Bailey, 17,  just came home from a sleepover. She spent the night with a teenage friend who is young mother with a 6-week-old baby. As she came in the door she said, “I’m exhausted and I’m never having kids.” 
I said, “Well, I do hope that you wait, but they don’t cry forever.” And, if you are a parent, you know that they don’t, although they do develop even more challenging behaviors so that at a certain point (the teenage years, for instance), you look back on memories of a crying infant and think of them as The Good Ol’ Days.

Another …read more

Teenage relationships are so confusing. Were they this complicated when I was a teenager? Or do teenagers just thrive on making things difficult?
A few weeks ago the 16-year-old went to a girl’s volley ball game to watch his “sorta girlfriend” play.
“Sorta girlfriend?” I asked.
“Yeah, we’re kind of going out, but not really,” he said.
Um, ok. Whatever that means.
Then the other day we were in the car and he was talking to the 14-year-old about some freshman that has a crush on him.
“I thought you already have a girlfriend?” I questioned.
“Who? Jessica?”
“Yeah. Isn’t she your girlfriend?”
“No. We just hang out. And …read more