Q. My ex’s boyfriend just moved in with her. We share custody of my 6-year-old daughter. We were at her ballet recital and I overheard him chastising my daughter for something. I’m not crazy about the idea of her boyfriend disciplining my daughter. What’s good ex-etiquette?

A. Hearing another adult correct your child can feel surprisingly...Read more

TAMPA, Fla. -- For 20 years, you could see their faces: An 8-year-old girl with chopped bangs and sad, brown eyes; a tall teenage boy with a shy smile; a 13-year-old girl with glasses, beaming between her three younger brothers.

Professional photographers teamed up with Heart Galleries across the country to provide portraits of children who ...Read more

Dear Kid Whisperer,

What if a student completely refuses to participate in a Delayed Learning Opportunity? I don’t mean he just sits there until he eventually starts doing it, but instead runs out of the room and out to recess, or something along those lines?

Answer: While this is a challenge, it may be the best opportunity anyone will ever ...Read more

It dangled, wiggled and squirmed on the hook. It was click bait and I clicked. No pause, no hesitation. Click. Just like that.

I’ll tell you what hooked me. Mature women. They had me at the word “mature.”

Well, let’s back that up. They actually had me at “Hosin garlic noodles.” It was a recipe for a weeknight meal. When you’ve ...Read more

You know you’re old and washed up as an athlete when you hurt your arm playing Wiffle ball.

That’s what happened when I was the pitcher in a spirited game with my grandchildren, who not only hit home runs off me but ran so fast around the nonexistent bases in my backyard that when I tried to throw them out at home plate, I threw out my arm ...Read more

CHICAGO -- Standing on a second-story Bronzeville balcony Sunday evening, a couple watched from above as the grassy area between their apartment building and the CTA Green Line tracks came to life in a way it never had before.

They saw people of all ages come flocking in costumes: one dressed as an inflatable dinosaur and others as bananas, ...Read more

Earlier this week I left a medical appointment, walked onto the elevator, waited for it to whoosh me to the lobby 18 floors below and started thinking about trust.

How often I rely on trust in a day. How much it shapes my worldview. How crippling it would be to lose it as a guiding force.

I trusted that the elevator would work. I trusted that ...Read more

CHICAGO -- Late at night in 2016, Michael Ramos sat hunched over his dining room table in his suburban Harwood Heights condominium, assembling valves and motor parts he’d picked up from local electronics shops.

By day, he worked as a building engineer at Von Steuben Metropolitan Science Center high school in Chicago. By night, he tried to ...Read more

LYNNWOOD, Wash. — Could a partnership between a school district and developer to build housing for homeless families be a model for removing one of the biggest barriers those students face?

Officials in the Edmonds School District and Housing Hope, an Everett-based affordable housing builder, are hoping a 52-unit development underway near ...Read more

There is supposedly an unwritten rule in the plant breeding world: If the new plant is not orange then it may be called blue. I am forever being told that a plant I am touting is not blue but is purple, lavender or ... well, you get the drift. There will, however, be no argument over one of the most celebrated salvias, Rockin Blue Suede Shoes.

...Read more

LOS ANGELES — A wish is a deeply personal thing, often fleeting and silent. But sometimes, a wish is a collective endeavor, a bold and communal call for action.

Yoko Ono's "Wish Tree" installation is both. The piece — which Ono has staged more than 250 times in 35-plus countries — draws on a Japanese tradition at Buddhist temples that ...Read more

Dear Anna,

A few years ago, I fell into an intense long-distance relationship with someone I met through a fandom community. We went from friends to lovers, writing smutty fan fic together and talking every day. They already had a long-term partner, and although they had always considered themselves open, I was the first person they had ...Read more

CHICAGO -- For four years, Lockport, Illinois, residents Ray and Shelly Romolt have stared out their window at an empty lot, waiting for the day developers would transform it into a home for new neighbors.

They’ve been eager to watch construction commence, and have long pictured the moment a moving truck would deliver fresh faces to join them...Read more

In any relationship, budding or established, there are two competing philosophies: Take people as they come vs. ask for what you want/need, especially when it comes to certain behaviors. I want to share that these two things can co-exist, and neither has to necessarily take precedence over the other.

Yes, we have to take people as they come, ...Read more

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Tyonne Nelson was celebrating his birthday with family at a Lauderdale-by-the-Sea resort last month when tragedy nearly struck in an instant.

Nelson, of Miami Gardens, had spent an hour at the beach near the Plunge Beach Resort with his 5-year-old son, Tyler, on May 24. When the boy got hungry about 4 p.m., they headed ...Read more

Years ago, we had a financial adviser who was so young I often wondered if I should bake cookies before he came to the house — peanut butter or chocolate chip?

He once said something that I found semi-appalling. He asked if we knew the three phases of retirement. We confessed we did not. With a grin, he said, “Well, there’s go-go, slow-go...Read more

Dear Kid Whisperer,

I teach in an urban K-8 school. Several years ago, we got a new administrator who took a lot of control away from the teachers and, in my opinion, has made teachers do many things that I believe have made behaviors worse. One thing she has done is to make sure that kids get warnings in the classroom, and that we have a ...Read more

As a man who can’t stay awake for the 11 o’clock news, which isn’t worth watching anyway, I tire easily. Then I fall asleep. And I snore with enough force to wake up not only the dead, who sleep pretty soundly, but also my wife, who would like to kill me.

So I got a CPAP machine, which was supposed to cure my sleep apnea. Stupidly, which ...Read more

Chicago-based writer Veronica Arreola got a text in late May from a friend. It was a screenshot of her 2023 children’s book, “J is for Justice: An Activism Alphabet” and a question: “Is this you?”

Her book was featured in People magazine. (Yay!)

Under the headline “Nonfiction book bans are on the rise, including these 29 banned ...Read more

If you’ve got sun and want a touch of the tropics and baskets full of blooms, then Austin Pretty Limits oleander is for you.

Let’s address your cold hardiness concerns first. Austin Pretty Limits is cold hardy from zones 8 and up. That’s a large swath of the country that can grow the shrub with ease. The rest of the country can grow ...Read more