By Whitney C. Harris

Would you sequence your baby’s genome? It sounds like a question from some futuristic sci-fi thriller, but it’s slowly becoming a reality for present day parents according to this recent NPR feature by Rob Stein.

Whole genome sequencing–the process of uncovering the entire DNA makeup of a living creature as early as in utero–just might become the next major decision that expectant parents need to make on the journey through pregnancy, as the procedure is becoming more common and less costly.

To read the full article, please visit newyorkfamily.com.

To read the full article, please visit www.newyorkfamily.com.

By Jess Michaels

When searching for a sleepaway camp—or resident camp, as some call them—there are many factors families need to consider. The most basic decision involves the type of camp but even that has its subtleties. One must consider the pros and cons of a general camp versus a specialty camp. Likewise, do you want your child in a coed setting or single sex—or a kind of hybrid known as brother-sister camps?

Here are the key differences between camp types. It is not that one type is better than the other, of course. It is simply a matter of where your child will be more successful and happy.

Single Sex Camps
Single sex camps don’t have campers of the other sex at camp. At single sex camps, female campers may be more willing to try new things and feel less self-conscious since boys are not around. The way they look, how their hair is, or the type of clothes they wear all become less relevant. (Note: There are single sex, coed and brother-sister camps that have uniforms for this reason as well). For some boys, a single sex environment will allow them to be more sensitive and not feel like they are going to be judged. Finding it easier to center their program on the interests of just one sex, many single sex camps go for more of a specialty mix than a general mix, with a focus on certain activities or themes, like sports or arts. “After we explored several options, we chose an all-girls camp for our daughter,” said parent Barbara Leshinsky. “I wanted to counter the social pressure most kids face in school. I also felt convinced that the all-girls camp would prove to be valuable to help build her self-esteem during her adolescent years. My daughter is also extremely athletic and I knew she would be challenged athletically and not afraid to express her competitiveness or ability.” Although campers spend their daily activities, evening activities and special events with children of the same sex, single sex camps often have regular socials with nearby camps of the opposite sex. The number of socials with another camp usually increases with the age of the campers.

Coed Camps
At coed resident camps, the girls and boys have many shared facilities, including the waterfront, dining hall, and sports fields. Coed camps have a clear separation of boys’ bunks and girls’ bunks. Gail Gold chose a coed camp for her three girls. “Camp is like a mini version of the real world. A coed camp has given my girls a chance to experience friendships with boys and build strong social skills in a safe, nurturing environment,” she says. “The girls have a distinct living area away from the boys which allows them to have bonding with other girls but they get to experience other camp activities with the boys at camp—they get the best of both worlds.” Even though coed camps have shared facilities, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all daily activities are coed. Each coed camp is different: some camps have some coed daily activities, other coed camps keep daily activities separate, but the boys and girls come together for meals, some evening activities, canteen, and special events like carnival, color war and off-camp trips.

Brother-Sister Camps
Brother-Sister camps are two camps on the same property or close by to each other. They usually have the same owners but each camp has its own traditions while also sharing traditions between the two camps. Each camp has their own facilities including different waterfronts and dining halls. Brother-Sister camps allow girls and boys to participate in separate activities during the day just like a single sex camp or some coed camps, but for many Brother-Sister camps, girls and boys come together for meals, special events and some evening activities. Many Brother-Sister camps also schedule special sibling activities so brothers and sisters have a chance to see each other and spend time together on a regular basis during the summer. “When we were looking for a summer camp four years ago, I had never heard of Brother-Sister camps,” said Amanda Greenblatt, the mother of twins, one boy and one girl. “My daughter said she wanted an all girls camp and my son was interested in a coed camp. I was trying to figure out how I was going to manage two different camps and two different visiting days until I came across a Brother-Sister camp that felt right for both of my children. Each camp has their own colors, traditions and songs and my children get to do separate activities during the day but are brought together on weekends to do activities together. My kids often bicker at home but when they talk about camp, they recall the fond memories of times they spent together.”

Traditional Camps: Traditional summer camps offers children a varied camp experience with many different camp activities such as swimming, archery, ropes course, arts and crafts, soccer, basketball, boating and drama, among many others. For parents looking to provide their children with a social and developmental experience, such as learning life skills, developing independence, learning responsibility and connecting with people, the traditional camp will provide these experiences. Campers at traditional camps also become part of a community and will enjoy traditional summer camp activities such as Olympics, Color War, Bunk Activity Days, Community Service Projects, Carnival and trips off camp.

Specialty camps
Specialty camps focus on a specific camp activity or related camp activities for a given period of time. There are many different types of specialty camps available for children for just about every interest; for example horseback riding, tennis, drama, gymnastics or soccer. Some kids who have a dedicated passion during the school year look to a specialty camp to help them take it to the next level. Other kids with a long-term specialty want just the opposite: to use summer camp as a chance to try new things, and a big variety of things. In addition to interests and activities, other specialty camps are distinguished by their focus on children with special needs like autism or diabetes. Religious orientation can be a unifying theme of certain camps too, thought they still will be segmented by sex and by the general or specific focus on the day-to-day activities.

