Before I get into our weekly roundup of interesting reads, it must be said that Liz is on her way to the Big Apple to run a half marathon this weekend! Holy crap, right? So proud! I think the farthest I will go this weekend is to the local coffee place for a croissant.
On to this week’s must-reads:
If you’re a parent of a toddler, you simply gotta see Reasons My Son is Crying a hilarious tumblr of pics of two youngsters mid-meltdown with amusing captions such as, “I refused to let him drown in a pond.” Then get along to the backstory at Christian Science Monitor, where creator and dad Greg Pembroke talks about the glut of advice he’s gotten from concerned readers.
“It’s just completely bizarre. I want everyone to know they can stop diagnosing the boys now, they’re fine. Charlie’s not autistic, there’s no weird food allergy causing their noses to run. Oh, and no, William’s not dehydrated and that’s not what’s causing him to cry. Wow! They’re just normal kids crying over normal things,” he says.
Nicholas Day at Slate discusses how parents of different ethnic groups value different qualities in their children, with American parents being relatively obsessed with intelligence.
Blogger Maria Guido at Mommy-ish talks about how Facebook makes her feel like a crappy parent.
“Before social media, we didn’t actually know what was going on in other people’s houses and families. We just did what we did and assumed everyone else was doing the same thing. Guess what? They’re not. On Halloween they’re making black licorice fondant spider cupcakes with glowing eyes. You’re giving your kids candy corn. You suck.”
Personally, the thought of buying an Easter basket for my infant just feels like a waste of money. Mommy would rather have $20.
Tina Rosenberg at the Times talks about relationship between talking to our kids and the racial achievement gap, saying, “If everyone talked to their young children the same amount, there would be no racial or socioeconomic gap at all.”
Freaky photos of children in their entirely gender-warped lives of pink and blue. Really, just go look.
“Society is leaning on mothers to go the extra yard, spend those extra hours, and even read that extra book to a fetus that doesn’t know the difference between “The Three Little Pigs” and moo shu pork. For the sake of our careers as well as for our kids, maybe it’s time for us moms to push back.”
That’s Lenore Skenazy of Free-Range Kids on about the connection between Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, helicopter parenting and the “cult of inconvenience.”
Although this LA Times article is about how to talk to someone with illness, we found a lot of parallels between its “ring theory” and talking to women about pregnancy, birth and parenthood, as well as oppression of all sorts. Good read.
And last but not least, The Onion makes us laugh with this guy: Toddler Junkie Immediately Hooked On Looking At Trains After First Exhilarating High.
Happy reading and have a great weekend!
Photo credit: smoorenburg on flickr
