Apparently, I’m not just a dirty diaper but “an extra poopy dirty diaper.” “Oh yeah,” I tell my 4-year-old daughter, “you’re an extra poopy dirty diaper with ...

One of the hardest parts of parenting for me, is restraint. By restraint, I mean shutting my mouth when I get the urge to talk about grown- up topics in the presence of my kids. This column, about wha...

My 4-year-old Zoe started her first day of preschool this morning with flowers in her hair, a new “pretty dress” and an advertisement for Budweiser beer dangling from her neck. And it wasn...

As this article about the benefits of setting strict bedtimes can attest, kids need sleep, lots of it, and when they don’t get enough they behave badly, take longer to put to sleep, and sleep w...

Do you have a best friend? A soul sister, or two, or a half-dozen? And do you believe these friendships will last a lifetime? Back in February, I wrote two posts on female friendships: one was on how ...

This story made my day.   My son’s fifth-grade class changes clothes for gym (seems young to me, but isn’t everything a bit rushed nowadays?). While Zachary was changing, a classm...

It started out as a sweet story. A six-year-old from Delaware was so excited about joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to take his new camping utensil to school so that he could use it to eat his lu...

When I was in grade school, I had this bad habit of picking at the skin around my thumbnails. I wasn’t even aware that I was rubbing the nail from the index finger along the skin there, but I...

A brilliant full moon spied through our skylight, casting a sliver of white light at the foot of Esther and Isla’s bed, for most of the night last night. Isla woke me up four times, talking, yel...

Forget Obama’s suggestion that we increase the length of the school day or cut out some of summer vacation. Perhaps instead schools could reclaim some of the teaching time they already have b...