It seems like each year as our kids get older there are more and more opportunities – in sports, music, at school, with friends. But how much is too much? When does highly-scheduled become over-scheduled? One indicator, various researchers and pediatricians have suggested, is whether it affects our kids’ sleep. If they have a hard time either falling asleep at night or getting up in the morning, they are probably over-scheduled and under-slept to a degree that could be harming their development. If they’re falling asleep with difficulty, it could be because they are stressed, have spent too much time on a screen (TV,...

Most of life, I think, is a dance between our desire to be loved and accepted, on the one hand, and a desire to protect ourselves from being rejected and hurt on the other. The trouble is, these two desires are most often at odds. That is, the only way you can believe you are really loved and accepted is if you allow yourself to be really known. That is, you stop pretending to be someone else; otherwise, you can never know for sure if they love you or the person you’re pretending to be. But to allow yourself to be known is a risk. The person to whom you reveal yourself may not like you, or may reject you, or may run away from you....