By Megan J. Doughty

You remember kindergarten: the finger painting, the alphabet songs, the awkward challenge of being expected to get along with the largest group of kids you had ever been in the same room with before. You sang, you danced, you watched the kid next to you shove glue sticks in his ear. And when the school day was over—at noon sharp—your teacher would load you onto the yellow bus, and the rest of the day was much like kindergarten itself: child’s play.

As many parents know—or will come to know—grade school, just like middle school and upper school, has become more demanding and more academic, to the point where many kids in kindergarten now have homework of sorts. While failing schools may raise their standards to try to turn the whole school around, successful schools do it as a matter of self-definition—and for better or worse, they are demanding much more homework of their students than they did of successful students a generation or two ago.

Now there’s something of a backlash afoot, led by skeptical academics and concerned parents who think that enough is enough and that schools are asking too much of our children at too young an age, especially when it comes to homework.

Brooklyn moms Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish weighed in on the heavy-backpack debate in their book, The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It.

Bennett, a lawyer, and Kalish, a magazine writer, interviewed educators, academics and students of all ages to find out how much homework is being assigned and how families feel about it. Kalish met Bennett when their children attended the same Brooklyn middle school. Bennett had been informally challenging homework norms for nearly a decade, since her son, Julian, was in first grade. But it wasn’t until her younger daughter, Sophia, now 18, entered elementary school that she felt her children’s homework was truly getting out of control.

“It got harder and harder for us as a family to do anything together, and I felt like almost everything she was bringing home was a total waste of time,” says Bennett.
As the authors tell it, the homework status quo is hard to question or even discuss in a society where homework is considered a sacred cow. Parents, educators and some children tend to be resistant to the vilification of homework: What’s so bad about a little hard work, right? Well, what Bennett and Kalish have concluded is that today’s homework load is often oppressive in quantity, poor in quality and far too disruptive to family life, and that parents should take action before their children “burn out.”

In The Case Against Homework, they marshal the following salient facts and arguments:

• Homework loads are dramatically increasing, especially for younger children. The number of hours that American children spend on homework has increased 51 percent since 1981, according to a survey by the University of Michigan.

• Lots of homework may not translate to high academic performance. Duke University professor Harris Cooper reviewed more than 180 academic studies of homework and found almost no relationship between a student’s level of achievement in elementary school and the amount of homework assigned.

• There is no “Homework 101.” Most teachers’ colleges do not offer a course in designing homework assignments.

• Family dinners trump homework. While homework may not predict academic achievement, it seems that nightly dinners as a family do. A study by the University of Michigan shows that these all-important meals are the single strongest predictor of high achievement scores.

• The Japanese know something we don’t. Students from countries like Japan and Denmark, which boast high scores on achievement tests, have light homework loads, while students in Greece and Thailand, where test scores are very low, are assigned large amounts of homework. Many Japanese elementary schools have no-homework policies, and Japanese seventh and eighth graders do less than an hour of math homework per week.

Or do they? Some researchers have found a lot of value in a lot of homework. In 2001, researchers at the National Foundation for Educational Research reviewed all the major academic studies on homework since 1998, including several that were presented in The Case Against Homework. They pointed out that while students in countries that assign extremely high amounts of homework do poorly on achievement tests, so do students in countries that assign almost no homework. And though they confirm that homework does not equal academic success in the lower grades, they did find an overall correlation in high school between time spent on homework and academic achievement.

Still, the personal accounts in The Case Against Homework are alarming. Bennett and Kalish report children getting sick over tests due to homework stress. Plus, when young children have a lot of homework, there are so many more developmentally important things that they are not doing—the most critical of which is socialization with other children.

Bennett and Kalish also argue that homework stress can damage the relationship between parent and child. With mounds of homework to plow through before anyone can think about going to bed, moms and dads are forced to become teachers or, even worse, “homework cops.” (In fact, families who have the financial resources often find it better to hire a tutor so they could save their relationship as parent and child.)

Most educational professionals and parents would still agree that there is such a thing as a good take-home assignment. Well-thought-out reading and writing assignments, for example, are almost universally valued, as are “family journals” and other devices that are sensitive to what is going on in the home. It seems that homework, like red wine and carbs, may be yet another case of everything in moderation.

Originally published in the Sept. 2012 issue of New York Family magazine

Reproductive Possibilities owner Melissa Brisman with her family. Photo courtesy of Melissa Brisman

Paying a woman to carry your baby is still illegal in New York state, but will the laws soon change?

In 2006, when Brooklyn local Melissa Musman was told by her doctor she could not have children following radiation treatments for desmoid tumors, she and her husband, Mike, decided to seek a gestational surrogate, or a woman who would carry their baby to term. With the help of an egg donor, they froze six embryos and began the search.

