A few words from Amy Aikon of the Los Angeles Times that I thought related to an earlier post by our good friend Matt (see “Monster Dad Abuses Child, Writes About It”). Aikon relates the story of a Thanksgiving holiday ride that was screwed up by an ill-behaved two-year-old named Adam. The kid screamed so …
Monthly Archives: December 2009
I Hate… I Mean Heart Forest Kindergarten
Nothing really critical to say about this Times article on the Waldorf School “Forest Kindergarten” (“For Forest Kindergartners, Class Is Back to Nature, Rain or Shine”) in Sarasota Springs, New York, other than that’s exactly the life I want for my son, but one that for many reasons (my job, my divorce, my lack of …
Raising little Christmas Jews
It started with an innocent enough question, from me to another parent at Dalia’s pre-school: what are you doing for Christmas? “First of all,” she said, “we’re Jewish, so we’re not doing anything for Christmas.” Ah, right. Oops. Me too. In the fine tradition of Walter Benjamin and, I suppose, the 12 Apostles, I am …
The endless mystery
Sit the kid down, and he promptly starts to bawl. Pick the kid up, he quiets down and starts examining everything around him. Put him down again, he cries. Pick him up, and he stops. This I understand. Attention and contact are soothing–there’s nothing hard to understand about that. But here’s what I will never …