If you’ve been paying attention to the child sex-abuse scandal at Penn State, you know that a report commissioned by Joe Paterno’s family calls into question several elements of the Louis Freeh report of last year that implicated Paterno in failing to do anything about Sandusky.  Paterno’s widow, Sue, went on Katie Couric’s television show Monday and  when Couric asked her reaction to Joe’s statement that “he wished he’d done more”  Sue Paterno quickly reminded [...]

I remember the first time I was swept away by a book. I was reading Gone with the Wind as a young teen, and noon became dinner time in what seemed like 5 minutes. I still recall my delight at finally understanding why people said that reading could be magic; I felt like a grown up secret had been revealed to me when I experienced the sense of being transported through time and by developing [...]

Summer means sports and baseball gloves are being oiled up in homes round the country.  Thoughts are turning to runs, hits, errors, uniforms, caps and spikes. And cups.   It’s standard practice for leagues to require boys to wear a hard protective cup over their genitals during practice and games.  One family I know had a golden teachable moment when their 5 year old wanted know why he had to wear a cup over his penis.  “I’m [...]

Kids learn about sex from the media.   That’s been demonstrated again and again.  The American Academy of Pediatricians tell us that kids wills see over 40,000 TV ads each year, many of them using sex to sell.    The Kaiser Family Foundation research tells us that “seven in ten (71%) have a TV in their bedroom’  and kids spend 4 1/2 hours each day  with their eyeballs glued to a screen. There’s sex n the media [...]