Tag: parenting

  • Teenage farm hands (and younger)

    My parents practiced hands-off parenting. While my mother helped my dad with the evening milking on the family dairy farm, she would look across the yard into the mirror on the wall behind the piano in the living room. She readily saw the image of any child sitting at the old upright piano. She always…

  • Never let them see you sweat

    “Never let them see you sweat” has been my philosophy. So years ago when our oldest son shrank back in horror at the crawdad his father found in a ditch, I stepped up to the challenge. “Just touch it. It won’t hurt you,” my husband urged the 8-year-old. Not doing. He whined, refused and wiggled…