Mom Basics Offers Parent/Child Resources

Mom Basics is a parenting web site offering useful resources that encompass everything from early childhood to the high school years.

The web site is divided into five categories: Things to Do, Ages + Stages, Parent Resources, Making Connections, and Robin’s Blog. For fun, you’ll find directions for making crafts, an A to Z list of things to do, favorite kid URLs, a perpetual calendar filled with celebration dates, family history projects, and links for places to go nearby and around the country.  

Sprinkled throughout the web site are inspiring quotes and useful tips. You’ll find suggestions on packing for vacation, when to choose organic or conventional produce, ways you can make a difference for a healthier planet, and where to find replacement toy parts.

Whether they work outside the home or not, many parents lack connections to other families and people in their neighborhood. To provide a sense of community, Mom Basics includes information on a wide range of parenting support groups as well as maintains its own discussion board and monthly e-newsletter.

For keeping parenthood in perspective, the site recommends ways to make time for yourself, including time-saving services and booking a “goddess weekend.”

“As a parent of a busy child, I needed to organize all sorts of information, from children's activities and local events to family-friendly restaurants, parenting resources, and useful web sites,” says Mason.

“In the summer of 2003, I started emailing friends about local child-centered happenings in my community. That email expanded into a local BedfordKids web site. In 2007, I thought, why not go national? And Mom Basics came into being.”

“At first, the new web site contained mostly national links from BedfordKids,” Mason continues. “But then it emerged with its own identity and grew exponentially, as I added craft projects, the perpetual calendar, a discussion board-things that would bring people back to the site.

"I also let people know what type of person I am, by including sidebars with my favorite things and my own blog. I even added a healthy living section (healthy eating, healthy home, healthy planet) and a genealogy page because these topics are important to me. Every day, I find something to add to the site.”  

Mason’s background includes both publishing and marketing experience. In addition to freelance work, she maintains several web sites, including WordsWorth2 (writing + editing + marketing); Mom Basics; BedfordKids (for parents in the Massachusetts area); Boston Genealogy Examiner; and Union county, New Jersey’s USGenWeb (genealogy).