I spent too much time the other day talking to my children about death and suicide. My oldest daughter went to the funeral of her former youth group counselor, an 18-year-old recent high school graduate who took her own life. A seemingly bubbly, optimistic and activist young woman who became clinically depressed over the past…
Here’s what I want to know: when did parenting become entitlement to impose young children on people around you in places which were, not long ago, understood to be adult spaces? A mom recently posted on a local listserv, called Park Slope Parents, that she’s offended by a neighborhood pub with a sign on its…
Last week, in an effort to woo my 9-year-old] daughter from the comfort of her bed, I offered to bring her clothes to her. Contrary to her assurances the night before, nothing had been laid out. So I began searching through the array of possibilities. Shirt after shirt came out of the drawer and each…
The last time I drove up the hill of Hamilton Heights I was a high school senior at Mount Saint Joseph Academy — steering the gigantic wheel of my father’s asthmatic ’65 Malibu. But today I was behind the wheel of my Volvo on a reconnaissance mission to see if it would be the right…
I read this recent New York Times piece called “Shouting is the New Spanking” on yelling with great interest, because I have been known to yell at my family members. Okay, family members, you can stop laughing now. I haven’t been “known” to yell, rather I could be described as “a yeller.” It feels a…
I read Elana Sztokman’s post about her daughter’s nose piercing with great interest, as for years now I’ve been fending off my daughters’ pleading requests to get their ears pierced. Now, I know that ear piercing is no big deal in our culture – my own ears are pierced, with three holes in my right…
This week, for the second time in little more than two months, I stood anxiously waiting in Terminal 4 of John F. Kennedy International Airport for a daughter to arrive on Emirates Airlines’s morning flight from Dubai. Dubai! I don’t think I even heard of Dubai until I was 40, and now my kids are…
Dear Bintel Brief: I want to be a Free-Range parent, I really do. I want to let my kids have the same kind of fun I had as a child. But I am so paranoid it is ridiculous. When I was in third, grade I used to walk a few blocks up the street to…
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