There was, however, one major obstacle for the Musmans—commercial surrogacy, or paying a woman to act as a gestational carrier for another’s baby, is still illegal in New York state, one of six U.S. territories where the arrangement is outlawed.

According to state Sen. Liz Krueger, an outspoken advocate for women’s reproductive rights, commercial surrogacy, which has been illegal in New York since 1992, is “like organ donation and adoption, a complicated issue rife with thorny ethical and moral questions.”

“Surrogacy options are clearly expanding, but our laws need to evolve carefully,” Krueger added in an interview.

Nominee for the New York State Senate and Greenwich Village resident Brad Hoylman, who has been working to repeal laws against surrogacy, said the Baby M case in 1986 “created a chilling effect on surrogacy throughout the country, including New York.” New York outlawed commercial surrogacy six years later, in the aftermath of the trial.
The Baby M case, which took place in New Jersey, was the first American court ruling on surrogacy, an issue that was controversial at the time. In the case of Baby M, the surrogate mother—who used her own eggs—had a change of heart and refused to give up the baby.

The drawn-out case ended after two years of courtroom battles, with the surrogate mother only receiving visitation rights to “Baby M.” The Supreme Court of New Jersey subsequently invalidated all surrogacy contracts, rendering paid surrogacy illegal, and similar disputes in other states quickly followed suit.

In 1987, the New York Times reported, “The emotional courtroom battle for custody of Baby M has cast a sharp and disquieting light on the tangle of ethical and legal uncertainties surrounding the growing practice of surrogate motherhood.

“To some who have studied the issue, one of the most disturbing elements of surrogate motherhood is the overtone of class exploitation,” the Times continued.
At the time of the article’s publication, an estimated 500 surrogacy arrangements had taken place in the country.

“I think gestational surrogacy is still illegal in New York because there hasn’t been an organized effort to change the law since the infamous Baby M case,” Hoylman noted.
Melissa Brisman, owner of Reproductive Possibilities, the largest surrogacy agency on the East Coast, also points to the case as a watershed moment. “Women wanted to keep their babies,” she said. “New York and New Jersey made commercial surrogacy illegal.” Brisman, an attorney, helped draft legislation to legalize and regulate commercial surrogacy in New Jersey that was vetoed by Gov. Chris Christie in August of this year.

New York State Assemblywoman Amy Paulin has also introduced legislation this year on the subject, with the hope of legalizing commercial surrogacy in New York.
“The law in New York has simply not caught up with current technology and practice of gestational surrogacy,” Paulin said. “[Families] should not have to travel to other states or abandon their dream of parenthood because of an outdated law.”

Currently, New Yorkers must leave the state to arrange commercial surrogacy contracts and oversee the process.

Despite the geographical hurdles, the Musmans did not have many requirements for a surrogate. “We were looking for the simple things in life,” Melissa said. They wanted her to be reasonably close by air travel, and not a smoker. “Because the egg donor was someone else entirely,” explained Melissa, “the surrogate was essentially an oven.”

The Musmans used Reproductive Possibilities to arrange their surrogacy, ultimately settling on Tracy, a woman from Illinois. They paid to fly Tracy to and from Connecticut to carry out the procedure.

“She was doing it out of the goodness of her heart,” said Melissa. “But she was honest about also wanting the money.”

Expense is a major issue when it comes to surrogacy. The Musmans estimate they paid about $100,000 total between surrogacy and egg donation.

Krueger also worries about the price component. “Whenever we talk about individuals’ rights over their own bodies, our first priority must be preventing exploitation of the less fortunate in our society,” she said. “Life—and lives—should never be for sale in our society.”

Altruistic surrogacy—a woman, usually a friend or relative, acting as a gestational surrogate without compensation beyond what is medically required—is permitted by New York State law.

However, “no one will [be a surrogate] for free,” according to Brisman. “Unless it’s someone who loves and cares about you.” The Times reported in the 1987 article that 89 percent of would-be surrogates interviewed at the time wanted to be paid for their services.

Brisman has three children via gestational carrier herself. She went outside the state of New Jersey for her own children to be born, using carriers in Maine and Pennsylvania. “When I did it, it was not as popular,” she said.

“Now it’s the new normal—there’s even a TV sitcom about it,” said Brisman, of the NBC network show, literally called The New Normal.

Brisman adds with so many celebrities or public figures having babies via gestational carrier, eventually New York “will be forced to change.”

However, the biggest increase in surrogacy, according to Brisman, is same-sex couples now that same-sex marriage is legal in many places. In fact, Hoylman and his partner traveled outside New York to arrange their own surrogacy.

“Surrogacy gives LGBT couples another option in addition to adoption to have children, and is a potential tremendous benefit for infertile straight couples, too,” said Hoylman. “Like my partner and me, many gay and lesbian couples have had to travel outside of New York to states like California to arrange their surrogacies, which makes the procedure far less affordable.”

