Parenting and Family
I am a contributing editor at Scientific American and write the Brain Waves blog for Psychology Today (you can find those posts here). My work has also appeared in The Atlantic, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, Vogue and many other publications. Earlier in my career, I was on staff at Newsweek, and People, among other places and I’ve included a few of my old favorites from those days.
Seeing is Believing
Why Role Models Matter
A few months ago, at the start of basketball season, my husband took my two youngest sons, Matthew and Alex, to see some college games at Barclays Center, home of the Brooklyn Nets, which is a few blocks from our home. We got the tickets at the last minute through…
What Cochlear Implants Did For My Son
Researchers who were just awarded the “American Nobel” have opened up the world of sound to the deaf.
There was a time when almost no respectable scientist would have anything to do with cochlear implants. In the 1970s, pioneering researchers who thought they could create a device that allowed the deaf to hear and speak were shouted down at professional conferences. The National Institutes of Health refused funding…
Clear the Air
It’s much more polluted than you may realize, and the potential impact on kids’ risk of asthma, cancer, and even autism is startling. Take steps now to protect your family’s health.
When Gretchen Alfonso, a 29-year-old mother of three, was growing up in Erie, Pennsylvania, fishing was part of the culture. The locals knew that the perch from Lake Erie was contaminated with toxic pollutants like mercury, but fish-fry dinners were a tradition no one wanted to give up. So on…
Redefining Adventure
When my husband told me he wanted to move from New York to Hong Kong, my first thought was: Really??!! My second thought was: What about Alex? The youngest of our three sons, Alex is almost entirely deaf. He uses a cochlear implant and a hearing aid. At the time,…
Jumping Higher
We had three light-saber-wielding, tree-climbing, rough-and-tumble boys. Everywhere we looked, potential danger lurked. Instinctively, though, we knew we didn’t want Alex to live in a bubble—and I suppose we knew it would be futile to try.
For years, my youngest son, Alex, who is now six, has watched one of his brothers do gymnastics. Jumping on the trampoline and swinging from the high bar looked like a lot of fun. Every time he was in the gym, Alex asked if he could do gymnastics, too. Every…
The Voice Of A Mother
I parent with my voice. Like mothers everywhere, I soothe and cajole, read and sing, teach and explain, reprimand and, though I’m not proud of it, yell. I like to think that whatever wisdom I’ve gained in 10 years of mothering my three boys is displayed in how I talk…
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