My seven-year-old was recently telling me about a third-grade power play. At lunch in the cafeteria last week, one little Queen Bee (let’s call her Girl X) imitated a less-popular girl’s speech impediment. After mocking her for a while, Girl X asked Girl Y, “Why don’t you talk right?” Girl X’s best bud snickered appreciatively.
“And ...

When I was a kid, our sukkah was made of heavy flats of hardwood. (They took up a lot of real estate in our commodious Rhode Island basement during the off-season.) We drew holiday-themed pictures with Magic Markers directly on the wooden walls—even though this was a totally mom-sanctioned activity, tagging the side of a ...

Banned Books Week falls on the last week in September every year. To mark it this year, we thought we’d offer a little tribute to Jewish children’s book authors whose works have been banned or challenged. And in homage to one Jewish writer whose books get attacked with great regularity, we decided to do it ...

In the spirit of Delia Ephron’s classic How to Eat Like A Child, illustrated by Edward Koren (Harper, 2001), we offer a guide for our elementary-school-aged friends on how to celebrate the holiday.
Gently kick the back of the pew in front of you. Kick rhythmically to the cantor’s chanting, until your mother suddenly clamps her ...

Patrick Swayze, who died Monday at the age of 57, was many things—an actor, a heartthrob—but, as embodied by his character in Dirty Dancing, he was also something else: a sheygets par excellence. As the perfect distillation of goyish masculinity, Swayze’s character could dance and throw a punch! He rode a motorcycle! He was built ...

Last year at this time, Josie’s teacher made her write a letter of apology for slapping a frenemy. This week I made Josie write a letter of apology to her bubbe. (I’m not going to share her sin here. She behaved abominably; she’s mortified; and at seven, she’s old enough to have veto power on my writing about her specific crimes.) I’m moderately sure Josie doesn’t ramp up her vileness right before the High Holidays just to give me column fodder. But she does seem to be more on a hair trigger around this time of year. Our New Year falls just as kids are experiencing stressful new beginnings—the end of summer, the stress of school starting.

Like many parents, I am driven up a tree by my children’s food preferences. I want to be that self-satisfied Mom who airily says, “Oh, Maxine simply adores dal! Josie loves nothing more than a steaming bowl of tom ka gai!” But no: I’m the patsy who still dishes up pasta with butter, the loser ...

My 7-year-old daughter, Josie, is crazy-competitive. At 3, whenever she lost a game of Candyland, she’d ricochet off the furniture like a screaming pinball, bellowing in fury for 20 minutes. She’s always wanted to be the winning-est, the smartest, the quickest. And that’s a big part of why I decided not to enroll her in a gifted program. After reading a bunch of research on the effects of labeling kids “smart” and “gifted,” I feared they’d only play into her worst win-at-all-costs tendencies. The girl’s so driven, I feared she’d wind up bulimic by the third grade and a plagiarist by the fourth.

Our parenting columnist tunes in to the world of TV.

Eight reasons the kids find grandma’s house more fun than our own