Category: Parenting

By all accounts Frank Shorter’s dad, Dr. Samuel Shorter, was an abusive monster.* Dr. Shorter terrorized his 11 children, yelling at them in secret, beating them with a belt. Dr. Shorter was mean to his wife; the kids had to watch their mom being abused, too young to or say

What would it take for you to never to speak to your child again? What would it take for you to say, “you are dead to me”? What if your five-year-old spilled her milk, you were already late for work and you had to spend five minutes you didn’t have

I’ve spent a lot of time in these columns railing against the blame heaped almost exclusively on moms. When a kid acts up—or even just acts like a kid—moms get the stink-eye. From other moms whose kids are being better behaved at that moment. From moms whose kids did the

Parenting is my usual topic but just as we are constantly being reminded to put on our oxygen mask first (are there like 200 plane crashes every day that I don’t hear about?) it has often been said that if you want to work on your kids, focus on your

I want to clarify what I mean when I write, “after you have kids, it’s no longer all about you.” The other side could be–has been–argued. What about the needs of the parents? Isn’t it the moms and dads whose well-being should take precedence? Aren’t the adults supposed to put

In a more patient age, discussions—rather than polemics—about what books students should be encouraged to read were still a thing. I’m not sure how these conversations turned into narcissistic death matches involving power hungry small-minded, big-agenda bullies. But here we are. If you don’t want your children to read about

On August 29, 1939 Angela‘s parents told her to pack a bag, that she and her two younger brothers were leaving Campobasso, the Italian town where the family had lived for as many generations as anyone could remember. You can bring whatever you can fit into a suitcase, her parents

Remember Dion and the Belmonts in 1959 crooning, “Why Must I Be a Teenager in Love”? “Each night I ask the stars up above, why must I be a teenager in love” I don’t know that my eighth graders and I substantially improved the lyric with our homage (parody?) in

I have been accused of championing mediocrity. In these weekly newsletters. Ouch! Untrue! These denunciations follow a familiar pattern: you disparage highly selective schools, you tell us it’s okay if our kids don’t get As in advanced math courses, you suggest that a good relationship with our kids is more