Time, the one thing no one has enough of.

As a parent, especially, you’re constantly reminded that time is ticking.

“The days are long, but the years are short!”
“Cherish each moment!”
“Only 18 summers … 940 Saturdays … 525,600 minutes!”

OK, that last one is not parenting-specific, but you get the gist. AI promises not only to save us those moments of hesitation or nothingness, but to fill the moments with something meaningful.

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And there is so much time to fill, especially with young children. People who say things like “cherish every moment” have forgotten or never experienced being woken at 5:17 a.m. on a Sunday to enact a complex scenario from Paw Patrol. These are the moments when it’s so tempting to let AI step in with the imagination, because yours is tapped out.

I’m stopping here to say I don’t want to make any parent feel bad about using an AI toy or tool. Sometimes you just have to do whatever it takes to survive, and that might mean handing over your phone or the iPad. I’ve certainly done it, and everyone survived. I even spoke to a genuine parenting expert (shout out to Dr. G!) who confirmed that sometimes, when the alternative is completely losing your sh*t, the best parenting decision is to hand your kid the iPad or whatever it is that will keep everyone’s sanity.

What we underestimate as parents is how much our children want us close, and how little brain power they actually need from us. Lobotomized, pre-coffee Mommy > high-tech AI companion.

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I think back to my own childhood, way before iPads or AI. I remember curling up on the powder blue shag carpet, resting my back against my mom’s knees as we watched TV together. Or at least that’s what I thought we were doing. I mentioned this fond memory to my mom recently, and she said, “Oh yes, I remember. That’s when I got some of my best naps in.”

Yes, my mom plopped me in front of the TV and got some much-needed sleep. And look at me now, literate and everything. I didn’t care, or even notice, that she was asleep. I just cared that she was close.

When my oldest was little, I was so tired at the end of the day that sometimes (often) I’d fall asleep while trying to put him to sleep. I’d wake to little hands shaking me: “Mommy, another story!”

There are AI toys now that will tell personalized bedtime stories. I didn’t have that then. Instead, half-asleep myself, I started telling a story about a secret passageway in the rocks at the playground near our house. How a little boy just like him discovered it one day, and ….

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It was the type of story born only from sheer exhaustion or a drug-induced haze. I was talking without knowing what word would come out of my mouth next. The secret passage led to an abandoned weather station in Central Park where Elvis and Jimi Hendrix had been hiding out and making music. Eventually they piloted a rocket ship to outer space to battle music-stealing aliens, as one does.

The story was meandering and bizarre. If an AI teddy bear told it to your child, you would complain to the company and demand your money back.

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But it became one of our most cherished traditions, and the story went on night after night. You’ll be glad to know that Elvis and Jimi did defeat the music-stealing aliens, and are still out there in space, bravely defending the guitar riffs of planet Earth.

I can’t stop thinking about this article I read in The Atlantic about how AI saves us the torture of looking at a blank page and not knowing what to write — but actually, that’s how humans figure things out and come up with new ideas. It’s the space between sitting down to write and knowing what to write where the magic happens, and that’s what AI takes away from us.

Maybe the same is true for parenting.

What if the parenting moments that matter most are the ones when we have no freaking clue what to do … when we are bone tired … when we have reached the bottom of the barrel, and scrape out something lame and weird and yet uniquely us? The stories AI tells might be objectively better, but our kids don’t want better — they want us.

But it’s not ALL bad. As promised, here’s the one reason I love AI and use it gratefully as a parent: Writing tricky emails to school.

You know the kind of email. Your kid tells you about something absolutely unfair, wrong and unreasonable happening at school and even though you know they’re not always a reliable narrator, your central nervous system is ready to fight a mountain lion. You snap open your laptop and type “Dear principal, WHAT THE HELL???” … delete, delete, delete. Try again: “Hi Mrs. Teacher, I was just wondering WHERE YOU GET THE FREAKING AUDACITY” …. delete, delete, delete.

This is the email where you have deep concerns that you would like to express strongly, and yet you have to be sensitive to the fact that these are the people who have a great deal of power over your child’s life, and you cannot afford to piss them off.

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AI is really great at translating rage into reasonableness. Mama Bears are great at many things, but writing polite, effective emails is not one of them. AI is stellar at turning “if you hurt my child, I will end you” into “I would love to hear more about this decision” and so on.

Human brain for parenting realness; AI for school emails. Trust me on this. After all, I’m not a robot.

Jill Smokler, the founder of Scary Mommy, has died of glioblastoma.

It doesn’t sound revolutionary to say Jill wrote about motherhood without the sugar-coating, because doesn’t everyone do that?

They do now, because Jill did.