With the help of advocates like Brisman and Paulin, surrogacy in New York has made certain advancements in recent years. Brisman argued and won a landmark case before the New York appellate court which now allows genetic parents of babies delivered via gestational carrier to do a post-birth maternity order.

Prior to Brisman’s case against the Department of Health (DOH), genetic parents still had to adopt their own baby after it was born via gestational carrier. The DOH maintained the woman who gave birth was the legal mother, in all cases.

This arrangement is far from ideal for clients who might seek help from an organization like Reproductive Possibilities. As far as the legalization of commercial surrogacy in New York, Brisman indicts the state, saying, “Commercial surrogacy will not pass with the way the [state] government body is currently stacked.”

Brisman believes some New Yorkers may choose to circumvent the law and organize a commercial surrogacy arrangement in New York, but likely not many. She explains it’s easy enough for most New Yorkers to travel to Connecticut, where the arrangement is legal. Not only is commercial surrogacy considered a felony in New York, the surrogate would be allowed to keep the baby, says Brisman.

Brisman’s own surrogacy process had its ups and downs. “I got my children right away from the minute they were born by terminating the surrogate’s right,” she said. But for her, the surrogacy process was “nerve-wracking.”

“I was one of the first court orders for children in the state of Maine, I was paving the way,” said Brisman. “The medicine was easy, though—it was a successful procedure.”
The Musmans were in New York when their surrogate Tracy’s water broke and immediately got on a plane, determined to make it to Illinois in time for their son’s birth. “Making it to the birth was the last obstacle,” said Melissa, but the Musmans did make it in time to see their son Sean be born.

“We feel a lot of women think it’s the end of the road if they can’t have a baby,” she said. “This is a great experience. [Sean] is still our son.”

The Musmans say the next time they use a surrogate, they will still likely have to go out of state, but they will “find someone closer.”

While Brisman cites state government as an obstacle to repealing surrogacy laws in New York, Hoylman is hopeful change is around the corner.

“New York has some of the best fertility clinics in the country and a large LGBT population that would like to take advantage of surrogacy,” said Hoylman. “With the legalization of same-sex marriage in New York, legalizing surrogacy seems like the natural next step to support LGBT families.”

He added: “I think it’s only a matter of time before the laws catch up to the science.”

From toys under the couch cushions to booby traps of clothes and gadgets upon entering kids’ rooms, clutter can easily take over a family’s home. There’s no reason to let that continue if you follow a few organization tips. Four local NYC personal organizers shared their ideas with us on maintaining a stress-free kind of clean, which of course can be especially challenging in city apartments. But our four guides swear it can be done—and to good effect.

Let’s start with this ironic gem: As keeping-it-clean genius Nancy Heller of Goodbye Clutter advises, beware of organizational products that can actually create more clutter. “Purpose your space,” she warns.

Another pearl of wisdom we love: “The clutter in your home probably didn’t happen in a day, and it’s probably not going to get cleared up in a day,” says A.J. Miller, of Miller Organizing, who recommends each family member receive a specific age-appropriate job and space to clean and organize.

Step-by-step, and room-by-room, here is some more great advice from the city’s best cleaner-uppers for de-cluttering your home and reclaiming your family life.

Kids’ Rooms
Think of favorite toys as friends and babyish or unused toys as strangers that go to stay with other kids. When children are aware they can help another child, they are often happy to donate and take pride in doing so. (A.J. Miller)

Double-duty furniture goes a long way. The Boon Animal Bag (see photo above) doubles as a snugly beanbag-like chair while neatly stowing plush toys. (Nancy Heller)

Folding mesh cubes from the Container Store can be tucked away when not used but are great to have as new games come into the house. (Nancy Heller)

Take photos of kids’ artwork to create an art album, eliminating the need to keep every original piece. (Erica Ecker)

Master Bedroom
You need to wake up without visual noise—a.k.a. clutter. Find a home for anything kid-related piling up in the bedroom. With an “address,” the items will always get put in their “home” rather than on your floor. (Erica Ecker)

With the hectic pace of family life, it’s crucial to make your bedroom a place of calm, relaxation and romance, by keeping keys, phones and change stowed away in decorative boxes or on trays. (Lisa Zaslow)

Here, or in any room, keep an EZ Fold step stool (shown above) for quick reaches to upper shelving. It’s amazing how the high shelves get used when accessing them is so easy. (Nancy Heller)

Living Room
To make a small space feel larger, replace overstuffed chairs and couches with sleek, minimalist designs—an armless, open chair or a low table. (A.J. Miller)

Store puzzles in 2.5-gallon Ziploc bags, but mark the bags so you’ll always know what pieces are for what puzzles. (Nancy Heller)

Nothing makes your living room look worse than piles of papers. And there are serious consequences if you forget to do your to-dos. Try a Container Store desktop file box to match your decor. (Lisa Zaslow)

