Healthcanc

On a walk this afternoon I ran into my youngest son and his wife. They had the baby in the stroller, dressed well as always for such an event, a stroll. She is in a little pink dress with miniscule black kittens and a big pink bow in her hair (via the fashionable baby  headband, not shown) . She's almost five months old.  I bend over the stroller and we exchange goo goo eyes and coo softly at one another. Then, finally exhausted of that, I bring it up:  "Do you think you might want to get together tomorrow night for an Oscars party?"  They consider it and we try to figure out who in the family has the biggest TV. Baby Fashion Plate (K"H) Once I treated a patient with high functioning autism who told me that she watches television to learn social cues. Television increases her intellectual empathy. She knows that even though these are actors and have memorized their responses and lines, their inflections and body language are rich in teaching moments. I...

I feel like there's so much to say; like we haven't talked in ages.  (1) Parenting My six-year-old granddaughter draws a stick figure picture of herself running away from my son. In the picture he's counting down: Five, four, three, two, one. Bedtime . He posts that he has no recollection of doing this, counting down. I remember it. He and his brother are six, their sister, four. Me: Better be in bed at the count of one. There's a thrill to this intervention, despite the total lack of consequences. The magic of counting down to bedtime is that it is a competition. Can I beat the parent? Can I make it to bed before he says, One ? And a kid needs a good reason to run, not walk to bed, because running is fun and walking is not, and it is much more fun jumping into a bed, feeling the fluffy pillows and covers receive you. Probably the best reason for the countdown, however, at least from the kid's perspective, and maybe my son knows it, maybe he doesn't, is that ...

I admit to sometimes  Googling people , if not after they make an appointment, then before. It helps knowing the public profile, what people are trying to present to the world, as themselves. Nancy Slagg's profile on Yelp Working downtown, some prefer to go to therapy on their lunch hour, then go directly home. Because seriously: Can you simply change the channel, switch from sharing things so personal, to attending to what matters most to your boss? It is an art, switching channels, one honed with time and experience. Rabbis and other men and women of the cloth do it when they run from a funeral to a wedding. Therapists do it when they're seeing eight patients in a row to make some money. We get good at disengaging from the last patient to focus on the next. In a matter of minutes, maybe seconds. The story: A friend asked me for a recommendation, a therapist he could see downtown, maybe on his lunch hour. I remembered a short list buried in my email and forwarded him the name...