She was one of the OG “mommy bloggers,” a term they came to resent but which stuck nevertheless. A mom of three, she wrote about motherhood with sharp humor and honesty. She was among the first to articulate the fundamental contradiction of motherhood: You can love your children with your whole heart and still complain about them, a lot, because damn they can be annoying. And cute. And infuriating. And lovable.

When Jill announced that she had glioblastoma, I assigned a story about her — sort of a pre-obit, which was a little awkward because everyone could kind of tell what it was, but I wanted Jill to get her flowers while she could still appreciate them. Writer Elise Sole did an amazing job, of course. She wrote:

She once published a post characterizing motherhood as “a series of unfortunate events that bonds women together in the most thankless and revolting job on earth.”

Another quote from Jill, one that sums up, for me, her approach to talking about motherhood and why her honestly was and still is so desperately needed:

“Admitting that this job isn’t always easy doesn’t make somebody a bad mother. At least, it shouldn’t. We’re all on this ride together. We are not the first ones to ever accidentally tell our children to shut up, or wonder—just for a moment—what it would be like if we’d never had children. We aren’t the first mothers to feel overwhelmed and challenged and not entirely fulfilled by motherhood. And we certainly won’t be the last. Nothing can be lost by admitting our weaknesses and imperfections to one another. In fact, quite the opposite is true. We will be better mothers, better wives, and better women if we are able to finally drop the act and get real. Who are we pretending for, anyway?”

And are you even really a mom if you haven’t occasionally flipped off your kids behind their backs? With love, of course. As Jill wrote:

“I kiss my young teenager good-bye in the morning as she leaves for school, rising above the hormone-fueled snarling and histrionics. Then I close the front door and flip her off, with both hands.”

We get to be moms and human.

What Jill did for mothers everywhere is what all mothers do for our children. We help them in ways they don’t even know. When they are grown, my children will never remember that I got the special grape jelly they liked instead of the raspberry jelly I like (with its weird-looking seeds) so I could make sandwiches they would eat. They won’t remember all the little things I did. But, I hope, they will grow up knowing they are loved, and carry that love in their hearts after I’m gone.

There are moms out there now who were too young to read Scary Mommy in its heyday, who will never know how Jill changed the culture around motherhood. But in their hearts, they carry the gifts Jill gave us: honesty, humor, and the understanding that you can be pissed off at someone and love them unconditionally, all at once.

Thank you, Jill.

So I curled up on the other end of the couch, trying to keep my questions to a minimum. Watching two grown men clasped in a literally fierce embrace, one straddling the other as they grappled on the blood-splattered mat, their foreheads touching, I had to wonder, Carrie Bradshaw-style: Is this the length macho men have to go in order to feel human touch? Just hug it out, dudes.

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I kept that commentary to myself, and instead started asking questions about the matches when I realized my son enjoyed answering them. Rather than the familiar dynamic of me trying to teach my teen about the world, he got to school me on something about which I know nothing. Who are you rooting for? Why is that one guy so favored to win? What’s a liver punch and why is it so effective?

We were … bonding? In between fights, he showed me how to make his favorite dessert (ice cream, then crushed Oreos, then gobs of peanut butter, then more ice cream). Then he threw chocolate chips at my head.

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In my favorite short story, “Franny and Zooey,” Franny says this of the way his sister Zooey interacts with their mother: “It isn't enough to treat her with the doting brutality of an apache dancer toward his partner—which she understands, incidentally, whether you think so or not.”

We do, indeed, understand. (And yes, I know that JD Salinger is problematic and was in fact a Bad Man, but I loved “Franny and Zooey” before I knew that, so I’m trying hard to separate the art from the artist.)

The doting brutality of an Apache dancer — or the measured violence of an MMA fighter — is not a love language I speak. But it’s what my son cares about, so I’ll care about it. These opportunities to share a moment with him are getting scarcer. I will take them, and lean into this fierce embrace for as long as I can.

That’s a little overly dramatic. I mean, I believe — you have to, especially when you’re a parent, right? I RSVP to invitations and sign the kids up for camp and bus service for next year and do all the things, but there’s a part of me that thinks, June? Next September? Hmmm, sure I’ll fill out this form but bold of you to assume we’ll still have a society then.

The Artemis mission changed me. I can hardly think about it without crying, and that was BEFORE the astronauts named a bright spot on the moon after the commander’s dead wife.

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And yes, I waited until they were safely home to post this. Gen X residual trauma (IYKYK).

We went to Florida to watch the launch. A more honest version of that: We went to Florida to watch my oldest son play baseball during Spring Break. While researching our trip, my husband searched to see if any rockets were launching from Cape Canaveral.

