This weekend we, like everyone across the country, celebrate Mother's Day.  Many of us were blessed with strong, loving mothers as we grew. Not perfect mothers, but caring mothers.  Some of us are watching our mothers as they age, the aches and pains settling in, the mind perhaps not as quick as it once was but still "My Mother."  Others of us, for varied reasons, have shared difficult years with our mothers, may yet have strained relationships.  Some us us never knew our mothers.  And still others of us have said our good-byes.  Beyond that, many of us are mothers--and grandmothers--ourselves.

No matter where you are on this spectrum, Mother's Day means something, perhaps different things at different times.  You are encouraged to spend a few moments this weekend thinking about Mother's Day and what it means to you.  Have you told her, "I love you"?  Have you not spoken in a while?  Make a call.  It may change your life.

Many of our children and youth are loved by mothers who struggle with being the mother her child needs; mothers who make mistakes, are impatient, who don't listen.  Help those children to appreciate the many women who find motherhood challenging despite loving their children imperfectly.

It had begun as a small dispute, but it had escalated. Ian Moore, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn, and Tyrone Sinkler, a junior, had had a falling-out with a buddy, 15-year-old Khalil Sumpter. Then they had started picking on him and making threats. Now it exploded.

Khalil, scared that Ian and Tyrone were going to beat him up, brought a .38 caliber pistol to school one morning, and, 15 feet from a school guard, shot both boys to death at point-blank range in the school's hallway.

The incident, chilling as it is, can be read as yet another sign of a desperate need for lessons in handling emotions, settling disagreements peaceably, and just plain getting along. Educators, long disturbed by schoolchildren's lagging scores in math and reading, are realizing there is a different and more alarming deficiency: emotional illiteracy(1). And while laudable efforts are being made to raise academic standards, this new and troubling deficiency is not being addressed in the standard school curriculum. As one Brooklyn teacher put it, the present emphasis in schools suggests that "we care more about how well schoolchildren can read and write than whether they'll be alive next week."

Signs of the deficiency can be seen in violent incidents such as the shooting of Ian and Tyrone, growing ever more common in American schools. But these are more than isolated events...  Continue.