ParentMap

Here’s one where I have some hands-on expe­ri­ence — main­tain­ing a healthy mar­riage after kids join the fam­i­ly. My extra­or­di­nary hus­band and I will cel­e­brate our 10th anniver­sary this year. We make time to care for each oth­er and our rela­tion­ship, as well as for our two young children.

“Keep­ing love alive after baby arrives”, Par­entMap, Sep­tem­ber 2005, pages 13–14

I love hik­ing, but my bike has been parked for years and jog­ging has nev­er been my thing. To look at me is to clear­ly see that I am not a great author­i­ty on fit­ness. Nev­er­the­less, I accept­ed an assign­ment for an arti­cle on exer­cis­ing out­doors with a child under two. Yes, I actu­al­ly got out the sneak­ers and went jog­ging for this one, all in the name of research. I broke a sweat but had a good time. If you look close­ly, you can see I also took the photo.

“Get out and get fit — with your baby”, Par­entMap, July 2005, page 13

All of the arti­cles I’ve writ­ten before this one have been on top­ics that I already knew some­thing about or have had some first­hand expe­ri­ence with. Not this one! It was real­ly fun to do, though. Most of the research came from inter­views, so at first I was a lit­tle ner­vous. Every­body I talked to was so help­ful and inspir­ing, how­ev­er, that now I look for­ward to interviewing.

“Young teens need prac­tice man­ag­ing mon­ey”, Par­entMap, June 2005, pages 19–20

Here is a very short arti­cle about a top­ic I am quite pas­sion­ate about, umbil­i­cal cord blood. Sev­er­al major hos­pi­tals in our area have teamed with the blood bank to col­lect and store the stem-cell rich cord blood and donate it to indi­vid­u­als in need through a nation­al reg­istry. Now some­thing that is typ­i­cal­ly dis­card­ed can instead save lives — magnificent.

“Donate cord blood and save a life”, BabyMap, Spring/Summer 2005, page 4

[Note: Because this ran in the Post­ings sec­tion, it was not archived on the Par­entMap web site, so there is no link to an online ver­sion. Sorry!]

This arti­cle is about diag­nos­ing and treat­ing lan­guage delays before chil­dren enter school in order to pre­vent learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ties lat­er. My daugh­ter, as well as the chil­dren of sev­er­al of my friends, are for­tu­nate to have received speech ther­a­py as preschoolers.

“Ear­ly lan­guage delays can ham­per learn­ing”, Par­entMap, Novem­ber 2004, page 13