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Lo and behold, there wasn’t just any rocket launch — there was THE rocket launch, the first manned mission to the moon since the Apollo program 50 years ago. We found ourselves watching in awe as the Artemis crew blasted off, enveloped by sound waves that I can only describe as being inside thunder while we watched the rocket trace a brave path through the sky.

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When those rockets ignited, it sparked a fire in me that I didn’t know had gone cold. Their mission isn’t just about getting to the moon and coming back — yes, we’ve done that before, in the 1960s. NASA’s visitor center still greets guests with a Jumbotron playing President Kennedy’s “We choose to go to the moon” speech.

It reminded me that American exceptionalism can be a GOOD thing. Yes, we’re going to the moon, because we want to beat the Russians/Chinese/Whoever, and because it’s there. ‘MURCA! It reminded me that hard-working, smart, good people inside the government can work together to do wonderful things.

More than anything, the Artemis II mission was a stepping stone. Yes, they did cool new stuff but it’s not primarily about what they accomplish, it’s about what comes next. One day after I’m gone, my children might watch a Mars launch with their children, and their children’s children might witness space travel beyond our solar system.

It reminded me — please bear with me, this is a leap, and not the Neil Armstrong kind — of when I converted to Judaism, heavily pregnant with my first son. I told my rabbi I saw myself as a link in the chain. I’m not the strongest link, and I’m certainly not the shiniest or best link. But I’m a link between our Jewish ancestors and my children’s future. And I won’t be the one to break the chain.

Science, weirdly, is a lot like faith in this way. Each generation is a link in the chain. We keep moving forward, not knowing what we will find out or where we will end. I hope it is somewhere great — I choose to believe it is somewhere great. I don’t know; I’m just glad I get to be here for this link in the chain.

The future looks bright.

Full disclosure: I can spot a misplaced comma from 100 feet away but it took me way too long to do the mental math to figure out I’ve been in journalism for 30 years. Luckily, you’re here for writing advice, not math expertise.

Most people have a story to tell. Here are a few ways to tell it better.

1. Read your writing out loud

This can feel awkward, especially if you’re in a public place, but I guarantee it will improve your writing. Whispering it under your breath works. You will catch little errors, like typos and repeated words. You’ll also catch bigger things, like sentences that don’t flow, repetitive paragraphs, and awkward wording.

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At my first job, at The Charlotte Observer, I remember my editor pointing out one of the paper’s columnists, a man whose writing I worshipped. He was staring intently into his computer monitor, his lips moving. “He’s not praying,” the editor said (given the state of journalism, maybe he should have been). “He’s reading his column out loud to himself.” I figured, if it was good enough for him I should probably try it — and reading out loud has saved my stories more times than I can count.

2. Transitions are overrated

The importance of transition sentences was drilled into us back in school when we learned to write the five-paragraph essay, and it’s hard to escape that voice in your head. Too often, transition sentences are just filler — throat-clearing that the reader skims over to get to the meat of the paragraph. Don’t slow your reader down like that!

Of course, if you have the perfect transition that makes one idea flow to the next, go for it. But don’t feel like you have to force it. Often, you don’t need a transition sentence. Just make your point — think of it like you’re giving the reader a tour in your car. Keep driving and they’ll go along with you. Don’t stop and make them switch cars.

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3. Avoid starting every sentence with “I”

This is really hard in a personal essay, which is what most people are writing on Substack. You’re writing about your own experience — how can you avoid using “I”?

First, why: It’s repetitive and boring. Starting off your sentences the same way over and over makes your writing seem dull, even if you’re writing about the most compelling subject.

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So, mix it up. Every time you start writing a sentence that starts with “I” — or, in the editing process, when you’re reading your post aloud as per #1 — see if you could start it another way. If it’s “I think …” or “I feel …” great news, you can just cut the “I” and get right to it. It’s your post, you’re writing it, we know that it’s you thinking or feeling something, you don’t need to tell us.

For example, the second sentence of Tip #2, above: I started typing “I feel like the importance of transition sentences was drilled into us … “ Deleting the “I” doesn’t subtract anything from the sentence — you still know it’s my personal opinion — and it makes the sentence stronger.

You don’t have to get rid of all the first-person singular. I’m not anti-I. But omitting “I” where you can is a good way to make your writing more vivid.

That’s it. That’s not ALL my editing wisdom gleaned over a 30-year career — I do know a few more things, I promise. But working in journalism has also taught me to keep word count down. Short and sweet is the way to go. If this was helpful to you, please leave a comment!

