Eda LeShan

Copyright New York Times Company Mar 4, 2002

LeSHAN-Eda. Parent educator, author and playwright. All her life she was an Ombudsman for children everywhere. Her television program, How do your children grow? ran on PBS for 3 years in the 1970's. She was a commentator on CBS Newsfront for many years. She is survived by her daughter Wendy, granddaughter Rhiannon, aunt Edith Engel, and her husband Larry. In lieu of flowers, send contributions to the Fortune Society. A memorial service will be held at a later date

__________________________________________________________________________

Copyright New York Times Company Mar 17, 2002

Eda J. LeShan, a psychologist and family counselor who brought psychoanalytic insights and common sense to two dozen books meant to guide people through life's challenges, died on March 2 at her home. She was 79.

The cause was kidney failure, said a nephew, Bruce LeShan.

Ms. LeShan was known for the motherly warmth she brought to books like The Conspiracy Against Childhood (Atheneum, 1967), her best-known work on raising children; her radio commentaries on CBS; and her show on PBS, How Do Your Children Grow?

Her message to harried parents was to ease off on the pressure, and sometimes allow children to just daydream. She thought that the discussion of love was central to sex education, and that spanking could only make the child feel as bad as the angry parent.

She said every parent should have a sampler on the wall that says, I'm only human. Raising a child, she said, is like gardening, because each flower develops differently.

A reviewer in Publishers Weekly in 1978 wrote, Adults and young people have benefited from LeShan's fluent, sympathetic writing in books addressed to those in trouble.

Eda Joan Grossman was born in Manhattan on June 6, 1922. Her mother, Jean Schick Grossman, was a parent educator, and her father, Max Grossman, was a lawyer and president of the Ethical Culture Society of New York.

She graduated from the Fieldston School in Riverdale, and received a degree in early childhood education from Teachers College at Columbia University. She earned a master's degree in child psychology from Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

Her life amounted to personal testimony to her message that people could continue to grow throughout their lives.

She wrote her first book when she was 43, began to appear regularly on a television show when she was 46 and got her own program on educational television when she was 48.

In addition to her books, which have been translated into nine languages, and her television and radio shows, she wrote a regular column for Newsday for years and was a contributing editor of Parents magazine. Her articles appeared in many magazines, including The New York Times Magazine in the 1960's. For nine years, she wrote the Talking It Over column for Woman's Day.

As she aged, she wrote more about older people. Her books include The Wonderful Crisis of Middle Age: Some Personal Reflections (McKay, 1973), Oh, to Be Fifty Again! (Random House, 1986) and Grandparents: A Special Kind of Love (Macmillan, 1984).

I used to be a child psychologist and I love children and I kind of miss that part of my life, she said in an interview on CBS This Morning in 1990. But I try to write the same way when I'm writing for older people, where I share my vulnerabilities and my aches and pains and my mood swings and so forth.

She wrote a play in her 70's. It was called The Lobster Reef, in reference to the vulnerability lobsters experience when they shed their shells and are completely naked until they grow a new one. It told the story of a woman battling to rid herself of literal and figurative cancers.

When the one-woman play opened in 1995 on Ms. LeShan's 73rd birthday, Lawrence Van Gelder wrote in The Times that it was a striking creation that brought to life four generations. He wrote that it would be interesting to see what she could do if she put more than one character on stage.

She is survived by her husband, Lawrence LeShan, and their daughter, Wendy.