(Un)Grammatically Speaking One of the less-heralded parental duties is (gently) correcting your kid’s bad grammar — or trying to. Witness this exchange between me and my (then) 8 year-old daughter: She: “Did you know that Raffy (family dog) digged a big hole in the garden?” Me: “It’s “dug,” not “dig.” She (with emphasis): “Did you know...Read More
Good Journalistic — and Realtor — Technique (vs. Parent of New College Student) Good journalists — and Realtors! — know that the key to eliciting information is to pose open-ended questions rather than closed-ended questions. So, savvy listing agents debriefing Buyers’ agents ask, “What did your client like most/least about the home?,” not, “How did...Read More
Slang vs. Literal According to Urban Dictionary, the slang meaning of “taking someone to school” is, “beating someone in a competition badly and thereby teaching them how it’s really done.” Ahh, but what if that someone is your 18 year-old son, and you really ARE “taking him to school” — in this case, to college halfway across the...Read More
Right Message, Wrong Messenger “Pick you up from school?!? When I was your age, nobody picked me up from school. I had to take two city buses, wait in the cold for a transfer, and sit in traffic for an hour to get home from school.” –Overheard at the Kaplan kitchen table around 7:30 a.m....Read More
What Could Go Wrong? Worry #10: “The Bar Mitzvah Blizzard” “Relax, enjoy everything,” my relatives counseled leading up to my son’s (just-concluded) bar mitzvah weekend. “What could possibly go wrong?” I actually had no fewer than 74 discrete worries, but these were my “Top Ten”: 10. Epic blizzard will shut down local airport; Gramie, Zadie, Grandpa...Read More
Question #2: And Exactly How Much Was That?? It turns out son #2 doesn’t owe anyone anything. What he meant to say was, “I got there fine” (as in, “I arrived safely”). The back story: he and a friend biked to school for the first time the other morning, and was under strict instructions to...Read More
