Gifted & Talented Programs Are Ripe for a Rethink: Let's Start with the Name

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Children_in_a_classroom.jpg

This is one of my more humiliating middle-school memories: I’m wearing a vintage Victorian
dress with a tight neckline that’s nearly choking me to death. My sweaty fingers are clutching a
piece of fudge, smearing chocolate all over the white lace. It’s sixth grade and I’m eleven years
old, doing my best to survive...

What does this have to do with G&T programs? To read the rest of this article, please check it out on .A Child Grows in Brooklyn. The article just went live and I've already been hearing from parents on various sides of this controversial issue. I'd love to keep the conversation going.

Photo by Michael Anderson via Wikimedia Commons.

Author of "Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy" Has THIS to Say About Parenting

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Author of "Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy" Has THIS to Say About Parenting

Ophira Eisenberg is funny. If you've seen the Canadian comic and author's stand-up performances, caught her hosting The Moth's StorySlams, or tuned into her on NPR's nerd-fest "Ask Me Another," you know this about her. Eisenberg—who had her son when she was 43—tells the Orlando Sentinel in advance of this week's Florida taping of "Ask Me Another": “Two years ago, I had a child, which was slightly unexpected. So I’ve made great fun of my advanced maternal age and what that is all about.”

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Late to the Parenting Party, but Glad to Be Here

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Late to the Parenting Party, but Glad to Be Here

The summer we turned 26, a friend and I jotted down a list of all the hot women over 40 we could think of at the time: Sofia Loren, Madonna, Tina Turner, and a half-dozen or so others. At the time, 26 felt scary and old to us; we needed reminders that women could hang onto their mojo well into their 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond. We should’ve started another list too: of women having kids over 40. Except at the time, that was the furthest thing from my mind. Kids? No thanks.

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This Is the 1979 News Broadcast That Got Me Psyched to Watch the Eclipse With My Kids

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This Is the 1979 News Broadcast That Got Me Psyched to Watch the Eclipse With My Kids

After a jammed summer of juggling work deadlines and trying keeping the kids sane and squeezing in desperately needed vacation time, while attempting to get a decent night's sleep on occasion, and call up a friend, and try not to totally lose my mind—in other words, the usual—I only had about 0.3 percent of my brainspace left to care about the total eclipse of the sun. Granted, here in New York we got just a partial eclipse, but still, it was a fairly big deal. A bigger deal, cosmically speaking, than finally climbing off the waitlist at the PreK program we were gritting our teeth to get into. I was vaguely looking forward to seeing what this whole eclipse business was all about, but it wasn't exactly top of mind. Until two things happened:

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"Guess What, You Just Magnified" This Family's Beautiful Daughter

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During today's memorial service for Heather Heyer, the woman who bravely died while protesting a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend, it was wrenching enough watching her father and her mother grapple with her tragic death. What's also tough—because it's nauseating, and not even all that unusual—is hearing Heyer described by certain sources as a "fat, childless 32-year-old" and a "drain on society."

These comments appeared this week on sites like the Daily Stormer (which Tumblr has thankfully taken down as of this writing) and World Today 365 (we'll avoid linking to any of them here). Here's one question: Is there any chance the idea that a 32-year-old woman's "childless" status is anyone's business but her own will start to lose traction finally, now that the white supremacists are publicly embracing that idea? There's no real ray of light in the horrific events of the past few days, but if comments like those lead to a collective rejection of the idea that "childless" is any kind of slur, it will be one tiny, tiny victory.  

Jimmy Kimmel's Baby for President

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Jimmy Kimmel's Baby for President

Warning: If you're out and about right now and you hate crying in public, don't watch this Jimmy Kimmel bit about his newborn son's open-heart surgery. I first watched it on YouTube on my phone while walking down the sidewalk (I know, that sucks and I won't do it again, promise). I couldn't stop the tears in time to hide indoors, and I'm definitely someone who gets mortified at public waterworks. The story that Kimmel, 50, tells about what he, his wife Molly McNearney (she's 39), and their newborn baby went through ripped me apart. I hope it'll do the same for members of Congress who are hell-bent on signing the horrifying Trumpcare bill.

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Where the Air Is Sweet: Sesame Street's New Character, Julia, Has Autism

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Where the Air Is Sweet: Sesame Street's New Character, Julia, Has Autism

The banged-up old Sesame Street records my parents put on for my brother and me when we were kids are sitting on my Brooklyn shelf, their covers so chafed you can't read the spines anymore. But the vinyl still plays, crackly but clear as ever. Whenever I put the LPs on for my kids, I can't get that "ABC-DEF-GHI" song--where Big Bird turns the entire alphabet into one giant word-- out of my head for days. I end up humming the tunes the entire rest of the week. In adult company. Mortifying. The kids don't yet have much in the way of a visual experience of Sesame Street, and we keep waiting for the right time to start in on that slippery-slope "TV shows" phase of their lives. But the recent news about Sesame Street makes me think the time is now. The show is introducing a new character named Julia, who has autism, as part of the regular gang. 

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