recent posts
- Why October Feels Like Tween Season | Dramatic, Moody, and Full of Candy
- Why Gratitude Feels Different in the Tween Years
- When Summer Gets Weird | What to Do When Everyone’s Over It (Including You)
- Tween Fashion Battles | Hoodies, Crocs, and Other Hills We Die On
- Trick-or-Treating With Tweens | Sweet or Sour?
- The Tween Gift Guide No One Asked For (But Everyone Needs)
Category: Chaos
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The holidays arrive dressed like a Hallmark movie—twinkle lights, cinnamon in the air, the promise of magic glittering around the edges. And yet, if we’re honest, December can also feel like trying to drink joy from a firehose. It’s noise-meets-chaos, sugar-meets-expectations, a thousand tiny pressures humming like fluorescent lights. For kids and grownups, overstimulation is…
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There comes a moment in every parent’s life—usually sometime between your child rolling their eyes so dramatically you fear injury and them insisting you “just don’t get it”—when you realize you have no earthly idea what a tween wants for Christmas. Or a birthday.Or a random Tuesday.Or ever. Welcome to the land of the Almost…
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Thanksgiving break: the magical time when school screeches to a halt, turkey takes center stage, and your tweens remind you why teachers deserve hazard pay. While Pinterest shows us candlelit tablescapes with acorn garlands, what we actually get is five full days of “I’m bored,” sticky pumpkin pie residue on the counter, and the eternal…
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Thanksgiving is the season of gratitude. A time when families gather around the table to reflect on life’s blessings: health, home, loved ones, and pie. Lots of pie. But if you ask my three tweens what they’re thankful for, you won’t hear “my sweet, selfless mother who birthed me and makes sure I have clean…
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October arrives with its golden leaves, pumpkin-spiced everything, and one very pressing parental debate: when your kids hit the tween years, do you let them trick-or-treat on their own, or do you tag along like they’re still toddling in a Pluto costume? The answer, like most things in parenting, is less about candy and more…
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Fall parent-teacher conferences are here. And I, for one, am not emotionally prepared. If you’re like me—living on caffeine, running late, trying to remember which kid likes ranch and which one is boycotting sandwiches this week—then you know that nothing sends your fragile heart spiraling quite like those 15-minute meetings of doom (or delight? Who…
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For me, October has always had the perfect vibe. The crunch of leaves underfoot, the cozy sweaters, the pumpkin spice everything—it’s a month steeped in drama. But once you’ve entered the magical purgatory known as parenting tweens, you start to notice something unsettling: October is tweendom, in seasonal form. It’s moody. It’s unpredictable. It’s dramatic.…
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Every fall, tucked in between practices and math homework, comes a day mothers everywhere simultaneously dread and secretly cherish: School Picture Day. The reminder slips into backpacks, and just like that, it’s not just about standing in front of a camera—it’s a full-on theatrical event starring tweens, complete with drama, costume changes, sibling rivalries, and…
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There are wars raging in my house every morning before school. Not the “Did you brush your teeth?” battles (though those are alive and well). Not the “Please eat something other than Takis for breakfast” skirmishes. No, the daily wars are fought over tween fashion choices—the hills my children are inexplicably prepared to die on,…
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Once upon a time, I thought the toddler years were the emotional peak of parenting. Silly me. That was just the warm-up act. Now, here I am, squarely in my mid-40s, experiencing the joys of perimenopause while parenting three tweens entering puberty. That’s right. One body. Three hormones. Five moods before breakfast. Welcome to the real Hunger Games.…
Fry, Party of Five 