What Is “Pretty”? The Mom Who Straightened her 6-Year-Old’s Hair
Back in elementary school, we got a new girl in our class one year who had Very Curly Hair. I mean, very curly. It wasn’t long and corkscrew-y, or wavy and bouncy, or quirky and Shirley Temple-like. This girl — her name was Tina Battaglia, in case she Googles herself these days — had a short, frizzy, coarse mop of brown curls. She was also very cute. But that didn’t matter. The double whammy of that hair and being the new girl got her a lot of teasing. Here’s what I remember, to my shame: I remember wanting to tell …Keep Reading
Turning Tikes into Tiger Woods: What’s Wrong With Sports For Babies?
I never have to wait around for very long, or dig very deep, to find something to be either baffled or outraged about when it comes to modern parenting. Yesterday’s crazy-making dose came in the form of a New York Times article about sports for babies. Yes, I meant to write “babies.” The article opens with a quote from a woman named Doreen Bolhuis, whose company, Gymtrix, sells DVDs of activity programs for kids as young as 6 months. There’s something about the idea of promoting organized physical activity for babies and toddlers that, to me, straddles the line between …Keep Reading
