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1 week ago | 
momspreading.substack.com | Sarah Wheeler
It’s Autism Acceptance Month, and last Thursday I met with five other parents and a teacher in our school library to do our annual Autism Read-In. As usual, the effort was completely last-minute and a bit miraculous, but also as usual, people showed the eff up.
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1 week ago | 
momspreading.substack.com | Sarah Wheeler
This Sunday, The New York Times Magazine published a long article by journalist Paul Tough (I remember as a baby teacher reading Whatever it Takes on a plane and being ALL IN) about what is behind the surge of ADHD cases in the U.S., whether stimulants actually work, and whether we really know what we think we do about ADHD. By the time my alarm went off at 9 west coast time (and after about 30 minutes of customary snoozing), my inbox was filled with links to this story.
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3 weeks ago | 
momspreading.substack.com | Sarah Wheeler |Viet Thanh Nguyen |Courtney Martin |Katherine Goldstein
The other night it was 70 degrees in Oakland, so my seven-year-old daughter and I filled a bag with cold desserts and took her bike to the local basketball courts to sit and lick and watch another mom run drills with her son (“I love the mom-coaching that’s going on!” my daughter remarked. This child tho).
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1 month ago | 
momspreading.substack.com | Sarah Wheeler |Katherine Goldstein
My least favorite new commercial features Chris Pratt and Chris Hemsworth, two of my least favorite Chrises, showing how cool their Meta AI Ray-Bans are by asking them silly questions, on a weirdly-lit set that is sometimes a gallery and sometimes Kris Jenner’s house.
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2 months ago | 
momspreading.substack.com | Sarah Wheeler |Amanda Montei |Tracy Clark-Flory |Garrett Bucks
I’ve been thinking and writing a lot about what holidays means as a parent in these times. In the fall, I mostly guffawed at the new trend of Boo Baskets for Halloween for The Cut. I also wrote in my Good Enough Parent column for Romper about how to engage as a parent with a holiday you don’t particularly love.
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Jan 27, 2025 | 
momspreading.substack.com | Sarah Wheeler
For someone with two kids and approximately 100 jobs, none of which are “movie critic,” I watch a lot of movies. The movie theater is where I go whenever I can (I’m going tonight!). This is often on my set Thursday nights out (my husband gets Tuesdays), sometimes alone and sometimes with friends (one recently noted “I’ve only seen two movies this year, and they’ve both been with you, and they’ve both been about the Holocaust!” I’ll take it).
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Jan 2, 2025 | 
momspreading.substack.com | Sarah Wheeler
New Year’s Eve was a dear friend’s birthday, and as a gift to her we decided to compile a book of our own “delights" a la Ross Gay. Ross Gay’s Book of Delights, which, if you read my newsletter, you have a 93% chance of owning, is a irreverent and moving chronicle of the author (a poet)’s daily joys. I love this book.
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Nov 12, 2024 | 
momspreading.substack.com | Sarah Wheeler
Hi friends, oh how I value you and hope this finds you…well? I’ve been feeling all over the place. I’m legit scared, for myself and so many others. I’m really, really sad. I’m also consumed by life’s daily tasks and ambivalent about whether they are the true fabric of a meaningful life or late-stage-capitalism’s grand distractions from spending time bucking the system. I have also been mostly off the internet.
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Oct 21, 2024 | 
momspreading.substack.com | Sarah Wheeler |Anne Petersen |Virginia Sole-Smith
Parents are full-on Halloweening. Over at my podcast, , we just talked for an hour about being a parent in October (How do you know where to go for trick-or-treating? What’s appropriate to wear? Do you let your kids keep their candy?? Why do we care about any of this??), and we could have talked for five. Parents are researching kids costumes (and having to reorder them when the ones we finally land on are actually out of stock, fuck you Etsy!). We’re going to the g-damned pumpkin patch.
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Oct 3, 2024 | 
momspreading.substack.com | Sarah Wheeler
I had a dream the other night that someone posted online “What are your favorite newsletters that have completed ghosted you?” In the comments, mine was repeatedly mentioned. The “favorite” part must have been my subconscious giving me a little much-needed bravado. The ghosting, clearly, was about how delinquent I’ve been here of late. I woke up convinced it was real (see the bravado???!) and determined to stop avoiding writing about a topic that still feels quite unresolved.