One of the more controversial parenting subjects that has appeared between my own childhood and the current era is the topic of leashes for children. Proponents insist that leashes increase a parent’s sense of ease in dangerous situations while providing a toddler with more range of motion than more traditional forms of restraint, such as…
Author: Clio
You must be kidding
In a recent Attachment Parenting discussion, it was asked: Do you refer to your children as “children” or “kids”? It was posited in that question that AP and other ostensibly progressively minded parents are more likely to use “child” while more traditional parents are more likely to use “kid.” “Child,” after all, is more respectful….
The Microsoft Tech that Saved Christmas
Last night, our 18-month-old kidlet was in the mood to have me play a video game. I know this because he handed me an Xbox 360 controller and pointed emphatically at the television. Since I wasn’t doing anything else and it was a welcome break from the near-constant barrage of Scooby-Doo! episodes, I decided to…
Praising children
Prompted by a recent discussion on an Attachment Parenting community, I decided to read the first chapter of NurtureShock: New Thinking about Children, on the subject of praise. In the discussion on the community in question, one person (apparently proudly) announced that she never praises her children, because all praise is bad in that it…
Attachment Parenting: A response to Erica Jong
I consider myself to be following an attachment parenting strategy. However, I found myself recognizing very little of what noted author Erica Jong characterizes with that phrase. She speaks at length about martyring mothers, anti-feminist attitudes inherent in the philosophy, and so forth, giving examples like Angelina Jolie as celebrities attachment parents. In a WSJ…
On dichotomizing the world
Or, “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” Spanish has two verbs which are translated into English as “is”: estar and ser. These verbs are, importantly, not synonyms in Spanish. Generally speaking, estar is used to refer to temporary conditions and ser to intrinsic qualities: Estar: La manzana está verde. The apple is green, i.e., not ripe….
The suicide “epidemic”
In the wake of recent high-profile suicides of young adults over sexual orientation, the media has been buzzing with words like “surge” and “buzz.” I was curious about whether such a phenomenon was really occurring. First off, it’s very important to keep in mind that, sadly, about 4000 young people (15-24) choose to end their…
The gay agenda
I was just commenting to my wife that I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the media has suddenly noticed a “surge” in gay teen suicides about the same time that certain gay rights organizations are pressuring Congress to push the Safe Schools Improvement Act, which “would require schools receiving federal funds to implement bullying…
What is “bullying,” anyway?
I think we may be losing sight, in the wake of incidents such as the Tyler Clementi suicide, of what “bullying” really is. For instance, I’ve been seeing reality TV being blamed as a major cause of the perceived increase in bullying: Reality TV communicates that humiliation is an acceptable form of entertainment, says the…
“It gets better”: What does?
The national media’s attention is currently on the plight of young gay men who choose to commit suicide, and the social forces that encourage that decision. One of the recurrent themes in this media attention is that we need to communicate that “it gets better.” It’s easy to assume that there’s some moment, upon graduation…