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Baked salmon garnished with asparagus and tomatoes with herbs

19 Shabbat Recipes for Families with All the Allergies

11 Delicious Ways to Use All the Food Your Kids Waste

RECIPE: Challah Pizza Roll-Ups

Home made Chicken Rice Soup - from above Horizontal

Instant Pot Chicken Soup Recipe That's Just Like Bubbe's

8 Jewish Comfort Food Recipes You Need for the Hard Times

More Recipes

Ellen Friedrichs is a health educator, sometime writer and mom to three kids. More of her writing can be found at https://www.clippings.me/ellenkate.

Sex Education

Sex Ed Has Changed Since You Were a Kid

Ellen Friedrichs

Protected sex, good contraception and health care

Growing up, I was pretty lucky: I had some fairly solid sex education. I learned about puberty in middle school, and then I had health classes in high school. The sex ed I received covered topics… like where to get condoms, how to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, and how to say no to sex. This kind of approach would generally be called “comprehensive,” since it was designed to address the full range of issues related to sexuality. This is markedly different from “abstinence-only” education, which teaches that sex should… >> Read More

growing up

Here’s How (and When) To Talk To Your Kids About Porn

Ellen Friedrichs

When I was growing up in the pre-Internet days, getting a peek at porn could be a lot of work. Fast-forward a couple of decades, and now any child with access to a screen also has access to porn.… And whether it is intentional or not, studies have found that a significant number of kids have seen some type of sexually explicit imagery by the time they are in middle school, and plenty more have encountered it even younger. Understandably, parents are concerned. They are concerned about the effects of porn on kids,… >> Read More

sexism

When Your Kid Says Something Sexist, Say This

Ellen Friedrichs

Have you ever heard your kid bust out with a statement about what boys or girls can or can’t do that sounds wrong or downright sexist? A lot of us have, which isn’t surprising considering we live… in a world where girls as young as 5 have been found to think that men are inherently smarter and more talented than women, and where kids across the globe believe a whole range of harmful gender stereotypes by the time they are 10. Given this landscape, it can sometimes feel like we are playing… >> Read More

sexual assault

How Do You Talk To Kids About Sexual Harassment? An Expert Weighs In

Ellen Friedrichs

My kids and I have had some pretty honest conversations about sexual harassment and assault. For one thing, I’ve been street harassed in front of them, and as a result, we’ve talked tachlis… about this form of sexism. For another, since I teach health and sex ed, so I’ve long made a point to talk to my kids about the range of forms abuses of sexuality can take. But for a lot of people, the current media storm around sexual harassment has put this issue front and center,… >> Read More

circumcision

How to Answer Kids’ (or Anyone’s!) Questions About Circumcision

Ellen Friedrichs

Almost nine years ago, I sat in my hospital bed googling “mohels.” I was a few hours postpartum, and though an anatomy scan at 20 weeks had given me a pretty good idea of what was to come, I… hadn’t really done anything to prepare for the bris I was going to be hosting in eight short days. To be honest, my lack of planning was partly due to vacillating between some pretty typical pushes and pulls; things like not seeing the need for a medically unnecessary procedure done on a newborn with no… >> Read More

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