The gender war began in first grade. My daughter came home on Monday irritated by the boys' slogan, "Girls go to Jupiter to get more stupider, boys go to college to get more knowledge." Tuesday, she came home giggling about, "Girls rule, boys drool." And so it has gone, one little barb after another thrown around as the girls and boys tease each other. I've always viewed this as inevitable and, for the most part, harmless, but maybe I'm wrong? It has been made known to me that saying things like "Girl Power!" is unsettling to the boys. The existence of clubs such as Girls on the Run raises …

My sweet niece came to stay with us this summer. We had a great time on field trips, swimming and shopping. And she bought black eye shadow, on my watch. In retrospect, I regret letting her buy it. My niece is a beautiful, bona fide teenager, but just barely into her teens. My leading edge of parenting experience is about eight years old, so what do I know? I figured the whole artsy, neo-grunge, black eye shadow thing was normal. My niece is incredibly smart, she gets straight As, and loves math. Will black eye shadow ruin that? Surely not, but if I wouldn't let my own daughter buy it, why …

Adolescence can be a dangerous place. I am reminded of this whenever I make it back to my childhood home to place flowers on my family's resting place. As I turn away from the well-groomed graves of the old cemetery to gaze out over a nearby lake, I always see the smiling, fresh face of a blue-eyed blonde staring back at me from a nearby headstone. Tracey Mott was my friend and teammate in school. Feisty and irreverent, the cross country runner and track star was a very pretty and popular sophomore girl. She had the world at her feet, winning state races and dating cute boys. But as the …

We are city folk who love living in Maplewood, but every summer we take the opportunity to travel to Michigan. It allows us to get away from the city (and the stifling heat) so we can visit Grandma. I feel guilty descending upon my mother like a swarm of locusts, with several rambunctious children exploring her immaculate house and dripping ketchup on her white carpet, but these times are really priceless; what is more valuable than time between grandparents and grandchildren? Grandma weathers it like a champ.  For our kids, it is a time to do stuff not readily done in the city. They enjoyed …

We love to go to the St. Louis Zoo, which, in the heart of Forest Park, is only five minutes away from Maplewood and Brentwood. One of my favorite places to visit at the zoo is the Fragile Forest and Jungle of the Apes. The zoo has a group of western lowland gorillas that includes massive silverback males. These apes are social, intelligent, and, for the most part, peaceful in their native habitats. They are also so strikingly similar to humans. My toddler and I strolled through the indoor habitat recently and we were the only ones in the area for a long while; it seemed deserted, devoid of …

A four-leaf clover is sometimes called a shamrock. Trifolium repens is the plant that begets the bona fide four-leaf variety, but almost all the buds from such plants are regular three-leaved versions. Only occasionally do shamrocks randomly sprout from these plants. Celtic legend that pre-dates Christianity designates the four leaves to represent faith, hope, love, and luck. Later, St. Patrick used the clover leaves to symbolize the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and—when one is lucky enough to find a fourth leaf—God's grace. Why a saint would use something extremely rare and random to signify …

One of the reasons we bought our house was the big backyard. We signed the mortgage with starry-eyed visions of our little ones chasing bubbles and fireflies on summer evenings. I never envisioned the blanket of acorns, sweet-gum balls, moss, dandelions and clover that dominate our backyard every summer. "We" also don't particularly like to mow, so sometimes I fear the mosquitoes (that are as big as bees), and worry about actually losing our youngest, shortest child in the chigger-infested wilderness behind our bamboo forest, which itself verges on metastasizing over all of our neighbors in …

I was doing some spring-cleaning in the kids' room and found a little collection of junk: trinkets and childhood fantasy talismans, I supposed. I moved the pile to clean, and later when my child discovered the stuff was not in its designated spot, she freaked out. I cannot blame her, I guess. Most of us have some sort of collection of something: shoes, CDs, nativity scenes, wine corks, baseball cards, tattoos, whatever. Then I began to think, "Why do we collect stuff?" Humans are the only animals I can think of who routinely seem to harbor stashes of apparently useless trinkets (except maybe …

Mr. Adams-Wenger, known as Mr. A-W, joined the Maplewood Richmond Heights Early Childhood Center community in 2010 to begin his first experience teaching children the magic of music. With two young children at the ECC, I can witness to the fire he has lit in their imaginations through music. They come home singing, with renewed interest in playing the instruments we have lying around the house, and they've even been making their own instruments out of the backyard bamboo and stuff we have in the recycling bin. (Lesson learned: Wash the recyclables thoroughly prior to throwing them into that …

