Parenting on Random thoughts of me

Addendum: Age Changes the Question

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The same Sam means one thing at eight and something entirely different at fifteen. The risk curve is not flat across childhood. The social stakes escalate as a child grows, and the escalation is not folk wisdom — it is documented. What happens to the peer world of an American teenage boy between eleven and eighteen changes the calculus completely.

Between roughly eleven and fourteen, romance moves from the periphery to the center of adolescent social life. It comes to dominate the internal world and the conversations with friends; ethnographers and developmental researchers describe dating and romance as one of the organizing principles of adolescent peer structure, not a side activity within it.¹ The peer world physically reorganizes to match: kids stop socializing only within their own sex and begin forming mixed-gender groups that bring boys and girls together in joint activity.²

Children Become Who They Play With

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When I was a kid I had a friend who lived nearby. He wasn’t Jewish. He was, by any measure, a good kid — kind, easy to be around, more mature than his age. We played the way children have always played. Hide-and-seek with walkie-talkies and some elaborate set of rules I no longer remember. Pretend games. Pulling bamboo out of the strip behind his backyard, which for some reason felt like the best thing in the world to do on a given afternoon.

It Starts With You

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Relocate the question

The primary question was never “should my child have non-Jewish friends.” That question can’t be answered in the abstract, and trying to answer it in the abstract is the error. The real question, the one that determines outcomes:

What is the child’s home-based identity actually built on?

Because that is what decides whether outside exposure is a minor wind the child leans into and walks through, or an existential threat. Same friend, same Sam, same team — the meaning of the exposure is set almost entirely by what the child is bringing to it from home.

Not All Friendships Are the Same

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The childhood friendship — the neighbor, the walkie-talkies, the bamboo — cost me nothing Jewish. The wrong lesson to draw is “non-Jewish friendships are fine.” The right one is narrower: that particular kind of friendship was fine.

“Non-Jewish friend” is not one thing. It names several structurally different situations that get lumped under a single phrase, and the lumping is exactly where the bad thinking happens. A parent who has decided the question in the abstract — for it or against it — has already made the mistake. The situations differ enough that they deserve different answers.

Protecting our homes

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 -0500

We want our homes to be safe. Many people suffice with a heavy door and a strong lock. But it isn’t always enough to fortify our homes. In our increasingly volatile world, it is wise to strengthen our selves, with firearms and the like. But even the most ardent believers in the importance of self defense don’t recommend removing your front door.

The internet is good, bad, everywhere, and forever. Most people recognize the importance of restricting access to dangerous content on devices, even if they can’t be bothered to do anything about it. It is a challenge to set up filters on all of our family’s myriad devices, and there are often monthly fees attached. It has the potential to get confrontational, and even after all of that, it’s only for devices we know about.

On Happiness

Mon, 24 Aug 2020 00:00:00 -0500

My two year old son was sad on the long drive home today. Very sad. Car sick, tired, miserable, alternating between tears and distraction to the sound of my barely coherent ramblings. We get home, and I unpack, and all the while inside the car he is the picture of misery. I take him out of the car, and he’s happy! He gets a bath, changed, a song in bed, and all the old suffering is gone, replaced by joy and security.

Parenting on Random thoughts of me

Addendum: Age Changes the Question

Romance becomes the social currency, 11–14

Children Become Who They Play With

It Starts With You

Relocate the question

Not All Friendships Are the Same

Protecting our homes

On Happiness