Undoubtedly, my favorite memories of childhood involve all of the freedom I had. Some of that freedom was achieved through sneaking around, but most of it was just a way of life. I didn’t have to negotiate it with my parents — they just assumed that my sister and I would kick up our own [...]

You know how the TV is a pretty awesome partner in parenting? Well, literature can be too. Whereas the TV-mom is best used as anesthetic for getting your kids to zone out while you take a shower, books — stories! — can help in those more complicated parenting things like moral development and making good [...]

Maybe don’t go over to Breed ‘Em and Weep, where you can read about blogger Jennifer Mattern’s dream-crushing tendencies. You might see yourself in her story and, if you do, you probably won’t like it. Mattern hasn’t always known she was a dream-crusher, but her daughter was kind enough to point it out one recent [...]

Here’s something to mull over: kids, in general, are engaged in so little self-directed, theme-less, purely from their own minds play these days that, in order to maybe try this kind of free play out, they need to be shown how to do it. Kids need to relearn how to play, according to some child [...]

Nothing beats a story that ends with the bad guys getting their comeuppance: evil dictators getting deposed, bank robbers going to jail, Farkus suffering punches to the face by an unhinged, obscenities-spewing Ralphie in “A Christmas Story.” What makes us root for justice to be served? Is this something we learn as children, after that [...]

A post over at Parenting.com titled “Why Are We Un-Boy-Ing Our Boys?” discussed a typical scenario found in schools all over: A fidgety boy is disinterested in the classroom instruction, and couldn’t care less about the current Phonics lesson. He is soon referred to a specialist who says he may be slightly delayed … or [...]

Either I hit the jackpot or I’m just that boring of a mom (my money is on option 2). Either way, my kids love school and heading back to the classroom, which they did two days ago, was no problem for us at all. But not everyone picked crappy summer camps and unintentionally deprived their [...]