By Shirin Yadegar
Summer travel always lends itself to family bonding, adventures and relaxation. We spend countless hours preparing for the “perfect” family vacation with the right balance of sun, culture and excitement.
Blessed to be able to visit incredible destinations with plush accommodations and immaculate service is a major plus. We work hard all year to splurge and enjoy our summer vacations, but what about those who can’t. Where are the families who are struggling and don’t have the ability to bond and relax together? (more…)
I can’t protect my children. It’s as simple as that. In fact, it’s worse than that. I have unwittingly poisoned them….BEFORE THEY WERE BORN. That’s the reality of the human health impact of plastic pollution.
Right now, thousands of people are talking about the show 13 Reasons Why. We’ve heard stories of people asking for help for the first time, and stories of people who had to stop watching because the show was too triggering for them. We’ve heard from parents asking if we think the show is appropriate for their son or daughter. We’ve heard from people who loved the show, and we’ve heard from people who hated it.
Although schools consider various factors when reviewing applications, none seem to cause parents more undue stress than the ISEE. Parents always want to deflect attention away from ISEE scores and ask me: Don’t the child’s grades and extracurricular activities count? What about the interview? How about legacy and sibling status? Schools do look at each applicant as a whole, but ISEE scores are the best indictor if a student will be able to succeed academically at their school and they are often the first measure considered when evaluating candidates. This doesn’t mean that students with lower scores will not be accepted to an academically rigorous school, it just means that they will have more hurdles to overcome. ISEE scores cause parents anxiety because they are hard, cold numbers and the rest of the application is subjective. 
Every mom I know has a vacation horror story…sick kid on the plane, a little one that either can’t go or can’t stop going, the whole family that ended up with food poisoning. In my own experience, I have one child who was born to travel and another child that gets very thrown off by the change in routine.
It truly takes a village to raise a family. Without support of friends and family how would we know what’s “best” for our families? How would we ever be able to take a breath? Who would we share our troubles and fears about parenting with?