#parenting

#parenting

The term "naked mom" sounds like internet bait. In reality, it describes something far less dramatic: a mother moving through her own home without turning every day moments like showering or changing into a performance of modesty. Supporters see it as a way to strip shame from bodies and raise kids who aren't scandalized by anatomy. Critics, meanwhile, worry about boundaries, privacy and where comfort should - and shouldn't - begin inside a family.

The parent or adolescent needs to find a better alternative, and the adult needs to lead and show that way. After all,now is later, an adolescent is just an adult in training, and part of the parental responsibility is modeling and teaching habits of spoken communication that the young person will carry forward into significant relationships to come. Ensuring safe speech means managing unhappy emotional arousal that can betray them into saying what can inflict serious injury.

Writer-director Angus MacLachlan's "A Little Prayer" is a quiet domestic drama about an older couple in North Carolina, their troubled adult children, the children's significant others, and their struggles to find peace and happiness despite the mistakes they've made and the distress they've caused others. It received respectful national attention and found a theatrical audience, even though it had little promotional money behind it and features just one cast member who's anything close to a household name (ace character actor David Strathairn).

Life has truly been life-ing here in 2026, and the only way any of us moms are going to make it through the darkness is by finding spots of light. And, sometimes, that means we have to be the spot of light for ourselves.

"The smartest women with the happiest relationships are the useless women," Dianna Lee begins in her video. "As you can probably tell, I'm a highly capable woman. I'm capable throughout all areas of my life, through my schooling days, to my career, and I attacked my marriage life in exactly the same way. I just executed. I was fast, efficient, and I knew exactly what needed to get done. And in retrospect, it was so wrong."

My wife and I have two kids, boys aged 4 and 6. I'm very happy with our family as it is. The kids are both out of diapers and in school all day. They're sleeping, we're sleeping. I feel like we've got a handle on this thing. But now my wife is saying she wants another one. She's 40, I'm 45-it's not totally out of the realm of possibility that we could have another one.

"We've been dealing with Rusty and his temper tantrums," Dylan shared on TODAY on Jan. 20. "He's been kind of having this little bit of a temper where he wants to hit and punch."

Neither my husband nor I ever had hair like my son's, but somehow he has curls that women would pay hundreds for at the salon. I would know, because I've been told so over and over again. His perfectly bouncy ringlets have become his signature look. You know Spencer by his hair. I'm always shocked when I look back at old photos to see how it's grown.

It was on [Dax Shepard's] podcast, and we were doing press ... Somehow the conversation derailed into bathing habits, and then we started talking about how we all don't bathe our children very often, and/or ourselves. Like, I shower every day, but I don't wash my hair every day. I don't find that to be a necessity,

When you fix the "problem," it teaches kids that you don't think they can handle it. Helping a child be flexible-to adapt when things don't happen as they expect or want-builds resilience. Resilience and flexibility are attributes that ultimately make kids happy. I call this the "taping the pretzel" trap: Your child flips out when something unexpected happens and demands you undo it,

First, you have to facilitate through the situation, which means realigning your mindset and asking yourself what you need to do to effect change for the next time you see this behaviour. Once this mindset has been established, there is a sequence of steps we must avoid to be able to effect change. These are as follows: 1. Do not allow your reactions to be based on what your child is saying.

Growing up, the grandparents who raised me were a generation removed from me, and because of it, I never felt like I could go to them with real issues or problems. I hid the deep and dark stuff because children were to be seen and not heard. We did not talk about the big things like sex or drugs. Instead, the warnings were direct and often frightening.

1. A cup holder snack tray converter so you can spend fewer road trips straining your arm while contorting it to hand individual Goldfish crackers from the front seat to the grabby hands in the back. 2. A pair of noise reduction ear muffs that'll cut back on the noise in your little's ears by 23 decibels and help muffle loud travel sounds, whether they're awake or asleep.

Most parents who reach out for coaching say they can't recall the moment(s) when it began. I'm talking about when they started pausing, maybe several times, before responding to their adult child's texts. Or, those parents softening their opinions (or straight-up twisting them) so as not to spark reactivity in their adult children. Or, they bite their tongues altogether and avoid certain topics.

