On a recent drive past the urban mega-cemetery where the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway intersects the Long Island Expressway, my five year old exclaimed “Look, a stone forest!”  It was a wondrous, important place in her eyes, and though she had visited graveyards, she had never taken in such a striking panoramic view of one.  Having officiated at several of her own pet funerals in her brief career as a thinking, feeling being, she exhibited a comfortable somberness at the sight.  I could see her lips move slightly as she attempted to count in hushed amazement the innumerable headstones rocketing past our view.  “What are all those stones for, Daddy?” (more…)

We want our kids to succeed, not just because of our obligation to provide them with good lives, but because we love them and want them to be happy.  So, how much parental intervention is warranted in the face of a growing teen’s natural ups and downs, successes and failures, joys and sorrows?  Where do we draw the line and maintain control of decision-making for our kids while we’re simultaneously nurturing their capacity for independent decision-making?  (more…)