Tag: childhood

As a boy, after the trauma of learning he is not his father’s biological son, Brian Gresko finds his sense of himself is shattered.

Sarah Watts details how science fiction shaped her family, her religion, and her own self-image.

Sari Botton turns to petty – incredibly petty – theft after her family life hits the fan.

In the wake of her mother’s passing, Dylan Landis wrestles with unanswered questions about love and art, and imagines different possibilities of what could have been.

In an excerpt from her memoir, T Kira Madden recalls a harrowing adventure with her parents.

Patrick Burleigh carried an extremely rare genetic mutation, which brought on puberty prematurely.

One of the few things that could raise anger — real, intense anger — in Mister Rogers was the willful misleading of children. Superheroes, he thought, were the worst culprits.

“There’s an idea that laborers end up in their role because it’s all they’re suited for. What put us there, though, was birth, family history — not lack of talent for something else.”

As a mixed-race kid with free-form hair, Lisa Rosenberg believed learning to blow bubblegum bubbles would be her ticket to an idealized (white) American girlhood.

Three meals a day don’t erase the scars of a childhood marked by hunger, violence, and loneliness.

When a woman and her daughter moved in next door, Jaquira Díaz found her world was suddenly turned upside down.

“A friend had handed down a beautiful book of Daniil Kharms poems for children… One was a song about a man who went into the forest with a club and a bag, and never returned.”

“Rebirth therapy” was meant to help a troubled girl start over, but it ended her life instead.

On storytelling in the shadow of Chernobyl, U.S. military planes, and not-so-distant German history.

Promethea’s education was the most important thing in her mother’s life. Then a mysterious benefactor made it his business as well.

Meeting an apparently less fortunate child in her daughter’s kindergarten class transports Amber Leventry back to her own painful youth.

One person searches for the anonymous fruit flavor of the pediatric amoxicillin that so many of us, somehow, came to love.

A teacher helping fidgety students pass a rainy recess with a familiar game — don’t touch the floor, it’s lava! — finds that the ability to pretend takes on an unexpected gravity.

For Maria Browning’s mother, Alzheimer’s Disease has dimmed old torments.

Kelsey Munger shares the story of a childhood spent being vigilant against the demons, witches, and werewolves her parents believed were stalking their family.

Mitigation specialist Jennifer Wynn investigates the upbringings of defendants on trial — often for their lives — to humanize clients in a bid to convince at least one juror to bypass the death penalty for a life in prison without parole.

How do you get to know a father — or a man — who defines himself by one single, insurmountable achievement?

Heather Matarazzo, who made her film breakthrough in 1995’s Welcome to the Dollhouse and has appeared on shows including Grey’s Anatomy, is now blogging about her life and her experiences in Hollywood. Her latest piece is a deeply personal one, about the curiosity and fear that came with secretly searching for her biological parents: I’m […]

The company is meticulous when it comes to product development, particularly for the BeForever line. “It takes about three years to launch a new character because you do a lot of research,” explains Opland. The BeForever books tackle a range of difficult issues—Addy Walker is an escaped slave, Samantha speaks out against child labor—and so American […]

Dear Raisin, I don’t have much advice for you. I likely never will. When you get older, you’ll know better than to ask me: Your mom is smarter, kinder, and taller than I am. In most cases, she’ll know better than anyone else. One thing I can tell you is that, regardless of how close […]

Alysia Abbott recalls being raised by her poet father—a single, openly gay man—in the San Francisco of the nineteen-seventies and eighties.

I had a beautiful childhood and a lovely childhood. I just didn’t like being a child. I didn’t like the rank injustice of not being listened to. I didn’t like the lack of autonomy. I didn’t like my chubby little hands that couldn’t manipulate the world of objects in the way that I wanted them […]

Fred McFeely Rogers taught us about ourselves and fought for PBS.