Parental Stress

Today is Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday. The one day of the year you're *expected* to eat a donut. So go ahead. Sink your teeth into that fruit-filled goodness. No guilt today. Not even a little, okay?

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Now here's just a nice story. At the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, they're building a new wing, named after Thomas and Jean Yawkey, founders of several philanthropic foundations and responsible for donating millions to help the Boston area year after year.

But this isn't about the Yawkeys. It's about the construction crew putting up the building. The Iron Workers of Local 7. You see, they've gotten into the habit of spray-painting the names of the children with cancer onto the I-beams of the wing's new infrastructure. Read the story. The kids - and the parents - are thrilled.

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CAUSES OF PARENTAL STRESS

What color hair does my daughter have today?

For fathers: Realizing there are boys out there who are just like you were at that age.
For mothers: Understanding that children are no longer allowed to simply be children.

Drug-using, tabloid-starring, foul-mouthed role model of the week.

I.B.S. (Irritable Baby Syndrome)

The mute button breaks halfway through a "Hanna Montana" 24-hour marathon.

You find an empty box from a home pregnancy test.

That same pregnancy test is positive. And you're 56.

[selected from Chris White's Top Five on Parenting with edits and additional material by Mark Raymond]

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WORDS for YOUR WEEK: "It's not only children who grow. Parents do, too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun unless I'm willing to reach for it myself." (Joyce Maynard, slightly paraphrased)

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