2025: In & Out, The Parenting Edition

And yes, I'm aware that I'm very late to the party

Just do it your way

NB: This post was conceived before the devastating Los Angeles fires, which have been dominating my thoughts over the past few days. It is meant to provide a bit of distraction and escape during this heavy time.

Yes, you’ve seen about a thousand of these lists over the past two weeks, and the last thing you need is another arbitrary compilation from an amateur Substack auteur. But this one is about parenting and is entirely based on personal feelings and observations, which gives it some originality points. I’m also 30 weeks pregnant and in the midst of packing for yet another move (a highly ill-advised combo), so my brain is currently far better equipped for all things short-form. That being said, here goes.

IN

Small birthday parties. This has been a sore subject for me ever since I moved to Miami, where spending upwards of three thousand U.S. dollars on a single digit birthday party is the going standard. I, for one, am putting a hard stop on it this year by positioning the school birthday party my daughter so desperately wants as her main event. There will be no additional play gym rentals or mermaid-adorned pool parties, but just a small family gathering where she can be presented with the Skye and Everest cake of her dreams. On that note, can we bring back simple home birthdays with a cake and some balloons? If it was enough for us, why can’t it be enough for our kids?!

P.S. I’m seriously considering moonlighting as a Paw Patrol party mascot as my next career move. At $300 an hour, these pups are making bank!

Manners. At a recent Christmas Eve dinner, my parents couldn’t stop raving about the incredible manners of Dave’s best friend’s sons. While both boys were older than my iPad-tethered child, they were extremely polite, engaging, and even congratulated me on my pregnancy. It was a wildly refreshing change from the preteens I see in our building elevator, noses buried in TikTok, pretending adults don’t exist. I firmly believe it all stems from the parents and requires a conscious effort from a young age—otherwise, they don’t stand a chance later down the line.

Fitting kids into your life, not vice versa. The number one European parenting rule has never felt truer than after a month of children’s activities and recitals that had me sitting on plastic folding chairs, clapping for every four-year-old in Miami-Dade County. Remember that you too are a human being who deserves a life that doesn’t always involve Christmas farms, trampoline parks, and slime museums. Let your kids tag along on your shopping trips and gallery visits, and don’t worry about keeping them constantly entertained. In fact, let them be bored for a bit—it will only do them good.

Adult culture for kids. To take it a step further, there’s something about exposing kids to the adult world that I’m really enjoying. My daughter, who loves all things theater, has recently taken to watching plays and ballet videos on YouTube, and it has been refreshing to see her engage with something outside of the Disney princess universe. She also accidentally ended up seeing Wicked with us over the holidays, which made her obsessed with the music and added some much-needed variety to our car playlist. Next up, The Brutalist!

Kid-free dinner talk. I don’t know about you, but I can’t bear to sit through one more girl dinner where we end up discussing recipes for “fun foods” that double as vessels for vegetables. I want the husband shit talk, the debate on the award-worthiness of Anora (love me a Brighton Beach movie, but Oscar buzz? really?), the gut confession about whether motherhood fulfills you... I want to know if you still give your husband blow jobs, for God’s sake! We were fun and interesting people before we were moms—let’s not forget that!

Doing it your way. Parenting, the one thing that used to be kept predominantly behind closed doors, has become yet another self-comparison arena via the likes of social media. I vote this is the year we stop looking at what others are doing and start focusing on what works for our families, whether it’s embracing later bedtimes or skipping the bulk of classmates’ birthday parties. Buy the boxed snacks, order in three nights a week, and tell anybody who judges you to go make some cereal from scratch. YOLO.

OUT

Phones at restaurants. Six months ago, I was still part of a fraction of parents who could proudly say that their child doesn’t need a phone to get through a restaurant dinner—or any dinner, period. Then, we attended a number of group meals where kids got devices “for the sake of sanity,” which led to Sasha demanding the same thing from us. I personally find nothing to be more dismal than watching a group of toddlers sitting together, munching on French fries while glued to their own respective devices. Can we finally stop this absurdity? Let’s take matters into our own hands and set some boundaries!

Excessive gifting. Blame it on post-holiday fatigue, but I’m really starting to question my child’s relationship to presents, which is becoming nothing short of an addiction. After receiving dozens of holiday gifts this past month, she doesn’t actually find value in any of them and quickly tosses them aside, moving on to the next item like a gambling addict looking for their next fix. This is officially my year of “unspoiling” i.e. attempting to salvage the situation and turn my child into a grounded human.

Loot bags. Yes, I realize that each loot bags is a mother’s labor of love, but here’s the thing: they take time, they cost money, and they are slowly but surely polluting our environment with Amazon-sourced junk that nobody really needs. They’re also flat out mean to parents who end up having to scrape slime off rugs, scrub their kids’ bodies from stamps, and spend hours attempting to blow bubbles off their balconies with tiny little dysfunctional wands. Basta!

Zara kids. I recently walked into a dance recital and saw a little girl in the exact outfit I had bought Sasha as part of her seasonal Zara haul, which made me want to send back the entire package. Unfortunately, Zara still happens to make the cutest (and most affordable) kids’ clothes known to man, therefore I’ll probably never stop ordering from them. But I highly encourage that you do!

Private school talk. As somebody guilty of proliferating private school chitchat for hours on end at each Miami social gathering, I officially declare it out. There’s nothing more annoying than having a person like me attack you at a party and grill you with questions about your school of choice, along with a list of tips for getting in. It also fuels the idea that where your child goes to school is the ultimate flex, which is both wrong and unfair to people who can’t afford 50K tuition (not that I can!)

Gentle parenting vernacular. Can this be the year this exhaustive parenting trend finally dies? I’m so tired of Instagram consistently feeding me scripts of how I’m supposed to speak to my child in elevated moments, as though I’m some sort of AI bot who shouldn’t react when I get a miniature frying pan chucked at my head. Sometimes, kids need some firm discipline, and no Big Little Feeling seminar can convince me otherwise.

Over-scheduling. I went through a stage of making Sasha do five extracurricular activities a week, which made everybody in my family feel like they were working overtime by shlepping her from one class to the other. (Don’t even get me started about the cost—I could have easily swapped it for a Tracy Anderson membership.) My daughter, in the meantime, would come home overstimulated and unhinged, which pushed her bedtime to an odious 10pm. As my mom likes to point out: kids need to unwind, kids need to relax, kids need to be kids.

Do you have anything else to add? Any “unspoiling” advice to share? Please comment below—I want your community and your engagement!