Kitchen
Keep a Sharpie and a roll of masking tape in a drawer so you can label food with the date you opened it. You’ll be able to tell at a glance what’s no longer fresh and what needs to be purged. (Lisa Zaslow)

Turn a lower cabinet into an arts and crafts station by putting markers, pens and paper in caddies for kids, especially little ones, to easily access. (Erica Ecker)

Family calendars allow everyone to keep track of each other’s schedules. Sondra Boynton’s planners (see photo at left) have vertical grids for family names at the top and the days along the side to write activities. It includes a dropdown storage pocket, 500 color stickers and a dry erase phone list for the fridge. (Nancy Heller)

Bathroom
Apartment bathrooms, notorious for being tiny, can be plenty cluttered when multiple people share them. Each person should own a plastic tote of bathroom products that is taken to and from the bathroom each day. (A.J. Miller)

Suction cup bins hold shower goods and keep clutter from the corners and bottom of tub space. (Erica Ecker)

Your medicine cabinet is the most accessible storage in the bathroom. Use it for toiletries and cosmetics that you use at least once a week. Store other items under the sink, on shelves or in a nearby closet. (Lisa Zaslow)

By Cristina Dimen
For city parents who suspect their child has a developmental delay, there’s good news: The city offers a wealth of free services for children with special needs, and there are also many experienced professionals in private practice in the city who work with children with special needs. But the bureaucracy around special needs can be confusing and overwhelming, so we asked a few local experts for their guidance.

Trust Your Instincts
Many children reach developmental milestones within a typical timeframe. For example, experts will tell you most children are sitting up between 4 and 7 months old. While it’s important to remember that each child develops differently, parents who suspect their child may have a delay “should trust their instincts—they know their child best,” says Dr. Daniela Montalto, clinical director of the Institute for Learning and Academic Achievement at the NYU Child Study Center (aboutourkids.org). Montalto advises parents to pay attention to potential delays, such as difficulty saying single words by 2 years old, which can indicate a speech or language-learning weakness.

Other warning signs for infants and toddlers include children who do not smile by 3-4 months, children who are not feeding themselves by 8 months and those who are not walking by 15 months, says Dana Rosenbloom, a child and family therapist who works with all types of families but focuses on families with children who have special needs (danaskids.com). She advises parents to talk to their child’s pediatrician about their concerns. If still concerned, parents should have their child evaluated. In NYC, a child can be referred for services by doctors, teachers, child care agencies, social workers and other community-based agencies. Of course, parents can always get recommendations by calling 311 and asking for Early Intervention.

Get Evaluated
New York City’s Early Intervention Program is funded and regulated by the NYS Department of Health and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The Early Intervention Program evaluates children up to age 3 for a variety of home-based therapeutic services. From ages 3 to 5 years, the Committee on Preschool Special Education, also regulated and funded by both NYS and NYC, assesses eligibility for both home- and facility-based services. Once the initial evaluations are complete, you will find out if your child is eligible for services. At this point, an Individual Family Service Plan is created. In CPSE, it is referred to as an Individual Education Plan.

Eligibility criteria differ in the two programs, whose services include speech, physical, occupational and special education therapy. Evaluations and services for eligible children are free in both programs. Within the private sector, organizations like the NYU Child Study Center offer comprehensive neuropsychological evaluations of a child’s attention, memory and social and emotional development. (See sidebar for more on where to get evaluated in NYC.)

Consider Your Options
Many public and private school options exist for children with special needs. Rosenbloom explains that in Early Intervention, each child is given a case coordinator who will work with parents to determine which programs and services will best meet their child’s needs. In CPSE, the committee will help a parent evaluate choices. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires that children be educated in the “least restrictive environment.” This means that CPSE will consider providing special education services in an environment with age-appropriate, typically developing peers. (Rosenbloom cites YAI/Gramercy and Child Development Center as a popular and well-regarded early childhood program for children with special needs.)

Once a child has reached age 5 (and up to 21 years old), the Committee on Special Education (CSE) provides evaluation and services. If your child has been receiving CPSE services, during the year prior to kindergarten, the committee will decide if your child will continue to require special education services. The CSE will recommend that your child either receives these services in a public school environment or in another educational setting. In public school, Collaborative Team Teaching classes taught by two teachers, one trained in special education, are increasingly common. Children who are struggling in specific areas, such as math or reading, receive small group instruction, while the rest of the class listens to the general education teacher. Afterward, all students engage in mainstream learning.

“Evaluations indicate if children will benefit from CTT classes, where half of the kids have no learning disabilities,” Montalto says. “Observing general education children who perform in a stronger way enables some kids with special needs to adapt what they see to their own style.” CTT classes can also be beneficial for typically developing children “whose self-esteem is built while they are helping others,” Rosenbloom adds. But she also points out that CTT classes aren’t the best fit for everyone, especially students with more significant developmental needs.

