I am a huge advocate of summer vacation! I'm not talking about the obigatory family trek to grandmother's house or Disney World; but plain old summer vacation at home. A time without alarm clocks and long division and schedules. Children need a time to be kids. This doesn't mean that I condon a summer full of video games though. The rule in our house always was no TV, video games, or computers before 5:00 p.m. If the weather was nice...it also meant no hanging about in the house as well! My children became very adept at being children. They acquired hobbies, explored, played with friends...and, without realizing it and with a little direction from me, actually maintained skills they'd learned during the year and painlessly cultivated new interests and knowledge. Think about what your child enjoys doing and expand from there.

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There are many people who have bemoaned the commercial and seemingly irreverent intrusion of a fairytale character into what is the seminal religious event for 33% of the world's population. Most believe that the Easter Bunny is a "modern" invention of business opportunists just trying to make a buck. He is viewed as a thief trying to steal the "true" meaning or Easter by diverting attention to the secular rather than the religious foundations of the holiday. But, it's the poor little bunny who has gotten a bad rap since it seems that his place in traditional spring celebrations has been around...for a very long time.

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There is no question that there is an epidemic of childhood obesity in this county. Nearly a third of America's kids are overweight or obese. From 1980 to 2008, childhood obesity increased from 6.5% to 19.6% for 6-11 year olds, and 5% to 18.1% for 12-19 year olds. Given the fact that 30% of our children's food consumption takes place at school; it makes sense to control what type of food is available for them to purchase there. Most parents are glad not to have soda and snack machines on school grounds. Nutritional guidelines for school lunches are a good thing too...as long as they're not taken too far. Nutritious school lunches do not do our children any good if they're not eaten and a hungry child, off of school grounds, will eat pretty much whatever food is available when they arrive home. Concentrating solely on how our children fuel their bodies while at school is naive. And, there is another side to the problem. Our children are not getting fat just because of the food that they consume, but also because they are not expending enough energy. Schools across the country have been faced with $2 billion in cuts on sports and physical education programs. Recess and physical education are quickly becoming obsolete on campuses across the country. The NASPE recommends 30 to 60 minutes a day of physical activity for children ages 5 to 12 and yet the focus seems to be wholly on food and not activity.

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I re-read Emerson's essay on self-reliance this afternoon and, just as I remembered from my first reading years ago in high school English class, it was long, cumbersome, and old fashioned. It was also, read now through the prism of more than a few years of experience...brilliant. But students today are not often required to read Emerson's essays; or those of Thoreau. The works of Shakespeare, Hemingway, Melville and the other profound authors and thinkers are disappearing from high school curriculums across the country. They are not seen as having a point of reference in today's society. Yet, Emerson's theme of self-reliance and embracing our own uniqueness is as relevant today as it was in 1841 when it was first published; and as relevant as it was in 1599 when Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, "This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."

The classics are invaluable in educating the thinking child; not so that students can memorize and regurgitate the ideas found there but so young people can understand that their hopes and fears...the result of their human condition...are no different from those of their great-grandparents.

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