Put… the… homework… down.

February 10, 2010

Okay, somebody’s got to do it—I’m calling for a cease-fire… a homework ceasefire. At least in LA, and at least if you are a middle or high school kid hoping to go to a “good college,” you are likely to be doing somewhere between two and four hours of homework per night.  I see this […]

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Barfing at Bright Child

February 9, 2010

Just as parenting can bring some of our highest highs, it inevitably also brings some of the lowest lows.  It’s funny how years go by and then suddenly you remember some moment that just lives on in your mind… maybe some sort of traumatic or embarrassing moment.  I know we all have ours, parenting and […]

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Dressing up vs. Growing up

February 8, 2010

A recent story in the New York Times, “Dressing for success, again” cited the show “Mad Men” as influencing the younger generation to dress up, in contrast to us middle-agers who (at least as a generation) made dressing down the norm.  On the one hand it’s interesting to have a generational flip-flop where getting dressed […]

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Only connect!

February 7, 2010

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, And human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect… –E.M. Forster, Howards End “Only connect” was going to be the theme of our Holiday Card this year, […]

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Honor thy Mother and Father… at the racetrack?

February 6, 2010

With a thirteen and fifteen-year-old at home, finding a family activity that everyone is willing and interested in has become increasingly difficult.  Now if I imagine some Norman Rockwell sort of Sunday in the Park with George, some sort of “jolly holiday with Mary,” the last thing that would come to my mind is the […]

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Got Sleepless Nights?

February 5, 2010

If we frame “parenting” as having a caring attitude toward not just our own children but each other and the world, then even when our kids are sleeping soundly through the night, our own sleep troubles can pose a major parenting challenge. A reader inquires: “I read your sleep post with interest. My kids are […]

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Eating Issues: Breakfast at Tiffany’s… dinner at home

February 4, 2010

At some point I went from seeing Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s as an idealized anima to realizing that she (or at least her character) was an anorexic woman in a hat with a lot of issues (after all, Holly Golightly is essentially a self-involved prostitute who is ashamed of her uneducated hillbilly roots—a […]

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Out in the cold—balancing attachment and a good time

February 3, 2010

A reader inquires: “I must say, I am enjoying parenting more and more…but I am feeling ‘out of balance’ personally and in my relationship with my husband, as I stay at home with my daughter (and the four or five times we have had a babysitter in the past 2 years to go have dinner […]

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A bullet-proof vest for the soul: psychological abuse in relationships

February 2, 2010

In a recent  NPR interview by Michele Norris, about psychological abuse in relationships, Dr Steven Stosny (Psychologist; Author, Love Without Hurt) spoke about the gender difference regarding the things that we are mean about when we systematically put our lovers down.  While Stosny acknowledges that we all say mean things sometimes, non-abusive relationships allow for […]

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Passing the baton

February 1, 2010

After a turbulent week that brought both a Wolf Moon (the biggest, and allegedly most provocative full moon of the year) and the iPad (a great name for something to catch the eFlow.  Period.), the Grammys brought a healing, wii are the world, unity.  Although I can’t say I’m a huge Lady GaGa fan, when s(he) […]

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