Category: College Admissions

“Dear Gemente Stein” my letter began. “I would like to participate in your triathlon.” In 1985, I had more discretionary income then sense and thought nothing of traveling to the Netherlands to plunge into 63° water before biking and running over hill and dale. The advert in the athletics magazine

Medieval doctors had a sweet gig. No downside, really. Their powers of prediction were pretty much perfect. “You are desperately ill,” a doctor might say. “Undoubtedly, you will soon die from this mortal disease.” And the doctor was usually right on. Sick people had a pronounced tendency to die. What

Eight years ago, my buddy Bruce got me started writing these blog posts. “It will be good for business,” he said. “And you love to write.”  I do enjoy communicating—“pontificating” is such a negative word. I like sharing my views on parenting, learning differences, college admissions, therapeutic issues. Bruce and

If going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than sleeping in a garage makes you a car, then putting this balding, paunchy, 62-year-old author is a Miami Dolphins’ uniform doesn’t make me a competitive NFL player. You know the expression, “several bulbs shy of a chandelier”? I

My older son is coaching developmentally disabled children. He says his players are awesome—motivated, cheerful, willing. His players typically have cognitive impairments as well as physical disabilities, but they love to play.  Basketball seems to be a universal language—even for kids with expressive and receptive language impairments. You have not

“Men have died from time to time but not for love,” Shakespeare pointed out, balancing irony with understatement. Homo sapiens over the years have indeed had a distinct tendency to slaughter one another. A more insightful author than I could suggest reasons for the rivers of blood over the eons.

As you might imagine, there has been some buzz these past few hours regarding the recent admissions kerfuffle. For those of you fortunate enough to be ensconced at the bottom of the ocean, here’s what you missed: Some wealthy and influential people cheated and lied. The wealthy and influential people

“Let’s go! C’mon! The day is wasting! It’s 5:00 am! Get your shoes on! What’s that? It’s raining? Who cares! You won’t melt! You are not made out of sugar! Everybody’s waiting! We need to go! Now!” The oft-cited Golden Rule suggests doing unto others as you would have them

“Make an eight. No, not two circles one on top of the other. One continuous line. Two circles is wrong. One fluid line is correct. There is one proper way to write the number eight.” So said my third grade teacher. She was passionate about handwriting.  I was less inspired.

Much has been made of late regarding enabling and rescuing versus natural consequences and learning from failure. Letting them fail, like riding public transportation, seems best left for other people’s children. “Helping out” “just this one last time” is what parents do with their own.  As always, the best interest