In my five years as editor of Connect for Kids, a lot has changed. As I prepare to take my leave -- this will be my last entry to this blog, as I head off for some new adventures with my family in Nairobi, Kenya -- it's fun to look back and see how far we've come.

This web site was created as an experiment, to see if the communications potential of the Internet could be used to elevate public awareness of the issues that affect children and families, and to encourage individuals and communities to take action on behalf of children.

We used to worry that site visitors' internet connections might be overwhelmed by too many pictures. Now we can confidently post video and audio on the site, without worrying about causing too many crashes. And we've come a long way in understanding how people use the Internet, and how to present information in ways that engage our audience.

One of the most exciting developments, and one that seems likely to continue, is the explosion in the quantity and quality of information that is becoming available on the well-being of children, most of it accessible through the Web. A prime example is the No Child Left Behind law -- whatever its flaws, and there are many, NCLB is generating mountains of information that educators and concerned citizens can use to push for the kinds of school reform that make a difference to kids.

Meanwhile, even small nonprofits operating on shoe-string budgets are often able to maintain websites that offer a window on their work to the entire world -- sharing their ideas, insights, and hard-earned lessons on how to be effective.

For an organization like CFK, the challenge these days is trying to stay on top of this flood of information. I look forward to gaining a new perspective on the work in the months ahead, as I become just another loyal CFK site visitor, counting on my colleagues to keep me informed about the children's issues I care so much about.

Keep up your good work, and keep us informed...
Susan

Imagine this. It's 2086. An earnest young graduate student in anthropology turns on his camera, and turns to the stooped, white-haired gentleman sitting across from him.

"Tell me more about this game 'tag' -- how was it played exactly?"

Like one of the last speakers of some obscure tribal language, the old man is a living relic of a dead culture. This one was wiped out by lawyers and those who fear them, well-meaning principals and teachers, insurance companies, anxious and ambitious parents, and school reformers with no patience for playtime.

Dodgeball has been under assault for years. This past school year, my son's elementary school principal banned tag and all its variations from recess, on the grounds it encourages aggressive behavior. And I just saw a USA Today story indicating that she is part of a national movement, with games like tag, socccer, and touch football being banned at schools across the country.

Thankfully, there's been an outcry from some in the educational community, who argue that these kinds of games, organized by kids themselves, are part of how kids learn to get along with each other, work together, and deal with losing and sometimes getting hurt. Active play at recess is also important for fighting off childhood obesity.

I agree with those arguments, but I'd like to add another: playground games are a big part of kids' culture, that little space they find for themselves out of sight of the confines of the grown-up culture that rules their days.

Tag. Sardines. Beckons. Kick the can. Freeze tag. Capture the flag. Dodgeball. Crack the whip...Just some of the ways that kids, left more or less to their own devices, have come up with through the generations to find out who can run fastest, throw hardest, take a joke, skin their knee without crying, lose gracefully. Who's tough, who's trustworthy, who peaks through their fingers and who doesn't really count all the way to 100.

You don't learn those lessons without the occasional trip to the emergency room, bloody nose, or rude awakening. But think how scary it would be to arrive at adulthood without ever having learned them.

I remember my first Fluffernutter. Jiff Creamy Style peanut butter, carefully spread on Wonder Bread (because Wonder Bread just can't stand up to crunchy) topped with a layer of Marshmallow Fluff and another slice of squishy bread. This sweet nutritional black hole, a symphonic conglomeration of the emptiest calories in the universe, was packed into my lunchbox -- the one shaped like a barn with space for a thermos under the roof. And I knew it was going to be a good day.

My children have never, to my knowledge, eaten a Fluffernutter. But I think maybe I'll serve some up one day this summer, maybe make one for myself. Set up a little table on the sidewalk outside my house and give them away.

Yes, Fluffernutters are silly and nutritionally void. But they don't pretend to be anything else. Unlike the powers that be in the U.S. Senate, who wasted a whole precious day spouting silly, nutritionally void rhetoric about the need -- or not -- to pass a Constitutional Amendment banning flag burning. While Iraq burns, and the border simmers, and the ranks of poor children in America continue to grow (by more than a million in the past 4 years, according to the latest Kids Count report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.)

Then there's the empty rhetorical calories emerging from the Massachusetts State House, where legislators spent a week wrangling over a proposed bill to ban Fluffernutters from elementary school cafeterias. Fluff isn't friendless in the halls of power, especially in Massachusetts, where it was invented and is still manufactured by the Durkee-Mower company. So, borrowing a page from the U.S. Congress manual on "How To Do Nothing While Talking a Lot," the proposed ban on Fluff was quietly withdrawn this week.

