2026 · 31 posts
October 2026 · 8 posts
- Super Dok
My Mother Said I Would Not Grow Tall
What a physiology teacher now knows about sleep, growth, and the summer afternoons I spent outside My mother had one warning she repeated every summer.
Two Days in Vinegar
Why I buy Dagupan bangus fresh, and marinate it myself I do not buy daing na bangus already marinated. I know where to get it.
- Super Dok
Microplastics in Your Child's Bottle
Microplastics, baby bottles, and the small habits that keep a child's exposure down When my children were still on the bottle, nobody was talking about microplastics.
Nine O'Clock
How we stayed close to our children through college, and how they took the driving over from us Every Saturday morning, for years, I cooked before the sun was fully up.
The Answer Is Still No
Tantrums in toddlers: why they happen, why they work, and why they stop The child is on the floor of the candy aisle or a toy store, and the whole store has gone quiet to see what the mother will do.
Whose Dream Is It?
Not every honor student wants to be a doctor, and not every one should become one "Doc, can I talk to you?
- Super Dok
Thin Is Not the Same as Strong
Why older adults need weights, not just zumba Walk past any covered court early in the morning and you will hear the music before you see the dancers.
Questions at the Door
Vitamins, water, and a daily bath: what I tell mothers about the first year The most important questions in my clinic are asked standing up.
September 2026 · 15 posts
The Weights Were Always in the House
Why so many people start exercising and stop, and what kept us going I started exercising in high school, long before I understood what it was doing for me.
I Never Spanked My Children
Discipline by dialogue, and why the hand was never needed I never spanked my children. Not once, in all the years they were growing up.
- Super Dok
The Box Does Not Know Your Child
Why a child's medicine is dosed by weight, not by the age printed on the box A mother came back to my clinic with the prescription I had written for her two-year-old.
Let Them Play (Part 2)
Race cars on the floor, a screen at the table, and what a child loses when someone else does the imagining The yaya of this generation does not sing, does not scold, and never gets tired.
Can I Call You?
Three interruptions, and the four-word question that would have spared all of them My phone rang in the middle of a lecture.
Let Them Play
Why my children had time to study and time to play, and why I would do it the same way again In our house, play came after homework.
What Marriage Did to My Cooking
Bicol gata, Pangasinan bagoong, and a lifetime of putting the two in the same pan I am Pangasinense. My husband is Bicolano.
What We Pay For First
A rebonded head of hair, an exam moved for a family gathering, and the prescription nobody budgets for After the consultation, the first thing she asked was how much.
- Super Dok
The Prescription Pad Is Not a Finish Line
Why maintenance medicine does not end when the tablets do Thirty tablets is not a treatment. It is thirty days.
The Restaurant in My Home
What my dad taught me, what the cookbooks left out, and why I finally renovated the kitchen There is a restaurant in my house.
The Worksheets Came Before Play
Why I enrolled my children in Kumon when neither of them was struggling A medical representative told me about Kumon, and I enrolled my children that same week.
The Coop We Did Not Plan
One chicken from a patient, then another, then another — and eventually a yard full of tinola We never decided to keep chickens.
The Sadness That Comes From Other People's Good News
Envy is the unhappiness that gives nothing back Nobody says they are envious. They say they are tired. They say they are not where they thought they would be.
I Do Not Eat Rice Anymore, Doctor
What people mean when they say that, and why the blood sugar does not agree "I do not eat rice anymore, Doctor.
The Piano Could Wait
What I learned standing next to my father at the stove, and what my sons took with them I was the kind of child who left things unfinished.
August 2026 · 8 posts
The Black Squares
Twenty-seven years of teaching, a screen that will not look back, and the one thing I thought I had learned I asked them to turn on their cameras three times.
- Super Dok
What the Cream Cannot Reach
Creams work on the surface. A face ages underneath it. Skin is the only organ you can watch grow old.
Three Encounters
What I taught my children about studying, starting from the week they entered school I taught my children how to study before they had anything worth studying.
The Fish I Call Tilanggit
Three weeks of rain, a word I made up, and the small tilapia I dry in the sun There has been no sun for three weeks, and so there has been no tilanggit.
- Super Dok
Feeding the Thing That Feeds You
Why the gut microbiome matters, what it wants from your plate, and what quietly starves it If you count all the cells in a person, roughly half turn out to be bacteria, most of them living in the gut.
The Basil in the Freezer
A morning harvest, a freezer full of pesto, and everything else a basil plant will give you I cut the basil this morning, before the sun came up.
Kimchi: The Living Side Dish
Advantages, drawbacks, pairings, and what it actually does to your gut microbiome Very few foods on a dinner table are still alive.
Sixteen Years Later, I'm Writing Again
Sixteen years is a long time to be quiet. When I last wrote here, my children were still children — school uniforms drying on the line, homework spread across the dining table, someone always needing something from me before I could finish a sentence.
