The DHX: The Doughtie Houses Exchange

I was selling my book at the LA Times Festival of Books today, when I heard a woman’s voice say “Don’t I know you?” After about five minutes of cross-referencing, we figured out that we had shared a cabin at a church camp about 12 years ago, had had Thanksgiving together at my old [...]

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One of the things I had to learn as a newbie stepparent is that I can’t do stuff for the kids because I’m counting on it earning me points, love, appreciation, affection, cooperation, understanding or anything else. I can do stuff for the kids because I want to do it, but I need to expect [...]

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Fighting entropy might look like room cleaning to an outside observer, but to a tween-age boy, there’s a difference. “Fight entropy!” makes a half decent battle cry, and while you’re doing it you can imagine yourself combating a villain or undermining a dark force of chaos. You could almost be wearing a cape while you’re [...]

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Get Out of My Life, but first could you drive me and Cheryl to the mall? by Anthony E. Wolf
“You need confidence, and not confidence that you are making the right decision — nobody can do that — or that you are always in control of the kid — nobody can even come close to [...]

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Check out this confession post and all of the confession comments over at Mormon Mommy Wars. Sometimes in the mom-stepmom world, I think we get super careful about doing a good enough job because we know another woman is going to be seeing and hearing all kinds of intimate details about what we’re doing and [...]

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When I was little and I got sick, my mom would tuck me into my bed or under blankets on the couch and give me a bell so I could ring for her when I needed her. My mom’s bell had a stained glass handle and lived on the bookcase when everyone was healthy. Mine [...]

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A long time ago, a friend told me that the best parenting advice he’d ever been given was to say yes as much as possible to your child. An aunt of his had given him this advice when his baby was first born, and over the years he found himself noticing that he was often [...]

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One of the things that keeps me from feeling overwhelmed by other people’s stuff (and that helps keep me from feeling like a nag at the same time) is our house lost and found. It’s a big basket that we keep on the window seat in the dining room. When I find something laying around [...]

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I yelled at the kids yesterday in the car. They were being annoying on purpose because we wouldn’t go somewhere they wanted to go. I turned around angry and yelled, “That’s annoying! Stop it!”
And now I feel like crap.
Still.
G was driving, and I could tell he didn’t like it (the yelling part). I asked [...]

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“From my own observations, the biggest variable to the success of blending a family is the behavior and agreeability of former-spouses. If you are divorced or divorcing (with children), there is probably nothing more important for you to do than to get on good terms with your ex. If you are falling in love with [...]

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Parent Effectiveness Training by Thomas Gordon
(This post builds on Kathy’s original Discipline post from last weekend.)
I read stacks of books about stepfamily dynamics when my relationship with G looked like it was going to be serious, and pretty much every book I read said to take things slowly and to follow the biological parents’ lead [...]

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I think one of the trickiest paths to navigate between mom and step-mom is this issue of how to “discipline” the children. Jill and G and I are extraordinarily lucky in this regard because we all have very similar notions of what and how much “discipline” should be doled out.
Basically, the answer — for [...]

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