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You may not have noticed, but last year was a milestone anniversary for Eastern Oregon Parent magazine. This year is a milestone for me.

In 2013, I emailed editor Greg Alexander saying I was interested in being a freelance writer for EO Parent. At the time, I had no idea I’d still be writing for the magazine 10 years later. When I sent that first email, my kids were four, two and two-weeks-old, and this publication has helped me make it from pre-school days to teenage years and everything in between. For this article – almost exactly my 100th – I thought I would take a look back at how things have changed over the past decade.

I had great plans for how we could update some of the early articles and talk about how kids have changed or how our understanding has changed. What I discovered instead is a lot of the “older” articles still hold up today – and I look at them differently now that my own children have grown.

In 2014, I wrote an article about the different types of child care and how to find providers. Finding child care is no longer one of my priorities, but it’s still an issue in Eastern Oregon, even as Preschool Promise and the Pendleton Children’s Center help take some of the burden off families.

Back when I wrote the article on Family Day Trips in 2015, a lot of those I described did not work for my preschoolers. Now, I think we might go ahead and try to fit some of these in this summer. Most of my recommendations in the September 2017 article on Family Board Games still hold up, although I would try to find a way to work in Canvas, Azul, The Isle of Cats, Tea Dragon Society, none of which had been released at the time.

I imagine the articles I have written about applying for college scholarships or “Life After High School,” interviewing recent graduates one year after receiving their diplomas will be even more impactful in a few years.

Even my very first article, on holiday safety, could be reprinted almost verbatim in 2023. If I called them today, I think local emergency responders would give me the exact same advice and concerns that they did in 2013. They might, however, wonder why I was asking about Christmas trees in April.

Seven of the eight stories I originally pitched have made it into Eastern Oregon Parent. We never did do a series about making a trip to the hospital easier for families and that process was different back in 2013 than it would be today.

In fact, the only articles I found that could not be reprinted in 2023 involve responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the articles in 2020 and 2021 have a different feel and deal with topics no longer relevant: the move to online learning, creating “pods” for socialization during lockdowns and how to keep kids active while at home – these were all necessary for the time but, we hope, are now a thing of the past. Eastern Oregon Parent has touched on talking to kids about the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the return to school and the return to activities.

Researching this piece, I went back through articles on 4-H and what to do when your child is one of the kids misbehaving in school. I’ve written about swim safety and an article about “Early Education, Then and Now” comparing preschool and kindergarten in 2018 to how it was 20, 30 or 40 years previously.

I was also reminded that articles are supposed to be 600 to 650 words, a limit that I have not always followed well. I may have the record for the longest submitted article.

Next month’s issue will focus, as usual, on summer camps and I have some ideas floating around for articles in future issues. Here’s to 10 years of Eastern Oregon Parent and, I hope, 10 more!