B.Y.O.F.

October 3, 2009

When my oldest son was around three or four, we were sitting at the table one afternoon having  a snack of some fruit.  A tiny fruit fly hovered near the cut pieces of cantaloupe and my child became focused on the fly, both vexed and transfixed.  A long moment hung there as he stared in […]

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Muhammad Yunus, micro-credit and parenting

October 2, 2009

Muhammad Yunus is a heroic innovator of support and effective, compassionate assistance for the poor:  he developed the concept of “micro-credit” where tiny loans are made to the very poorest people, mostly to women, so that they can develop self-employment opportunities (i.e. small businesses selling hand made crafts).  Interest is not charged and his Grameen […]

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As parents we need to do windows

October 1, 2009

If we don’t learn better, we humans tend to be ego-centric (i.e. believing that others think, feel and experience the world the way we do).  A great example of this is getting someone the perfect present… only to be crushed to see that they don’t appreciate it, don’t see why it’s so great. If we […]

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Make directives positive

September 30, 2009

A simple thing to keep in mind as a parent in order to make communication more effective is to lead by listening and understanding, but when you need to direct your kids, try telling them what you would like them to do rather than focusing in on what you do not want them to do. […]

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A Tale of Three Cities

September 29, 2009

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it […]

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Yom Kippur

September 28, 2009

I have heard it said that we need to know where we’ve been in order to know where we are going.  For the Jews, today is Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Hebrew calendar—a day where tradition holds that the lives (and deaths) for the year are sealed.  I am not particularly religious, and […]

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The stag by the road

September 27, 2009

I know that if you live in the country you see deer all the time, and even in LA you see them in the canyons sometimes, along with coyote, racoons, opposum and skunks… living alongside us in our finger-hold lives on this sometimes burning, sometimes shaking terrain.  But in my years in LA I’ve personally […]

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Asperger’s at eleven

September 26, 2009

I once worked with a ten-year-old boy with Asperger’s who changed entirely at age eleven.  While he had always been socially awkward and withdrawn, rarely making eye contact and showing the “classic” nearly obsessive, and exhaustive, level of interest in one particular, and narrow, subject (arachnids).  We were slowly working our way to a relationship, […]

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Trickster Chronicles—Why Teens Lie

September 25, 2009

From their nose to their toes, research suggests that our teen Pinocchios are pretty much bold-faced, inveterate and chronic prevaricators.   Last week I wrote about why younger kids lie, but this week I wanted to focus on the adolescent aspects and implications of lying as explored in a New York Magazine article, “Learning to […]

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Be a mensch, make it a better world

September 24, 2009

The word “mensch” is Yiddish for “man,” but it’s not really a sexist word, as the true essence of “mensch” means to be a human being in the kindest and most generous sense of our best homo-sapiens Selves. A recent New York Times Magazine article, “Are your friends making you fat?” by Clive Thompson (http://tiny.cc/7Tu4G) […]

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