About this column:
Jeannie is the lucky mama of a soon-to-be 7-year-old daughter, who she is trying to raise as a compassionate, literate, thoughtful person. A main part of her parenting strategy centers on her TV-free home environment. She is interested in the health and well-being of children and families, and is studying family health as she works to obtain her Nurse Practitioner license from Boston College in 2012.Once your child starts having sleepovers, it is official: they are growing up! This weekend, my daughter celebrated her 7th birthday with an inaugural first sleepover. I'd like to share the lessons I've learned about the dos and don'ts for all of you curious parents who may not have plunged into the dawn of the sleepover age. In planning my daughter's sleepover, I realized that the cardinal rule that, two is plenty, three is a crowd, could easily be extended to four is party! Thus, four girls, I reasoned, would be more successful together than three. Boy, was I right! With four girls, more…
Well, it's that time of year again. My baby inevitably gets another year older each January, and it's time to prepare! Where shall we have it? Who should be invited? The whole class? Girls only? "BFFL"s only (Best Friends For Life)? Will there be a theme? Must there be cake? Must there be a piñata? These questions occupy what little festive-free space is left in my brain after the Christmas marathon. Luckily, I have developed some traditions over the past six years, and if traditions are useful for just one thing, it is that they preclude the necessity to think of new, original …
