Monday, December 31, 2012
A year after writing a major story on overparenting, Katherine Ozment talks about how she remade herself as a mom.
Give a boy a watch and send him out the door: After her 10-year-old leaves the house, Katherine Ozment may not see her son again until he reads his wrist and knows it’s dinnertime. Today, she’s fine with that. But one year ago, Ms. Ozment was just coming to terms with her parental hovering habits. Going out to play meant dressing everyone for the weather, packing snacks and water, mom loading the baby into the stroller – a real group activity. Her intense monitoring of her three kids’ every mood and management of their days was, as she wrote, “changing the very nature of their childhood.” So she decided to become a different kind of parent. Last December, Ozment wrote a story for Boston Magazine about how we overprotect our children, …
Sunday, May 6, 2012
If you're used to walking home with the groceries, there's novelty to visiting New England's largest supermarket.
When it’s just a carton of milk you need, a 35-mile drive is definitely out of the way. But if you’re up for a pilgrimage, the new Wegmans in Northborough is New England’s largest supermarket and the chain’s first store in Massachusetts. There is some psychology behind wanting to see 138,000 square feet of produce and everything else the modern American grocery sells, in a box so big that there are 30 check-out lines and a red phone right by the yogurt case, connecting you to customer service – just in case you get lost, or have a question. But it’s not just me: Wegmans’ reputation for superior customer service, as well as their competitive price-quality-choice mix, drew 25,000 visitors to Northborough last October 16, breaking opening …
Monday, April 23, 2012
New children's stores in the mall draw parents with kids to the Shops at Prudential Center, a place that relieves the dearth of community spaces in the Back Bay.
Stay in your lane, pass on the left, and neither exceed nor fall under the speed limit: These are the unspoken traffic rules at Boston’s Prudential Center mall. Crowded with office workers, tourists, and locals, the busy hall off Boylston Street reminds you that you are still in the city. But pass the north-side main drag, and the aisles widen while the lovely skylight ceilings persist. Ahhh, space. It’s here that young families are making the mall their own. A landscaped garden, places indoors to linger, and now a family-oriented trio of businesses are all holding down the age of the average Pru visitor. With most residents in our urban neighborhoods tucked into condos without yards, we covet any living space beyond our own homes. The …
Monday, April 9, 2012
Whether or not the Florida’s teen’s clothing contributed to his death, we can use the lesson of appearance to protect our kids.
Squinting into the distance, I search for my 10-year-old. With rolling backpack in tow, she’s walking ahead of me after school. The meandering pace of her little sibling was slowing us down, and big sister was eager to get homework started. “Mom, can I go home by myself?” The leash lengthens as a child grows, and that day I let it out some more. So with plenty of daylight left, I handed her the keys. My daughter is a different color, shape, and size than Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old in Florida who was fatally shot by a man on a neighborhood watch five weeks ago. But fear of harm done to your child can shorten the leash. And what parent in America has not rethought the distance between herself and her children since Trayvon’s tragedy? …
Angela Wang
3:02 pm on Monday, May 7, 2012
Jim and Bette, thanks for mentioning the Chelsea Market Basket. The Northboro Wegmans is barely larger than the MB, and if you're interested in buying local, MB is a Mass. company. But Wegmans has such a longstanding, high-profile positive corporate image, it was interesting to see, given that they are now invested in doing business in our state. I'd like to see if the DeMoulas Co. will want to … more ›