How Do You Escape When You Need Alone Time?

Plus: Is it bad to address your kids' unsavory behavior?

One evening last week, a good friend lamented in a text message that she had an appointment for a brain MRI at 7 o’clock the next morning. She was like: Why the heck did I make the appointment at 7am? What was I thinking?

The next morning, she texted again. This time, she said something along the lines of I’m in the waiting room and oh my gosh, it’s actually really nice to be out of the house during the getting-ready-for-school chaos.

Then it dawned on her that she had probably made the appointment at 7am for precisely that reason. Instead of cursing her former self, she realized she should be thanking her.

Her story made me laugh and laugh and laugh. And also kind of want to cry. What does it say about life as a parent when a brain scan is more pleasant than hanging out with one’s kids? Of course, this isn’t always true. I love spending time with my kids. (And so does my friend.) But we also love having space from them, especially at certain thankless times.

Today I want to know: How do you engineer time away from your kids? Or how do you create that space when you desperately need it? Maybe you lock yourself in the bathroom, take the dog for hour-long walks on the weekends (it me) or masterfully schedule appointments to coincide with unpleasant parenting duties? I want to hear your approaches and ideas — because hey, we all need inspiration. Plus, the more we talk about and normalize this kind of self-care, the more we will all, hopefully, internalize that it is healthy and necessary.

Should We Support Our Kids Rather Than Correct Them?

And now for this week’s

Today I’m commenting on this Instagram post from @responsive.parenting, which has more than 6,200 likes:

Here are my thoughts.