and made me really impressed with the amount of empathy my daughter was ...

It was a very, very busy weekend last weekend, but overall a very, very good one.I knew that the weekend was going to be rather hectic and full of out-of-routine situations for A., so I sat down with her on Friday night to explain everything that was going on. I laid everything out in relation to things that matter to A. (mainly, how much time ...

It's been a stressful and exhausting day. Everything has been out of sync and not according to routine. From picking A. up from school early due to the threatening weather, to spending great chunks of time in the downstairs bathroom and closets when it seemed like the storms were getting scary and close, to skipping bath-time because we were in ...

My mother always told me I was a very emotional girl. She told me this, however, from the lens of someone who had spent her entire life feeling ashamed of emotions, in general. Generations of women in my family have seen blatant expressions of emotion -- sadness, in particular -- as signs of weakness and insecurity, and such expression has been ...

Sometimes, it takes something like reacting quite unprofessionally to an inflammatory blog post to help one put things into perspective.I often couch this blog that I write with a lot of disclaimers: ''I'm not a professional,'' or ''This is just my humble perspective.'' The few times I've actually ''spoken up'' about something serious or ...

I know that my last entry may have made December sound as if it's all been sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. Believe me -- despite the fact that much progress has been made, we've also had several rocky days in the middle of all of this, as well.Specifically, I was painfully reminded of how a simple snow day can completely throw A. off kilter and ...