Texting makes kids smarter
Or maybe kids who text are smarter. Either way, apparently we can all relax when it comes to teens who communicate with messages like this: hey hey wat r u up to? nada, u? gr8 day 2day. pizza 4 brkfst cool yeah u goin 2 the dance? no why idk- ru? yeah why idk looks like fun ok- g2g, cul8r bye Apparently- all that was a stimulating mental experience, like a critical thinking exercise. Connie Varnhagen, a researcher, discovered that whether a teen texts or not has absolutely NO bearing upon their reading, writing or spelling abilities. Actually, a bunch of researchers are discovering tha

Good Morning Sunshine
Madelyn, 2004I am not a “morning person.” I wake up confused, my eyes are blurry, my voice is gritty and my body moves slowly. I tumble into the kitchen, straight for the coffee pot and stare at it cross-eyed until there’s enough to fill my cup. Sometimes I squat in the kitchen so I don’t have to use any muscles or energy to stand up. Because of this (and the fact th

Emotionally Manipulating Children
This gets me steamed- and I see a lot of “gentle” parents doing it. It sounds like this; “Oh sweetie, it makes mommy so sad when you _________” or “Come on, give grandma a kiss, you’re hurting her feelings” or “Please ______ honey, it would make me so happy” Here’s a newsflash- Your kids are not responsible for your emotions, OK. Now, if I only had the nerve to say this to xxxxxxx. (and here’s the part where I begin to address xxxxxx as if this were a note to her all along…) Your 2 yr old is confused enough, he doesn’t need the added confusion of your emotional ins

I just want to publicly disagree
20% of the when time I visit Suite101, one of the websites I write for, I see the somber face of Barry Schwartz in the upper left corner of the screen, who writes his feelings about psychology. He has written ten books on psychology, the most recent of which is called “The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less.” His books espouse the theory that people are happier if they have less choices in life. He believes that having too many choices can lead to social unrest. My big beef is that he’s not taking into account the fact that the people he’s studying were like

Peppers in my eye
Peppers in your eye? Rinse with cold water for 15 minutes to relieve the burning. (forgive me for being so quick about getting to the point unlike another blogger who made me read through squinted teary eyes about her whole family history and traumatic pepper in the eyes experience before finally getting to the point about what to do when you get pepper in your eye.) Actually, I am extremely grateful to her because otherwise i would have had to follow my husband’s suggestion to hold a slice of bread up to my eye. Actually, I’ll admit that I did try his stupid bread suggestion,