Uh, Wal-Mart?
The strawberries, in the regular plastic box with a lid, were 99 cents for the one-pound container. Ah, yes, they were fresh with bright green tops and they cost me half the price I would have paid had I bought…
You Wanna Take This Outside?
A perfect story for this March, which has been designated “National Parenting Awareness Month," is the South Central Los Angeles mom who, with her two daughters, assaulted the younger daughter’s teacher on the campus of John Muir Middle School. Kiki…
Being Tough Gets The Job Done
Juan Martinez, the prosecutor in the Jodi Arias murder trial, ought to be seen as a role model for every home in America where parents are raising children. “He don’t take no stuff,” remarked the young adult in my household…
Parenting Horror Stories
Some years ago, an audience participant on our Talk About Parenting with Shirlee Smith Cable TV show proclaimed, “ You need a driver’s license to drive. You need a license to own a dog. . . “ Of course she went…
Black History Marches Through Your Town
It’s not real smart for today’s black parents to rely on February as the month their children get to find out who they are, and, most likely, the scant amount of information the kids get exposed to isn’t coming from their…
Ask Your Preacher Man About The New Jim Crow
Some years ago, during the late 1960s, my younger sister, who at the time was attending UCLA's law school, was part of a project that took her to one of California's state prisons for men.She said she saw why she…
Birds Do It, Why Don’t We?
It’s referred to as the “Empty Nest Syndrome” - the kids leave home and the parents, well, let’s get real, here, Mom doesn’t know what to do with herself.Those mothers who still have the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom…
Black History Meets Art Linkletter
’Twas Art Linkletter who let it be known that “kids say the darndest things.” On this Martin Luther King Jr.. holiday weekend, Linkletter's classification brings me to think about a darndest and how it evolved into an Oprah Winfrey “aha” moment. Just what…
Family Resolutions
This may well turn out to be the best story of 2013. While I bear the burden of not giving the new year a chance to unfold, the story of the year I'm going with is the family that gathered…
Raising Kids For Prison
The young lady on the Cleveland RTA bus plain ol’ wasn’t up to obeying what the driver told her to do. When he finally decked her, yes, an upper-cut to the jaw, she was still being defiant and yelling that…
Because I Said So!
I’m not quite sure why so many parents want to believe today’s kids are different. Now, if they were claiming kids are fatter than they were a few years ago, that’s a position with supports.According to research, almost 60% of…
Tough Times Require Tough Changes
Times are tough and some folks recognize that their everyday spending habits need to be reigned in. It sounded as though the woman was saying something about the economy was in trouble. She was strolling down a grocery aisle pushing…