At some point while chanting “slow down slowdown slowDOWN,” I realized that a lot of my driving advice makes good life advice, too. I am sure he will take it all to heart. Just kidding, he absolutely will not, which is why I’m compelled to share it here. At least on Substack I can’t see people actively not listening to me, which is a big step up from parenting teens.

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My driver’s ed wisdom

1. Brake going into a curve, accelerate coming out of a curve. This is advice my mom gave me for driving in slippery conditions, and I remember it. (I LISTENED to my mom; apparently that skips a generation.) It works for life, too. When life throws you a curve(ball), don’t slam on the brakes. Don’t switch lanes. Just keep cruising. Don’t make any big life decisions while you’re in the middle of a massive change. Get through the challenge first, then accelerate AFTER.

2. People are stupid. This may be self-explanatory. But my son is under the impression that if HE is a good driver, he doesn’t have to worry. I keep reminding him that he has to share the road with other people, and many of them are stupid and make bad decisions. HIS lane-changing skills are great, but he has to watch out for the knucklehead swerving across three lanes without signaling. If you assume that most everyone else on the road is stupid, you’ll be prepared to react to their bad decisions and preserve yourself. Unfortunately, this has applications in other areas of life, too.

   

3. It’s not personal. When someone cut in front of us without signaling, he was deeply offended. “That jerk! He’s challenging me!” (Testosterone is a hell of a drug, y’all.) I told him not to take it personally. Chances are, the people in other cars are not thinking about him at all. They’re thinking about their own things: The dinner they’re trying to get to, the project that’s due for work. They’re not thinking about you.

   
   This is a lesson that’s so important and so hard to learn. It’s the cure for self-consciousness. The truth is, people are not thinking about you. They’re not thinking about your hair and they’re not thinking about how you said “queso” weirdly when you ordered at Chipotle. They’re not thinking about how awesome or dumb you are. They’re simply not thinking about you. They’re in their own heads, worrying about their own hair and Chipotle order. Realizing that is incredibly freeing. Do what you want (just don’t speed).

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4. When cars are entering the highway and merging into your lane, your job is to keep your speed steady. Don’t speed up and try to cut them off, don’t slam on the brakes to try to let them in. Just keep going the same speed so that they can safely merge in. As a recovering people-pleaser, I used to slam on my metaphorical brakes all the time, dropping whatever was important to me in order to serve someone else’s needs. I’m getting better at NOT doing that.

5. Be kind when you can, because you can’t always. We were rushing to school and I stopped to let someone turn left in front of us. “MOM!! We need to get there FASTER!” he protested. I pointed out that there was a line of cars stopped at the crosswalk ahead of us — pausing to let the car turn in front of me didn’t cost us any time. Yes, we should do acts of kindness all the time, but you get a few chances like this in life, to do a nice thing for someone that doesn’t require you to sacrifice anything. Take those chances when you can.

   

   That’s the wisdom I have to offer. So much of parenting a teenager, I find, is just talking while they seemingly don’t pay attention and hoping that some of it sinks in. Now, if anyone has any advice for a right arm that’s permanently cramped from clutching the armrest in abject terror, I’d really appreciate it.

6. BONUS LESSON: I’m not in control. In the passenger seat last night as he changed lanes on I-287, yes I was clutching my arm rest like it was the last lifeboat on the Titanic, I realized I had to add one more life lesson.

   
   This time, it’s a lesson that I’m learning as a parent. Slowly. Painfully. I am not in the driver’s seat, literally and figuratively. I see what you’re doing, DMV: This whole learner’s permit is a metaphor for parenting. You teach and model the right things as much as you can, and then you have to let them take the wheel. No amount of stomping on the passenger-side floor will apply the brake. It’s up to him now. It’s time for this baby bird to fly — hopefully, at a speed that’s safe for the conditions — and time for mama to take a step back.
   
   It’s hard. I’m trying. We’re both trying. Wish me luck.

   The Parenting Trapdoor is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Ashley French (née Tisdale, of “High School Musical” fame) wrote about the pain of being excluded from her mom group in New York Magazine, and then a few weeks later – roughly the amount of time it takes for an editor to point at a story and say, “I want this, but different” – the story appeared in the Wall Street Journal. It’s only a matter of time before we see it on morning television. Some morning show producer is cutting b-roll of moms on a picnic blanket at the park as I type this.

Why everyone’s talking about toxic moms

The notion of the toxic mom group is culturally powerful because it runs counter to the cultural narrative of new motherhood as a fuzzy pastel montage of love and rainbows, with a gentle pan flute soundtrack.

Anyone who has actually been through it knows that it’s more like boot camp with a death metal soundtrack.

