The flow of frozen-yogurt seekers kept the door of the Allston shop in near-constant motion. With the skies already dark, for our little kids spooning into their scoops, it was late. But not for the customers coming in: With school yet to start, the relaxed, homework-free summer faces and bodies around us were uniformly young, as befits a neighborhood of students. We were with friends who were visiting Boston to tour colleges with their high schooler and two younger children. As the other mom at our table turned slightly to see the crowd, a bit of a shudder passed through her. “I can’t be …

You couldn’t blame anyone outside our fair Commonwealth for thinking that we’ve pushed the needle high on the wacky-o-meter lately, all of it having to do with what we’re feeding ourselves. Menino vs. Chick-fil-A For sure, we’ve had more than enough of a certain chicken sandwich by now. Happily going without them for years, there isn’t a Chick-fil-A franchise anywhere in Boston. Yet for the past three weeks, the two have been inextricably linked. In July, when the company’s president, Dan Cathy, publicly reiterated his longstanding anti-gay marriage stance, Mayor Thomas Menino's wrote to him…

I’m being terrorized by a machete-wielding, three-year-old child: There are pictures of him in my head, working in his Amazon habitat, helping around the house, practicing cutting wood. His six-year-old neighbor is there too. She’s on an expedition away from her own family; cleaning camp, fishing for dinner, and preparing meals for an entire group of people.  These accomplished children are the latest images of childhood competing with my own family, leaving me breathless as I discover what parenting mistakes I’m making today. Should I be a Chinese Tiger Mom? Or more Français? Am I …

When you’re a member of the audience, you hope to outnumber the performers.  An empty venue is disheartening for those on stage and there’s less energy in the room.  Boston Public Schools (BPS) took the stage on a rainy Tuesday night, holding its latest community meeting on improving school choice. But with fewer than two dozen people attending, speakers included – we barely made it. Go ahead, you can yawn – “community meeting on improving school choice” is one boring string of words, and not an event destined to be standing room only. But I was wide-eyed, thinking of the immense task Mayor …

Stay in your lane, pass on the left, and neither exceed nor fall under the speed limit: These are the unspoken traffic rules at Boston’s Prudential Center mall. Crowded with office workers, tourists, and locals, the busy hall off Boylston Street reminds you that you are still in the city. But pass the north-side main drag, and the aisles widen while the lovely skylight ceilings persist. Ahhh, space. It’s here that young families are making the mall their own. A landscaped garden, places indoors to linger, and now a family-oriented trio of businesses are all holding down the age of the average…

Squinting into the distance, I search for my 10-year-old. With rolling backpack in tow, she’s walking ahead of me after school. The meandering pace of her little sibling was slowing us down, and big sister was eager to get homework started. “Mom, can I go home by myself?” The leash lengthens as a child grows, and that day I let it out some more. So with plenty of daylight left, I handed her the keys. My daughter is a different color, shape, and size than Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old in Florida who was fatally shot by a man on a neighborhood watch five weeks ago. But fear of harm done to …

The nurse had wrapped the baby snug as a burrito. In the darkened hospital room, my husband and I watched as she nearly tossed our bundle in the air, trying to soothe the cries of someone so new to the world that she sounded as if she regretted entry, and was wondering about the alternatives.  The way this expert dressed in scrubs knew she was in for a challenge gave me a sense of foreboding. After the safety of the maternity ward, what was to come? How wanted this baby had been, how completely grateful we were that she had arrived, did not ease the sense that I had just given birth to a …

“Mommy, I’m fat,” says my daughter, all 40-something lbs. and 40-something inches of her. I see a perfectly smooth belly, and a body that is all little-kid taut. She looks in the mirror and manages to stick out her tummy a bit farther by arching her back. “You’re not fat,” comes my truthful response. It's a conversation that goes on. As much as kids are their parents’ parrots, I hope my child is not copying my own body concerns – since I have my metabolism and city walking to thank and I’m not overweight. But to blame her behavior on any media is all too easy. Yet talk about fat we will – …

There’s little magic to being “in the zone” when it comes to school assignments in Boston. After Patch.com columnists Jack Kelly and John Keith both wrote about the promise of neighborhood schools last week, I thought about our limited access to public schools in the downtown neighborhoods. According to Boston Public Schools (BPS), every address in the city has a “walk zone” elementary school, which is one mile or less away.  The walk zone is the main factor by which school assignments are made in our city. Yet since Beacon Hill lost its elementary school in 1975, the neighborhood, as well as…

On the spectrum of risky behaviors, this one ranks high only if you fear the fluorescent orange envelope.  We’d just finished an errand on Newbury Street one Saturday afternoon, and the kids were waiting for me to unlock the car. As I dug out my keys, a couple was parking just in front of us. They got out of their car and headed for the “pay and display” meter, the kind that gives you a sticker receipt. I looked quickly around for someone who might disapprove of what I was about to do. I then took my own parking sticker off the window and asked the driver who was about to pay the machine, “if…

