* There are so many times I have simply despised Father's Day. Close to 50 now and I feel differently. There are benefits and blessings even to not having a Dad. This is NOT an argument FOR fatherlessness for anyone. But it is a real-life experience...
These past weeks have been awful for vulnerable children in MN. Stomped on, kicked, torn liver kidney & pancreas 2 year old Sophia O'Neill was violently murdered by 17 year old Cary Faran-Baum died because she wouldn't stop crying . There's been way too many violent child deaths in MN this past year - many of these children were known to child protection services. Sophia was known to child protection (they didn't investigate the case because caseloads are high and...
A growing number of prisons nationwide are starting gardening programs to teach inmates new skills, improve prison life and feed communities in need. "It’s planting season behind bars, where officials from San Quentin in California to...
As a Y.M.C.A. member since 1984, I know it as a great place to become and remain fit, make friends and receive encouragement and support. What I didn’t know, and I suspect you don’t either, is that the Y.M.C.A. of the U.S.A....
Not only was the 16-year-old boy 60 pounds overweight, but a blood test showed he might have fatty liver disease . At last, his mother took him to a pediatric weight management clinic in New Haven. But she did not at all like the...
The video of a McKinney, Texas, police officer slamming a 15-year-old black girl to the ground and pointing his gun at unarmed teen boys has, unsurprisingly, elicited strong reactions. Here are a few that might help you make sense of this...
Female scientists were jumping on Twitter on Thursday to voice their views on the controversial comments by a Nobel Prize-winning British scientist, who spoke about his " trouble with girls " when working in laboratories. Speaking...
Officially, Kalief Browder died as a result of suicide at his family’s home in the Bronx this weekend. Yet it’s not a stretch to say the racist criminal justice system that locked him up for more than three years without...
Some children feel very unwanted by their parents, and even by their schools. They grow up in households where harsh words and physical punishment are handed out daily, and they attend schools that focus more on compliance than creativity....
When Nadya Okamoto’s mom lost her job, the family was technically homeless, although they lived with a friend. Suddenly, her bus rides to Catlin Gabel, where she’s a scholarship student, took two hours and brought her into contact with...
Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has released its findings into more than a century of abuse in Indian Residential Schools. Between the 1880s and 1990s 150,000 aboriginal children were sent to institutions where they were stripped...
In the 1950s, a group of Inuit children were taken from their families in Greenland to be re-educated as model Danish citizens. More than 60 years later, they want the Danish government to apologise for an experiment that did enormous damage....
Are you baffled by your teenager’s behavior? Welcome to the club. Please step inside my office. Let’s eavesdrop on other parents: “My son doesn’t sleep at night, so he can’t wake up in the morning.” ...
Recently, I read Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the Thing With Feathers” to my high-school students in order to set up a writing assignment. Dickinson describes hope in terms of a bird that perches in the soul, and the students...
The thing Sara Garcia remembers from the day her son, Mark, got out of prison was the hug — the very, very awkward hug. He had just turned 21 and for the past two and a half years, he'd been in solitary confinement. "He's not used to...