I always seem to get comments when I rant about marketers targeting our children (see Pirates). Now, here's something we can do about it! Center for a New American Dream has a quick, easy letter writing campaign to tell marketers not to exploit schools. Click here to learn more or take action.

There’s been a lot of political talk around our house lately, with the mid-term elections coming up and all. Even seven-year-old Luke has caught the vibe. After we recently heard Michael Jackson on the car radio singing “Billy Jean,” Luke started crooning his own version: “Dick Cheney is not my love…” He says he just [...]

Our community garden is being shut down. There’s a “For Sale” sign blocking the gate, and the garden is riddled with holes where people have salvaged clematis, lilac, irises, and lilies. Our own plot has been empty since Saturday when I pried the thick-rooted asparagus out of the corner it was wedged in and brought [...]

We were actually running on time this morning, even though a friend called at 7:20 and asked us to take her daughter to school. One extra kid was no trouble, especially since she sat on my bed and read while I admonished my own children to put their shoes on and brush their teeth. Still, [...]

I had forgotten that my last post was called “Slowing Down” until I started writing this. It’s been unusually long since I’ve posted because I had to start teaching a week before the children went back to school. Then there was the Labor Day pot luck, the end of summer overnight camp out in Fairmont [...]

This morning my seven-year-old son Luke said, “Sometimes I’m having so much fun I forget I’m alive.” The kid is good at living life to the fullest, though sometimes he has so much fun he forgets to look out for oncoming traffic. It’s a tricky balance, keeping the presence and engagement of a child while [...]

I suppose a blog post written on my birthday should be especially reflective—taking stock of the past year, looking forward to the future, something like that. And I think it is a good time for an assessment. It’s been eight months since my mom died and eight years since we moved to Philadelphia. That’s actually [...]

I’m learning a few things from dog training that’s making me think about the ways I’ve been training my kids:1. Let them know that you’re the “Alpha dog” and that they need to obey you. When I first became a parent, I figured I wanted my children to question things like bad government policies when [...]

A few days ago I was at a party and met a middle aged woman who said, “I want to do something really important before I die!” She listed some possibilities, like going to jail to end the war or restoring America’s democracy. I understood her sentiment. With so many problems in the world, I [...]

I’ve had it with Disney. It’s bad enough that their female characters have waists that would choke Thumbelina. It’s bad enough that many Disney films reflect racial stereotypes, like The Lion King, where the darker lion is the evil one, and the shiftless hyenas have African American accents. It’s bad enough that they’ve convinced us [...]