Playtime

October 13, 2009

A recent article by Lea Winerman, “Play in peril,” (Monitor on Psychology; September, 2009) outlines the importance of play for intellectual and emotional development in children—as well as the reasons why play is nevertheless in steep decline. Kids get significantly less playtime than they did in years past, and one of the chief reasons distills […]

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Four Aces: a terrible hand?

October 12, 2009

They say, “lucky in cards, unlucky in love,” but when it comes to “ACEs” (or “adverse childhood experiences” such as abuse, neglect and family dysfunction in childhood) those unlucky in childhood are also unlucky in adulthood—particularly unlucky about getting sick and dying.  We’ll take a look at the details in a moment, but the key […]

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Wise Old Babies

October 11, 2009

Babies are amazing teachers.  I had the pleasure recently of a couple bringing their five-month-old along to a therapy session and this child was so amazing that I found it a bit hard to tear away from simply gazing at him for the whole hour—partly because the child was already in the mental space to which […]

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Why Did Ancient Yogis Sit on Corpses All Night Long?

October 10, 2009

The end of modern yoga class typically ends in shivasana, or “corpse” pose; this is the moment when you just lay down and let everything go.  Back in the day, and I mean way back in the yoga day, young yogis who were being initiated into the spiritual path underwent ordeals and initiations similar to […]

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What to do about the “bad” kids…?

October 9, 2009

A while back I received a comment from a reader that has challenged me to formulate a useful or constructive response.  The question, about what me might be able to do to help sociopathic kids, read as follows: “Over the course of the last year or so, I’ve been putting off facing my now nephew […]

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Aikido

October 8, 2009

When I was a kid I was always the shortest one in my class.  Then, finally in seventh grade there was a moment when the gym teacher had us all line up along the bleachers from tallest to shortest, because the tallest kid and the shortest kids would each be team captain.  Even though I […]

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Going Deep with The Sponge—Can SpongeBob make us better parents?

October 7, 2009

This summer marked the tenth anniversary of SpongeBob who, in his timeless decade, has kindly made his way to reigning Puer Aeternus (Latin for “Eternal Child,” i.e. Peter Pan).  The Sponge has cried and laughed his way to the top as the world around him, and us, has grown ever more bitterly Squidward.  Meanwhile, the […]

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Baseball, sex, math and OCD

October 6, 2009

I’ve never been much of  a baseball fan, perhaps owing to my Ferdinand-like experiences out in right field as a child, yet as we make our way into the classic fall days of the pennant race it seemed like a good time to talk baseball. At some sort of strange mystical level, I am intrigued […]

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Get Smart

October 5, 2009

Richard Nisbett, Ph.D. is a cognitive psychologist and researcher who teaches at the University of Michigan.  His recent book, “Intelligence and How to Get It:  Why Schools and Culture Count” (W.W. Norton, 2009) focuses on the heritability of intelligence and finds that culture, social class and education matter more than genetics alone which have tended […]

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soul is our ultimate bowl

October 4, 2009

Parents and children have a symbiotic relationship:  as parents, we help facilitate the self of the child develop, while the act of parenting allows us to develop our deeper Selves (or perhaps more poetically, our soul-Selves). While science hasn’t yet located the soul, or the mind for that matter, that doesn’t mean the concept of […]

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