Toxic moms come with the territory, unfortunately. Queen Bees who peaked in high school don’t change their Mean Girl bee stripes just because they have a kid. If anything, the witches’ brew of hormones and insecurity that run amok in the postpartum period only make toxicity more potent.

But, you may be thinking, I’m past that. I don’t care. I’m a grown-ass woman with a child, not the insecure 7th grader I used to be.

Oh, but that insecure 7th grader still lives inside your head. She’s up there trying to make friendship bracelets with the semi-feral 5-year-old and the wild party girl 21-year-old. Frankly, they are a lot more fun, but in a toxic mom group, your self-conscious 13-year-old WILL come out to play.

Why mom groups turn toxic

New mom groups are basically trauma bonding. When you can reliably open a conversation with “So, my nipples are bleeding again,” you get to a very emotional place very quickly. Intense situation = intense friendships.

At first, that feels awesome, especially if you crave deep emotional connection (and who doesn’t?). But foxhole camaraderie can mask deeper rifts. As your similarly sized babies squirm in front of you, you think, “Wow, I’d usually never be friends with [this person who is totally opposite from me in every way] but now she’s my bestie!”

Sometimes that closeness lasts. Great!

Sometimes it doesn’t, and the friendship fades away naturally. OK.

And sometimes you look around in a new-mom fog and realize you’ve stumbled into the Friend Circle From Hell. Uh-oh.

How to deal with a toxic mom group

I’m no relationship expert. But, I’ve been there and I’ve escaped the toxicity. Here’s my advice for moms who find themselves in a toxic mom group situation:

1. Give fewer fucks.

This is honestly the solution to most things. What other people think of you is none of your business. Stop caring. Feel left out on social media? Block them on social media. Problem solved. This sounds easier said than done, and it is. Saying you don’t care is one thing, actually feeling it is another.

Think of it as practice. One day, your child is going to be an insecure 7th grader with hurt feelings, so consider your self-talk to be practice for that day. The people leaving you out aren’t doing it because there is something wrong with YOU; they do it because there’s something wrong with THEM. Repeat it until you believe it.

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You don’t have to forgive them and you don’t have to feel sorry for them – although personally I think self-righteous pity is a fun high horse to ride. But you do have to NOT let them live rent free in your mind. Wish them healing … far away from you.

2. Channel your inner Kelly Clarkson and get what you waaaant.

Why do we even care about mom groups? Because we need them. Motherhood is a real mind fuck, and we have not evolved as a species to do it alone. We need each other. Just because your village sucks doesn’t mean you don’t need community. We just don’t need the toxic ones.

Figure out what is really feeding your soul in this particular mom group. Then find a way to get it, minus the toxicity.

Do you treasure the connection with one or two other moms you really vibe with? Find an excuse to meet up with them one-on-one. Maybe you can’t live without the text message or WhatsApp group where you know someone else will be up at 3 am breastfeeding and questioning all their life choices. Again, find a few people you trust to be on a new text chain. A smaller circle is better than a circle you can’t trust.

Maybe what you love is the excuse to leave the house once a week and get coffee or a drink. Great news - you can find another reason to do that. You can even do it - gasp! - alone. It will feel awkward at first, but just like any muscle, the more you do it, the easier it gets. There is life after the toxic mom group.

‘A reason, a season or a lifetime’

Noelle Santorini, an Atlanta psychologist who specializes in “relational aggression,” tells The Wall Street Journal that she reminds moms, “People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.”

New motherhood is a season like this winter has been on the East Coast. Harsh conditions, unexpected events that drastically affect your daily life, and the occasional bomb cyclone. I just got a weather alert about a winter storm toppling homes into the sea, and that’s a pretty apt meteorological metaphor: Baby season WILL wreck your emotional house.

Your mom group friends may have just been here for a season. And that’s OK. You’re going to get through this season, and the sun will come out again.

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I call bullshit.

According to one article:

“Parents everywhere are hitting pause on screens and digital chaos, choosing analog moments of play, connection, and creativity to nurture calmer, happier, and more resilient families.”

I know, I sound like a monster to oppose this. But hear me out, it’s not just dumb, it’s insidious.

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Parents are rejecting digital chaos? I wasn’t aware of a time when parents affirmatively chose chaos, digital or otherwise, and isn’t accepting chaos into your life the fundamental bargain of raising children? But OK, moving on.

In 2026 parents are apparently choosing to play with our children … unlike 2025 when we just locked them in the basement with smartphones. Ah, the good ole days.

And, this year parents want to nurture calmer, happier and more resilient families. Wow! Again, such a contrast with the past few years, when I and all the parents I know chose to actively make our families anxious, unhappy and fragile. I’m so glad we’ve been alerted to this “trend,” because this is going to be a real shift for us.

