Category: Psychology

  • Getting rid of…part 2

    Last week I wrote about cleaning out my closets, and I suggested that perhaps spring cleaning has moved to winter. Then I noticed that at least as far as my Facebook friends are concerned, spring cleaning is a thing of the past. What’s up here? Did the blue moon give us all cleaning out the…

  • Mr. Know-it-all

    Before we had kids, my husband used to have a standard joke that he needed to get a business card that said “Mr. Know-it-all.” He has one of those encyclopedic brains, and he reads voraciously. So even though we don’t watch TV or listen to most popular music, if I say, “who is that person…

  • Helicoptering, hovering, and hyperextending, but holistically

    Someone forwarded me the cover story from Time Magazine this week and asked for my opinion. In summary, it’s about what some are seeing as a trend in parenting, the trend already dubbed “helicopter parenting” and made famous by Lenore Skenazy, the author of “Free Range Kids.” Parents who parent too much, who hover and…

  • Portrait of a happy girl

    Today I met with my publisher at SantaCruzParent.com. We talked about lots of things, especially social networks like Facebook and Twitter, which I had avoided, but I am now taking part in, reluctantly, sometimes enjoying them. (Want to receive my notifications on Facebook? See “fan me on facebook”: below, right side.) And then Parmalee asked…

  • Understanding how scientists make decisions about your child's health

    There’s been a theme running through conversations I’ve had lately. I and some of my more scientific friends have been noticing a general lack of understanding about how science works and what makes the scientific method worth considering. First, a caveat. We all know that doctors have been wrong. So giving examples of when a…