At least the stuff that comes in a jar has no pretensions.

I'd like someone to launch a well-funded public service campaign to take on one of the less-recognized threats to a healthy pregnancy and healthy infancy. "Pregnancy: More Joy, Less Guilt." "Guilt: Bad for Moms, Bad for Babies." Any deep-pocket volunteers?

The idea came to me after watching a video clip of a public service advertisement that ran this spring to "encourage" women to breastfeed their babies. Called "Ladies' Night," the ad shows a hugely pregnant woman riding a mechanical bull during a raucus ladies' night at a bar. She gets flipped off the bull backwards, a sight that left me gripping my abdomen in a protective reflex that dates back to my own pregnancies more than a decade ago. Words appear on a black screen: "You wouldn't take risks before your baby's born. Why start after? Breastfeed exclusively for six months." (This clip and another from the same campaign can be seen via links in a New York Times article on the current push to increase breast-feeding rates.)

I'm not questioning the goal. Research is pretty clear that breastfeeding has important benefits for moms and babies. It strengthens infants' immune systems and helps protect them from colds, flue, ear infections, and diarrhea. There's growing evidence it can ward off obesity, breast cancer incidence both in breast-feeding mothers and their daughters who are breast fed as infants, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, diabetes, leukemia, asthma. Some research indicates it may increase IQ.

(Sort of sounds like the unnamed miracle product in Tom Waits tune, "Step Right Up":

"That's right, it filets, it chops, it dices, slices,
Never stops, lasts a lifetime, mows your lawn
And it mows your lawn and it picks up the kids from school
It gets rid of unwanted facial hair, it gets rid of embarrassing age spots,
It delivers a pizza, and it lengthens, and it strengthens
And it finds that slipper that's been at large
under the chaise lounge for several weeks...")

My point is, why is the federal government spending money to guilt-trip women into breastfeeding instead of trying to guilt-trip employers into making it a practical possibility for working women? There's already plenty of guilt and anxiety heaped on the aching backs of pregnant women, who worry about sitting next to smokers, sipping a glass of wine, drinking coffee, eating too much, eating too little, listening to Metallica rather than Mozart, and the possiblity that all that worrying will harm their infants.

Breast-feeding is really, really hard for most working moms -- and that's some 60 percent of the mothers of very young infants -- to pull off. I managed it with my first child, but only because I was very lucky, very stubborn, and not particularly shy. I still remember sitting in a toilet stall in the grungy green ladies' room in the Boston Statehouse pumping breastmilk with a little plastic hand pump, then putting the results into the press gallery fridge, wedged in among the tuna sandwiches, wrapped in a plain paper bag labelled: "Do NOT Use This in Your Coffee!" By the time my second son was born, I was no longer working full-time, so it was easier. Though I was still loudly berated for discreetly nursing in a quiet corner of a nearly-empty museum and suffered three painful bouts of mastitis.

The fact is, guilt-tripping moms to do something about which we are not really comfortable as a society, and which we don't support in other, more substantive, ways, is just plain mean. Breast-feeding rates have been increasing modestly with public education efforts that rely on a less bullying, hectoring tone, but dramatic progress will require a real commitment and an honest effort to remove some of the real barriers. When it works, breast-feeding can be a great source of joy. And that tastes better than guilt.

The No Child Left Behind law is supposed to address "the soft bigotry of low expectations," by holding schools and teachers accountable for teaching all children, regardless of their race, home language, learning style, gender, economic status, etc.

So in these early years of NCLB implementation, the focus of everyone who cares about kids and their educational success needs to be on whether it is moving our educational systems in that direction.

For those many observers who suspect that the law's momentum is instead taking us to unexpected and unwanted destinations, research from Jennifer Booher-Jennings, a doctoral student at Columbia University in New York, provides grim support.

Booher-Jennings looked at how NCLB's focus on "data-driven decision making" is playing out in an urban elementary school in Texas. In an article in Phi Delta Kappa International, "Rationing Education in an Era of Accountability," Booher-Jennings explains in excruciating detail how teachers at the school are taught to sort students according to a cruel calculus: Kids who are in no danger of failing their achievement tests are labeled "green", which means teachers should not expend any extra energy or teaching effort on them. Kids who are so far behind that they cannot reasonably be expected to catch up in time to pass the test are labeled "red," which means teachers also should not expend any extra energy or attention on them. Also labeled "red": kids who enter school late enough in the year that they won't have to take the tests that year. Finally, kids who are lagging behind but close enough that, with help, they have a good shot at passing the test, are labelled "yellow." These are the children to whom teachers are urged to direct their attention.

