More in ‘parenting’

I’m a parent. My editor, Liel, isn’t. But he is an expert in new media. And we were recently chatting about online bullying, a phenomenon that interests us both, but found ourselves completely at odds.
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Hi, Liel, a person whose views are diametrically opposed to mine on everything and who has no child and therefore no ...

The prophet Jeremiah launches this week’s haftorah with a poignant question. Channeling God’s voice, he asks, “What wrong did your forefathers find in Me, that they distanced themselves from Me, and they went after futility and themselves became futile?”
What follows, in the grand prophetic tradition, is a litany of complaints. Again we see the Israelites ...

Tourist Development Association of Palestine poster, circa 1935.
CREDIT: Boston Public Library

I’ve written a column about Jewish parenting for eight years, first at the Forward and for the last year at Tablet Magazine. In that time, I’ve written 11 pieces about Jewish children’s books, nine about the High Holidays, seven about Passover, six about the Jewish ...

As moral dilemmas go, it’s not quite Sophie’s Choice. But when my daughter Josie, 8, was cast in her religious school’s production of Oliver! and it turned out to conflict with her secular school’s 3rd-grade camping trip, I was torn.
She’d committed to Oliver! first. She’d been cast in the chorus; when she expressed disappointment about ...

Each spring, Jewish parents nationwide engage in the sacred and holy ritual of writing checks to summer camp.
Josie, 8 years old, is going to overnight camp for the first time this year, which has made me reflect on my own experiences as a child at Camp Ramah in New England. I loved the lake, the ...

I often work myself into a lather trying to make Jewish ritual practice accessible to kids.
Take the seder.  This year I joined the Facebook group “Great Seder Ideas for Kids!” and adopted several suggestions from it. To illustrate the plague of blood, I poured water into all the Hebrews’ glasses, then pretended to be Pharaoh ...

I have a fatal nut allergy. I’ve gone into anaphylactic shock twice, once as a 2-year-old after my mom gave me a pecan muffin, and once as a twentysomething after a bored waitress told me that no, there were no walnuts in the pesto.
These days I carry EpiPens. I bypass fancy pastries, since they often ...

CREDIT: Leela Corman
For lunch today I ate a pastrami sandwich on white bread with mayonnaise, and it was delicious. I can already hear you—and my dead grandmother—groaning: oy, what a goyishe deli sandwich. To be honest, it wasn’t my fault. I did it in solidarity with my kids.
Children can do that to a person. One ...

In the spirit of Choose Your Own Adventure, the classic (and newly reissued) series from our childhood in which a single misstep could mean death by yeti, ghost, or Royal Bengal tiger, join us on this expedition of horror. At the bottom of each page, you’ll find several choices. Click on the one that appeals ...

“Mom! Max is trying to put a booger on me!”
“Mom! Josie won’t let me play fairies with her!”
And so it goes. I’d like to tell you that time off from school means time spent baking gluten-free organic muffins and jamming joyfully with our family bluegrass band. But not so much. Intensive togetherness in our house ...