Parenting Tips and Advice | More4kids.info

By Sophia Richards

I found the missing lip balm in a winter boot once. Not a dramatic hiding place, exactly, but just hidden enough that a parent would not notice it while trying to get everyone out the door. A little hand had taken it from the grocery checkout line, brought it home, and tucked it away with the quiet logic children sometimes use when wanting s...

By Sophia Richards

The sunroom was quiet for approximately ninety seconds. Then came the pounding of small feet down the hall and the announcement, delivered at the volume of a fire alarm: “MO-om! He’s looking at me with his weird face AGAIN.” Before I could answer, the other one arrived, breathless and wounded: “She said my drawing was ugly, well she THINKS i...

By Sophia Richards

We were four minutes into a twelve-minute drive when the voice floated up from the back seat: “Are we there yet?” Then again at the stop sign. Then again — with real anguish this time, as if the waiting itself were a small injustice being done to him. My youngest was three, and to him, a wait of any length was a wall he had run straight into...

By Sophia Richards

She climbed into the back seat, buckled up without a word, and stared out the window the whole way home. My chatty middle one, who normally narrates the entire day before we’re out of the school parking lot, said nothing. It wasn’t until bath time that it came out, in that small, wobbling voice that goes straight through a mother’s ribs: “At...

By Sophia Richards

The first time it really landed for me, my middle one was five, standing on the coffee table like a tiny general, directing her cousins through an elaborate game with the crisp authority of a woman who runs a mid-size company. “You sit there. No — there. You’re the baby. I said you’re the baby. We’re doing it my way.” One cousin was...