Thanksgiving with Dr. Phil

You know you need Dr. Phil if you’re watching him on Thanksgiving. But if indeed you do tune in, you’ll see a rerun of “Extreme Moms.” One of them is me.
Extreme?
I’m on the show as the mom who let her 9-year-old take the subway alone, a fact that will be chiseled on my tombstone. [...]

Can you babyproof the world?

In one of the parenting magazines  I was just flipping through (all right – looking for crazy stuff to poke fun at) here’s a “tip” I found:
“I fill a bag with shoelaces and outlet covers, then throw it in my purse.” Why? Because if this mom ever, God forbid, finds herself someplace that has not [...]

Obama’s childhood

As we contemplate Obama’s win, let’s think about his childhood for a sec. Far from being watched over every second by hovering parents, his dad split when he was still toddling and, for a while, his mom was absent, too. That’s when he was 10 and she sent him to live with his grandparents in Hawaii. [...]

Vote for the Free Range candidate!

Not for president. For book cover! Yes, I’m now writing ”Free Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Enjoyed Without Going Nuts With Worry,”due out this spring from  Wiley. Yay Wiley! The folks there have come up with two potential covers. They wanted to do some test marketing so – here goes. Please let us know which one you [...]