While You Were Busy

You know how LifeTime movies always have those, "inspired by true events" preambles? As if they're saying, "We were intrigued by this news story, but we wanted to turn it into fan fiction." Well, this post is shamelessly stolen from Dave Pell. Dave Pell writes a daily email newsletter that is awesome at covering what's happening on the internet/in the world.

I'm not half as clever as Dave Pell.

I also like my sleep too much to write a daily newsletter. But I'm considering a weekly (at least to start) post (which could turn into a newsletter type thing if you have an aversion to just subscribing to my blog already) that summarizes news relevant to parents.

1. The American attitude toward parenting is like that guy who has read every book about wilderness survival but has never even been camping.  In other words, Americans love to read about parenting techniques and theories but we're not very good at implementing them. There are some intimidating stats here, but all I learned was that I really want to move to Italy.

2. Have you noticed something different about your Facebook timeline lately? If this keeps up I'm going to be stuck using Google+.

3. Since I can't even find my Elf on a Shelf, this letter from one really hit home. The people who have turned their elves into expressions of their creativity and passion have my admiration. And my loathing.

4. My husband's insistence that a BB gun is not the worst toy ever is backed up by statistics; apparently the kids are more likely to go to the emergency room if we buy them Razor scooters.

5. "To preserve the sacred space of her womb, Carey never even had an ultrasound." Perhaps you've heard about the couple who lost custody of their children after their home birth? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it wasn't about the home birth. It's probably because they refused pre and post natal care. Also, they're crazy.

6. Rape threats are never okay. They're especially not okay when they're inspired by a video game review. I love how Alanah Pearce is handling it.

7. Is your kid obsessed with Frozen? You'll be relieved to know that there will be another soundtrack to play over and over when the sequel comes out.

8. You should get more sleep. No, really, sleep is way more important than you think it is. They liken it to wearing a seatbelt. Also, your teenagers will be smarter if they get more sleep. Which I'm going to start using as an excuse for why I didn't go to an Ivy League college - I got up at 5:30am every day of high school to do my hair.*

9. Now your kid can become overly dependent on Google products too. Of course, my kids are already using Google Drive at school and think research means typing questions into the Google task bar, so I'm not sure how necessary these kid-friendly products are.

10. We need to talk to our kids about race. Parents of color, or parents of kids of color, are probably going, "Duh," right now. But white parents need to do it too.

11. Shameless plea for opinions: What did you think? Should I do this again? Was it useful?

*That may be especially hard to believe for the people who know me now, when I barely take a minute to do my hair, but I promise it's true.