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My wife and I discovered the parenting Holy Grail: a babysitter who’s punctual, affordable and amazing with our kids. Last time she sat, we told her to help herself to anything in the fridge. When we got home, she was a bit chattier than usual. We paid her and she drove home. Then we discovered a bottle of wine sitting empty on the counter—it had been three quarters full when we left. Was she drinking while playing with the kids? Was she driving drunk? We want to keep using her, but we don’t know how to broach the drinking issue. Help!
—Parental Guidance Needed, High Park
All stories relating to children
Dear Urban Diplomat: How do we tell our otherwise perfect babysitter that drinking on the job isn’t cool?
Memoir: when my husband and I defected from North Korea, we made the biggest sacrifice of all
I met my husband, Oh-jooyean, in 1996, while working in a market near my hometown of Yonan, North Korea. I was 22 years old; he was 26. A year later, we went to the police station to get married. We stood before an officer and pledged to love each other, live peacefully together and forever love and respect our eternal leaders, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.
We settled in the northern province of Yanggang-do, not far from Baekdu-san, a famous snow-topped mountain that’s mentioned in our national anthem. Like everybody in our town, we lived in a “harmonica” townhouse—a type of building consisting of a long line of attached one-room cells. We didn’t have a fridge in our room, and we rarely had wood for heat. My husband and I worked in a factory or farm field—wherever we were assigned—and we survived on rations and a measly wage that was barely enough to buy a kilo of rice. We grew whatever vegetables we could in a small plot in front of our house and foraged for plants in
the mountains.
Dear Urban Diplomat: Am I obligated to provide a gluten-free option at my kid’s birthday party?
Dear Urban Diplomat, Read the rest of this entry »
Last week we sent out e-vites for our son’s 10th birthday. The RSVPs started coming back, and in two cases, parents wrote “gluten-free preferred” in the space for allergies and dietary restrictions. What the heck is that? I’m not asking for preferences—I’m asking if their kid will keel over if he catches a whiff of chocolate icing or offend Allah by consuming non-Halal pepperoni. I’m disinclined to accommodate these requests, but my husband thinks we should, to avoid any social awkwardness. Am I out of line here, or are they?
—Let Them Eat Cake, Streetsville
My Cheating Heart: lessons from my year on Ashley Madison
I was bored with my husband, resented my kids and yearned to feel sexy again. I was ready to have an affair
Everything you’re about to read is true. I’m withholding my name to protect my marriage, but the people, the places and the dates are just as I describe. It all began in the spring of 2011, after several bellinis at a Milestones with my best friend. She giddily whispered in my ear that she was having an affair with someone she had met on AshleyMadison.com, the hook-up website targeted at married people. She pulled out her iPhone and surreptitiously showed me a picture of her paramour. He was attractive, with a chiseled face and a broad smile. He’d ended their first date by kissing her passionately—something she hadn’t experienced in years. I felt a pang of envy.
She and I had met years earlier while working for the same PR firm and had bonded over a shared crush on an extremely handsome younger colleague. We spent many lunch hours discussing our interactions with him and laughing over what we’d do if we ever found ourselves alone with him in the backseat of his silver SUV, parked in a dark corner of the company’s underground garage. Sometime after that, we started to share pulpy erotic novels with titles like Wicked Ties, Fantasy Lover and Strange Attractions.
Holiday Gift Guide 2012: monster friends for human kids
From her home in Dartmouth, N.S., Blythe Church sews these handmade monsters, which she says live in the back of closets and behind furniture and “eat the things that your vacuum leaves behind, like paperclips, marbles, bits of string and belly button lint.” They all have jagged felt teeth, dog noses and long, tentacle-like legs (which make many silly poses possible), and each is unique and totally lovable. $44. See 18 other gifts for kids »
Available at Kid Culture, 2986 Dundas St. W., 416-859-9006
Holiday Gift Guide 2012: a make-your-own animal kit for less than $10
Who knew a wine cork could so easily transform into a charmingly low-budget buffalo, bear, monkey, deer, bunny or crow? These stocking stuffer–sized kits will be a hit with older kids, though the pushpins and small parts aren’t appropriate for wee ones. We bet adults enjoying free-flowing wine at holiday fêtes will also enjoy the Kinder Surprise–like fun. $8 each. See 18 other gift ideas for kids »
Available at AGO Shop, 317 Dundas St. W., 416-979-6610.
