Lisa Endlich's Blog, page 310

Splitting the Holidays With My Ex: I Don’t Want to Wave Goodbye to My Kids at Christmas

Last year was the was a first for my ex and me: We went through the holidays as a divorced, co-parenting couple and decided to celebrate the holidays together, under one roof so our kids wouldn’t have to go back and forth or worry about the parent they weren’t with.

Mostly we did this for the kids of course; we wanted them waking up in their own beds and to be greeted with Christmas morning the way they’d always known – with both of their parents present and waiting to dive into all the norma...

No One Should Parent Teens Alone

Parenting teens can be hard, much harder than any of us expected. One of the reasons it can be so challenging is NOT because of the kids but because of changes ha...

I Am Parenting My Teens One Mistake At A Time And I’m Learning As I Go

When the nurse handed me my son after delivery, I panicked. I felt my heart start to race, my hands started to shake and I could feel sweat forming on my forehead.

“Am I holding him the right way? What if I don’t know what he needs? What if I screw him up?” I looked at the kindly nurse as if she’d be able to magically answer my frantic questions.

She smiled and said, “I’ll tell you what I tell all of my new moms: if you screw up, just try again. You’ll get it right eventually.” After she help...

Now That My Kids Are Teens, I Feel Like I’m Losing My Mom Job

On a recent rare day when my teens and I were all off work and school, we decided to play local tourists. We visited several historical sites dotted throughout the city and then capped it all off with a long drive up the coast home. As we pulled into our driveway, it occurred to me that we’d just spent the entire day in the car and I hadn’t driven any of it.

My 17-year-old son had happily done all the chauffeuring. My 14-year-old daughter interrupted my thoughts with an announcement that she...

When Parenting a Thirteen Year Old, The Struggle Is Real

I can feel the heat rising in my neck as I log onto my daughter’s email account because I’m afraid at what I might see.

Less than a year ago, I had no reason to check her email. She had a phone and always knew I ‘could’ check it if I wanted to but mostly I only checked it on occasion, just in case. I think teenagers need space and I promised her I wouldn’t intrude unless I thought I needed to.

Lately I’ve thought I needed to more than I wish. She started hanging out with a new friend. A frien...

Why You Should Refrain From Posting Your Kid’s College Acceptance To Social Media

I was out on a run alongside a friend last year at the time her daughter was waiting to hear back on her college applications. My friend was lamenting the fact that Facebook was adding an extra layer of stress to the process. As my friend’s daughter anxiously awaited a yes or a no, students and parents of students were quite gleefully and publicly sharing their college acceptance successes. If those aligned with where my friend’s daughter was rejected or deferred, it only served to ratchet up...

If This Is Your First Christmas As a Single Parent, Here’s Some Advice

Festive cheer can be hard to muster if you’re struggling mentally with parental responsibilities in the lead up to Christmas. It’s no surprise that a survey conducted by the America Psychological Association discovered that stress, fatigue and irritability are the most commonly experienced negative emotions over the holidays.

Dealing with the break up of a relationship or the death of a partner only serves to make festive matters more complicated, and with approximately 13.7 million single pa...

Breaking News: The FDA and Juul Labs Act to Reverse Vaping Trends

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just announced a host of new restrictions on e-cigarettes. Only tobacco, mint and menthol e-cigarettes will be sold at brick and mortar stores. Other “sweet” flavors such as creme and mango that appeal to kids can now only be sold online or at stores with tight age-verification systems. New figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show a 78 percent increase in vaping by high school students, with 3.6 million high scho...

Watching Your Son Fall In Love Is No Easy Task

“A son is a son until he takes a wife; a daughter is a daughter all of her life.”

I don’t have any daughters, so I really couldn’t tell you if this saying is true.

But I know it scares a lot of boy moms.

I have six boys. And, whether they like it or not, they will be my boys all of their lives. They don’t get out of that one so easily, wife or no wife.

I love being a ‘boy mom’. I love everything about it. I love the rough and tumble, the dirty messes, the stinky bedrooms and the muddy uniform...

Sextortion: Survey Finds 1 in 20 Teens Report Being a Victim

“Sextortion” and “revenge porn” may sound like television drama terms, but for more and more young people, they are a real life concern.

According to a new study of 12 to 17-year-olds, a surprising number of youth—one in 20—say they’ve been a victim of sextortion—a form of blackmail that involves someone threatening to share explicit images of someone else if their demands aren’t met. Most of the time these explicit images are nude photos teens have sent voluntarily to a boyfriend or girlfrie...