My Family Blog

  Does this stress you out? A new study on math anxiety out of the University of Chicago has found that heightened stress while working math problems makes the smart kids in class perform below their capabilities more than it does the average students. The study also found that math anxiety can start young — [...]

Soccer Bans Heading My six-year-old daughter has become completely obsessed with soccer. She gives her practices and games her all and recently, I have started to worry. She throws her whole being into the game and has yet figured out all the nuances of self-preservation on the field. Recently there have been several stories  about [...]

I’m all over quick, one-dish dinners in the fall, when back to school schedules and extra curricular activities tend to send mealtimes into high gear. I’ve long been a fan of roasted broccoli, so when I came across this dish that combines broccoli with shrimp to produce a meal in a bowl in about 20 [...]

Extreme discipline? It's happening more than you think. Imagine the pain of dad Bill Lichtenstein when he found his five-year-old daughter locked in a basement broom closet, naked in a pool of pee. Not while accidentally playing at Grandma’s house; not funning around over at her friends. But at school. Not church school, not crazy [...]

Taylor Townsend Thin has been in for too many years to count. It’s so in, in fact, that anorexic-looking models are often the ones with the fattest bank accounts because their protruding collar bones and skeletal arms are what sells fashion, apparently (based on who’s walking down the catwalk during Fashion Week, anyway). And yet [...]

The right to vote is such an extraordinary gift. Allow me the warm and fuzzy pride I feel as I type those words.  You’re hearing from a girl who has just recently passed her U.S. citizenship test.  I was born in Canada, but have lived in the United States for a number of years.  As [...]

canned or boxed pumpkin? Pumpkin season is just about here and that means you will most likely be in the kitchen whipping up pumpkin pies, pumpkin shakes, pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin muffins and more. Well when you arrive at the “pumpkin” section in your grocery store you may notice a few options. Both boxed and [...]

MTV is on a mission, although perhaps a different one than from elections past If you’ve been alive and of voting age over the past 20 or so years, then you’ve been aware that young people have been urged up the wazoo to get out the vote, that their voice was the one lacking in [...]

Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood I loved Mister Rogers. His gentle voice, his warm smile, his cardigans…what’s not to love? The beloved children’s TV host passed away almost ten years ago back in 2003 after a long career of entertaining and amusing children. Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, which ran from 1968 to 2001, was a beloved ...

Breaking a 50-year silence, the German manufacturer of the drug Thalidomide has apologized. Thalidomide, which was prescribed to help pregnant women with morning sickness in the 1950s and 1960s, caused series birth defects including shortened or “flipper-like” arms and legs, or babies being born without limbs at all. Other side ...