Ask Scary Mommy is our weekly advice column wherein Scary Mommy editors and guest editors — fellow moms like you — will answer your burning questions. You can send all of your questions and conundrums about parenting, family, and relationships to askscarymommy@bdg.com (don’t worry — we’ll keep you anonymous!). When it comes to kids and parenting, there is no more confusing etiquette than birthday party etiquette — there are so many unspoken rules, regional differences, and school policies that it’s hard to know what’s completely accepted behavior and what’s seen as weird, presumptuous, or even rude. Can siblings come? How...
I Am A 'Goonies' Mom
Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock I have always wanted a title as a mom, a quick and easy way to identify my parenting style so that people could say, “Oh yeah, me too” or “No way, that’s not for me.’” Things like helicopter mom or lighthouse mom or free-range mom feel like fast and easy ways for potential mom friends to find each other, to figure out if they’re on the same page. Unfortunately nothing ever felt quite right. Until I rewatched The Goonies 40 years after I first watched it as a kid. Clearly that movie made some sort of momentous impact...
Mothering Is The Ultimate Form Of Resistance
Catherine Delahaye/DigitalVision/Getty Images I was in the middle of cooking dinner, the house relatively quiet as my three daughters played upstairs, when my tween sidled up next to me. “Will you teach me how to chop an onion?” she asked. I had just been thinking about the ICE raid video I saw that morning, where a woman videoed ICE agents smashing the window of her car to detain her husband. I thought about a neighbor who works in the high school library sharing with me on a walk that attendance was down the last few weeks of school because of...
Why Do Dogs Always Throw Up On Carpet & Rugs An Investigation
alvarez/E+/Getty Images We hold this truth to be self-evident: that if a pet needs to throw up, it is going to find a rug, carpet, or other upholstered item to do it on. Without fail, whenever our dogs and cats start to retch, they always do that uncomfortable, tail-tucked shuffle over to the rug to finish the process. It’s why the sound of them gagging gets us up and running so fast to try and prevent stuffing the damn Ruggable into the washing machine later (it never fits). So what gives? Why do dogs always throw up on carpet and...