Saturday, January 12, 2013
“Piggy,” my daughter’s new boar-bristle hairbrush, sends my youngest running, shrieking at the thought of its real-animal, scratchy touch. I don’t dare tell her about 2009 and the swine flu.
Mayor Thomas Menino’s declaration of a public health emergency this week reminded me of the last time we took the flu so seriously, during the 2009 pandemic. On an October Saturday that year, my family stood in line for 2 1/2 hours with one Red Sox player, his wife and kids, and dozens of others at our pediatric practice to receive the H1N1 vaccine. At the end of that line lay nasal mist, thankfully, no injections. Because a month before, our children had already received the seasonal vaccine. And they needed another dose of H1N1 spray one month after the first to provide protection. We made three doctor’s visits just for the kids' flu vaccines that year, but I was relieved to do it. The unfortunately named "swine flu," which contains …
Friday, December 14, 2012
Why "We're No. 2!" is not a bad thing: High scores on an international science and math exam taken by eighth graders around the world show that Massachusetts students are doing better than American students as a whole.
Our citywide angst over the education of Boston’s children caught a break this week, with the good-news results for Massachusetts from an international study of mathematics and science achievement. The ray of sunshine in these parts is that Massachusetts eighth graders scored second highest in the world on the science portion of the TIMSS, the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. Just Singapore’s scores were higher. In math, the Commonwealth ranked sixth behind South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan. The test, taken by 600,000 eighth graders worldwide, is meant to show learning trends over time and has been given every four years since 1995. Massachusetts participated at a level which allowed statistical…
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Add scientific research to your list of activities for children in Boston.
Even if you’re buying diapers and wipes instead of No. 2 pencils and notebooks this month, you can still go back to school. The idea of college – sleeping in until your first class, learning instead of teaching, even institutional food (at least you didn’t have to cook it, and then do the dishes) – might be pretty appealing compared with, well, everything about being a grown-up. So, since there’s no escaping the grown-up part, here’s a compromise: Go back to school, and take the baby with you. In our research-rich city, you can make a little contribution to science by volunteering to participate in child development studies at many of the colleges and universities in Boston. Your child might be asked to perform simple tasks such as …
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
After Ann Romney's adoring tribute to her husband at the RNC, the Democrats' spin on love and marriage supports same-sex unions.
Ann Romney’s blanket of love, her speech at last week’s Republican National Convention, was an appeal to women voters that warmed hearts with her talk of a deep love for her husband, their very real marriage, and Americans’ shared love of country. But on Day One of their convention in Charlotte, N.C., the Democrats took that language of love and used it to support gay rights and the freedom to love whomever you please. Love wasn’t mentioned in the keynote or by speakers whose job it was to focus on single issues such as healthcare or the economy. But according to the Democratic National Convention, in President Barack Obama’s America, being gay is OK – and same-sex marriage should be, too. As on-again, off-again White House staffer and …
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
List-Mania: Recent rankings score Boston high for young and old alike, making it a fine place to live for a long time.
The flow of frozen-yogurt seekers kept the door of the Allston shop in near-constant motion. With the skies already dark, for our little kids spooning into their scoops, it was late. But not for the customers coming in: With school yet to start, the relaxed, homework-free summer faces and bodies around us were uniformly young, as befits a neighborhood of students. We were with friends who were visiting Boston to tour colleges with their high schooler and two younger children. As the other mom at our table turned slightly to see the crowd, a bit of a shudder passed through her. “I can’t be around so many people this age,” she said, smiling and shaking her head. She was thinking of all the parenting she’d done, and all that was left to do. I…
Monday, July 16, 2012
"One child broke a bowl carrying her dinner dishes to the kitchen. One burned herself in three places with that first-world, post-Martha Stewart version of a necessary household tool, the hot-glue gun."
I’m being terrorized by a machete-wielding, three-year-old child: There are pictures of him in my head, working in his Amazon habitat, helping around the house, practicing cutting wood. His six-year-old neighbor is there too. She’s on an expedition away from her own family; cleaning camp, fishing for dinner, and preparing meals for an entire group of people. These accomplished children are the latest images of childhood competing with my own family, leaving me breathless as I discover what parenting mistakes I’m making today. Should I be a Chinese Tiger Mom? Or more Français? Am I overparenting and being overprotective? Depriving my kids of nature, a dog, or just sunscreen? All are topics covered in the latest health and parenting news, …
Monday, June 18, 2012
Massachusetts says bullying is down, but 40 percent of middle school girls report being bullied.
Dear Syd, It’s 10:30 p.m., you’re finally asleep and we’re both exhausted, but I think you’re bully-proofed for tomorrow. I was worried about the stomachache you said lasted all day yesterday. So I spoke with the doctor and went over some ideas with you after school: drink plenty of water, keep a pain diary, a food diary. Walking home on a humid, cool, green afternoon, we chuckled about that. But another diary may be in order. You were acting rather helpless at bedtime, preferring mom’s full turn-down service to a quick goodnight wish a couple of minutes later. I was trying to settle in for an evening of my own, non-parenting work, so I yelled, of course. Tears. And then, the confession that your friends are picking on you. Sydney, why …
Monday, June 4, 2012
I was 'mom enough' to resist Time magazine's bait. Until my kids forced the issue.
Did you know that all magazine covers contain the words “hot” or “sex?” Of course, they don’t. But my second-grader believes it is true. Just one glossy Boston freebie lying on our coffee table was used to make her point. While we keep few of the fashion mags and supermarket rags that are the focus of her headline criticism, she sees and hears enough, just from being out in the world. She knows that “sex” not only refers to gender, but to something that she’s too young to feel comfortable knowing about yet. And “hot” often has nothing to do with the weather. So, as long as we were onto uncomfortable topics and magazines, I decided to ask my kids for their opinions on the now infamous Time “Are You Mom Enough?” cover photo. Whether you are…
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Low attendance at a city-sponsored meeting sends the wrong signal.
When you’re a member of the audience, you hope to outnumber the performers. An empty venue is disheartening for those on stage and there’s less energy in the room. Boston Public Schools (BPS) took the stage on a rainy Tuesday night, holding its latest community meeting on improving school choice. But with fewer than two dozen people attending, speakers included – we barely made it. Go ahead, you can yawn – “community meeting on improving school choice” is one boring string of words, and not an event destined to be standing room only. But I was wide-eyed, thinking of the immense task Mayor Thomas Menino created for the city in January, in promising to overhaul the lottery assignment process and begin fostering school communities for 57,000…
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Sometimes it takes a leap of faith to raise a child with a labor-intensive approach like attachment parenting.
The nurse had wrapped the baby snug as a burrito. In the darkened hospital room, my husband and I watched as she nearly tossed our bundle in the air, trying to soothe the cries of someone so new to the world that she sounded as if she regretted entry, and was wondering about the alternatives. The way this expert dressed in scrubs knew she was in for a challenge gave me a sense of foreboding. After the safety of the maternity ward, what was to come? How wanted this baby had been, how completely grateful we were that she had arrived, did not ease the sense that I had just given birth to a handful. We waited over the next few weeks, then months, for this child to seem more happy than tearful to be here. We sang our favorite songs, we danced…
lilady
11:30 pm on Thursday, January 17, 2013
Why in the Media Editor of Age of Autism, a notorious anti-vaccine blog permitted to post her off-topic walls of words spamming comments here? more ›