No, not from me. But this is something that really moved me and I felt it was worth sharing.

A co-worker today attended the Westchester County Women’s Hall of Fame Awards luncheon, at which his daughter was receiving the Merrill Lynch Westchester Leadership Award.

I think her words best relay why she was worthy of the honor and the scholarship it brings. These are excerpts from the essay she submitted as part of her application for the award:

“I have always been different. In books and movies, being different is always good. The hero and heroine are never ordinary people, they are special and gifted.
“But being different in real life is not always a good thing; most of the time it’s painful, lonely, and just plain hard. I have cerebral palsy and other learning disabilities including difficulty reading and writing.
“I would have to say that my disability, and more importantly people’s reaction to it, has had a big impact on my life and made me who I am today.
“It’s amazing how being different can be like holding a magnifying glass up to reveal those who are kind as well as those who are cruel. While I consider many of my ‘disabilities’ to be ‘abilities,’ I have had to spend much of my life learning how to be like others so I will be accepted.
“I hope to become a teacher, a special education teacher or maybe a social worker or an advocate for people with disabilities. I’d like to help other people like me get the help they deserve. Maybe I’ll even get a PhD.”

Wow. That’s some young lady.

Last week I discovered how to stop my youngest son from being late to school. At least it’s worked so far. You can say my youngest son, a high school freshman, has a chronic lateness problem. He hadn’t been on time for school since October.

We talked to him about his lateness; The school sent home notes about his lateness; He lost the privilege of leaving school for lunch; And we took his electronic games, except for his computer. None of that made a difference.

Then last week, a school staffer suggested a solution that went to the heart of being a high school freshman – not wanting to be seen with your parents. The plan was diabolically simple: If he couldn’t be responsible and get to school on time, treat him like a second grader and bring him to school.

To make sure this scheme worked I upped the ante, saying I would accompany him all the way to his classroom, the better to be seen with him. The fact that we live only two blocks from the school made the plan easy to carry out.

The first morning, last Friday, I woke my son and reminded him that we’d walk to class together if he was late. I said I was looking forward to our walk: It would be like the old days when he was younger. He was not similarly nostalgic.

That day he was on time for class. So, too with the next two days. Tomorrow could be the fourth day in a row. I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find parenting a to be a little like guerrilla warfare. You’re in it for the long haul, so you need strategy and much patience. Change usually doesn’t come quickly. This battle was different, however, and now it feels like cause for celebration. But I have two things to do. First, praise him for his promptness; Second, hope he doesn’t lose his embarassment over being seen with me.

Sure, I should’ve paid more attention. But I didn’t.

So, here I was taking my 11-year-old son to see Watchmen at the theater, not having done enough legwork to know that there was heavily graphic violence, sex and nudity. Whoops.

Well, he knows enough to cover his eyes during certain moments (aided by me, of course). But I did stay the course and we sat through the whole movie. Yes, I considered walking out, but I didn’t. Don’t get me wrong: This wasn’t Last Tango in Paris, nor was it Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It was just a tad over the top.

In hindsight, I wouldn’t take him to see it had I known the extent of it all. But I also reason with myself that you can’t shelter a kid from everything. My philosophy on cursing, for instance, is that he is in no way allowed to use foul language. However, I know he hears it in the course of his day and has to simply censor himself.

I see this movie experience similarly. Of course, now he figures if we saw that he can go see Slumdog Millionaire and it would be okay. Not sure I’m ready to make that leap.

Most adults old enough to be parents remember kindergarten activities like finger painting, cutting triangles and circles out of colorful construction paper and spending long periods of time on the playground.

Not any more. As most parents known, today it’s full-day kindergarten, with lots of time spent on reading, spelling, even math. Not so much time on the playground.

Educators and advocates for children have also noticed the trend. A group called the “Alliance for Childhood”:http://www.allianceforchildhood.org/home, which describes itself as an advocacy group that” promotes policies and practices that support children’s healthy development, love of learning, and joy in living,” has just released a new report, “Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School”:http://www.allianceforchildhood.org/sites/allianceforchildhood.org/files/file/kindergarten_report.pdf.

The report confirms what many parents have already noticed. Time for play in most public kindergartens has dwindled to the vanishing point, replaced by lengthy lessons and standardized testing.

Classic play materials like blocks, sand and water tables, and props for dramatic play have largely disappeared from the 268 full-day kindergarten classrooms studied.

The report is based on studies conducted at three universities, including Long Island University  and Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers.

