Blogspot - Talk to Baby

      Some people fear global warming.      Others worry about the economy.      Me, I worry about isolationism.      Not the kind of isolationism that my high school history teacher talked about. I worry about people living in this ever more connected world, and yet becoming more and more distant because of gadgets that isolate them.      My grandmother grew up with in a home where the family read books like Peck's Bad Boys in the evenings together.      In my father’s childhood, when the family wanted music, they all played band instruments together around the piano.      In my childhood, my family took rides to the canyon or long road trips with five kids playing games together in the back of a station wagon.   For lunch, we opened the tailgate and made sandwiches and mom plugged the baby bottle warmer into the cigarette lighter.   ...

    At Christmas time I walked out of a restaurant and saw five little boys sitting quietly in a row in the lobby area obviously waiting for a family dinner party.   I stopped to stare just a little. Quietly?   Can a group of little boys ever wait quietly?   Sure.   Each boy had a little phone or electronic gadget with a movie or game playing in front of him.   Each boy was entirely engrossed by his own tiny screen.       Tiny screens, big screens, our children are surrounded by screens that do magic things, like keep a row of small, hungry boys happy in a crowd.      Are these screens really as magic as they seem?      Recently I attended a class on Children and Technology taught by Deena Strong, LMFT, LCSW, and Ph.D.    She had some interesting things to share about research in that field and her observations of families in her clinical practice.      In her presenta...

       Once upon a time there was a sweet, little girl named Gracie.   She was almost three years old and she loved dress-ups, all things pink, and Disney movies about princesses.       One day, when Gracie was playing with her toys and her baby brother, she got frustrated and told her mother that she was “very angry and needed to get a knife to cut someone.”   Mother was   alarmed and she talked to Gracie but what she said didn’t make any sense to Mom.   Knives were put further out of reach.      The next day when Gracie got up, she talked about being angry and needing to cut someone.   Mother was getting more alarmed.   She called Grandma and she called her friends.   Did anyone know where Gracie was getting such ideas?   Why would a cheerful, tiny little girl talk about knives and cutting?   No one could offer a suggestion.       Mommy and Daddy and G...