Holiday Gift Ideas: 19 ideas for kids (or the young at heart)
Nothing makes one’s heart grow three sizes like seeing a child light up over a well-chosen present. We’ve picked 19 items we think are right for the job, including a whimsical elephant chair, a classic pogo stick and kits for making a toy car or a snowman. Okay, we admit one or two of these options—like a onesie that reads “Straight outta Parkdale”—will probably appeal more to parents, but there’s still enough kid-friendly ideas to fill several stockings. Best of all: not a single battery required.
Jan Wong: Why it’s time to talk about the elephant in the classroom—the Catholic school system
Most Torontonians think the Catholic school system is antiquated, expensive and unfair. So why don’t politicians want to talk about it?

(Image: Getty Images)
As Christopher Hitchens so memorably noted, “god is not great.” Please allow me to add that god is especially not great when it comes to taxpayer-funded Catholic schools.
Ontario remains the sole Canadian province that still fully funds Catholic education while not providing a cent to any other faith-based schools. About 660,000 Ontario students—one third of all students attending taxpayer-funded schools—are in the Catholic system. In Toronto alone, 92,000 are enrolled in 200 schools. Funding any religious school in a pluralistic and secular society is anachronistic, but it is especially appalling when a school’s teachings come into conflict with societal norms—as was the case earlier this year when the Catholic board refused to allow its students to use the term “gay-straight alliance.”
Politicians say that a constitutional brick wall has stymied us from dismantling the separate system. As Laurel Broten, the education minister, reiterated in May, Catholic education is “constitutionally protected.” News flash: a deal is not always a deal, and walls that men build can always be dismantled. Especially one that financially weakens our public schools by $7 billion a year, fights an inclusive student environment and discriminates against unemployed teachers, be they Jewish, Muslim, Protestant, Buddhist, Baha’i, lapsed Catholic or garden-variety atheist.
Reasons to Love Toronto: No. 7, because kids have a playhouse
How do you make Toronto’s best building even better? You put in a kids’ space. The Weston Family Learning Centre at the AGO is sort of like the city’s finished basement, if the city had artsy parents with money. It’s one of the rare spots where children can be happy and those responsible for them can lounge hiply, admiring an architecturally superb space, designed by the super-hot firm Hariri Pontarini. It’s almost too nice to have grubby little children running around in it.
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The Weekender: TIFF Kids International Film Festival, The Tales of Hoffmann and six other items on our to-do list

The Weekender: The Tales of Hoffmann, Mad Couture Catwalk and TIFF Kids International Film Festival
1. TIFF KIDS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
This film fest is for the city’s smallest movie lovers. Aimed at kids three and up, TIFF Kids (formerly Sprockets) features tot-appropriate features and shorts from around the world, both live action and animated. This weekend, our picks include Chimpanzee, Disney’s latest nature documentary; Alfie, the Little Werewolf, a Dutch feature about accepting who you really are, featuring a little boy who turns seven and suddenly starts sprouting hair, claws and sharp, sharp teeth; and McB, a doc about a group of elementary school children in New York who stage a production of Macbeth. Post-screening, kids take part in a Shakespeare-themed workshop. To April 22. $8.50–$12. TIFF Bell Lightbox, 350 King St. W., 416-599-8433, tiff.net.