And there's more: kids in "subgroups" too small to be counted in a school's testing results -- in the case of this particular school, that includes special education students -- also get dumped in the red bin.

The worst thing is that this perverse system, guaranteed to turn gifted students into bored under-achievers and struggling students into irredeemable failures by about third grade, works -- at least in the terms of NCLB measurements. It's a heartbreaking example of how dangerous it can be to let numbers alone drive policy -- especially when the numbers are stand-ins for real children.

A high school math teacher in Florida has discovered that uncertainty is a great motivator for students.

According to a story in eSchool News online, teacher Paige Allison, who is also a University of Florida graduate student in educational anthropology (latest entry in my list of "majors I never knew existed"), came across this new technique for keeping students on their toes while researching another question: how to avoid calling on certain students, or types of students, more often than others.

Earlier research had shown that teachers tend to call on white male students more frequently than other types of students, and this tendency is considered a likely contributor to girls and minorities doing less well in math.

So Allison looked for a way to remove the possibility of teacher bias from the process of calling on students. She and a computer-savvy colleague created a program for a handheld computer. With the touch of a button, the computer randomly calls up the name of a student from the class roster. And that's the student who is asked to answer the question at hand.

Allison and other teachers she recruited to try the system found that not only did it eliminate the temptation to call on the "usual suspects" more often, but it lead to all students being more engaged in class.

With Allison's program, the name of a student who is picked to answer gets kicked right back into the system, eliminating the temptation to think "She's called on me once, no way she'll call on me again." My limited understanding of probability suggests that it is possible, though unlikely, that the same student could get called on repeatedly in a single class. Perhaps if I'd been a student in Allison's class, I would have paid enough attention to know if I was right about that.

I was racing through the Washington Post this morning, trying to finish the A section before it was time to go into border collie mode and start nipping heels (who wants to go to school in June, anyway?), and came across a brief item about a new government survey.

The National Center for Health Statistics surveyed about 4,900 men between the ages of 15 and 44. Based on the results, the researchers estimate about 28 million men have children under the age of 19, and that 75 percent live with at least some of those children.

They also found a clear connection between a father's level of education and his level of involvement with his children. More educated dads were more likely to read to their kids, bathe and change them, eat meals with them, and play with them. They were also much less likely to father a child outside of marriage...about 6 percent of college graduates had done so, compared to almost half of those who hadn't finished high school.

All very interesting, if somewhat basic, information.

A bit more interesting to me was the fact that this was the first time that this major survey, the National Survey of Family Growth, actually bothered to include men. (It's been carried out since 1973.)

Remember when we all woke up to the fact, some years back, that all the medical research we'd been counting on to keep us safe from dangerous side effects of drugs or the cancer-causing properties of various chemicals had been carried out exclusively on men, as though men were the template for everyone else when it came to biology?

Women, I guess, have been the template for family life.

I hope the NCHS will keep on checking with men about their experiences of family life and fatherhood. Findings like these have clear and compelling policy implications -- such as providing more support for the idea that closing the education gap between men and women is important for the well-being of children.

As a parent, I will be breathing a big sigh of relief in a couple of weeks when my older son leaves middle school behind. And the parents of his classmates tell me they will be doing the same. I'm almost expecting that the entire neighborhood will feel the breeze emanating from the middle school auditorium next Wednesday when the whole ordeal finally ends for the lucky 8th graders and their parents.

Elementary school is a time of positive discovery and growth for most kids, and parents get a second-hand thrill from watching mastery develop, friendships form, interests and talents emerge. While high school can be catastrophic for some kids, for others it is a time to soar. Middle school, though, just seemed like a frustrating nowhere-land, with a few bright spots provided by wonderful teachers.

I think it was about three years ago that a New York Times columnist referred to middle school as "the Bermuda Triangle of education". I didn't get it at the time, but now I do. It's where your kids drop off the radar. It's where the whole home-school communication thing falls apart dramatically. It's where the odds that at least one of your child's six or seven teachers is going to rub you the wrong way are very, very high.

Education expert Hayes Mizell gave his thoughts on the topic at a speech a few years back. One thing that strikes me in reading his talk is the notion that physical activity is identified by researchers as one of the key developmental needs of middle schoolers. That makes sense -- this is a time of rapid growth, rivaled only by the years from 0 to 3 in terms of the speed of change and development that goes on. Young adolescents need to keep in touch with their rapidly changing physical selves.

Yet at my son's middle school, like many others, there is no longer any recess during the school day. Gym class is a one-semester affair. There are a few after-school sports, but a lot of kids have jobs or other obligations, and a lot of kids that age aren't into team sports, with their potential for public humiliation.

