Dear Kid Whisperer,

I teach in a K-5 room for students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBDs). I love my job and I run a tight ship. My students know that while they are in my room, their negative behaviors won’t work: They only get what they want with positive behaviors. However, a few of my students know that there are some ...Read more

Kate Movius knew it would be challenging when her son Aidan, who experiences profound autism, turned 22 and aged out of the programs and services provided through his school.

What she didn't anticipate was the two years she would spend in a fruitless search for an adult program that fit her son. Ultimately, the family ditched the wait lists and...Read more

I was lucky in many ways that my parents were young when I was born. My mother was 19, my father 22.

Their youth meant their parents were also relatively young, as were their parents’ parents, which dropped me into a multitude of grandparents and great-grandparents at birth, a tribe of elders whose physical presence would enrich my life for ...Read more

CHICAGO -- Rose and Rob Bronstein were blindsided by their 15-year-old son Nate’s suicide in early 2022.

The Bronsteins say Nate was a funny, athletic and well-liked kid. What they didn’t know, they said, is that in the weeks leading up to his death, Nate was being harassed by other Latin School of Chicago students on the social media ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA -- Anxiety among children and teens is on the rise, and that concerns clinical psychologist and Temple University professor Philip Kendall.

Kendall directs Temple’s Child & Adolescent Anxiety Disorders Clinic, which treats kids ages 7 to 17. The clinic charges low treatment fees in exchange for enrolling children in research to ...Read more

When our kids were young, I briefly considered home schooling. Then I was teaching our son to play piano, found myself with the John Thompson Book for Beginners rolled up in my hand, ready to swat him on the arm, and realized I was not home-school material.

We paid a neighbor for piano lessons. She taught all the kids in the neighborhood and ...Read more

Q: My sister is getting married, and her fiance has asked my ex to be his best man. My ex and I don't get along very well and I have asked her fiance to reconsider many times, but he refuses to consider how I might feel. I am also in the wedding party as well as my two children, ages 10 and 12. Plus, there are other former couples who are ...Read more

If the remains of Jimmy Hoffa are ever found, ending a nearly half-century search for the notorious union boss, I know just where they will be:

My office.

That’s because I am in the middle of one of the biggest cleanups of all time, one that not only rivals the most ambitious urban renewal projects ever undertaken, but could be the basis for...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- It was a yearlong battle, Maribel Ahumada said, to get her teenage son into the program that changed his life.

The Gardena, California, mother was dissatisfied with the traditional system that arranges supportive services for Californians with developmental disabilities like D'Angelo Ahumada, who has cerebral palsy, epilepsy and ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — Kevin and Julie McMonagle’s nearly 3-month-old daughter was behaving oddly. Colleen wasn’t finishing her bottles, her pacifier kept falling out of her mouth, and her cry was as quiet as a kitten’s.

As the parents of four children, they rarely worried about sniffles and stomach bugs. Still, they took the baby to the ...Read more

For three decades, David Johnson has guided nature lovers in early spring to northern Illinois lakes to hear the eerie yodeling of hundreds of common loons.

Within the next 30 years, however, there may be few if any migrating loons in Illinois, according to Walter Piper, researcher and professor of biology at Chapman University in Orange, ...Read more

The Garden Guy has become completely mesmerized by a bowl of blackcurrants.

You can guess I am having a little fun with you. I am not talking about the fruit but the flowers referred to as Superbells Blackcurrant Punch.

This year most everything came through the winter, including a few plants where I am even asking, "Where did you come from?"...Read more

There's a hidden scourge making homes more harmful to the climate and less comfortable: leaky heating and cooling systems. Plugging those leaks may be the dull stepchild of the energy transition, but that doesn't make it any less important than installing dazzling solar arrays and getting millions of electric vehicles on the road.

The problem,...Read more

PHILADELPHIA -- The Philly born, Pulitzer-winning playwright Charles Fuller didn’t start writing plays until he was an adult. These high school students are getting a head start.

Philadelphia Young Playwrights, a organization that has taught Philly youth the art of playwriting since 1987, held its Spring Showcase earlier this month. At the ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- South Los Angeles resident Channing Martinez recalls the days years ago when he couldn't find enough change for the bus and was forced to hop on his bicycle.

Martinez, 36, co-director of the Labor Community Strategy Center, a think tank and advocacy organization for working-class families, rode roughly seven miles to El Camino ...Read more

MIAMI -- On the outside, the Miami Lakes church looks like any other house of God, perhaps plainer than most.

The unassuming white exterior, topped by a tall bronze dome that peeks over the Palmetto Expressway, offers no hint that stepping into Christ the Saviour Orthodox Cathedral is like entering a glorious gallery of religious art — but ...Read more

PITTSBURGH — Dizy Kapalka has always loved the great outdoors, so it's no surprise that she quickly mastered the artistry of casting a line in a graceful arch into a cool, clear body of water.

It's why the Cabot, Pennsylvania, resident took up fly fishing a decade ago. And the sisterhood she's found doing it? That's worth a story.

In ...Read more

At the tender age of 18, I made the decision to attend the university that offered me the largest financial aid package, through academic scholarships.

It’s been 17 years since that decision and I’m certain that it was the right call. If I had stuck with my first-choice school, I would have been saddled with nearly $75,000 in student loans ...Read more

Dear Anna,

I'm a 28-year-old woman living in Brooklyn, New York, with my boyfriend of two years, who's been getting more and more enthralled with the world of TikTok lately. He's always been big on social media, way more so than me, and he recently brought up this idea of us evolving into a “TikTok couple.” Now he's picturing us posting ...Read more

I’d like a large thin-crust pizza with extra cheese, red peppers, pepperoni and olives. But can you please make sure the cheese is covering the whole pizza because I don’t like baldness? And actually, why don’t you hold the pepperoni all together. I’d like someone who doesn’t eat processed red meat. And while you’re there, make sure ...Read more