A good place to start...

Dear YM:
Oops. I somehow replaced your post with my attempt to comment. Yikes.  Sorry!!!

Signed:
Delete-happy in Denver

I hear you about parent teacher conferences for kids who are barely functioning at any level. I think, at that age, not crying hysterically or biting other kids is considered victory. Every thing else just ices the cake. Be glad you're conferences are still in the "plays well with others" and "doesn't eat his styrofoam cup" realm. As the kids get older, the challenge of parenting shifts from physical to mental.

We are a little deeper into the Montessori pool that you are--with all three kids (ages 10, 8 and 4) in a public charter Montessori PreK-12 school., Grades and report cards aren't really part of the Montessori deal, so I have come to cling to those conferences for insight into my kids' school experience. Because, let's face it, children are notoriously bad reporters. They can describe a scene of a movie in excruciating detail, but ask them what happened at school and you're likely to get, "Nothing." Both literally and figuratively

I have been astounded more than once by the insight some teachers can pull out about my kids during a 15 minute meeting. It makes me respect good teachers all the more. Why don't we pay teachers millions of dollars and pay entertainers teachers' salaries? I guess one could argue (based on the above) that entertainers have a bigger impact on young minds. But that is much too scary to be true.

Parenting in Advanced Maternal Age

In my career in corporate communications--the last eight years as a freelancer--I have been fortunate to work with people I really like and whom have become friends beyond professional bounds. I've been working with Niamh since my second child was a baby and before she was married and had kids of her own. Now we're both in the throes of raising kids and working. We talk often but have only met face-to-face a couple of times. And we were both amused and a little horrified the first time we heard the term "advanced maternal age" from our respective OB-GYNs.

This blog will be an ongoing dialogue between Niamh and me (and, hopefully, some regular readers/commenters) about what it is like to have and raise kids after living through our 20s and part of our 30s without them. It's also about raising kids in this time, when there is so much attention paid to "parenting" as a verb. We are living in an advanced maternal age in terms of attitudes and expectations of us as mothers. Or so we'd like to think. But have we really advanced in our thinking? Or just our expectations?