JP’s kindergarten class has a nice little library from which the children are allowed to borrow books and bring them home. JP does so regularly and we read the book before he goes to bed. Heartwarming stuff, particularly as the reading period is that wonderful moment just before both kids (usually) disappear for the night’s …
Monthly Archives: December 2011
Children Are Evil, and This Is Normal
When I was a kid, my brother, Steve, and I didn’t always get along. Actually, I was often downright mean to him, as I wrote recently in this travel story for Afar magazine: “Can we put Stevie in the trash now?” was how it began, when I was almost 4, a week after my newborn …
The Princess Syndrome
“Princess Snow White!” screamed Sasha one day last week in the middle of the East Broadway F-train station. I looked around: Huh? There were no subway posters advertising Disney’s oldest animated princess, no kids dressed up as Snow White—nothing. Then I gazed down two sets of stairs to the train platform, where on another kid’s …
Outsourced Beatings
Listen up, assholes: if you want to beat your kids, do it yourself. That’s the moral of this (un)godly tidbit from Southern California’s Inland Empire (yes, San Bernardino actually calls itself that) over the weekend. Some parents thought their 15-year-old son had been smoking. Punishable offense? Maybe. My kids don’t smoke. They’re still in preschool …