Trends are, as Miranda Priestly could surely explain better than I, an excuse to sell you something.

What’s being sold here is the trap as old as time, the one we parents walk into again and again (or at least, I certainly do). What’s being sold is the idea that you’re not good enough.

Analog parenting is yet another way to say that you’re doing it wrong. You’re too digital. Your kids are too scheduled. Be more mindful. Be less busy. Are you mindful yet? BE MINDFUL. You need to slow down and spend more quality time in nature. Quick, slow down! Or something bad will happen. Why aren’t you more relaxed yet? You’re reading this on an electronic device, aren’t you, instead of printed on recycled hemp paper that you crafted mindfully with your toddler? Ugh, gross.

The analog parenting trend is particularly evil because it’s disguised as a message of relaxation for parents when it’s actually the opposite. It’s telling us to try harder to do all the stuff we try to do anyway. Is there a parent alive who isn’t trying their hardest to get their teen to look up from the phone? Is anyone NOT thinking 24-7 about how to make our kids happy and resilient, and if so, can you tell me your secret? Does it involve heavy narcotics?

Sometimes the best moments are analog, it’s true. I cannot recommend enough taking your children to a place where they can throw rocks into a lake or other large body of water. Something absolutely magical happens to their brain chemistry when they make a big rock go splash. If there’s ice to crack through? Oh my word, even better. Of course, it only lasts a few minutes and then they’ll start chucking analog rocks at each other until someone ends up in analog tears, but it’s nice while it lasts.

But digital moments can be really nice too. Sometimes family dinner is using your McDonalds app to order ahead and as you’re all shoving food into your faces before practice, you show your kid how to dip their fries in their shake and boom, core memory made. I haven’t gotten my family to sit still for a board game in a while, but lately my teenager’s got us all playing this XBox golf video game and I have seriously laughed harder than I have in ages listening to my kids narrate my terrible six-over-par putts.

So, instead of this silly analog parenting nonsense, here’s my trend prediction for 2026. We’re going to try so hard to be good parents and raise good kids. We’re going to stress out (sometimes over the right things, often over the wrong ones), we’re going to mess up, and fail, and apologize, and give ourselves grace, and celebrate our little victories, and lead with love, and do the best we can.

What’s your best, no-BS parenting resolution this year? Tell me in the comments, or send me a handwritten letter in the mail if you’re really into this analog thing.

I was giving away a stepstool to someone on our local Buy Nothing group on Facebook (THE best part of that accursed platform). He needed the stool for his toddler daughter, and I happened to have one even though the child it was purchased for now towers over me. I need a stepstool to look him in the eye — maybe that’s why I hung onto it?

But no, it was time to part with the stepstool. As I was discussing pickup logistics with my Buy Nothing friend, I said the dreaded phrase: “It goes so fast.”

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I mean, it does. I could swear just yesterday my son was clambering up a step stool painted with monkeys to brush his teeth, and now he has to duck to go through doorways. I blinked and he got big.

But A, what is a parent supposed to do with this knowledge? “Oh, it goes fast? Gotcha, I’ll blast my toddler with this SuperVillain Time Slowing Laser, thanks for the tip.”

And B, “it goes so fast” is paradoxically both emotionally true and a big fat lie at the same time. I remember waking up at 6 a.m. on weekends, spending YEARS playing some sort of Paw Patrol-Star Wars hybrid game that involved getting smacked with a plastic lightsaber by a child pretending to be a dog, then looking at my phone thinking it must be almost lunch time when it was, in fact, 6:07 a.m.

The time with kids goes fast, yes, and it also crawls like a churlish badger drunk on fermented apples.

No, I’ve never met a churlish badger, drunk or sober, but these are the kind of thoughts that occur to you when you’re on hour 457 of pretend play.

So I felt a little wistful when I handed over the stepstool. And a little grateful. Parenting is full of mixed emotions like that.

When my own kids were younger, I pitched a parenting series called “It Gets Better,” in which parents of older children would reassure parents of younger children that yes, indeed, it gets better.

A colleague who was brilliant but had the most toxic Debbie Downer energy I’ve ever encountered responded, “But it doesn’t, really.”

Her kids had graduated college. She, and they, had crossed the finish line. But she worried constantly — about their jobs, their significant others, whether they were happy.

“It doesn’t really get better. It gets harder, actually, because you have less control.” Her somber voice barely masked the glee in her eyes at getting to suck the hope from mine.

I’m no Debbie Downer — stupid optimism is more my brand — but I sort of get it now. She was right. As the old saying goes: little kids, little problems; big kids, big problems.