Seek Legal Counsel
Parents choose to forego public school options for various reasons, including the absence of programs equipped to meet their child’s specific learning needs. Upon enrolling their child in a private school, these parents often seek tuition reimbursement by filing a lawsuit against the Department of Education, stating that “the DOE failed to offer their child the statutory right to a free and appropriate public education,” explains Regina Skyer of the Law Offices of Regina Skyer & Associates (skyerlaw.com), a firm that specializes in advocating for children with special education needs. While there’s no guarantee that families will win the case and recoup tuition costs, Skyer recommends parents work with an attorney specialized in advocating, mediating and litigating for kids with learning disabilities. She notes that the multi-step process is complex, and it’s best if the child has been privately evaluated. Also, unless parents choose a private program from a list of approved schools, they’ll have to reapply each year. She recommends parents attend workshops on the subject such as those hosted by private schools or the JCC in Manhattan.

By Mia Weber

City kids may start to feel a bit pouty as the sun sets on a beautiful summer, so we’ve compiled the perfect guide for everything they’ll need to start the new school year off in style with a smile!

1. The Perfect Pouch
To help your young scholar bring a stylish edge to the classroom, check out these bold Converse shoe pencil pouches. These crafty cases are perfect for infusing desktop organization with some personal panache.
$22.95, coolpencilcase.com

2. Style for Every Subject
With a variety of eye-catching patterns, Staples’ printed Better Binders are sure to make homework a breeze. Try different looks or sizes for classes or assignments.
$8.49-$9.49, staples.com
3. A Bright
Reminder
Make sure no errand goes undone and no homework assignment goes unchecked. With Post-it Super Sticky Shaped Notes, organization takes on a whole new spectrum of eye-catching colors and playful shapes.
$4.25, post-it.com

4. Haute Hipster
What cuter way to ease the sting of summer’s end than with a back-to-school backpack from Hello Kitty? Mustache, the animated world’s beloved feline, proves that a cheeky dose of hipster fun can turn the hallway into a runway!
$45, sanrio.com

5. A Classically Delicious Lunch
L.L. Bean’s patterned lunchbox mixes durable construction and high-tech insulation with a variety of perky prints. Plus, there’s a monogram option so your studious kiddo never gets his or her lunch mixed up in the cafeteria.
$17.95, llbean.com

6. For the Eager Reader
Keep book pages free of creases with Night Owl Paper Goods’ water otters bookmark/ruler. Crafted from eco-friendly, sustainably harvested yellow birch wood, this sweet marker features otter graphics and doubles as a handy ruler on its flip side.
$5, nightowlpapergoods.com
7. Navigating the Concrete Jungle
Ever stop to think how your urban student might yearn for the schoolyard to transform into a leafy jungle? Aid the imagination with animal-inspired Zoo Packs from Skip Hop. Shown here in Giraffe; this sweet backpack is sure to hold everything.
$20, skiphop.com

8. Savvy Snacking
Adorned with smiley fruit friends, Land of Nod’s Disguised as Fruit Snack Pouch makes for the perfect addition to any lunchbox. The organic cotton pouch holds every kind of lunchtime treat.
$16.95, landofnod.com

9. Budding Artiste
Help your child add an elegant splash of color to every poster and art project with Muji’s mini tube of 36 colored pencils. Packaged in recycled cardboard, these vibrant cedar scribblers are the perfect way to bring the rainbow to the classroom.
$11.25, muji.us

10. To Back It All Up
With a full course load comes plenty of typing, online research and tech-powered learning. Make sure your little one protects her hard work with Tokidoki’s Pantera Mimobot flash drive. This USB drive is available in two-gig and four-gig sizes.
$19.95-24.95, tokidoki.it

11. Write With Whimsy
Nothing can spoil a pop quiz like a dull pencil. Keep things sharp as can be with Gama-Go’s Unicorn Pencil Sharpener. This magical trinket will bring a pop of playfulness to any desktop and comes complete with a shimmery silver pencil.
$6, gama-go.com

12. The Academic Aesthetic
Say goodbye to messy backpacks and missing homework assignments. PB Teen’s sleek Gear-Up Houndstooth Homework Holder will assist your busy student in keeping track of every last note, list and assignment.
$25.50, pbteen.com

13. Keepin’ Clean
Pencils and books aren’t the only things that students bring back to school in September. Head lice outbreaks are common, so how can you prevent your child from having to deal with unwanted critters? Fairy Tales Hair Care’s Rosemary Repel Leave-In Conditioning Spray is clinically proven to repel lice without the use of harsh chemicals.
$11.95, available at Kidville locations in NYC and
fairytaleshaircare.com

14. Cafeteria Cutters
You better believe an adorably shaped sandwich or piece of fruit will encourage your little one to eat up come lunchtime. Bento accessories like these animal-shaped food cutters make lunchbox noshes cute enough to nibble for even the pickiest eaters.
$5.75, from-japan-with-love.com

15. Colorful Composition
Creative writing on-the-go has never been easier with these tiny, spiral-bound notebooks and matching Wild Notes pen, which infuses words with bursts of color. Stash one in your child’s book bag for when inspiration hits!
$4.99, crayola.com

Get more tips for back to school shopping at newyorkfamily.com

By Sarah Greene
Learn the facts about nursery school admissions in the city.

