I’ve been working on letting go of my own feelings of despair when either of my beloved offspring is not ok. This is so hard. Appallingly challenging. My urgent need […]
Read moreWhy don’t boys try harder?
I hear so often from parents of boys that their sons are unmotivated, don’t seem to care about doing well in school and can’t seem to get themselves organized. “Where’s […]
Read moreMarch Break and….boredom.
In a February column in the New York Times, Pamela Paul opined: “Boredom teaches us that life isn’t a parade of amusements. More important, it spawns creativity and self-sufficiency.” Three […]
Read moreDid St. Mike’s have to happen?
I feel awful about what happened at St Mike’s. Awful for the boys and their parents, and sad for our culture where such goings-on can occur – and be tolerated. […]
Read moreDo we over-identify with our children?
I ran into a male friend, 45ish, last week and he told me a story that made him sad. His wife was dropping their 10-year-old daughter off at school. She […]
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Why Failure is Good for Kids
One time, about a decade ago on his regular annual camp visit, my friend Seth Godin came out of the lake in a gorilla suit. A full-size theatrical rented gorilla […]
Read moreHomework
After the interrupted sleeps of infancy, and before the storms of adolescence, nicely sandwiched in the middle is the nightmare of homework. Not the kids’ nightmare. Ours. It’s ours because […]
Read moreAutonomy and Mastery – the Hidden Gifts of Camp
What do kids need, really need, in order to thrive? A smart guy at University of Rochester did a study on just that and he, Richard Ryan, identified three psychological […]
Read moreNotes from PreCamp 2018
All our staff are here and it’s been a fabulous PreCamp training thus far… One nugget: In a session with our full staff last night (about 165 staff) I asked […]
Read moreAnxiety, the new epidemic
My camp team has been going to the biggest camp directors conference in the world, the American Camp Association Tri-State Conference, for years. 4000 camp directors, four days, about 20 […]
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