Parents, Mizell says, are a key to middle school reform. But it's hard to know how to assess your child's middle school and how to approach the job of trying to make it better. There's help available. MiddleWeb is a wonderful window into the philosophy and practice of middle school education, and the teacher blogs can be addicting. Schools to Watch offers a parent-friendly assessment exercise that can be completed in as little as two hours by interested parents. I wish I had known about it a few years ago. If you have a rising middle schooler in your family, think about giving it a try next fall.

Let's put middle school back on the map.

Census data shows that the fastest-growing household type in the U.S. is the "multigenerational household," one that includes members of three generations or more.

It's not exactly a new idea -- and while in this individualistic age it may be the disadvantages that leap to mind first (Who wants to hear, "You're going outside in that?" at the age of 35 or so?), it doesn't take much deep thinking to see the advantages, particularly for children, too often deprived of close relationships with their grandparents, and for young parents starting out, for whom housing and child care costs are a major burden.

According to a NY Times article, some of the growth is culturally driven, as immigrants from countries where the multi-generational model is the norm (as it was in this country until the advent of Social Security made independent living affordable for more elderly Americans) carry on that tradition. Single parenthood is another contributor, with young mothers often relying on their own mothers and fathers for financial and child-care support. Most multi-generational households are low or moderate income, and clearly the financial advantages are important.

But another segment of the growth seems to be driven simply by preference. Developers are catching on, building houses and planning developments geared at a new niche market of well-off multi-generational households.

When my children were small, we lived for two years in the Republic of Macedonia, a country where the multi-generation model was the norm. Though Macedonia struggles with serious ethnic divisions between Slavs, ethnic Albanians, Roma and Turks, all the groups at least have that in common. Grandmothers -- babas -- ruled the roost in the neighborhoods, caring for young children while their parents were at work, sweeping the sidewalks outside their homes and keeping an eye on older children at play. It made for a neighborhood setting so safe that my three-year-old son could walk out the door to play with neighborhood children -- a very unsettling luxury for me.

There was a whole different ethic of care among the children, as well, with older children keeping a big-sibling eye on all the younger kids, whether related or not. In fact, most of them were related, at least as cousins, since each neighborhood tended to be settled by people from a particular village. But the babas were the glue that held it all together.

Still, there was a feeling of change in the air. Some of the younger women -- the mothers -- told me that they felt this arrangement was not modern. And a primary school teacher complained to me once that children who stayed at home with their babas rather than attending preschool entered first grade unprepared -- "They can't tie their shoes, they can't button their coats, they can't do the simplest things!"

Here in the U.S., multigenerational households were still only 4 percent of all households in 2000 -- but that was a 38 percent increase from 1990, and real-estate and building industry sources say the trend has accelerated since then. It will be interesting to see how far back this particular pendulum will swing.

When I was applying to college three long decades ago, it seemed like there was a relative handful of schools that most students at my high school applied to. It was a list that was heavy on the Ivies, heavy on the liberal arts, and sprinkled with "safeties" that included some state schools and small single-sex institutions.

In typical teenage fashion, I set my heart on a particular school -- Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania -- as much for the rather perverse reason that no one from my school had gone there in decades -- as from any real understanding that it would be a good school for me. Fortunately, it turned out to be just right, and I think there was some real good sense behind my desire to re-invent myself in college without any witnesses from the agonies of high school.

These days, it's all a lot more scientific, and a lot more anxiety-producing. As the book "The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less" (coincidentally, written by a Swarthmore professor whose introductory psychology course I still remember vividly, even though it was at 8 a.m.) points out, a proliferation of options doesn't always make us happy. In the case of kids applying to college, it seems to be a recipe for angst.

But in this case, there is at least one real and very significant benefit to all that choice, all those niche schools, all those possibilities, and that's the fact that more and more colleges are looking to a market segment that for too long was not considered college material. Students with learning disabilities are going on to college in greater numbers than ever before, and some smart colleges are making substantial efforts to attract, support and retain them.

The Boston Globe ran a story this week on a number of high schools in Massachusetts that have started holding special college fairs for special education students and their parents. One such event at Arlington High School drew about 200 students and parents to meet representatives of three dozen colleges and trade schools.

For special education students, such fairs can be less intimidating than college fairs for a more general audience, since they don't have to wrestle with how much to say about their learning difficulties in such a public setting. They know that the participating colleges are going to be willing to work with them.

So amid all the societal angst about the grueling college application process, it's good to be reminded of the many benefits of a system that does, indeed, offer a whole universe of choice.