Tovah Klein is author of How Toddlers Thrive (Simon & Schuster, 2014), available online & in stores. She’s also director of the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development, and has been for over 20 years — she knows her stuff. I get her RSS feed and it is often so interesting, I find myself reading the whole thing, even though my kids are far from toddlers. That’s what happened the other day, and I asked if I could reprint her answer to this mom of a 4-year-old’s pressing question: “My son is very social and loves to be outside. He…
Author: lskenazy
Please watch this 2-minute reverie on parenting, tweens and how many Hershey’s products two people can consume in one sitting, and then give me your reaction (because mine was visceral): The spot shows a girl preternaturally sad because even though her (pathetic, doofus) dad is at home with her, he is tied up with a Skype call from work. I just can’t imagine a kid as self-sufficient as this pixie pining for daddy-time during the work day. And I resent the fact that she resents her dad being busy. Just because he works from home doesn’t mean he’s her companion,…
Here’s a question for you, folks: Last weekend, the weather was amazing up here, in Montreal. We went to the park. While the kids were playing, we got to talking with another set of parents. After a while, my oldest, 5 ½, asked if she could go home by herself. We were almost done with the conversation, the park is 200m (600 ft) from home, and the backdoor was not locked, so she could get in the house. We said yes. She took the sidewalk (I like her to cross the street at intersections when she is by herself), and…
An article on how to get your kids to play outside would have seemed like an Onion headline back when…well, back anytime before The Onion. I was a bookworm and I still spent a ton of time outside. My kids, not so much. If you want to get your own offspring outdoors for any reason — including simply allowing you some peace at your computer — here are some wise tips from Angela Hanscom, founder of TimberNook and author of the new book: “Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children.” Three Ways to…
My friend Julie Gunlock lives just outside of DC. She’s a great mom AND the author of a book I love, From Cupcakes to Chemicals: How the Culture of Alarmism Makes Us Afraid of Everything and How to Fight Back. Well, just recently she found herself fighting back a particularly stubborn misconception. She’d let her kids, 9, 7 and 5, wait in the car for 15 minutes while she ran into the store to get dinner. She emerged to find an FBI agent flashing his badge and insisting, “M’am, you can’t do that” because “kids get snatched all the time.”…
This amazing video was screened at the US Play Coalition conference by Kent Callison, director of communications and marketing at GameTime, creators of playground equipment (including the wildly popular Expression Swing). Kudos to Unilever, for making such a powerful commercial about kids, prison, and freedom. https://www.youtube.com/embed/q2f76pgNap4 This is a video that should be shown at schools cutting back on recess, as well as throughout communities where the playgrounds are often empty. We certainly don’t mean to imprison our kids, but when we worry that anytime our kids are outside, unsupervised, they are in danger from predators and/or the police (see…
Last fall, a man who was driving his van around Susquehanna University looking for his lost dog was mistaken for a predator. Why? Probably because he was…a man. Driving a van. Looking for a “lost dog.” Never mind all the “LOST DOG” posters the family had put up. Never mind the fact that his teenage nephew was in the passenger seat and his wife in the seat behind them. Man + van is all it takes. As the Orange Street News reported — exclusively! Susquehanna University has banned a Selinsgrove father from his own son’s preschool graduation after mistakenly accusing…
Hats off to Sarah Sahagian for understanding this issue so deeply, as her reporting in The Beaverton indicates: Toronto — After her 38 year-old son Ben Johnson moved out and got a job at Starbucks, Child Protective Services decided to investigate his mother, Deborah, for possible child neglect and abandonment. “A neighbour saw Ben working as a barista at Starbucks, and she freaked out,” explained Deborah Johnson, whose son was, until recently, living in the basement. “When he told her he was living in a rented apartment with friends, she got even more frantic and contacted Child Protective Services.” When…
I’m thrilled and worried when these stories make the news (via CTV): A Winnipeg mom was doing the dishes while her three kids, 10, 5 and 2 , played in their fenced-in backyard. A neighbor called to report “unattended” kids frolicking and Jacqui Kendrick was visited by a child protective services rep. The rep asked questions about what Jacqui’s own childhood was like, how she punished her kids, and where they slept. She even looked in Jacqui’s fridge. Happily, the shrink that the CTV reporter interviewed for some perspective pointed out that neighbors should complain to each OTHER, not to…
. I was speaking at the Minnesota Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers last week, even as this story was sent to me by my dear friend whose 20something son has Autism. This issue is so thorny, fraught and sad: If a person is developmentally disabled and therefore not in step with others his or her age, is it any wonder they would, for instance, make inappropriate overtures, or even want to watch child porn, since they relate to the age of the kids in it, and yet are already sexualized young men and women? It’s not a pleasant…