ArcaMax

"Let me tell you about Alice," said Mariel Mussack, an attorney with Community Legal Services, testifying in the Pennsylvania state Legislature on Monday. Alice, Mussack said, is a single mom of two who was also caretaker for her younger brother, aged 13. When she needed to run a brief errand, Alice had her brother babysit her nearly 1-year-...Read more

Here are some things most Americans believe but I don't:

-- You must have a water bottle with you at all times or you will die of dehydration, or end up drinking Coke instead and die of diabetes. (Or you will end drinking Diet Coke instead and die of something Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is worried about.)

-- Your kid should not play at the park ...Read more

Chelsea F.'s baby, Teddy (both pseudonyms used at the family's request), was born with serious genetic problems -- heart defects, breathing issues and brain abnormalities. But when Chelsea rushed the 5-month-old to a Texas emergency room in January after he developed a fever, seizures, vomiting and what was later determined to be a brain bleed...Read more

The story of a 5-year-old who wandered away from home is going viral today for a wonderful reason: The cops did not arrest the parents!

In Jacksonville, Florida, a 5-year-old named William managed to leave his family's home and fully fenced-in yard one recent morning and walk over to the local Chick-fil-A. Alone!

Whereupon the employees couldn...Read more

Our dreams are getting more boring, and believe it or not, the reason is ... phones.

So suggests Adam Haar Horowitz, a dream researcher with a whole lot of academic heft behind him, including a PhD from MIT and Harvard. Now he's living in Sitka, Alaska, to be closer to indigenous Americans who have long set more store in their dreams...Read more

According to a Reuters article, "Mattel has teamed up with OpenAI to develop toys and games with artificial intelligence. ... The company ... plans to 'bring the magic of AI to age-appropriate play experiences.'" ...

BARBIE: Hello, my new best friend. I'm Barbie. What's YOUR name?

AVA: It's Ava.

BARBIE: Ava. That's a nice name. What is your ...Read more

Kids love staring at their phones so much they don't want to do anything else, right?

An explosive new Harris Poll finds that that is an urban (and suburban and rural) myth. What kids ages 8 to 12 REALLY want to do is hang out together in real life -- with no adults hovering and no screens.

They go online because that's the only ...Read more

On May 25, 1979, 6-year-old Etan Patz was taken from his school bus stop in Manhattan and never seen again. A few years later, he became one of the first missing children whose face appeared on milk cartons.

His story has haunted Americans ever since. In fact, after I let my 9-year-old ride the subway alone, there were folks who said, "How ...Read more

As some readers of this column may have noticed, I keep gently reminding (or perhaps the word is hectoring) parents to step back to allow kids to step up. But what if a kid doesn't WANT to step up ... or even get off the couch?

This happens often enough that I'm reprinting the note from a mom worried about this. She wrote to say:

"My son loves...Read more