October is National Bullying Prevention Month, and the issue of bullying—both at school and through cyberspaces—continues to negatively affect the lives of children in many ways. “I think bullying has been thought of as something that happens in childhood, in that it’s something that all kids go through, and …
Read More »Teen Years
Road Test
I am car shopping, which is both exciting and nerve wracking. In my household are one teenager and one college student. Hence, the mixed emotions. I am looking at cars for them, so safety is key. But so is park-ability. We live in a rowhouse community that provides every driver’s …
Read More »Still At It
We are two weeks into the school year and already each of my children has dealt with a situation of gun violence. For my oldest, it happened just before she returned to college at Temple University in Philadelphia. Police serving a warrant for drug crimes near Temple’s hospital ran up …
Read More »Divorce & College Costs
I started 2019 wondering if I had to sue my ex-husband or not. Happy new year to me. We have two kids, a son who is in high school and a daughter who is studying at Temple University in Philadelphia. She and her dad, my ex, got into an argument …
Read More »Seals, GPS and Back-Seat Drivers
The trip starts with snafus, because there always is a karmic, you-just-try-and-relax comeuppance before I attempt to slide away from real life into the magic of vacationland. This time: My 16-year-old son leaves a bag with all of his catcher’s equipment in a rental car that I had driven the …
Read More »Kids and Mental Health
The numbers tell a story I know too well. The same week as two celebrity suicides last month, the Centers for Disease Control released new data showing that the suicide rate in this country has increased by 30 percent. In 2016 alone, 45,000 lost their lives to suicide. The state …
Read More »Why we are writing about shootings
In college in the early ’90s, I studied for a semester at the University of Nice, one in a group of about 15 students traveling through the University of Maryland, College Park. Most of us barely knew each other – although some of us have remained friends decades later – …
Read More »What About Boys?
Last year, I attended the senior awards ceremony at my daughter’s high school to see her be honored for serving as class president. It was one of the first awards of the evening — she and the three other girls who had served as officers were called to the stage …
Read More »9 Days, No Teens
I ended 2017 with nine kid-less days. Nine days, no teens. In odd years, my children travel to Bozeman, Montana, to spend Christmas with their father and his family. My daughter breezed in from college on a Wednesday afternoon and the next day I dropped her and her brother at …
Read More »What a Roller Coaster!
When my daughter and her friends left for college this fall, there seemed to be a flood of emotion online. Suddenly everyone I knew on Facebook was dropping off children for their first year of college, and everyone was tearful and choked up. Not me. “This doesn’t mean I am …
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