Parenting | Page 2 of 23

The Power of Cake

June 21st, 2025
Mollie T. Cox

All the world is a birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.
George Harrison.

I have incredibly wonderful memories of my grandmothers. Unconditional love, sacrifice, understanding, laughter, special gifts, family stories, and more. I remember some of those in detail but not all.

However, I remember in detail the cakes my grandmothers fed me. Almost forty years after my last bites, I can visualize the appearance and recall the taste of homemade apple stack cake made by Mamaw and the red velvet and coconut cakes Grandmommy bought from Miller’s Bakery.

What’s another cherished childhood memory? The rainbow cake my parents bought from Glenwood Bakery. That Saturday outing lasted only one or two years, but the memories have lasted sixty. The colorful layers that were revealed after that moist cake was cut were marvelous to my young eyes.

My book club shares their cake details and photos.

I hadn’t thought about my childhood cakes until I read the opening quote by George Harrison. I googled the psychology of cake, and the best description is below.

Cake is not just a food; it’s an emotion.
Anonymous

Let’s take seriously the joy of cake and its effects on us.

Favorites, Parenting

Protect the Colts*

June 14th, 2025
Mollie T. Cox

While playing with peers, my sons were exposed to inappropriate, harmful behavior. My husband and I made the hard—yet easy—decision that there must be adult supervision when our boys were with a certain child.

The day after we explained our unpopular stance, we providentially read aloud Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Young Almanzo wanted to train the two-year-old colts, but his father said,

A boy who didn’t know any better might scare a young horse, or tease it, or even strike it … It would learn to bite and kick and hate people…

When Almanzo persisted chapters later, he was told,

In five minutes you can teach them tricks it will take me months to gentle out of them.

When Almanzo eventually went too near the colts, his father repeated his warnings.

That’s too good a colt to be spoiled. I won’t have you teaching tricks that I’ll have to train out of it.

We were accused of being overprotective, of taking mischief too seriously. We knew it was deeper. Reading Wilder’s words—written over fifty years earlier—encouraged us. Our sons were far more valuable than colts.

Have you providentially received encouragement from an unexpected source?

* Edited and republished for the fifth anniversary of 100words.

Lies We Tell, Parenting

You Can Be Anything You Want To Be

May 10th, 2025
Mollie T. Cox

I snatched the sticker below as soon as I saw it because I believe we set others up for hardship, and sometimes failure, when we say, “You can be anything you want to be.

Taylor Swift’s parents believed she could be anything she wanted to be. They backed her with their wealth, connections, and a move to Nashville when she was thirteen.

Dolly Parton believed she could be anything she wanted to be. Though poor, her family recognized her gifts and sacrificially rallied around her with the skills and connections they did have.

What about the rest of us?

After years of observing, I believe it’s harder and takes longer to accept the reality of limited opportunities or a mismatch of abilities and dreams when parents, teachers, and friends spend years saying, “You can be anything you want to be.”

What am I learning to say when someone shares a dream?

“You can be whomever God wants you to be because he will bring the opportunities and equip you.”

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:9 ESV

Memories, Parenting

Perhaps I Did Do My Best

May 3rd, 2025
Mollie T. Cox

Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary we all carry about with us.
Miss Prism, The Importance Of Being Earnest

Yes, but it usually chronicles the things that have never happened and couldn’t possibly have happened.
Cecily, The Importance of Being Earnest

I don’t believe my memories are my imagination, but I do know that memories are tricky. Sometimes I forget the victories and remember the struggles. Sometimes the opposite. As I think about raising my sons, my memories tell me I could have listened more or played more or many other things more.

Rarely does one get a chance to revisit past situations. Last month—as I cared nonstop for young children for days and days—I got that chance.

Through last month’s filter of sleep deprivation, constant action, fatigue, and rarely having solitude to think, the things I left unsaid and undone while raising my sons were not unreasonable. By reliving my circumstances when my own children were young, I now understand that the things that I wish I had made happen couldn’t possibly have happened.

Perhaps I did do my best. Like you.

Parenting

Advice From Another Mother

April 12th, 2025
Mollie T. Cox

… And since when is good advice criticism?”

“When it comes from your mother.“
For Better or Worse Comic July 9, 2024

Our children need a mother. As they age, they want a mother that doesn’t belong to them. They want the advice we would give—just not from our mouths.

When my children were younger, I found it odd that young adults seemed to be trading mothers. My cousin didn’t ask my aunt for advice. However, my cousin’s best friend did. My cousin turned to the mother of another friend.

Why?

My aunt listened sympathetically to the problems of her daughter’s peers—more sympathetically than she listened to my cousin.

Why?

Along the way, I learned that by the time my children really needed my counsel, baggage had accumulated on both sides. Even when baggage wasn’t an issue, as healthy adults who were finding their own identity, my sons wanted privacy. And a mother who wasn’t overly interested.

So, what’s a mother to do?

I pray that my children seek godly counsel. I pray that the right person is put in their path at the opportune time.

… But wisdom is with those who seek counsel.

Proverbs 13:10