LOS ANGELES – Nearly every evening after dinner, Mary and Melissa Anderson walked together along the rural road stretching out from their home.

The one-mile journey amid groves of walnut trees became a safe space for mother and daughter. The walk was always the same, to the nearest stop sign and back, but the conversations ranged wide and ...Read more

So far in their young lives, the Heinrich brothers of Manchester, Connecticut, have shared two powerful moments.

The second milestone happened Saturday at Manchester High School’s graduation ceremony, which Paxton Heinrich might have missed if not for his brother, Campfield.

As a board of education member (the youngest member elected in the ...Read more

FRESNO, Calif. – On a spring day when the mustard greens were still tender, Sherril Wells stopped harvesting, raised her arms and danced to Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly" playing over her SUV's speakers.

Her friend Liza Apper had told her that joy and grief could exist together. She thought this must have been what Apper meant: a flash of being...Read more

LOS ANGELES – My younger sister and I have a lot in common.

We are both long-winded and gesture dramatically when we speak. We're patient listeners and inveterate advice-givers. We tilt toward skepticism, and cling stubbornly to our beliefs.

And that has brought us to a rare impasse, on the issue of COVID-19 vaccines.

I have been ...Read more

Q: Is it too much to expect a 2-year-old to pick up his toys? Our little fella, when we tell him to pick up his toys, just stands there and looks at us. We’ve tried making a game of it. We’ve tried punishing. We’ve tried bribing him with ice cream. Nothing has worked. At most, he will pick up one toy and put it where we tell him, but that�...Read more

To cut down on your child’s anxiety, not to mention the cries of “I’m bored,” we’ve compiled a list of things to prepare them for a hurricane and to keep them entertained.

Explain hurricanes

Tell your children that a hurricane is a giant, rainy windstorm that requires a lot of preparation and precaution.

The more children know ...Read more

CHICAGO – The last time Neha Kaul Mehra was in her hometown of New Delhi was in October 2019 for Diwali.

She and her family decorated the house, cooked a feast and gave out gifts. A few months later, she and her parents, who are scientists, watched news coming out of Wuhan, China, anticipating the novel virus would impact whether they could ...Read more

Coronavirus stole my Thanksgiving. When my son tested positive, my extended family members canceled their trips. It robbed my Christmas. My husband's parents couldn't consider setting foot on a plane.

Even Easter, which held so much hope with increasing vaccinations, ended up a bust, with my nephew stranded abroad in mandatory quarantine and me...Read more

For three decades, I knew my mother-in-law as a strong woman with very sharp edges. She was highly opinionated and blunt — sometimes excessively so. Her words could bruise if you let them.

She rarely paused to edit her thoughts.

If she didn't like the service she was getting at a restaurant, she'd say so in a stage whisper that projected ...Read more

ST. LOUIS — Jenny Berla has three children, 5-year-old twins and an 8-year-old. And they are really sick of nature hikes, she said.

But, after Berla, her Type 1 diabetic husband and their elderly parents were vaccinated against COVID-19, she looked forward to doing more things with her kids this summer, such as visiting museums, taking ...Read more

The 10-year old girl was living with her mother again, but she still couldn't sleep alone.

A year had passed since their reunion, after being separated under the Trump administration, but the nightmares still jolted her awake.

It took three months of weekly therapy sessions for her to feel comfortable in her own bed and to stop blaming family ...Read more

LOS ANGELES – This is the story of a journey from ignorance to understanding. It's about questioning beliefs, and radical rethinking. It's about parenthood and childhood and the pandemic.

But ultimately, it's about video games.

My 12-year-old son has always loved video games, but during the pandemic that love intensified. After hours of ...Read more

CHICAGO — When their toddler daughter Maddie was diagnosed with cancer in 2017, Scott and Pammy Kramer felt her care was in good hands.

They had a wonderful Chicago doctor who talked them through a path forward. But Maddie’s treatment plan was based on scant data, as her rare childhood cancer could not lean on research and data more ...Read more

BALTIMORE – In the dead of winter, and the throes of the pandemic, the Berman family chose to foster a passel of puppies and their mother, all desperate for shelter. Five dogs in all clambered into their Ellicott City home — a squirming, squealing brood from the Canine Humane Network, a nonprofit rescue organization in Highland.

The 4-week-...Read more

While perched on a cold granite bench on a sunny March day, St. Cloud, Minnesota, Mayor Dave Kleis peered down to read his younger brother's name engraved in the granite.

Thomas Joseph Kleis, known as Tom to his family, died by suicide in July after showing no blatant signs of depression to his family.

"I say this often: People just need to be...Read more

CHICAGO – Angelle Cortes, a Filipino American college student living away from home, monitors the Ring video doorbell at her parents’ house in Bridgeview to make sure they’re safe.

“I just still have that fear in the back of my head that someone at the grocery store is going to be super racist to them, or just randomly that my dad’s ...Read more

One of the COVID-19 variants can infect children more easily, posing a new risk to kids, a nationally respected epidemiologist warned on Sunday.

The variant called B.1.1.7, first detected in the U.K., represents “a brand-new ballgame” in the fight against COVID-19, Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease ...Read more

CHICAGO – It was nearly two years ago that Elizabeth Oyarzun had last seen her grandparents. And every day for the past year, she prayed she would see them again.

After what seemed like an eternity, the two arrived at O’Hare International Airport from Monterrey, Mexico, Sunday night, she said.

Oyarzun, the couple’s oldest granddaughter, ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — After the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools across California to close, Rosario Correa took a closing shift at a fast food restaurant partly so that she could monitor her children's in-home learning during the day.

Each night, she arrives home from work at 2 a.m. Five and a half hours later, she wakes up to get her kids ...Read more