Looks like the latest iPhone feature will allow parents to check their kids’ blood glucose level from afar, according to U.S. News & World Report. That would add to the plethora of health-related functions already available on iPhone applications. But this is the first that monitors remotely, the magazine says.

And a prototype is already out there: It was just unveiled out on the West Coast.

Obvioulsy, this is marketed for kids with diabetes. And, in that regard, it’s a marvelous and valuable technological development. It could easily save lives.

(photo courtesy of Jason DeCrow/Associated Press)

There’s also a blood-pressure remote function on the way, and other medical tools in the works.

Clearly, these aren’t limited to children, but it certainly helps parents of kids with related health issues breathe a sigh of relief. And the way things are going, my son will probably be using this technology to keep tabs on me in the years to come.

So my wife and I were trying to figure out last week how to dress up our 15-month-old son for Purim, the festive holiday that commemorates how the Jews were saved in ancient Persia.

She spent quite a long time online and came up with some possible costumes: a bumble-bee, a cuddly lion, a UPS delivery man and a cute, fuzzy bear. The ears were off on some, the bumble-bee looked fat and the UPS outfit would have just been weird.

We settled on the cuddly lion and ordered it, and were told it would arrive in plenty of time for the holiday. The package arrived four days earlier but we were too busy to open it up until last Monday, the day before Purim.

When my wife finally did, inside the box was …. a duck costume.

It didn’t look anything like a lion, in fact, it didn’t look much like a duck. And it wasn’t even particularly cute. The body was made of tiny little yellow feathers that were shedding even inside the bag. And my son had worn a duck hat on the holiday last year.

We decided to return it and my wife went to a store Tuesday and found a replacement – a puppy costume with floppy ears and paws.

He was adorable. We took lots of pictures. His grandparents kvelled.

My wife, the Jewish mother, though, still thinks he would have made a great lion.

Troubling report his week from The National Center on Family Homelessness, which released a study that found 1 in 50 children in the U.S. were without a home. That’s about 1.5 million kids, according to the study. And the troubling thing is that the figures were compiled in 2005-2006 — before the current economic downturn that has more and more parents without jobs.

(Angela Gaul/The Journal News)

The study ranks New York 38th overall in a national review of states. The Empire state was 39th in child well being, 31st in risk of child homelessness, and 22nd in extent of child homelessness. It also classified New York’s policy and planning on the issue as inadequate.

It’s just a reminder that as more folks end up out of work, there’s a whole generation of kids tagging along.

Kids are better behaved and have better social skills if a grandparent is involved in their upbringing, according to a recent study in the Journal of Family Psychology, That’s kind of a no-brainer for most of us, but take note of the fact that the study found it’s particularly true in single-parent and divorced families.

(Joe Larese/The Journal News)

Obviously, plenty of children grow up to be marvelous human beings without significant influence from their grandparents. It was largely lacking in my childhood. But, and especially in single-parent homes, what an element of stability that can add to a child who doesn’t have the benefit of both parents in the home, or is struggling emotionally with the adjustment to a step-parent.

That’s a noteworthy footnote to the whole thing. At least it is for me.

Interesting stats out from the U.S. Census Bureau. In a nutshell, fewer families have children under 18 living at home. The number dropped to 46 percent last year, down from 57 percent in the ‘60s.

The reason, the bureau says, is because of lower fertility rates and the aging of Baby Boomers.

“Decreases in the percentage of families with their own child under 18 at home reflect the aging of the population and changing fertility patterns,” said Rose Kreider, family demographer at the U.S. Census Bureau.
“In 2008, not only were baby boomers old enough that most of their children were 18 and over, but they were having fewer kids than their parents, as well.”

Among the factors:

• Increases in longevity: The average numbers of years of life remaining at age 30 increased by about three years, comparing those 30 in 1960 with baby boomers who turned 30 in 1980 . As adults live longer, more married-couple households will be older and either childless or with adult children who live elsewhere.

• Increases in childlessness: The percentage of women 40 to 44 who were childless increased from 10 percent in 1976 to 20 percent in 2006.

So, society is getting older and having fewer kids at home. Or is there a deeper story behind the stats?

Sometime between Saturday and Sunday, I became the parent of a teenager. That’s because my oldest daughter was born on Feb. 29, 1996—  Leap Day. This year was an off year, so we wished her a happy birthday on both Saturday, Feb. 28 and Sunday, March 1.

We can joke all we want that she is really still only three-and-a-quarter years old. But anyway you slice it, she has now entered her teen years: a milestone for the entire family.