2. THE TALES OF HOFFMANN Read the rest of this entry »
The COC kicks off its spring season with this Jacques Offenbach opera. The titular character, played by American tenor Russell Thomas, is a poet and storyteller in love with Stella, an opera singer. At a local tavern with his friend Nicklausse (actually his Muse in disguise) and his rival Lindorf, Hoffmann is convinced to sing a song to the eagerly listening revelers (he’s quite drunk at this point). The ensuing performance relates his pursuit of three prior great loves—and how they were thwarted by a cast of demonic villains, all played by bass-baritone John Relyea. We’re most excited about the famed Barcarolle duet from act two. To May 14. $12–$318. Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen St. W., 416-363-8231, www.coc.ca.
Councillor Janet Davis and like-minded colleagues are poised to block yet another of Rob Ford’s belt-tightening measures by letting children and youth use city playing fields for free. When reviewing the 2012 budget in January, city council overlooked a measure to stop giving children’s sports leagues free access to the fields. Now that coaches, parents and the kiddies themselves have spoken up—sometimes quite wittily—Davis says she’s confident council will agree to reconsider the fees and give the leagues a reprieve, at least for this year. Ford hasn’t yet said if he’ll support the reversal, but he should have at least seen it coming—after all, when you try to shake down kids, the talking points practically write themselves. Read the entire story [Globe and Mail] »
Jan Wong: Why aren’t schools teaching kids about the pleasures and perils of sex?
The answer is simple: our curriculum is shamefully outdated, and the Liberals are too scared to fix it
Adam and Eve nibble an apple from the Tree of Knowledge and suddenly realize they’re both naked. Unfortunately, sex ed isn’t part of God’s plan, and He evicts them from the Garden of Eden. These days, some folks in Toronto are acting quite God-like themselves, insisting that the next generation live in innocence and ignorance. Heaven forbid our youth get to know themselves in the Biblical sense.
Our public schools are under attack by an evangelical Christian organization called the Institute for Canadian Values, whose leaders believe, as a basic ideological tenet, that teaching up-to-date sex education in schools will corrupt and confuse our children. The institute is run by a man named Charles McVety, who is quite skilled at getting media attention. Shamefully, most journalists have checked their brains at the door, blandly covering the institute’s actions and claims without questioning their legitimacy or standing up against the influence of the church on the state.
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Editor’s Letter (February 2012): why Ontario schools should talk about homosexuality in the classroom
When I was in the sixth grade, a health instructor employed by the board of education was parachuted into my classroom to talk about puberty. She arrived with two life-size felt cut-outs of naked, child-like bodies—one male, one female—which she hung on the blackboard. After a brief preamble, she asked the class to name the changes bodies experience during puberty. Kids tentatively put up their hands, offering ideas: “Girls grow breasts,” and “You get pubic hair,” and “Boys grow moustaches.” After every correct answer, the health instructor dug into her bag and, without even a sprinkle of humour, extracted small felt swatches of pretend armpit hair and cushiony stuffed pretend breasts. As she Velcroed them onto the nude figures, we watched the nameless doll figures grow up before our eyes.
By that point, a few kids in the class were already going through puberty, so most of this wasn’t news. But it was helpful to have the subject released from behind a cloak of confusion and shame. The rest of my preteen sexual education was provided by Sue Johanson, who was a sex educator in North York classrooms before she became a media personality. On her Sunday night call-in show, she took all questions seriously, no matter how goofy, offering frank answers. She believed that everyone had the right to enjoy sex, safely and sensibly, and I can’t imagine a better way to learn about it.
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Where to Get Good Stuff Cheap: Bundled, winter-defying kids’ clothes that match stylishness with handmade durability
Parka
Planet Kid
87 Roncesvalles Ave., 416-537-9233
Multifunctional clothes are easy on the budget—and extra fun for little kids. This cozy, stylish hooded winter parka from 7 A.M. Enfant becomes a full bunting bag with just a couple of quick snaps. Available in lilac and navy blue.