I don’t worry about getting my kid to brush his teeth anymore. I worry about whether he’s doing Zyns, and if he’s studied enough for his math test, or am I pressuring him too much about schoolwork, and when I drop him off at a party and then pick him up a few hours later and he says he had fun, did he really have fun or is he just saying that? Am I projecting my social anxiety onto him, or should I be probing more? Is the quiet on the drive home companionable or should I be trying to impart wisdom about life and friendship and love? Do I even have any wisdom? Do I know anything, at all, about anything, actually?

There’s not a stepstool for that.

On the other hand — because again with the mixed emotions — some things DO get better. Childcare gets a lot less physical after the first few years. There’s less lower back work — no more fighting a flailing child into a car seat, or shoving their arms into a winter jacket while they display a level of passive resistance that would make Gandhi proud.

Of course, now they traipse out into sub-zero temperatures with a T-shirt and a smile, and you pick your battles.

I remember being so mortified by public tantrums. It’s especially fun when you’re raising kids in the city, and have to stand over a small body convulsing with grief on the sidewalk because you won’t buy a candy bar half an hour before dinner, and just motion people to walk around you like a flight attendant in hell. I don’t miss that.

But sometimes I miss the kids who would cry loudly when they were sad. I miss not having to wonder what they’re feeling. I want to grab their faces and stare in their eyes and demand, “Are you OK? Are you really OK? Are you happy? Are you sad? Is anyone mean to you? Can I fix it?”

The only answer I know for sure is to the last question, and it’s “no,” and that’s the hardest part.

It gets better, and it gets harder, and it gets weirder, and it goes fast. Now I’m realizing the point of “it goes fast” is not that we should be freezing time or treasuring every moment, every sidewalk tantrum, every quiet car ride filled with unspoken questions. It goes fast like a roller coaster: You wait in line for hours for a ride that lasts a few minutes. Buckle up, hang on for dear life, scream a little if you have to and enjoy what you can. It’s a wild ride.

OK, I’m sure better feelings exist, but that feeling’s got to be pretty high up on the list.

This is my experience with Elin Hilderbrand — who is not only NOT new, but one of the most famous, most popular authors in the world, the mainest of mainstream. I read about her cult-like following in The New York Times a few years back, and may have even rolled my eyes at the readers who flock to Nantucket just to go to the restaurant, bars and shops she name-drops in her best-selling novels.

Oh, how quickly I become what I mock. Because a few novels into her lengthy catalogue, I am ready to don my preppy best, hop a ferry and join the crowd of Elin fans at The Chicken Box in Nantucket.

Is this related to parenting? Yes, in the sense that moms get to have (gasp!) inner lives

Elin Hilderbrand novels are, if you’re not among her throngs of readers, the kind of paperback that flies off the shelves of airport bookstores. They’re basic. They’re chick lit. And if you, like I once did, think those descriptors are insults, please allow me to evict the internalized patriarchy from your brain.

“Basic” and “chick lit/flick/etc.” are insults only if you believe that products and content created for or enjoyed mainly by women lack depth. Hilderbrand’s beachy books with their beautiful pastel covers include unforgettable ideas about mortality, friendship, forgiveness and love. From my extensive research (reading the author bio on the book jacket) I know Hilderbrand (Elin … can I call you Elin? I’m gonna call you Elin) is a fellow breast cancer survivor. She writes about death in a way that lets me know she’s had to confront it.

One thing I love about her books is that they have proper endings. So many literary fiction novels — the ones with slightly thicker paper and more sophisticated-looking covers than Elin’s — get a few hundred pages in and just sort of stop. It drives me crazy. To be a “serious” writer apparently means leaving your main characters suspended in action, their fates unknown and ambiguous.

“Isn’t that reflecting real life, though?” the imaginary Serious Author in my head asks. “Real life is ambiguous and rarely ends with all the questions answered.”

Yeah, no duh Serious Author. That’s WHY I READ, to get satisfying conclusions that real life lacks. Books > reality.

When I read Elin’s books I don’t slam them shut after the last page and shout “but what happened to her?!” As much as I’d love to linger in the world she creates, finishing her novels means you find out how the main character resolves the central conflict in her story. You’ll keep thinking about her characters (at least, I do), but not for unresolved plot reasons.

Sure, her books are basic. Miss me with the idea that basic is bad. I hate to blame the patriarchy again (just kidding, I adore blaming the patriarchy), but basic is a term applied almost exclusively to things women love, especially things not created for the male gaze. Elin’s novels are the literary equivalent of Ugg boots — they’re everywhere, they’re not bold or “sexy,” and no one is going to be impressed by your imaginative taste. But oh my god, do they feel good.