In my favorite children's books, the writer and illustrator are one; two talents residing in a single gifted artist who can create beauty in both words and pictures.Grace Lin is one of those artists. This week, for Lunar New Year, she is everywhere in our house. Not only have we been reading her picture book about the holiday, but on Jan. 21 she held a book launch for her newest novel, "Dumpling Days." When you attend a Grace Lin book launch – patronizing an independent bookstore, standing in line – you leave with not just an autographed book, but with what kids have come to expect from any …

If you ask a child, "who was Martin Luther King, Jr.?" and the answer is, "he freed the slaves" – here's a chance to teach more about one of Boston's most important alumni.  Ryan Hendrickson remembers hearing that response once, from a very young student on a tour of the library at Boston University. As the assistant director for manuscripts at BU's archival research center, Mr. Hendrickson and his coworkers are the keepers of the collected papers that Reverend King donated to BU in 1964. For the holiday in King's honor Jan. 16, special events around the city reflect the civil rights leader's…

When you bring a new life into the world, the chronicle begins. Photos of the delivery are followed by portraits of the baby with every visiting relative; a video of the baby sitting in the car seat for the trip home; pictures of days one, two, and three. Technology has made image-making cheaper and faster, and for many of us, the mechanics are as close and transportable as a cell phone. The ease with which we can make a visual record propels our compulsion to capture as much as we can.But documenting in words hasn't changed. To write, you must think, and then put pen to paper, voice to …

What is the one holiday tradition you can't live without? Let's take family and friends' presence as a given; you get them for free on this quiz. Is it the roast beast on the dinner table? Church at midnight? Cruising the town to find the best-dressed, most brightly-lit house, threatening to blow the whole neighborhood's electrical transformer?  These traditions are evergreen, all. But my choice is the endangered species of customs – Christmas cards.This week, while most people are probably not missing the ample displays (gone) of boxed cards at their local card shop (gone), I'm waiting for …

Among the many places a 4-year-old does not belong, a 40,000 square-foot bakery is probably one of them.Yet there we were: one preschooler, her two sisters, and their parents – roaming the cavernous, cinnamon-spiced spaces of Leo's Bakery in South Boston, on the weekend before Thanksgiving. To kick off our holidays, my husband wanted our family to do something purposeful together. With visions of helpfulness dancing in his head, he web-searched his way to "Pie in the Sky," the annual event that marries the generosity of bakeries and restaurants with pie buyers. The $25 pie purchases go to …

Jane's husband is home. No more helicopters whirring in the background of every tenuous satellite phone call, no more talking in code. No more worrying about certain Marines in Afghanistan, no more kids sharing the life-size, cardboard-cutout photo of Dad. This Thanksgiving, Jane's husband is a veteran of the war, and he's back. He's back on the streets of Boston, as a police officer for the city. That's no picnic itself, but it's not Helmand province, Afghanistan, either (to protect the family's privacy, we're not using their real names).Deployed in March 2010, Tom went to the U.S. Marines' …

For the past few elections, I've been breaking the law. Demonstrating democracy in action, I thought it was – bringing my children to the polling booth, and letting them take pen in hand to "completely darken" the little ovals by the name of candidates I wanted to vote for. But with an election day coming up Tuesday, just to make sure that my bright idea of a teaching moment was acceptable, I called the city election department."Is it OK for someone else other than the registered voter to mark the ballot?" I asked. For example, may I let my child do it? I was put on hold. It is OK, they said…

From the third floor of the nearly empty house, I watched the maple's whirlybirds softly helicopter their way down to the ground, onto a thin carpet of dry, autumn leaves. Windless and overcast, the day held few promises, and the green seeds didn't fall far. Downstairs, a dozen people were engaged in animated conversations. Voices echoed off the emptiness. With a box here, a rug there, markers and crayons scattered between, the party's smaller guests ran up and down flights and played games. We were at a farewell for friends who were moving 7,000 miles away, to India, the very next day. Mom …

If there's any group in America that gets as much done for families and kids in their community as this group of Boston moms, I'd like to know. It sounds like an exaggeration. But from its welcome baskets for new moms to the dozens of events it hosts each year, the Charlestown Mothers Association (CMA) runs on the power of sheer, optimistic volunteerism – and no money of its own. And as it turns out, it's very difficult to find another group anywhere who has the audacity to welcome its members for free, yet offer so much programming. Since 1997, the CMA has grown from a handful of moms to 1,…

As my mother was getting her weekend grandchild fix over the phone last Sunday, I knew she'd be asking about the new school year and how each girl was getting along. The phone was passed from one person to the next. And then, in answer to some question my mom had asked, I overheard my daughter say quietly, evenly: "I don't have a friend yet." My ears pricked up, but mere murmuring followed. We were two weeks into a new school experience for this child and her older sister; I'd been trying to play it cool and not ask too many questions about how they were feeling, despite my desire for …