Every so often, I write a post about the pieces that struck me in the Sunday papers.

Here are a few articles that I thought were worth discussing…

Katherine has a very discerning palate (insert the p word here) so I am always looking for ways to expand her repertoire. Therefore, I was thrilled to read Matt Tichtel’s piece in the NYT titled “In Pitching Veggies to Kids, Less is More”. Turns out that research shows that kids who are told nothing (not “It’s so yummy!” or “It’s going to make you so strong!” about the foods they are going to try or eat, will eat more of them. This certainly is not what I have been doing so I suppose it’s worth a try!

This week’s New York Times Great Divide article was written by Robert Balfanz and titled Stop Holding Us Back. The article studies the shocking facts of high school drop out rates among poor children and examines the ways that are known, but not applied, to help the problem. He writes, “It is not news that the students who don’t make it out of high school largely come from our poorest neighborhoods, but the degree to which they are hyper-concentrated in a small set of schools is alarming. In fact, according to new research I conducted at Johns Hopkins University, half of the African American boys who veer off the path to high school graduation do so in just 660 of more than 12,600 regular and vocational schools.” Wow.

Patricia Volk authors, “The T.M.I. Pregnancy” in which she tells the story of her daughter-in-law’s pregnancy as she accompanies her to visit after visit where one more test is run and one more ‘warning sign’ is discovered. In the end, the baby is born healthy and happy but the family has spent nine months worrying. I wonder about this a lot and know about all the babies and families saved by our excellent pre-natal care but sometimes I do wonder….

As a person who went to and loved sleep away camp, I was fascinated by Pamela Paul’s article Not a Happy Camper in which she discussed her hate of camp but the fact that her daughter is leaving soon and will love it. She believes that the world is divided into camp lovers and camp haters, with good personality based reasons. I always believed that my girls would go to camp just as I did and even sent Caroline one summer. I worry that I sent her too young because she was not a happy camper but this article made me wonder if maybe she is just not a camp person.