Fast food chains, snack food companies, and beverage manufacturers that target young people are creating a health crisis that is like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode sometime in the next few decades.  Through promotional tie-ins, two-for-one deals, free beverage refills, and access to public schools and other places where kids congregate, corporate pushers...Read More

I fly a lot, and when I travel I see a lot of people carrying teddy bears in the airport; not just children; adults too.  Everytime I see somebody carrying one onto a plane, I think of the idea of the “transitional object.”  This term was coined in 1951 by the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott.  It’s...Read More

I’ve written a book for educators called The Best Schools: How Human Development Research Should Inform Educational Practice (publisher:  The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, December, 2006).  In this book I suggest that our educational climate has become totally overwhelmed by what I call an “academic achievement discourse.”  This discourse concentrates on accountability, rubrics,...Read More

Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development model represents probably the most well-known and highly regarded map of the human life cycle in contemporary western culture.  This theory was first articulated in 1950 in chapter seven (“The Eight Ages of Man”) of his book Childhood and Society, and further developed in later books and articles. Erikson...Read More

A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates a big increase in the percentage of teenage suicides from 2003 to 2004.   For all young people between the ages of 10 and 24, the suicide rate rose 8 percent.  This is the biggest single year increase in fifteen years.  The largest increase was in...Read More