Final

Don't forget you.

No matter what you think of Opera Winfrey -If you follow her, her show, or her in print -she has offered up lots of advice regarding rearing kids without loosing sight of yourself. She said, take time for yourself. You will come back a better parent. If you don't forget who you are and take time for yourself you will have more "you" to give to your family!

It's that moment. I've finished checking homework, handing out backpacks, rummaging for baseball caps, finding car keys, bestowing kisses. The door slams shut for the last time, and I'm alone. Glad as I will be to have my family reconvene under this roof hours from now, I treasure this early-morning solitude, this small nest of time inhabited only by me. Soon I'll be up and out the door myself, but for these next sacred minutes, I will sit on the window seat, coffee in hand, and watch the sky. Solitude is the soul's holiday, an opportunity to stop doing for others and to surprise and delight ourselves instead. When we are hungry, we get the signal right away, and we pay attention. Thirst is sneakier. By the time our bodies send us in search of water, we are already dehydrated. The same holds true in our thirst for solitude. By the time I begin to crave a vacation alone on a desert island, chances are my emotional well has already run dry. And so I've learned to create little islands of solitude in my daily life.

Exhausted?

Like many exhausted new moms, Ava Neyer read stacks of books about baby sleep. But nothing seemed to work for her twins, now 5 months, one a night owl and one an early bird. Every new expert offered a different solution -- and what's worse, they all seemed to contradict each other. Neyer poured out her frustrations to friends in her mom's group in a hilarious rant, one that will strike a chord with any mother who has ever paced the floor at 3 a.m. with a wide-awake baby, thinking "WHY WON'T YOU SLEEP?!" Neyer's essay went viral on Reddit and has been making waves in the mom-blog world. "I didn't expect people to like it as much as they did!" said Neyer, 31, who lives in Fort Bragg, N.C. She's still struggling with sleep issues, but her experience has taught her to take all advice with a grain of salt. "A lot of it is learning to read your children," Neyer said, rather than reading books.

"You shouldn�t sleep train at all, before a year, before 6 months, or before 4 months, but if you wait too late, your baby will never be able to sleep without you. College-aged children never need to be nursed, rocked, helped to sleep, so don�t worry about any bad habits. Nursing, rocking, singing, swaddling, etc to sleep are all bad habits and should be stopped immediately. Neyer's brilliant take on expert sleep advice:

Growing up 20 years ago..

Sew — Ralph Machio | The Karate Kid | 1984

As a Gen Xer, I so enjoy reminiscing about the freedoms we had growing up in the 70s and 80s. Our parents take on safety and acceptable ways to spend one�s time was different from the get go. Starting with baby-proofing, which in no way resembled what it is today. In fact, I recall being given green Mr. Yuk stickers (which were basically like yellow happy face stickers that had just thrown up) to put on anything that was toxic: chemicals, cleaning supplies, etc. I remember showing my mom the stickers we�d been given at preschool and her telling me to �go for it� (yes, I was to baby-proof my own house). So, I actively searched my house for toxins. I checked cabinets that I�d never even thought to open before, climbed on the sinks to get to all the medicines. It was like anti-baby proofing. I slapped the stickers on all my new found poisons and added one to the vegetable crisper, for good measure. Now, as a parent myself, my own parents like to tell me I�m too overprotective. �Really?� �Well, you survived,� they say. �Yep, but it seems like the odds were against me.� Here are a few things many of us did growing up that make me wonder how our generation survived �