Common Sense Media, that great website for all things kids and tech, is encouraging families to join their latest campaign: Device Free Dinners. It is a simple concept: families commit to spending time at the dinner table focused upon each other rather than their devices. As Common Sense founder and CEO James P. Steyer explains, "Everything from better grades [...]
Hello GCP Parents! Long time. Been working quite a bit on an exciting project that continues where this blog began (think a comprehensive collection of GCPblog posts and lots more--stay tuned) so there has not been much posting this year. Hope you have been combing through the archives for interesting and relevant articles. But today I came across this [...]
Over the years that GCP has been around, we have had to write an alarming number of posts with the same basic message: how do we talk to our sons about unimaginably horrible and senseless killings that they can see footage of over and over on CNN? This time it is Paris. It has been Lebanon, it has been [...]
As I talked with a good friend recently about our sons and their social lives, he quoted an old saying that rang so true: "Show me his friends and I'll show you his future." Our sons will most certainly have a lot of friends over the course of their childhood and adolescence. But at some point he will develop [...]
Giving constructive criticism to our sons so that they hear and accept it can be so tough, especially when our boys are in their middle and high school years. Constructive criticism lets them know they could do something better without blaming or shaming them. Takes a lot of parenting skill to get this right! We at GCP believe strongly [...]
GCP has been checking out back to school articles for parents on line, and we think these are especially worth reading: The 8 EdTech Questions Every Parent Should Ask Schools This Year: An educational technology consultant has compiled a list of questions for parents to ask at their children's schools. Unless you are an edtech expert yourself, or have [...]
Civil rights and social justice activist Julian Bond, who died recently at the age of 75, had a lengthy career championing civil rights which included stints as President of the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee (SNICC), Chairman of the Board of the N.A.A.C.P., 20 years in the Georgia State Legislature, and in later life, professorships at various universities including [...]
This Friday, July 10, I will be participating in a panel conversation with Gregory Hess, President of Wabash College and Dr. Robert Franklin, Director of Religion, Chautauqua Institution and former President of Morehouse College, discussing the practical and institutional ways to support boys' healthy development. Our discussion comes at the end of a week-long examination of the theme "Boys [...]
We've been surfing the web doing research in preparation for the conversation about boys we are having on Friday with Dr. Robert Franklin and Gregory Hess, president of Wabash College, at the Chautauqua Institution (more on that in another post!) and have discovered some great articles which are definitely worth reading. We will share what we come across. "Letter [...]
With great sorrow we turn yet again to the topic of how we talk to our sons about a senseless tragedy. This time it is the horrific massacre of nine Black parishioners in a historic black church in Charleston by a 21-year-old white young man. Images of the victims smiling with their families in the days prior and of [...]