English philosopher John Locke once advised that children should have “shoes so thin, that they might leak and let in water, whenever he comes near it.” Yikes! I thought when I first read that passage in “Some Thoughts Concerning Education” years ago. The mother’s heart of caution within me still balks at that idea … but
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A few years ago, I took some adolescent grandchildren to the grocery store and was astonished by their wonderment. One had never set foot in a grocery store, and the others were infrequent visitors, to put it mildly. They learned some things that day, like how to pick out the best bunch of bananas and
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Going through some old, family documents this week, I stumbled upon a clipping from “Harvard Magazine” that included an address given by Reverend Peter J. Gomes of Harvard University to the school’s graduating seniors in 1982. It’s a heart-felt and lively address, which is reproduced below. What stands out most is that Rev. Gomes recognized that
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If you ever want to get an interesting – sometimes shocking – glimpse of today’s culture, try reading the advice columns that populate many of the nation’s newspapers. A letter to Slate’s “Dear Prudence” column caught my eye today. The letter writer explained that a friend (“Chrissy”) in her late 30s was still dealing with the effects of her parents’ divorce, roughly
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Author and mother Gina Bontempo noted on X recently that the online uproar over a woman being the “default parent” in her child’s life smacks of the lie that men and women can, and should, be treated as interchangeable. For those unfamiliar with internet lingo, the phenomenon in question is as old as mothers and
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A newborn baby is about 25 billion times bigger at birth than it was at conception. That incredible growth occurs in just nine months. If an adult did that, his head would be among the moon and stars by the end. Nothing should grow that quickly, yet it happens with every baby. Every time. And,
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