Once upon a Christmas, our children came creeping down the stairs before dawn like little burglars.

I’ve been wondering lately how to slow down time. If you’re a parent, I’m sure you would agree there’s a positive correlation between children getting older and days moving faster.

Our children and even our grandchildren are always watching and listening to what we say and do.

The earliest expressions of our daughter’s deep and abiding affection for cute, fragile creatures were frightening and very nearly catastrophic. When she was 4 years old, she liked carrying our helpless cat, Bubby Tomas, around the house with her arms squeezing his torso tightly as if she were performing the Heimlich maneuver, his eyes wide with panic, pleading for rescue. 

The Jackson County Commission allocated just over $60,000 of American Rescue Plan funds to AWAKE Children’s Advocacy Center for the organization to finish renovation of its current building.

“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy….” So begins one of the George Gershwin’s greatest songs, an aria in “Porgy and Bess” reproduced by scores of musicians ranging from Ella Fitzgerald to Willie Nelson to Norah Jones.

It is never too early to teach children and adolescents about budgeting and finance. Even the youngest of kids can learn how to manage money in a healthy way. The goal is for them to create habits that move with them into adulthood and ensure they make wise financial decision throughout their lives.

It’s late Saturday afternoon, February, that hour before supper when the little ones go bananas, and the 5-year-old and his sister are driving you bonkers, to the point where you want to plop them down in front of the television watching “Arthur” while you slosh some red wine into a glass and smoke a cigarette, though you only drink wine with supper or in the evenings, and you gave up the cigs years ago in college. 

My 12-year-old son is extraordinarily inquisitive. Since he was a little boy, he’s inquired about everything from politics and finances to sports and geography to space and the environment to all topics in between. He loves to learn and fully absorbs all the knowledge he acquires, to the point where he’s often concerned about the outcome or implications of what’s going on in this big, confusing world of ours. 

Dr. Diana Messer, a forensic anthropology professor at Western Carolina University, is working on groundbreaking research that could drastically improve the methods used to estimate the timeframe of a child’s injury, which is essential evidence needed to identify and prosecute child abuse cases.