There was an article in the Washington Post last week about middle schoolers and risk taking. Essentially, it said: in order for children to morph into adults, they have to take risks–defined as anything that takes them outside their comfort zone: crazy hair, weird clothes, a new activity–or scarier alternatives like drugs, sex and…
Read MoreAll articles filed in child development
Child Abuse, Part 2: Personal Defense
A commenter once took issue with a post I wrote about parents’ responsibility to arm their children against the threat of child abuse by teaching children about their dignity as human beings, and in particular the dignity of the human body. This person took issue with the idea that such concepts can provide any protection against predators.…
Read MoreRhyme And Reason (or: the Reason she can’t Rhyme)
I haven’t written about Julianna’s speech and cognitive development in a while. You’re ready for a post on that, right? Last Friday morning, hours before the second day of school post-Christmas, Julianna woke up at 4:30 a.m. with terrible respiratory distress and a moderately high fever. By 7:30 a.m. I was sending emails and calling…
Read MoreA Portrait of Nicholas
This isn’t something I do often, but just for my own sake, I want to share a glimpse of my kids, separate from how they interact with me (which is what I usually write). Since I’ve been struggling with the stage Nicholas is in a lot lately, it seems like a good idea to start…
Read More“Eyes Ahead”
If you’ve never been walking with Julianna when she runs smack into something at eye level, you might not understand why we laughed so hard when this book came home in her backpack. My name is Julianna. This is a story about keeping my eyes ahead. Sometimes when I walk, I look down at the…
Read MoreA Kerfuffle About Doughnuts (or, The Rules Apply to Special Needs Kids, Too!)
By the time I got there, Alex was crying. It began, as far too many of these encounters do, with Julianna. She took advantage of the fact that her parents were caught in conversations after church and helped herself to someone else’s juice cup. We saw her, but the people talking to us were not…
Read MorePixie vs. My Little Linebacker: Smackdown!
I always expected that Nicholas would leapfrog past Julianna by the age of two, and that they would switch places in the family, he taking the position of role model, she becoming the one who looks up and tries to imitate. It turns out it’s not that simple. This isn’t going to be a deep,…
Read More7 Quick Takes, vol. 103
___1___ I hardly ever click on anything in the Facebook sidebar, but this one caught my eye: “What’s the point of Girls? Challenge one father’s goal for what he’s trying to raise his father to become by clicking here.” Uh-oh, I thought. But I was wrong. His post is stellar, and although at first I…
Read MoreAt the Grocery Store
Maybe it only happens to me, but it seems like some of the most profound experiences happen in the grocery store. There was the day when judgment turned into compassion. The encounter with people who really do “have their hands full.” And then, this. Sunday afternoon at Aldi. The usual motley assortment of people: an…
Read MoreAlex faces
He goes off to school now, and last night, as I lay awake thinking about him, I realized that he spends more of his day away from me than with me. He has a whole series of experiences every day that have nothing to do with me, experiences that I will never share, the way…
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Kathleen M. Basi 