This afternoon President Obama will announce the launch of an initiative to provide greater opportunities to African-American and Hispanic young men of color. His "My Brother's Keeper" initiative has already received a $150 million commitment from a group of foundations and businesses who have pledged an additional $200 million towards this effort. The White House initiative seeks to intervene [...]
Hard to imagine as frigid temperatures and snow continue to plague us on the East Coast and elsewhere around the nation, but now is the time to focus on Summer Camps. If you are interested in finding out about summer camp options, don't wait any longer to start your research, as Summer Camp research and sign-up season is well [...]
Ted Wells’ report to the NFL on the Jonathan Martin/Miami Dolphins harassment case presents Martin as an NFL rookie who was tormented both by his teammates and his own inability to fight back. As New York Times columnist Bill Rhoden notes in his column about the report, found here, “The question that repeatedly came to my mind as I [...]
With Thanksgiving but a few days away, we focus on gathering with our families and being thankful. In preparation for the holiday, children are encouraged in school to think about what they are thankful for, and often families will encourage everyone around the table to say what they are thankful for as they sit down to dinner. But what [...]
Any parent of a boy and a girl will quickly tell you that there are many developmental differences between the sexes that are evident almost from birth (apart from the obvious physical ones). We recently ran across an interesting article from Eleanor Reynolds, author of a series of books on guiding young children, which suggests that mothers should acknowledge [...]
Navigating those parent teacher conferences for our sons in the lower grades can be really stressful if there are behavior issues to discuss. We ran across these helpful tips for a successful parent teacher conference for parents of younger children with behavior issues from "What Did My Son Do Now?", an article in Early Childhood News, and want to [...]
Today is Veterans Day, a day to thank and honor all who served (or still serve) in the military. Whether your children have the day off from school is a function of your state or local school district (with no legal requirement that schools close on Veterans Day, individual states or school districts are free to establish their own [...]
It is an ugly truth: parents of African American children live with the constant fear that our children, especially our sons, may have an encounter with the police that ends in their arrest, or even worse, in their bodily harm. We know we need to have “The Talk” with them about what to do if they are ever stopped, [...]
As you probably know if you've been paying attention to the news recently, Trayon Christian is a 19 year old Black college student who is suing the NYPD and Barney's--one of NYC's luxury department stores--for wrongful arrest after he purchased a $350 Ferragamo belt in the store using a debit card. Christian was stopped by police as he tried [...]
The Wall Street Journal recently revealed news which should gladden the hearts of parents of teenagers everywhere: "cognitive empathy", the wiring in children's brains that enables them to understand and care about how others think, only begins to develop at age 13. So when your sweet middle schooler disappears and is replaced by an eye-rolling, door slamming "who is [...]