Parenting Adolescents and the Play of Chance and Risk
Life is a chancy process, every chance we take creating hosts of risks. This includes the chance we take by having children and the risks involved with becoming parents, particularly becoming parents...
View ArticleAn Interview with Carlin Flora, Author of Friendfluence
The new book Friendfluence: The Surprising Way Friends Make Us Who We Are (Doubleday, 2013) makes a seminal contribution to the literature on friendship. In this meticulously researched and eminently...
View ArticleLook Who's Addicted to Gambling
As the American Psychiatric Association's manual, DSM-5, for the first time recognizes a non-substance-based addiction -- gambling -- states have become completely dependent on the money generated by...
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The Younger Generation Is Always Right
My daughter Samantha and I did another bit of publicity for our book Twentysomething yesterday: a taping of an upcoming episode of Katie Couric's new afternoon talk show, "Katie." The subject of the...
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Alzheimer's - An Information Disease?
Where Is the Information Flow Going? The human body degenerates like a rusting machine. The parts just get older, break down, fall away.Believe this story? If you do, you’ll probably increase your risk...
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Distraction and Happiness
The French philosopher, Blaise Pascal, had the following to say about distraction:"When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions of men…I have discovered that all the...
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How Close is Too Close in Mother-Daughter Relationships?
Swapping clothes and sharing information about my dates are areas I would not have considered approaching with my mother when I was a teen or 20-something. Nor would my mother. But our mother-daughter...
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Why Does It Take Work To Make A Relationship Work?
When Ben Affleck accepted the Oscar for best picture on Sunday night, he thanked his wife Jennifer Garner saying marriage is hard work, but it is the best kind of work. It reminds me of a couple who...
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Diversion Therapy
I’m sure that most of you are aware that nearly all casinos around the world do not have clocks or windows. Casino operators don’t want their customers to think about time or give them external cues...
View ArticleDo We Really Need More Guns On Campus?
This post is co-authored by Glenn Altschuler.Given a sense of urgency by the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the gun control debate rages on across the nation. Less well known is that this...
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72 Proverbs From Hell. (Not the Usual Hell.)
I love paradoxes, koans, parables, proverbs, Secrets of Adulthood, and aphorisms. So how have I never come across poet William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell before? When I found it the other day, I couldn’t...
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The Myth of the "Other Mother"
When my daughter Cricket was three years old, she started taking ballet lessons. Every week the dressing room was a swarm of tiny ballerinas in pink tutus, twirling in the mirror or squirming away from...
View ArticleThe Textbook Study: Flawed and Wrong
Guest blogger: Dr. Elihu D. RichterDr Elihu D Richter is a founder of the Jerusalem Center for Genocide PreventionHe writes:Tell me what a school system is teaching its children and I will tell you...
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What Compassion Is, Redux
Several years ago, I was out walking my son in his stroller (he was somewhere around six months old) when a homeless woman approached me asking for money. I'd seen her before in the neighborhood many...
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In Praise of Frustration
I can't get no satisfaction.– The Rolling StonesNew research published by the American Psychological Association suggests that praising children for their personal qualities rather than their efforts...
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The Sweet Spot Between Hubris and Humility
When Robert Noyce, the founder of Intel, was asked how he felt about being known as the “Father of Silicon Valley” he responded, “You know it makes me a little bit proud, and a little bit humble.”...
View ArticleI’ll Be With You When the Deal Goes Down
In his late essay, “Poetically Man Dwells,” existential philosopher Martin Heidegger claims that dwelling is the basic character of authentic human existing—an existing that faces up to the transience...
View Article"My Husband Was Not the Most Romantic of My Loves"
"Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives."...
View ArticleLooking for Mr. Fibromyalgia
I have this funny habit of watching the evening network news with the television on mute. Oh, the first ten minutes are not so bad (although I’m still trying to figure out why the bail hearing last...
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Do You Plan for the Future?
Thinking about what lies ahead can help create a more satisfying life.
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