Picture this. It is 7:00 pm, a time known by many parents as the “witching hour”, a time when bedtime routines should be completed and when most children under the age of five years old should be asleep or almost asleep. For parents, it may mean a chance at a small respite, maybe some time to catch up on some Netflix episodes while eating from a tub of ice cream (shh…, don’t tell the kids!). It may mean, for some couples, a chance to spend some quality time together, to conne

You've seen the Instagram posts. Beautifully rendered daily schedules promising order, tranquility and intellectual stimulation for all ages. You've read the homeschooling posts, too, all of them. You know, the ones that promise that your active child will be busy with a (full!) cup of water, a paintbrush, a chalkboard easel and some good-old-fashioned creativity. In your "spare time" (I'm laughing out loud at this), you peruse fellow parents’ haggard posts on Facebook, their