1. Mark Your Calendars
Call it Black Tuesday. The Tuesday after Labor Day is when a number of private nursery schools give out their applications. Miss it and you won’t be able to get an application to those schools for the year, so do your research in the prior months. And for that special Tuesday itself, we recommend starting at 9 a.m. and recruiting a trustworthy family member or friend to help you work the phones and computers, keeping in mind that the popular nursery schools may give out their applications by noon. “Staying organized and on top of those dates and deadlines is really critical,” explained Roxana Reid, educational consultant and founder of Smart City Kids.

Special Tip: Find out beforehand whether a school distributes applications online or over the phone. Also, schools that nominally distribute applications throughout the fall may stop once they’ve given out the number they can handle—a good reason to reach out to them sooner rather than later.

2. Do Your Research
Even before parents read about, talk about or visit any schools, Gabriella Rowe, head of the Mandell School, recommends coming up with “Must Have,” “Would Be Great But Not Critical” and “Who Cares?” lists to differentiate the qualities you’re looking for in your child’s education. The lists may evolve, but they’re a good way to remember what’s truly important to you as you go through the process. Consider buying Victoria Goldman’s The Manhattan Directory of Private Nursery Schools. Likewise, the Parents League (parentsleague.org) offers a schools guide, personal consulting and seminars. If you seek additional advisory services, organizations like Smart City Kids (smartcitykids.com) offer private sessions and small group workshops. It’s recommended that parents contact approximately 10 schools to get eight applications.

3. Weigh Private and Public
Tuition at some New York City private nursery schools can range between $20,000 and $30,000 per year. For that reason, many families use public Pre-K programs, which are free but only offered the year before kindergarten. Unlike with kindergarten, the city doesn’t guarantee you a spot in Pre-K. (Visit the Department of Education website, schools.nyc.gov, for more information.) A number of children’s activity centers offer “preschool alternative” programs, which don’t have elaborate admissions but offer similar activities.

4. Learn Educational Philosophies
When considering nursery schools, factors like location, tuition and general reputation are typical starting points. But parents should also be mindful of a school’s educational philosophy and how that plays out in the classroom. “If people stay focused on the goals and philosophy of the school and go with their gut as far as feeling comfortable in a particular setting, I believe they’ll end up at the right place,” said Sharon Shorofsky Mack, director of education at the JCP Downtown.

5. Bond With the School Director
Ask yourself: Is this someone whose opinion and instincts I trust? Since she is the leader of the school community, you may need to have a close and cooperative relationship with her, especially if any emotional or developmental challenges come to the fore, which is quite common in the nursery school years.

6. Write a First-Choice Letter
Because of the competition for limited spots, many parents feel compelled to send a “first-choice letter” to their most desired school. This basically acknowledges that if a specific school were to select your child, you would accept the given slot. Other parents prefer to phrase the letter in less binding terms, noting particular reasons a certain school is a good match for them. While ISAAGNY (The Independent School Admission Association of Greater New York) officially discourages first-choice letters, the truth is that many schools enjoy hearing positive feedback.

Special Tip: If you’re concerned that the school you favor may not appreciate a letter, we strongly encourage you to use the school tour to get clarification on whether they would prefer to hear from you near the end of the admissions season.

7. Be Yourself
It’s impossible to completely avoid the hype surrounding nursery school admissions in the city. But try not to be alarmed by stories of a dozen rejection letters. Most of all, focus on schools that feel like a truly good fit for your family and your child.

For information on schools and admissions in New York City, visit newyorkfamily.com.

A new book reports on the surprising ways that traits like grit and curiosity can improve success in school and—even better—in life

By Tali Rosenblatt-Cohen

A journalist with long-time gigs as an editor at Harper’s and the New York Times magazine, New York City dad Paul Tough has spent much of his career thinking, reporting and writing about education. In his first book, Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, Tough chronicles the challenges and triumphs of the famous Harlem Children’s Zone.

His new book is called How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. In part, it grew out of his reporting on kids from low-income neighborhoods. But it also became personal. “I had my son, Ellington, who is now 3,” said Tough, “and I found myself wondering about this question as a parent as well: What do you do to help your child succeed?”

Your book makes the case that noncognitive skills (which you call “character”), even more than academic achievement, are the key to long-term success. Can you define noncognitive skills?

The phrase comes from economists and, in particular, a Nobel Prize-winning economist from the University of Chicago, James Heckman. He started using this phrase about 10 years ago to explain what he was seeing in his data. He found that there were certain kids who scored low on IQ tests but would go on to succeed, or who would score high on IQ tests but not go on to succeed. As he looked deeper into the data, he identified these other skills that seemed to determine success. Some of the skills have to do with self-regulation, like conscientiousness and self-control. Some of them have to do with optimism, curiosity, zest—basically wanting to explore new things. And grit and perseverance are another set—they’re about intensity, sticking with something, bouncing back from failure. In lots of ways, I find “character” a more accurate or evocative term for these skills because it gets at how important they are. They are a really deep part of what it means to be human.

