by Jane Samuel
Done: This mother of babies has retired.
The email surprised me. Apparently the Chinese orphan we had sponsored for the last five years had been adopted. Not three days earlier I had finally shipped off a package of specially selected Christmas presents: a doll, a few Chinese picture books, a cheongsam (Chinese dress), and some craft items. […]
by Jane Samuel
Okay parents, I know you want to make your kids happy for the Holidays. After parenting three children, one of which has sensory processing disorder, I have amassed a list of our favorite toys and activities. I can attest that not only will the following items bring laughter and joy to your house this season; they will work your children’s brains and bodies developing their cognitive, physical and emotional skills. Happy Holiday shopping; potential websites for ordering items are listed as well. […]
by Jane Samuel
I am a former Jersey gal, tough to the core, with a fast talking side to me which is quick to tell you, “I do not bump my hair!” I am also a mother who has cultivated her desire to make things better for the last eighteen years of my seemingly non-stop-parenting life. […]
by Jane Samuel
It has been over nine years since we brought our youngest daughter into our home and I continue to be astonished by the layers that adoption has brought to our life as a family, my work as a mother – even to my own emotional being. […]
by Jane Samuel
Recently I read Michael Wolff’s New York article “Mother I Love You” (May 2012) and found myself nodding to every other experience he had penned about his involvement with an aging and terminally ill parent. Two years ago I would have read that article and been an outsider looking in, now I have pulled up a chair at the same table. […]
Jane Samuel
The title of this blog – Mothering in the Middle – comes at me in more ways than one.
It sums up my life because I am a mid-life mother. I am the mother who wears night sweats and ponders progesterone while also wearing the face paint my nine-year-old old recently painted over my fine lines. […]
by Jane Samuel
There is something in my house besides summer’s insects that has been humming along happily since school let out. Filing my children’s brains – one impressionable nine-year-old’s in particular – with fluff and stuff. Fluff like toy ads: “the AMAZING Slushy Magic™ available for only four easy payments of $9.99.” Stuff like potty humor and child-friendly, anti-adult one-liners. […]
by Jane Samuel
Four years ago, I naively walked through the life of a middle-aged woman with not much thought to the loss of a parent, let alone the loss of my mother. Then the dominoes in our lives began to line up, teeter and fall – some swiftly, some slowly, all painfully. […]
by Jane Samuel
The arrival of summer and the unleashing of cooped-up young bodies always bring me back to my child-rearing-roots. Only a few days have passed since the carpool line, the packing of lunches, and the buzzing of early alarm clocks stopped and I am already thinking, “How can I keep them away from the TV and feed their bodies and minds?” With sensory smart activities of course! […]
by Jane Samuel
(In Honor of National Child Abuse Prevention Month)
– Every 35 seconds a child is abused or neglected in the US.
– Every hour a child is displaced due to abuse or neglect in the US.
– An estimated 1,740 children nationally died from abuse or neglect in one year’s time; the majority was 0-4 years old. […]