Giving kids the social skills they need to succeed
Before I went to graduate school and embarked on a professional career, I flirted with the world of hippie-dom for a few years. I was captivated by Jack Kerouac’s writing that extolled the life of on-the-road spontaneity and the freedom to “dig” all that was around us. I spent my share of time at Grateful Dead shows, captivated as I was […]
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This past week, there were news stories in the media about the State of the Union Address, chaos in Yemen, and the death of a king in Saudi Arabia. Here in New England, all those stories played second fiddle to news of our beloved New England Patriots and the deflated football scandal. As the Patriots head to the Super Bowl to face the […]
» Read moreA few years ago, a couple of teenage boys I was working with asked me a question that must be on the mind of many an adolescent: “Bruce…is bastard a swear word?” I answered that it depends on the context in which it’s used, whereupon one of my young charges replied “Screw context! What the hell has it ever done […]
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In 1988, I was a first year graduate student in the Counseling Psychology program at Tufts. I did my internship that year at The Academy of Physical and Social Development in Newton. The choice to do my internship there had more to do with the fact that it was accessible by public transportation than anything else. Call it karma or […]
» Read moreA good neuropsychological evaluation is worth its weight in gold. A thorough assessment provides invaluable data about an individual’s cognitive, emotional, and psychological functioning, the way s/he processes and organizes information, and perceives and interacts with the world. A trained neuropsychologist takes the thousands of puzzle pieces that go into an assessment to create a coherent, rich picture of the many processes that make […]
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In memory of Marcia Strassman, Gabe Kotter’s long suffering wife Julie on the 1970’s sitcom Welcome Back Kotter, I’m reposting an entry I wrote two years ago. Strassman passed away last Friday. R.I.P.
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As a species, we humans are decidedly a mixed bag. Interactions with other people elicit emotions ranging from rage to indifference to joy. For most of us, the frustration inherent in everyday communication can be looked upon as a minor irritant – the cost of doing business. For other people, those annoyances are deal breakers. They see other humans as means to an end at best and […]
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“Well, I’m not giving my baby any more dangerous drugs. From now on, it’s nothing but fresh air, lots of hugs, and good old-fashioned Ritalin.” – Marge Simpson To medicate or not to medicate, that is the question. It is, at any rate, for scores of parents of kids and adolescents with ADHD. Paraphrasing the […]
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Recently, my family and I spent a week camping on the coast of Maine. We spent part of the week at a beautiful new campground in the town of Brooklin, right near Blue Hill and Deer Isle. As luck would have it, we wound up adjacent to another family with children close to my daughter’s age. As luck would also have it, one of the children […]
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Sometime during the late 1990’s, Academy MetroWest came into possession of a copy of the movie Heavyweights. No one really remembers how it came to us or who brought it in but it’s exerted a powerful presence at our summer camp ever since. It’s one of those rare gems that’s ostensibly for kids but is just as funny for adults. All of our […]
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