My sons were often the only Jewish children in their classes, given that Portland, Oregon has a relatively small Jewish population. Like parents in minority groups all over, my husband and I took on the role of coming into our boys’ classrooms every year bearing food and stories in order to bridge the divide that…
What do anxiety, attention problems, bullying, and adrenaline-seeking all have in common? Although these stories all seem to be coming from a different place, there is a shared thread between them … stay with me.…the cyber-bully dynamicMy first assignment as a school counsellor, almost 20 years ago now, was an incident of cyber-bullying. It was…
A very long time ago it seems, I gave a talk called Cultivating Caring Children. I loved that material. More recently I had the opportunity to keynote on empathy. Oh my goodness, I was taken by surprise by the rant that was in me. I decided at that time to create a course with empathy as the…
Let me introduce you to Mister Rogers and Mister Dressup. Perhaps they need no introduction, especially if you are from my generation. Or perhaps you have heard stories from your parents. In my day, these two shows were a much slower counterpart to the fast-paced Sesame Street and Electric Company. At the time, Mister Rogers…
Some of our first pets were baby chicks — twenty-day-old precious Buff Orpingtons, Australorps, and Rhode Island Reds. New to chicken farming, my husband and I learned how to care for them alongside our children. I could tell on that first day, however, that one of those chicks was not like the others. It was…
I keep waiting for someone to ask me this. Not even when writing Hold On To Your Kids, over 20 years ago now, did anyone ask me – not my editors or even my most articulate co-writer, Gabor Maté. Perhaps it is obvious and doesn’t require further explanation. On the other hand, the capitalization was a deliberate choice…
‘Tis the season of beginnings, most obviously of a new cycle of time of course. This often comes with some attempts at fresh starts and renewed resolutions. I have a number of such beginnings in mind for myself.What I am thinking about however, is something more philosophical but also much more salient, especially in the…
Recently I was saying goodbye to my 24-year-old daughter who was going off on a long overseas journey: a trip she was both excited about and ready for. The intention for the trip is that it will be not only an exploration of new lands, but also an exploration of her inner landscape. After all…
“Just make a mark,” Tammy said, as she boldly drew a messy line on her paper.I had been the kind of girl who coloured between the lines. I wasn’t comfortable with things that were uncomfortable. Things I didn’t know how to do. Things that were messy. Yet something had been shifting and I knew there…
Sometimes in our travels we come upon something that seemed initially like just one more place to visit, only in retrospect to reveal itself as absolutely key to our understanding of the world and our place in it. I remember a few such transforming experiences in my life. My travels over the theoretical landscape of…