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.

Word Meds: On Friendship and Forgiveness

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A few words to meditate on this week, just in you case you ever feel like a bad friend while trying to juggle family, work, and daily/hourly chaos—and in case you worry that your crazy-busy friends have suddenly abandoned you (and you're convinced it's your fault):

“All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness. “—David Whyte, poet and author of Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. 

Put a Hat on That Belly

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Put a Hat on That Belly

For anyone who has never before had to deal with random strangers walking up and telling you what they think about your eating habits, fitness level, or choice of outfit, pregnancy is a wake-up call. The headline for this week's Time Ideas essay by 38-year-old new mom and Time's editorial director for health, Siobhan O'Connor, says it all: "When You're Pregnant, Everyone is Suddenly an 'Expert' on Your Health." If you've ever been pregnant, or stood within earshot of anyone who has been, you don't need convincing about the truth of that statement. Pregnancy seems to give people you've never met (and some you have) license to ask you totally inappropriate personal questions, or make comments about what you should or shouldn't be doing—or just shoot dirty looks at your espresso. 

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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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A Star Doula Reveals What It Takes to Have a Great Birth at Any Age

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A Star Doula Reveals What It Takes to Have a Great Birth at Any Age

Since Sarah Moore started working as a doula and childbirth educator more than 12 years ago, the Brown University grad has become one of the growing profession’s most sought-after experts in New York City. Sarah has attended upwards of 175 births so far, and been present at the bedside of a number of celebrity clients including Megan Boone, star of NBC’s Blacklist. And although Sarah had her two kids in her late ‘20s and early ‘30s, half the women who hire her are over 35. Let’s do the math: That’s almost 100 clients of “advanced maternal age,” not including all the parents Sarah sees regularly in her childbirth and perinatal classes. All this means Sarah has gathered lots of insights on what older moms—and dads—go through during pregnancy, childbirth and the aftermath. We can’t think of a better subject for the first installment of Crunch Time Parents’ Q&A series. Sarah sat down with us for an honest, revealing interview over coffee at a Brooklyn café. Read on!

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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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Exciting News for IVF Patients: Just When You Thought It Was Time to Give Up, It's Not

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Exciting News for IVF Patients: Just When You Thought It Was Time to Give Up, It's Not

I remember the look on my friend Jillian's face when her umpteenth round of IVF failed. Exhausted and out of money to try yet again, she and her partner decided to give up on having a baby. She was 43 at the time, and meanwhile I was newly pregnant with my second kid, but it was still too early to talk about it. Even if the time had been right, I would've kept my mouth shut. Some of my friends (myself included) had been on the fence about having kids for years before we got pregnant. But Jillian wasn't on the fence. She'd always wanted to be a mom, and she wasn't flying any ambivalence flags. Now, as I read the latest news about how the most determined fertility specialists and doctors are helping IVF patients have healthy babies despite "abnormal" embryos, I wonder if faulty science kept Jillian and millions like her from having the life they envisioned. New York Magazine's article this week is astounding. It's about how scientifically dubious and misleading test results from PGS (preimplantation genetic screening) might be preventing fertility specialists from using embryos that have a very high chance of leading to a healthy birth.

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Getting an "F" in School Supplies

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Getting an "F" in School Supplies

The first time I was forced to care about school supplies, Trapper Keepers were a thing. This was back in the early '80s, the dawn of the cool-binder era in American history, and the Ocean Pacific-wearing kids who bought the first wave of Trapper Keepers are no doubt busy stocking up on Oculus Rifts for their teens right about now. For reasons no longer accessible to memory, I never owned a Trapper Keeper myself, but damn if I didn't covet one.Fast-forward a few decades later, and I'm school-supply-shopping again, this time for my four-year-old, who starts preK this week. The challenge this time is, sadly, not as simple and human as envying a classmate's glistening, unicorn-festooned binder. It's that I have no idea what the hell the stuff on the school supply list even means.

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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.  

Writing a Non-Stupid Kids' Book Is Harder Than it Looks

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Writing a Non-Stupid Kids' Book Is Harder Than it Looks

How many times have you read a six-page children's book at bedtime (to your kid or to yourself—no judgments) and thought, "I could've done that." But of course, like any work that seems simple but manages to linger for years, decades, centuries: It's not all that easy. At least, not in that head-slapping, any-idiot-could-do-that way.  Writing a good children's book, especially one that survives generation after generation (not to mention sells millions of copies), takes a certain kind of genius. Granted, the really bad ones are pretty easy to write. (Ever see the Tonka Chuck & Friends book series? A cute blue tow-truck with absolutely no insight or wit about anything does not a great narrator make.) In any event, the ultimate kids'-book-that-looks-easy would have to be Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown's 1947 meditation on bedtime, and on all the things kids notice around them as they drift off to sleep. The first time I read it I thought, what's the big deal about this book?

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Let's Give Gwen Stefani and Her Pregnancy-or-Not a Break, Ok?

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Let's Give Gwen Stefani and Her Pregnancy-or-Not a Break, Ok?

Presidential intrigues, climate catastrophes, high-level scandals everywhere we turn: Somehow no matter how explosive the headlines, they can't bump out spurious rumors about celebrity bumps. The "is she or isn't she pregnant?" stories are even more incessant when a celeb is in the no-spring-chicken category (exhibit A: The neverending baby-bump rumors that Jennifer Aniston has to deal with). Now the Internet is combusting over whether 47-year-old Gwen Stefani is or is not, or is about to get or not about to get, pregnant with Blake Shelton's baby. 

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