I noticed when Maplewood put up the flag banners along Manchester Road reminding us that we are traveling on the famous "Route 66." It brought to mind our family road trips from my childhood. Once upon a time road trips were a rite of passage, a forced lesson on familial harmony, a national pastime. Does the following sound familiar (details may vary): You're somewhere between one and 10 years old in the family station wagon speeding down the highway around 80 mph (speed limit is 75). The windows are rolled up tight, dad is chain smoking and there is an open can of beer in his lap. As the car…

It is no secret that the Maplewood Richmond Heights community has been working hard to increase the academic standing of its schools. Americans nationwide lament that K-12 students are poorly educated in public schools. Many blame teachers and teachers' unions. I agree that administrators must be allowed to fire a truly lazy or abusive teacher without facing untold thousands of dollars fighting a lawsuit against someone hiding behind a union shield. That said, is it realistic to wave goodbye to the kids on the schoolbus each morning, and then place all responsibility for their educational …

I haven't yet read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua. But I have heard the tizzy it has stirred up about parents that are relentlessly tough on their children in the pursuit of vicarious excellence. It makes me nervous that I sometimes walk precariously close to that line. My job is not to be my child's best buddy. I will never drive my adolescents around the neighborhood to throw toilet paper in their friends' trees, nor will I ever have a beer with my teenager. I know me, and I suspect that I will always watch their grades like a hawk, make them practice piano before playtime, …

Have you ever awakened in the morning hearing the rhythmic drumming of rain on the house and felt a content anticipation of the day? I used to. Rain used to mean I had an excuse to curl up with several cups of coffee and get lost in a really great book for hours. However, with small children around, I have no quiet rainy days in which to settle in on the couch and become engrossed in anything. Oh no, as a parent you must be constantly on your toes. So now, when I wake up to rain, my mind starts filing through a list of potential activities to keep the kids busy. I always seem to run out of …

I was sipping coffee while watching my kids play at a playground in the Maplewood-Brentwood area when I heard testimony about a vaccine causing autism. It wasn't my choice to eavesdrop. The conversation was impassioned, as are most parents' conversations about their children.  Conspiracy theories thrive on the Internet, perpetuating the beliefe that diabolical scientists are poisoning our children with vaccines. This disconnect between what medical scientists actually do and what the general public suspects they do can endanger children's lives, particularly when parents believe that vaccines…

If you want to teach your young daughters the merits of dressing like a hooker, you may consult the Disney princesses Ariel or Jasmine for advice.  I recently thumbed through a coloring book Grandma bought for the girls, and didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Ariel the mermaid, with her shyly batted eyelashes, open come-hither lips and a bedroom-eyed look on her face, sits on a prince's lap. Her hunched shoulders accentuate her cleavage in an eerily Marilyn Monroe-ish pose. In her movies and cartoons, she is at once this hot, sexy lil' thang, and yet a very innocent, naïve little girl. Ah, …

Victoria Brown wrote the following piece to honor Shannon Dodson and her family following Shannon's unexpected death on Feb. 10. My daughters were disturbed to see mommy crying. My preschooler took my chin in her little hands and said, "Mommy, now she is a star in the sky, and they can see her, and she will always be with them."  She was a friend that I knew through the Maplewood Richmond Heights Early Childhood Center Daisy troop. She was rather soft-spoken, and I only recently began to know her better during Girl Scout cookie season, but I respected her immensely. She was a striking young …

The Itty Bitty Blue Devils are working their tails off on the basketball court this season, learning a game that is at once simple (ball-in-basket) and complex (dribble-while-running). Considering the MRH team consists of kindergarten through first-graders (plus one brave second-grader), they are holding their own in the second-grader league. Skills are progressing at the speed of light; they now resemble a team of coordinated mates, instead of simply a hoard of organisms meandering around the court in Brownian motion. The referees are permissive, which is a blessing during heated …

It's so cold and snowy in Maplewood that birds are falling out of trees. My children and I were playing in the fresh morning snow, admiring icicles, when a beautiful little bird dropped to the ground right in front of my neighbor as he shoveled snow. The bird was shivering and gasping, but it wasn't quite dead yet. My irrational tendency for excessive mothering kicked in and, hoping to avoid a discussion of death on a bright wintry morning, did my best to keep the bird alive. We made a bed for the bird in a shoebox, supplied it with food and I used a syringe to try to let it take a tiny sip …

Okay, I'm not a sportswriter, so apologies in advance for this biased account of the most important basketball game I've ever watched. The "Itty Bitty Blue Devils" is my name for the kindergarten through second-graders that make up the youngest girls basketball team in the Maplewood Richmond Heights Youth Sports league. The season opener took place on Jan. 8 at The Center of Clayton, which by the way does not seem to be actually in the center of Clayton, as we found out in transit to the game (we were almost late). We played against the Forsyth Falcons, or as I would say, the "Itty Bitty …