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I learned something very simple, very basic, and very important about parenting while on vacation, overseas, these past three weeks. I was being selfish. I have two teenagers who needed their dad, and this three-week trip was an indulgence that wasn...
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Last year, after my honeymoon to Africa, I struggled a bit to find the right material from that extraordinary experience to write about in my column. Happily, I came through with two of my personal favorite columns: each called “African Reflections” (...
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While on a recent skiing trip, I had a casual dinner with casual friends, including a couple that had been married, divorced, and were now dating again. As is so often the case, on the surface, they looked great together, so it seemed natural that the con...
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1. I text when I drive? My younger son gets crazy on me and points it out in the same way I’d point out a mistake or poor choice he’d make. It doesn’t give me much credibility when I continue this dangerous and foolish behavior.2. Wh...
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Life often gives us web-sites that carry my column had a very radical anti-Israel agenda. At first, I didn’t even realize how marginal and fanatical it was. Since my focus is not on politics, I just didn’t vet this web-site sufficiently, given my naï...
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There was a slogan in the early days of the feminist movement that went something like, “A woman needs a man as much as a fish needs a bicycle.” I was part of that generation, that also said, “Don’t trust anyone over 30,” among other things eq...
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We went on a family skiing trip recently and on my son’s first run of the season, he fell and broke his arm. Thankfully, it was a clean hairline fracture and he should heal just fine. It may take his ego a bit longer to recover, as he was trying t...
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I had lunch with a good friend the other day and the subjects we covered really made an impact on me, as I reflected on them. I had just come from a lesson in using social media, where I’m learning the new technologies that are popular in our culture ...
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How often have you made a choice, in which you knew that you were right, yet it turned out wrong? If we, as adults and parents, can do this, what can we expect from our children, especially our teens? I still can’t get over the fact that human brains ...
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Nobody promised that being a parent would be easy nor were we assured that we’d get kids that were easy to handle. If you’re like most of us, you face regular challenges to your authority, your rules, and the way you expect your kids to behave. As wit...
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My wife took me to see Nancy Meyer’s new movie, “It’s Complicated,” which stars Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin. She had seen it a day or two before and wanted to see it with me saying, “It would be good for us.” Honestly, I d...
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One of the many things that we try to teach our children is how to make a good decision. Sometimes the problem can be that we may not always make good decisions ourselves or we may allow emotions to influence our choices. I found this to be true in a ...
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The parents of every generation expect and hope that their children can and will do better than they did. Ours may be the first generation, in a very long while, where it is both unlikely and unrealistic to have this expectation. The world has just gotten...
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Every holiday season brings both wonderful times and challenging family situations for most of us, my family included. This past season included the first visit to our home of my in-laws, the first time my sons and I would be apart, and the first time m...
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I hate New Year’s Resolutions. I swore I’d never write one. I misspoke. So, this is going to be a New Year’s Resolutions column, with a twist: it will include both resolutions and wishes. I am going to mix my own personal resolutions and wishes with...
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Dennis Prager, one of the most influential men in my life, spoke on his talk show recently about the impact of a first year on marriage. He asked if an easy, successful first year or a difficult, hard first year were indicative of the long-term succ...
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This holiday season my wife and I will celebrate our first year of marriage on separate continents. As we are different races and religions, there are usually challenges we encounter at this time of year, so maybe being 7,000 miles apart will make it ea...
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While walking with a friend the day after Thanksgiving, we shared our respective holiday experiences and noted that we were both now the senior dads--the main paternal figure in our respective families. We laughed together, but it was a moment of melanch...
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When I was a child, my mother brought home a little dog that was so small that she carried it in her purse. The dog was a mixed-breed of Pekinese, Pomeranian, and Chihuahua and my mother named it Su-Su. Fully grown, she weighed maybe 7 pounds. Su-Su w...
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What parent hasn’t dreaded report card time, especially when a child is underperforming? How do two kids, born of the same genetic material, turn out so differently when it comes to school performance and their work ethic?When is it wrong if the “...