You place a lot of importance on the first few years and parent-child attachment. Should we be worried about a kind of backlash against trends like early enrichment programs, where everyone shifts from an extreme focus on academic performance to an intense anxiety about connection?

I do worry about stoking parental anxiety, but I hope the book will encourage parents to relax rather than freak out. To me, what the research on attachment implies is that most children need a basic level of love and security and nurturance. Studies on attachment indicate that 60 percent of American 1-year-olds display a secure attachment with their parent or parents. That’s a pretty big group. Attachment, the way I see it, is not a way to produce super-children; it’s about providing enough love and attention that your children wind up in the secure 60 percent. You can make a lot of mistakes as a parent—as we all do—and still get it right. And if you get it right, your child has a big advantage starting out.

You talk about adversity and how experiencing some adversity in childhood or early adulthood can make for a more well-adjusted and successful adult. If a child is lucky enough not to face much adversity, are there ways parents can challenge them?

It’s important to note that the kind of adversity many kids are experiencing in the South Bronx or in Harlem isn’t good in any way. It does real damage. But for affluent parents, it’s about a bigger shift in how you think about childhood. As we all know, kids in high-achieving, high-pressure schools are working incredibly hard. They are often burned out, stressed out. But at the same time, people like Dominic Randolph [head of the Riverdale Country School] are right—these kids are not experiencing real failure; they’re not open to real adversity or taking real chances. They’re not even enrolling in classes they might be interested in if it might pull their GPA down. But you can make the case that those are just the kind of classes they should be taking.

In some ways, the advice I would have for parents in that situation is to expand their definition of successful to include [the word] “challenge” much more than it is included now. The big message is to give kids the opportunity to take on more serious challenges, to go off in strange directions sometimes and have the opportunity to fail.

Why write a chapter about chess? Could children learn whatever skills chess helps them develop from an art program, a musical instrument or sports?

I think so. Chess was there to show how far kids could go with this type of noncognitive training. We think of chess as such a cognitive skill. But the most amazing thing to me going on at I.S. 318 [the Brooklyn middle school in a low-income neighborhood that won the 8th grade national chess championship] was that the chess teacher, Elizabeth Spiegel, was able to use noncognitive techniques to increase her kids’ skill level. Those skills can absolutely come from something other than chess. Sports, when they’re done right, develop the same things.

Kids learn that they can exceed what they think of as their limits—that they can keep pushing themselves. When you’re practicing piano, you get that same kind of instant feedback that you do in a chess game. When you’re playing chess and you make a mistake, an opponent takes your pawn; when you’re playing piano and make a mistake, you sound terrible. That sort of feedback, if you have the right kind of teacher, can lead to much bigger success.

Going back to optimism, zest and curiosity—how does one get those? Can they be taught?

One thing that was really striking to me in the research was how much those skills correlated with good parenting. When parents in the first few years were able to create strong attachment, a real sense of security in kids, those kids were more optimistic and more curious and were happier and psychologically healthier as a result. Those skills are really built very early on.

And what if they’re not?
Schools can do a lot. [But] the way we run our schools is not focused on curiosity. When you’re focused on tests, you’re focused on a single right answer. Successful scientists, though, are ones who go beyond the right answer and look for alternative solutions. There are ways to teach that and it involves a more open approach to learning than traditional public schools typically offer.

Optimism and happiness are definitely related. Some of these techniques that [the charter school group] KIPP is using—positive psychology and cognitive behavioral techniques—are designed to help kids with optimism and psychological well-being. I was really struck by the way these interventions helped kids reorient themselves in adolescence. At that age, they can think about things in a much more self-reflective way: Why do I feel this way? Why do I do this? Why do I keep making the mistakes I’m making? I think schools can really help kids reframe things and think in a broader way.

We keep hearing that American education isn’t up to par with learning in many other industrialized nations. As someone who has covered education for much of his career, how do you feel about the state of education in this country?

I’m very concerned about the achievement gap and the fact that, in some ways, it’s getting worse in terms of class and race. In terms of the education of the majority of kids in the United States, I tend to feel more optimistic. There are lots of schools I visit where kids seem to be getting a great education from Pre-K all the way up through high school. I do feel like this issue of high pressure in schools, the emphasis on tests and not enough on character, does make a difference. But part of the reason I feel less concerned about this in well-off communities is that parents in those communities are really good about responding to research, saying, “Aha! We did go a little too far in this direction.” On the whole, my concern continues to be kids at the bottom and how we still have not designed an education system that allows them to succeed.

After years of lots of love and attachment, New York City mom of three Tali Rosenblatt-Cohen now plans to make sure her children face a lot of adversity.