Your Most Frustrating Parenting Emergencies

Plus: If you don't do gentle parenting, are you are a despicable human?

TGIF, everyone! Maybe you didn’t notice, but I’ll just go ahead and admit it: I’m a day late sending out this thread. I’m in Florida visiting my parents with the kids. We arrived on Tuesday evening and enjoyed a beautiful first day in the sunshine. Then, 24 hours later, my 9-year-old spiked a high fever — because of course she did. So, my best laid plans to get three newsletters out this week got run over by a virus. (Which, so far, does not seem to be Covid. She had that charmer for the second time in late December.)

Great. Just great.

If anyone will understand and forgive me, I know it’s you. And hey, let’s turn it into a discussion thread topic. Today I’d like to hear your stories about the wonderful (or maybe terrible?) things that would have been but weren’t because of kid emergencies. Have you ever had to miss a big trip, event, job interview, or other momentous thing because of a parenting emergency? Was it a pain in the ass, or a blessing in disguise?

OR, here’s another related prompt: What parenting emergencies have you had to deal with while solo parenting? I have a very distinct memory from when my son was two and suddenly developed a TERRIBLE penis infection (penises should never look like that, omg) while my husband was on a work trip in Asia. Of all the times to have the only other penis-owning member of the family halfway across the world….. Oof.

Share your stories in the comments so we can all collectively nod and groan.

Is Gentle Parenting The Only Good Parenting?

And now for this week’s

Today I’m commenting on this Instagram post from @mamapsychologists, which has nearly 23,000 likes:

Here are my thoughts.