In an ideal world, Mommy and Daddy would love one another forever and together provide a warm, loving home for the children. But the real world is just that — real. Lives changes, relationships go awry, and the best of intentions sometimes fall through the floor. Mommy and Daddy split up. But who gets the kids?

In the past, this wouldn’t have been a question. Once upon a time, men owned everything, including the children. *Cough.* (I think we’ve moved past that, for the most part.) In our more recent past, the “tender years” doctrine held and kids went with their mothers, who were presumed to be the more nurturing parent. Now, things are flipping once again and more and more, fathers are getting custody of the kids, especially when Mom is a working mom and Dad has been taking care of the kids. Are working moms working themselves out of a relationship with their children?
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Show of hands if any of this sounds familiar:

• You walk on the sidewalk, not on people’s lawns, unless it’s someone you know well and you’re spending the afternoon there.
• You let people cut in front of you in the 10-or-less grocery line, but you try to burn holes in the back of their head the whole time they’re in front of you.
• Soup is lukewarm at the restaurant? Steak cooked a little more than the medium-rare you asked for? You eat it but you refuse to enjoy it.
• You won’t call anyone after 9 pm if you don’t know them well enough.
• You have an entire conversation with someone who stopped you on the street to ask directions, even though they creep you out a little, because you’re too nice to look the other way, keep walking, and ignore them.

Did your mother raise you to be nice? Mine did. In my mom’s world, nice trumped everything. if you couldn’t be smart, at least you could be nice. Good girls were seen and not heard, and if you were a teeny bit dramatic (aren’t all nine-year olds?) you got called “Sarah Bernhardt” and were shushed a lot.

That didn’t work for me, and I’m unlearning the niceness thing. And I’m teaching my daughter to speak out about what she wants and feels. I am so breaking this chain, the one that I can trace back to before my mom’s mom.
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Ever have one of those brilliant thoughts when you’re out walking or in the grocery store mindlessly tossing things into your cart or waiting in line to pick the kids up from school or driving home from work?  For me, it happens all the time.  I go, “OMG! I’m brilliant!” and just KNOW it’s so brilliant that OF COURSE I’ll remember it, I mean who would be unable to remember this great idea that will:

1. Save everyone at least an hour a day.
2. Save hundreds of dollars, nay, thousands of dollars. Maybe every DAY, this is so brilliant.
3. Save marriages.  Save LIVES.
4. Get you elected President (after Obama has a go, or maybe even two), or better yet, elected God. No, make that GoddESS. Yeah, Goddess. Has a nice ring to it. You could get t-shirts made…

And then, when you get home, after dealing with dog vomit and homework and dinner and maybe a little TV with a glass of wine and a snuggle on the couch, that brilliant idea just vanishes, POOF, into thin air and reality sets in.

Me too. Except THIS idea is so brill that all that Real Life could not prevent me from presenting it here to you now (get ready): Dads should raise the kids. Let Moms work.
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I was leaving the grocery store last night, walking back home through the parking lot, when I heard it.

“Please, mama!” the anguished voice tore at my soul. It could almost have been any of my own kids, it was so familiar. Pleading. Frightened. My heart stopped. I had to look. I was 99.9999% sure it wasn’t any of my kids, but a mother’s heart goes so easily into Protective Mode. Someone needed his mama.

I scanned the parking lot and saw a white pickup. Mom and Dad inside, window rolled down. Outside the driver’s door stood a thin boy, anxiously hopping a little, maybe ten years old.

“Bye,” Dad said flatly from within the truck’s cab. He looked away. “We’re leaving.”

My jaw dropped.
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A hundred or so years ago, this wouldn’t even have been a question. Children, if they had a separate room at all, shared it with whatever other children were in the family, regardless of age or gender.

When my older son turned about 9, he started bathing alone instead of with his sister, then 5. That seemed about right to me, and he led the way with the decision. They still shared a room (bunk beds rule!). One of my favorite things then was to overhear their early-morning whisperings via the baby monitor still in their room to alert me to the late-night stylings of Night Terror Boy or Hypochondriac Girl. (I had yet another kid in my bed then so it wasn’t like I was getting off scot-free anyway.)

A year later, we moved, everything changed, and Boy and Girl got their own rooms. 
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Sarah Palin’s entry into our consciousness has polarized the U.S., and not just politically.  Love her or hate her, much of our opinion about her is based on her identity as a mom.

Wha??

Aside from the fact that hello, it’s her political attributes (or lack of them) that we should be looking at, it feels like much of the debate over Sarah Palin is nothing more than a thinly-disguised continuation of the Mommy Wars.  Working moms vs. stay-at-home moms.  And I am sick of all the judging that is STILL going on with this. Can we stop now?
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Ever noticed how many how-to books there are about babies and raising kids?  Seriously.  Go to any bookstore right now.  There must be bazillions.  And everybody’s an expert.  Doctors are experts, psychologists are experts, people who think they know stuff are experts.  Your neighbors, your in-laws, random people on the street, they’re all experts too.  All of them are experts on your kids. On YOUR family.

Hello?!  What’s wrong with this picture?

Um, lots.

We’ve forgotten how to trust ourselves, to trust our own instincts, to even acknowledge our instincts.  Instead, we’ve become, collectively, a pack of drones raising identically-parented robot-kids who are destined to become identical robot-adults.  I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of this.  We deserve better, and our kids deserve better.  It’s time to stop.
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Watch the news much?  Had a look at your bank account lately, your 401K statement, prices at the grocery store?

The past few weeks have been super-intense.  We’re worried about the housing situation, the election, gas prices that are lower but still too high.  We look at our kids and wonder what sort of world they’ll be growing up in.

It’s enough to make you start totally freaking out.  Hyperventilating.  Panicking.

Sound familiar?  Here’s what to do next time this happens, AND what to do to prevent a future freak-out as well:
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I had a photoshoot this weekend with a professional photographer (because, you know, I’m fancy like that), and she gave me a piece of advice that resulted in awesome photographs.

The advice?  Breathe.

Yeah yeah, I know.  We hear that all the time.  But she showed me the difference.  It was right there in her camera, undeniable, staring me in the face: when I took a deep breath and then let it out, my face relaxed, my eyes opened up, and I looked more present and connected.  When I wasn’t breathing I looked nervous and tense.  I had visible proof that breathing makes a difference.

So what’s the big deal?  We all breathe.  And we tell ourselves and one another all the time to slow down, stop and breathe.  I’ve said it here before.  We all say this. But what does it mean?
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Autumn.

This is officially my favorite time of year.*

Yep, when the leaves start falling, it feels like time to strap on the walking shoes.  Time for a little crunch action underfoot.  Put your kid in the stroller, grab an apple for Mr. I’m-too-big-for-a-stroller Preschooler and another for yourself, and get out there and enjoy the next month or so of gorgeousity.  The colors are intense and the air is a little crisp.  It feels really alive, yet when you get back home, your ears a little reddened by the slight bite of the wind that you never felt because you were too busy enjoying those rays of sunlight arching through the trees overhead, you feel really glad to be indoors again.  Glowing.  Completely alive.

There’s a reason this feels so good.
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