Lavonne Zwart Schaafsma

When my first son Owen was an infant, I often got together with a group of moms to participate in a playgroup. Truthfully, the group was more for the social benefit of the moms and less for our infants, since they were too young to crawl and their playing involved nothing more than pulling each other's hair. Nonetheless, it was important for us moms. We talked about parenting philosophies and had lively debates over when to talk to our children…