What’s Really Scary on Halloween (and every other day these days)? Homework, Academic Stress and Toxic Levels of Competition

October 27, 2010

Greetings.  I’m in two places at once today:  here writing about the terror lurking beneath education; and guest posting at one of my favorite haunts as a reader—The Kitchen Witch—where Dana hosts my tale of neurotic kitchen terror from a Christmas past.  Please visit her today (she’s a lot of fun) and then delve back […]

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Putting the ass into, or taking it out of, Asperger’s?

October 20, 2010

The Social Network is very good filmmaking, but it’s ultimately not more interesting than the real-life subject it addresses. As we transition from the age of narcissism into the age of autism it makes great sense that the reins of power move from the narcissistic and entitled elite (perfectly personified by rich, rowing twins who […]

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Hello Cruel World

October 13, 2010

I’m astride my bike near the big park.  G.D., the local bully/cool kid, calls out to me.  I turn and look and our eyes meet.  With cold inscrutable contempt he takes the rather hard “softball” he is holding and simply beans me in the face with it.  He watches my anguished pain, humiliation and shock […]

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Autism becomes us

October 6, 2010

An article in the most recent Atlantic by John Donovan and Caren Zucker, “Autism’s First Child” is well worth reading. Using the first identified case of autism in the medical texts, and exploring the human story of this now seventy-seven-year-old, Donald Gray Triplett, the authors invite us to think about how the oncoming epidemic of […]

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Lice Capades

September 29, 2010

The muse works in mysterious ways.  Today’s guest post comes to you via my wife, Andy, inspired by creatures greatly small… * Summer was going swimmingly. No triple digit days. The boys getting along well, with just an occasional, basic skirmish. Lots of down time. Great reading. One evening in late July we had a […]

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Bless Us, Ultima

September 22, 2010

Recently I have been reading some of the things my kids are reading.  I liked Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolpho Anaya so much I was sad to see it end (like so many things in life and especially in parenting).  At the core of the story is a boy’s coming of age under the spiritual […]

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First Comes Love

September 15, 2010

Falling in love is a private business—a mystery and a blessing, a fickle arrow that sometimes works out for the best, and sometimes leaves you crawling on all fours and trying to believe that everything happens for a reason.  Sometimes it just plain breaks you, but sometimes it transforms you. Today is Andy and my […]

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Can back-to-school blues hit on the first day… of preschool?

September 8, 2010

A recent New York Times article by Pamela Paul, “Can Preschoolers Be Depressed?,” raised a number of points relevant to parenting across the span of our children’s development. While identifying depression in preschool age children is presented as something newly emerging, Harry Harlow identified failure to thrive in monkeys, and later observed it in human babies—which […]

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History Lessons

September 1, 2010

It was the evening after the first day of school and after cooking with Andy we were all seated in the deepening dusk of the garden, candles burning in jars, Will stating that this macaroni and cheese was the best he’d ever had… Andy’s magic, complimented by my grilled protein and sautéed green beans (beans […]

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Light in August

August 25, 2010

Late August has its own unique character—the end of summer, wilting with melancholy, languid with hot summer evenings, child-joy being subtly eroded by shadow’s undertow, sundialing toward lockers and school clocks. Being neither a kid nor a teacher, I don’t really get a summer vacation and this takes the edge off of late summer’s mournful […]

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