Lauri Meyers .

This Christmas I gave the children lots of stuff.  Sparkly stuff, shiny stuff, shrill sounding stuff, swirling stuff and stuffed stuff.   They are pretty good wonderful kids, and I am lucky to be able to give them these gifts. by foxumon via sxc.hu But it got me thinking about the other gifts I can give my children - self esteem, compassion, responsibility to name a few. I'm a pretty good fantastic Mom.  And sometimes I am spectacular, evoking my days as a 4-H camp counselor.  But when I'm tired, overwhelmed, it's Monday, or any other number of situations, I can be a real lousy lady.   I'm reading the 10 Greatest Gifts I Give my Children by Steven W. Vannoy and hoping to store some of the tips in my parenting purse for those too-frequently-occurring lousy occasions. I was struck by how consistent the advice for raising kids is with advice on writing for kids, such as: Let kids develop their own solutions when problems strike...

To be fair he had to use those ties with the little balls on the ends.        When I was five I would sit on the bottom step in front of a mirror.  My dad would ask "one pony or two?" and fix my hair in the requested fashion.   Too bad he didn't ask about straight or not, because I always ended up with lopsided ponytails.              After years of giving him a hard time about his salon skills, I admit defeat at the challenge of chasing a child and inserting decent looking ponytails.  On the rare occasion I find success, those stinkers yank 'em out within minutes.       What a sweet, if asymmetrical, memory.  Ahh, my memory!  That wonderful place where snow isn't cold and Ramen Noodles taste expensive.         Have you been shopping lately in your memory for picture book ideas?   Maybe the memory itself isn't worthy of a book, but the ...