My younger son Thomas has just become 12, but his childhood innocence ended a few days earlier because he experienced the biggest sorrow of his life – our tom-cat “Schnurr” had been killed by a car. Schnurr had been Thomas’s very best friend for seven years. My boys are home-schooled (or, to be precise, unschooled)…
I was recently asked to give the keynote address for a Behaviour Summit organized by the Eastern Townships School Board in Quebec. They called together all of their stakeholders: directors, principals, teachers, consultants, aides, lunch monitors, bus drivers, secretaries, trustees, and parents to brainstorm ideas for how to help students to better handle the behavioral…
My daughter was having a hard day. As the youngest of three she was trying to keep up with her older siblings and the neighbour kids – attempting hold her own in a series of rousing outdoor games. It didn’t go well. Nobody was being mean to her, or excluding her, or teasing her, but…
I was sitting in my office with Jake helping him with his math when I heard crying coming down the hall. It was dismissal time for the Kindergarten students, and the hall was full of parents getting their little ones ready to transition back to home. We looked at each other, shrugged, and kept on…
One day my 10-year-old son came home shaken by an incident he experienced in the woods. He had gone biking with some neighbourhood boys and an older brother of one of his friends. In the forest, they came upon a group of angry teenagers who were arguing, and on the verge of a fight. As my son described…
Before I had my own children, I remember being invited many years ago to a traditional Passover Seder at the home of our rabbi and his family. I expected to hear deep insights into the Haggadah, the ancient text that relates the story of the exodus of the Jewish People from Egypt to become a…
Some time ago friends of ours were hosting a cultural exchange program participant in their home. “Esther” was a preschool teacher from Zaire working in a public daycare here in Winnipeg for the year she was in Canada. One day over dinner I asked her which cultural differences were most striking for her in adjusting…
In an earlier editorial I talked about guilt as an unpleasant emotion that is best kept in sight. Well, what about shame? Is that not what you also feel when you feel guilty? For purposes of gaining insight into these difficult feelings, it is important to distinguish between shame and guilt. As I said in…
Recently my dear friend’s grandmother died at 96. I didn’t know much about “Gransie” except for the fact that my friend Karin kept in close contact with her, often visiting and taking her out to dinner with the family. My only thought about this woman I had never met or known was: I hope I…
Dr. Neufeld frequently compares our need for food with our need for relationship; the more I think about this the more it makes sense. It is easy for us to understand the importance of food for the healthy development of our children; we know they need sleep and safe shelter in order to grow. It…