Moms, just like anyone else, can make mistakes. Sometimes, the weight of balancing parenting responsibilities, work, and personal life leads to moments of extreme frustration or maybe an accidental harsh word. However, what's important is understanding that apologizing isn't a sign of weakness - it's actually a sign of strength. Apologizing shows your kids that you are not perfect, and that it's okay to own up to mistakes.

Yes, I know your kiddos probably just got far too much from Santa and their grandparents over the holidays. However, there is something to be said for introducing a little something something to keep them busy (and happy!) when they're sick of being stuck indoors (aren't we all?). Honestly, if my kids are content, life is easier. There's no shame in surprising them with something like a K-pop Demon Hunters version of Monopoly Deal, a snowman decorating kit, a fresh pair of Vans sneakers, or

Be safe. Have fun. Boys lie.

"He would love to take it with him everywhere. He'll drag it around the house," Laney says. "He spends a lot of time trying to plug it in, which we try to not let him do. But even if it's not plugged in, he still likes to have it nearby because I think he just has become a fan of it now."

On this episode: Lucy Lopez, Elizabeth Newcamp, and Zak Rosen get into a listener's question about whether or not to gift a gaming counsel to their college kid. They bought the gift when the kid was doing well in school, but now they're struggling again. Should that matter? But first, they share their latest triumphs and fails. Elizabeth is in her Worm Era and explains the wonders of vermicomposting.

My father was a petroleum geologist. A lot of my childhood, he was gone, away on oil rigs in the Powder River Basin and remote parts of Wyoming, living in man camps long before cellphones. We had to wait days to talk to him. When he went into the nearest town to shower, he'd find a payphone and call us. I was always breathless with news.

"I've had to sort of mourn in a way, not the loss of those friendships, but like how they've changed," Moore said.

Even if a child seems relatively happy, that can lead any parent to be concerned that there is a problem - or else why would they be evasive? On the other hand, our teen patients tell us about how they try to avoid long car rides with their parents because it is inevitably seen by the parent as an opportunity to ask a lot of questions.

Many of the parents felt that their way of doing presents wasn't working. Their children were disappointed, overwhelmed, or both. One mother described it this way: "Everybody opened everything all at once. It was chaos. I had a headache." The second topic was relatives: When they came, how long they stayed, and how many presents they gave. One mother with three small children had tried to control the overwhelm by having everyone come to her house instead of having to travel. That too was chaos.

"I married somebody who is the opposite of me. He is so organized," Lawrence said during an appearance on Tuesday's episode of the "Smartless" podcast. "He's an anchor. Everything is ordered, like on the sink. Like I have to, you know, like keep the closet doors closed, and I have like my little jobs that I work really hard to do," she said.

I was delighted when I saw an Evite in my inbox from a mom inviting him to a classmate's 6th birthday party. The little boy's name was Nathan. The event took place at a retro slot-car raceway, where you raced tiny, electric-powered replicas of full-size cars on narrow tracks with "grooves," known as "slots." Neither of us had been to one before, and we were excited to accept the invitation.

He kept repeating himself until I finally said, "We are done arguing, just drop it." To which he retorted, "You just drop it!" I then asked him to go anywhere in the house besides the kitchen because he was still talking about it after I asked him to stop. (I couldn't leave, I was helping his sitter get a snack, and doing dishes.) He then yelled at me, "You leave! Why do I have to leave if you're the one with the problem?"

I am at the end of my tether with my three children. They are eight, 11 and 13 and every morning it is a giant battle to get them up out of bed and ready for school. I have tried everything - I have their clothes laid out, their breakfast on the table, their bags packed and their lunches made.

I wanted to help her sleep soundly in her new "big girl" bed. But once she did, I didn't expect my own sleep to continue to be disrupted as well. I woke up at every creak of the house, wondering if it was my daughter roaming around, exploring her newfound freedom. I knew it was incredibly unlikely, but I feared that she would unlock the door and walk outside in the middle of the night.

I never speak negatively about my body or my appearance in general when talking with my 9-year-old daughter. I am trying to model positive body image, self-esteem, and self-love for her. When I was growing up, my mother was always very self-critical, self-conscious, constantly complaining about her body and her flaws, and I had to work pretty hard to undo her negative programming.

I wouldn't have to answer to anyone or for anything. Not requests for snacks or one more backrub. I wouldn't have to sit rigid, wondering if one of my three kids was creeping out of a bed that wasn't theirs. Or defend my parenting style while my oldest yelled about how life wasn't fair and we must all really hate him,