"If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands." Every kid knows that insipid song.  It scrolls through a palette of feelings, "If you're sad...If you're angry..." always pointing to the refrain "but if you're happy and you know it, shout hooray!" as if that's the... Read more...

For years I have extolled the value of empty cardboard boxes—the ones in which your big appliances arrive—in the lives of children. You see cardboard box to be recycled; your child sees secret cave, fire station, beauty parlor, club house. But Caine Monroy has broadened even my... Read more...

There’s nothing like a toddler’s tantrum or an older child’s melt down to bring a parent to her knees.  It’s one of those behaviors that makes you feel inadequate and helpless, to say nothing of incompetent. Put that tantrum in a public place—a restaurant, the grocery store, the... Read more...

I might hold the record for having given the most single birthday parties. Each of my kids (triplets) had his/her own party from age two years old on up. It’s not that I am a glutton for punishment; it’s that there’s not much that is all yours... Read more...

They’re getting younger and younger! Now there’s Junior Kumon, a program to teach your two year old academics. Seriously!  In a recent New York Times article, Fast-Tracking to Kindergarten, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/fashion/with-kumon-fast-tracking-to-kindergarten.html?_r=1&emc=eta1 author Kate Zernike highlights the proliferation of the new Kumon (and other) tutoring programs designed to  jumpstart... Read more...

Isn’t it amazing that as soon as the phone rings and you answer it, someone else needs you? This phenomenon, phonus interruptus, is pervasive in homes all across the country. Further, the more you tell your child that you are on the phone (as if he hasn’t noticed)... Read more...

Was your parent one who asked, when you brought home an A-, “Why didn’t you get an A?” So many adults have a version of this tale to share. They have never forgotten it, twenty or thirty years later. Most children really do want their parents to be proud... Read more...

As often happens, over the weekend I ran into a client at the grocery store.  Mid aisle we stopped for a brief  greeting.  As soon as the mom began to speak to me, her son piped up with,  “Mom, Mom, can we get some Gatorade?” tugging at... Read more...

An Interview with Betsy by Heidi Stevens of the Chicago Tribune Q: Your kindergartener is extremely shy around strangers. How do you get her to warm up to relatives she only sees at the holidays? Few topics are more complicated than family at the holidays, which is why Betsy... Read more...

“You will not believe this story,” began the email from a client who had just returned from family services for the Jewish New Year. She described the mother and three children sitting next to her own family. “She was knitting!” (Yes, you read it correctly,... Read more...