Life is ambiguous and hard to understand, a lot of the time. Books don’t have to be. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got 29 soul-satisfying reads* waiting.

*So far, I’ve read “The Matchmaker” (loved), “Five Star Weekend” (loved), and “Golden Girl” (shocker, loved it), and I will gratefully accept suggestions of what to read next!

I researched carefully beforehand, reading articles full of advice from the Mayo Clinic, Sloan Kettering, and anyone I could find online who had an opinion. They all agreed: It’s definitely best to tell the kids. They’ll hear you talking about it and it’s way scarier when adults WON’T tell you about something. So talk to them.

I agreed. I would tell them. But what words to say, exactly? Suddenly all the online experts went quiet.

“I have cancer” or “I’m sick” seemed too scary and stark to start the conversation, so I decided to back into it. “I have a tumor, and I’m going to need an operation to make me better. The tumor is called cancer…” That’s how I would start. Factual yet optimistic: It sounded pretty great when I practiced in my head in the bathroom.

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What I failed to take into account is that they’d heard the word “tumor” in precisely one context before. And that context was the 2014 movie “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Peter Quill aka Starlord’s mom has a brain tumor (given to her by his alien dad) and she dies in the first five minutes of the movie. So when I started with, “I have a tumor, and I’m going to get an operation” they immediately gasped. My youngest looked stricken.

“Does that mean DAD… is an alien?” my older son asked, pointing at my husband.

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Nononono, I quickly added, it’s not a brain tumor, it wasn’t given to me by an alien or your father, also your father is not an alien, and most importantly I’m not going to die. I’m going to get an operation and get better.

They nodded. Got it.

Just one question.

“OK, but am I Starlord?”

Sigh.

Let’s go through this one more time. It’s breast cancer, not alien related, not contagious. I’m going to get an operation to remove the cancer, and then I will need medicine to get better, and I WILL get better, but in the meantime I’m going to be tired and will need you to be extra-gentle and also to help out around the house a lot.

More nodding. OK, I asked, any questions? They both raised a hand.

Any questions NOT related to “Guardians of the Galaxy”?

They both slowly lowered their hands.

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Post script: This happened in 2021 and I have not died (yet) and did, in fact, get better (knock on wood). Both of my little Starlords were excellent helpers. I’m really proud of them. And we’re like 99.9 percent sure their dad is not an alien.

This revelation hit me like a lightning bolt in a moment of sleep-deprived clarity. My youngest was a few months old, and he would sleep only in my arms or while I walked him in the stroller or baby carrier. He was an October baby, so that winter I bundled up and walked the length of Manhattan, again and again. Great for my postpartum weight loss, not so great for my sanity.

So, once again I found myself in the Parenting aisle of Barnes & Noble, one arm pushing the stroller back and forth while I desperately scanned the shelves for answers. How do I get him to sleep? How should I breastfeed, because it hurt so much that clearly I was doing it wrong? How should I NOT MESS THIS UP, because I had this wonderful, magical, perfect baby and my absolute love for him competed with the vague sense that I was failing.

There were so many books. Did I want to be a Tiger Mom, a Panda Mom, a Dolphin Mom? A lighthouse or a helicopter? Gentle parent or cry it out? What would a good mom do, I wondered. Should I buy them all?

Then it hit me: There’s not one book. There are a million books, a million different ways to raise children. Because if there was one book that had ALL the answers for EVERY child? We would all buy it. There wouldn’t be an aisle worth of parenting books, there would be one book in a locked case. It would cost $100,000, it would work for everyone, and we’d all sell our vital organs on the black market to buy it.

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But there’s not one book. There are many books and ideas and methods that will work for some kids and some parents. Maybe you get lucky and read the book that works for you and your kid. Great! But if you buy into what one expert says and do all the things and still feel lost, it’s not your fault. You’re not doing it wrong. It just wasn’t the right book for you.

As digital Parents Editor at the Today Show for the past 15 years, I’ve seen so many experts with theories come and go. I admire their confidence. I admire the ones who are honest enough to say – here are some ideas, maybe they’ll work for you. I unapologetically hate the ones who say their method is the ONLY way to raise kids to be good humans.

It’s a lie. There’s not one book.

There are a million ways to raise good kids, and, yes, a million ways to screw up. I have done both. If you have kids, you have too, or you will, and that’s OK.

What I’ve learned is that no one has all the answers. That’s scary but also somewhat comforting. Because when we admit we don’t have the answers, at least we can find our way in the dark together. At least we can keep each other company while we fall down and get up and try again. If that sounds like your kind of parenting, maybe you’ll like it here.

We can write our own books.