Category: Parenting

Are you better or worse than you were four years ago is the perennial kudzu of politics implying, I suppose, that our elected officials are perfectly responsible for the worldwide economy in general and what goes into our shopping carts in particular. I am committed to writing about parenting rather

One of my running buddies was told by his high school language teacher that he would never be able to pass Introductory Spanish, that he should give up on learning a foreign language. And because of his pronounced learning differences, he should probably also give up on higher education altogether.

Yesterday a child came out to wonderCaught a dragonfly inside a jarFearful when the sky was full of thunderAnd tearful at the falling of a star. My last marathon—in the sense of most recent—was 10 years ago. My last marathon—in the sense of “Yeah, I’m never doing that again,” coincided

From Beryl Bainbridge’s 1974 novel, The Bottle Factory Outing: As a child she had been taught it was rude to say no, unless she didn’t mean it. If she was offered another piece of cake and she wanted it, she was obliged to refuse out of politeness. And if she

“Is this the person to whom I’m speaking” queried the irrepressible Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the operator. As a youngster staying up late to watch Laugh In, I missed the wit. Of course this is the person to whom she’s speaking, who else could it possibly be?” Instead, I focused

Another thought on how steep the pyramid is, on how important it is to communicate to our children that competition is debilitating, that how they feel about their accomplishments matters significantly more than what those accomplishments might actually be. Here is Eugene Wigner (fictionalized account) on one of his elementary

Moms get blamed for everything. Everything their kids do, say, or think. The belief that moms are responsible for every nuance of their children’s behavior is so deeply engrained in our lifestyle that it’s hard not to notice without doing two minutes of Internet research or thinking critically for an

“I am despondent. My daughter did not graduate at the top of her medical school class. She won’t get a good residency placement. It’s the end of the world as we know it, the sky is falling, where did I go wrong?” Or… “I am pleased and proud. My daughter