Back-to-School Shopping, Jitters, and Tips

It is the second biggest shopping spree of the year, bested only by the winter holidays. It’s also about the longest. That’s    because, for months now, stores such as JCP, Target, Staples, and Kohl’s have been hawking their back-to-school deals with such catchy...

The Downside of Helicopter Parenting

The other day, I went Internet exploring about the dos and don’ts of parenting prompted by a scene I witnessed at a seven-year-old kid’s drop-off birthday party. Not all invitees were seven, however. Two were younger and two were older—all either neighbors or...

Zero-Tolerance in Schools Run Amok

In the good old days, when a kid misbehaved—shoved another child, disrupted a class, pointed his finger and said, “Bang!”—the result was a sit down with the parents and principal, along with a subsequent detention or two or three. Then came 1994 when Congress, in an...