Tag: parenting
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Top 10 Books for Parent-Child Book Clubs with Tweens and Teens
Read Article: Top 10 Books for Parent-Child Book Clubs with Tweens and TeensAs the author of a book about mother-daughter book clubs, and as a parent who often read books with my daughter at home, I cannot speak highly enough about the transformative power of literature. My favorite part of sharing books with my daughter is having a discussion that begins with some aspect of the plot…
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Why We Should Talk to Our Kids About Class and Privilege
Read Article: Why We Should Talk to Our Kids About Class and PrivilegeI remember the first, rather generic conversation I had with my daughter when she was in elementary school about how her life compared with the lives of other children on this planet. I drew a triangle for her and said, “The tippy-top point is where the richest and most fortunate people in the world are.…
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Going Offline: 10 Fabulous Books to Read With Your Kids This Summer
Read Article: Going Offline: 10 Fabulous Books to Read With Your Kids This SummerIn today’s world of ubiquitous personal and mobile screens, family time is becoming harder and harder to come by, and is often framed or fractured by children’s (and parents’) prioritization of digital socializing over the in-person relationships right there inside the home. Family book clubs are educational and are a great way to encourage reading,…
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Why We Must Raise Children Who Care About the Welfare of Animals
Read Article: Why We Must Raise Children Who Care About the Welfare of AnimalsThis image has haunted me for over a week now, since I first saw it in my Facebook newsfeed. I simply cannot get it out of my mind, and that’s arguably a good thing. Normally I scroll quickly past such disturbing photos. There seem to be more than enough of them on social media, documenting…
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The Value of Boredom
Read Article: The Value of BoredomWhen I was a child, my parents often ignored me. It’s not that they were unkind to me. It’s that they had full lives of their own and didn’t like playing Candy Land. They believed that you should open the door and say to children, Go out and play. They understood the value of boredom.…
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How Highly Gendered Toys Present an Exclusively Heterosexual Worldview to Children
Read Article: How Highly Gendered Toys Present an Exclusively Heterosexual Worldview to ChildrenWhen girls and boys walk into a toy store in 2015, they see a significantly more gendered, heteronormative arrangement and selection of toys than I did as a girl forty years ago! Toys, grouped by gender, are prescriptive of gender roles. It is not only a problem of limiting the ways to be a girl…
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If Our Sons Were Treated Like Our Daughters
Read Article: If Our Sons Were Treated Like Our DaughtersCome with me. Let’s open the door to a parallel universe. You unlock this door with a key of imagination, just like on The Twilight Zone. Here in this parallel world, the rules are different because gender roles are flipped. Loving parents and teachers accept this strange culture as if it’s not so bad, or…
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Redshirting in the Age of Academic Kindergarten
Read Article: Redshirting in the Age of Academic KindergartenEvery September, the incoming group of kindergarteners becomes ever so slightly older. When I had my daughter almost twenty years ago, I remember a friend of mine exclaiming, “Oh, you’re so lucky, she’s birthday-blessed!” The term referred to her fall birth date, and the fact that she would automatically be one of the oldest students…
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When Children Die and It’s Incomprehensible, How We Move Forward as a Society
Read Article: When Children Die and It’s Incomprehensible, How We Move Forward as a SocietyAlmost twenty years ago, in February of 1993, my daughter was a toddler and sometimes hard to keep track of in stores if I took my eyes off her for a second, as all parents occasionally do. Around that time I lost her in Gymboree at the mall for perhaps 10 minutes because she was…