Words from the Heart

Dolphin and baby (Photo credit: WIlly Volk ) Ever since Yale professor, Amy Chua rocked the parenting world with her book, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" (Penguin Press, 2011), I have heard bits and piece about this authoritarian, adamant doggedness for perfection in academics.  At first, I had no frame of reference.  I had never met parents who are so strict on their insistence that their children make perfect grades and excel in everything that the children were suffering from stress-related illnesses.   Don't get me wrong, when I was raising my kids there were parents who pushed their kids to excel, but not so much in academics.  Mostly, the push was for being a star in whatever sport the child played.  A few wanted their child to be the star of the concert/play/orchestra, but that was it.   Recently, I have come face-to-face with tiger parenting.  My first reaction was, "Oh my goodness, don't you realize what you are doing to thi...

  Our Home - The Enchanted Cottage Edict from our homeowner's insurance company:  "The inspection revealed the current condition of the property (our home) and the insurance company decided to non-renew your coverage." These are the words that jumped out at me from an inspection of my home - the Enchanted Cottage - that my homeowners insurance company did recently as part of a "new protocol."  Like so many other evaluations being made in the world today, this one is not based on facts or logic. The person who took the pictures of our home did not prepare the report.  That was done by some unseen person, somewhere in the insurance world, who did not take into consideration that Roger and I have been struggling to keep up with things after his two major operations and  my being unemployed for two years.   In addition, the report doesn't mention that we are/have been working on the house, little by little. There is no mention of the f...