Parenting through multicultural adoption.
One mother's experiences with adoption and our multicultural society. If parenting is a race, it's a marathon.
It was a wonderful privelege to take part in the Listen to Your Mother show at the South Orange Performing Arts Center. I was more than a little nervous in front of the sold-out audience for two shows and would do it again in a heartbeat if I could!
Waiting at the school bus stop one recent Spring morning, another mother asked me, “When should we as parents tell our kids about the birds and the bees?” My answer was, it’s never too soon. It’s a lesson I learned the hard way.
I believed I had prepared my young children well for the “birds and the bees” phase of their development but life, YouTube and Super Mario had other plans!
Read MoreI am thrilled, and a little nervous, to be taking part in the Listen to Your Mother show at SOPAC on May 9.
Read MoreI was interviewed during National Adoption Month on Huffington Post Live about teaching our kids about the language of adoption.
Read MoreThe things kids say to each other on the playground can be cruel in ways we don't expect. I wrote this piece about a difficult experience my kids had on the playground one day and it hit a nerve with readers. The article was published on the Huffington Post and garnered more than 53,000 Facebook likes and shares.
Read MoreI grew up Irish Catholic but I have been agnostic (and sometimes atheist), for most of my life. Nevertheless, my children have recognized a sense of spirituality. We teach our kids the values of all religions and cultures, and in an effort to enhance their spiritual awareness, and communal responsibility, we found an inclusive church to take them to. This church has a brilliant female pastor, who refers to God as She as often as He and has played a proud role in the fight for marriage equality. Recently, members of the congregation were asked to read a poem each week during the Sunday service. I was asked to read one, and so I wrote this piece for the occasion.
Read MoreFor kids, it's the little things that matter. If you do Christmas in any way in your home, then Santa is a pretty influential guy. Let him be black too. In this article, first published on The Good Men Project, I ask -- do you like my black Santa?
Read MoreWe are all conditioned from birth in matters of such things as equality, beauty, design, comfort and tradition. We are all affected by what we see around us. Whether we like it or not, our world conditions us all from a point of white dominance. In this piece, published on The Huffington Post, I make the case that to actively exclude people of color from children's entertainment is especially racist and destructive to our society.
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