On Yom HaShoah, my 3-year-old daughter left ganwith a memorial candle and a poem about the honor we show for the Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. Having lived in Israel for nearly four years, I was already a pro at just nodding at all the educational and cultural things that I thought were absolutely bizarre or inappropriate, so despite the fact that I

It’s not easy feeding children. Some of them just don’t like to eat. They instinctively know that even if it’s shaped like a bear, it’s a chicken nugget and a chicken nugget is made out of chicken (hopefully) and eating chicken would make mommy happy, so, no, that child is not eating it.  It also doesn’t help when their father is a picky eater. When we are

As we have just passed the “holiday” of Mother’s day, when kids make their moms adorable cards and creative gifts in school and their dads desperately try to make some sort of good impression on mom so that Father’s Day, for them, doesn’t totally stink. I did see the irony in having the holiday of Shavuos follow so closely to Mother’s Day and then look,

I was recently on a trip to Israel and on my return flight I decided to diligently utilize the much anticipated 12 hours of uninterrupted alone time to work on my next column. As I began to write, I was suddenly plunged forward from a forceful kick to the back of my seat.

Apparently, the little girl sitting behind me was not happy that her movie was over.

Some Ideas On Rewarding Or Punishing For Grades

Over the years, it appears that there has been a tectonic shift in education wherein there is more of an emphasis on grades rather than on learning itself. Somehow there is this crushing competition from the earliest school experience onward for which nursery, which elementary school, which high

Private practice or corporation? Law or medicine? Harvard or Yale? Cheerios or Corn Flakes? Cheerios or Cornflakes???What are you talking about? What’s the big deal? Well, when you’re 2 years old, it can be a big deal.

Acquiring the skill of learning how to—and being comfortable in—making decisions is a gift parents can and should give to

With Pesach just a few weeks away, the OU has upgraded the OU Kosher Appwhich allows consumers to search the kosher status of all OU products Kosher for Passoverand year-round. It now includes Passover FAQ’s, a new side navigation tool and educational articles.  So far, the free

Almost everyone knows the four questions that are read in the haggadah during the Passover seders, but for two OU Kosher poskim (halachic authorities) --  Rabbi Yisroel Belsky and Rabbi Hershel Schachter -- multiple other questions are asked of them every year during the Orthodox Union’s Pre-Passover webcast, which this year will take place on Tuesday, March 12 at

Lately, it seems like everywhere I look there’s another harried, frazzled person working too hard and getting too little sleep.

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to find ourselves trapped in a cycle of stress, and yet, it is so very difficult to address our stressors head-on. There are many great tactics to help reduce stress—exercise, listening to music,

(Teaneck, NJ) The Bergen County Friends of P’TACH hosted a parenting lecture titled “ Tiger Mom vs. Jewish Mom” at the home of Elaine and Hillel Weinberger on Monday, March 4th. The speaker was Mrs. Chary Fox, nationally renown educational consultant and preschool director at the Sephardic Academy in Manhattan. She discussed the divergence in parenting between

I am a very lucky person—blessed I would say. With a busy life and great expectations and hopes, it often takes something or someone to remind me to remember the good things in my life. And recently, one of my children did exactly that.

On one special morning in the Bernstein household, our boys woke up even earlier than usual after

I can’t remember the first time I heard the phrase “witching hour.”  Was it when one of my kids was screaming, the other one was spitting up on me, one kid was throwing his dinner on the floor, their father was “working” and a friend was trying to convince me that my angelic boys all turning into monsters at the same time was perfectly normal and there even