Younger Sister

Q: What do you do when a 9-year-old acts more like a parent than a child?My daughter constantly tells her younger sister what to do as if she was her mother.Is there anything I should do about this?-- Diane Ortiz,! Philadelphia, Pa.A: This is an age-old problem that has everything to do with age and being older. When you're 9 years old, age means power if you have a chance to lord it over a smaller child.A certain amount of bossing of younger siblings by older children can be expected, and whether a parent should intervene depends on the degree of bossiness and why the child might be doing it."

On the day Kiara Leslie committed to Maryland, her older brother announced that he would forgo his senior season at North Carolina State and enter the NBA draft. C.J. Leslie, who averaged 15 points and 7.4 rebounds as a junior for the Wolfpack, was clearly focused on his future leading up to last week's NBA declaration. But the 6-foot-9 forward - who was heavily recruited by Maryland before picking N.C. State three years ago - did find time to advise his 6-foot sister on navigating the recruiting process.

Longtime Orioles first baseman Eddie Murray never embraced the spotlight, but his 21-year major-league career shined so brightly that there was never a serious doubt that he would be elected to baseball's Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. Murray was named on 85 percent of the 496 ballots cast by 10-year members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America in voting announced yesterday and will be inducted in Cooperstown, N.Y., on July 27 along with catcher Gary Carter, the only other player to receive the minimum 75 percent of the vote required for induction.

In a washed-out video projected on the wall of Bethany United Methodist Church at her memorial service Saturday, Rose Louese Mayr tumbled and fluttered in a dance portrayal of a girl with her eyes turned toward God. The dance put on display one of the many talents family and friends ascribed to the 2010 Mount Hebron High School graduate, killed last week in an Ellicott City train derailment along with longtime friend Elizabeth Conway Nass. Ms. Mayr's pastors said they hoped her performance would also offer mourners some comfort.

WIMBLEDON, England - Venus Williams says she's doing a lot of praying that her abdominal injury won't keep her from playing today's Wimbledon final against her sister, but she's not avoiding more mortal help, either. Her personal trainer, Kerrie Brooks, spent much of yesterday giving her treatment, and Williams also stayed off the practice courts, trying to get as much rest as possible. She's game to play and there's no question of her motivation after her courageous semifinal win over Belgium's Kim Clijsters on Thursday.

A Westminster area man is being held in lieu of $75,000 bond on rape and sexual assault charges tied to alleged sex acts involving his teen-age stepdaughter and her younger sister.The man is accused of having sexual relations with his teen-age stepdaughter, and recently forcing her younger sister to watch the sex acts and engage in perverted sex acts with him, said state police Cpl. Wayne Moffatt, a spokesman for the Carroll County Child Abuse-Sexual Assault Unit.The suspect was charged with second-degree rape, and second- and third-degree sexual offenses involving the teen-ager and with a fourth-degree sexual offense involving the younger sister.

Sylvia S. Shoken, a Holocaust survivor who owned several Baltimore neighborhood grocery stores with her husband, died Thursday of complications of a stroke at Milford Manor Nursing Home. She was 73.She was born Sylvia Szmulewicz in Zdunska-Wola, Poland, and was 16 when the Nazis occupied her country. The Nazis marched members of her family, along with others in the Jewish ghetto, to the town's Jewish cemetery, where they were shot."Her mother, brother and younger sister escaped, only to be lost and were probably later gassed," said a son, William R. Shoken of Baltimore.

MY SISTERS AND I have been communicating ferociously during the past five weeks, both by telephone and electronic mail, since the eldest of us had a mild heart attack the day before Easter and later was diagnosed with lung cancer.Though this is not the first intrusion of reality in this generation of our family, we're relearning coping techniques, supportive attitudes and the delicacy of dealing with her husband and children."Her gallows humor is intact," our younger sister said. But how deeply should we probe what the humor may camouflage?

Glenelg senior pitcher Becky Schmidt was crossing home plate, getting high-fives from teammates after hitting a home run against Mount Hebron earlier this season as her younger sister watched. Freshman first baseman Casey Schmidt, was up next. She didn't want to be outdone. "I went up thinking, `Man, if I could only get one good pitch right down the middle, then I could measure up.' The very next pitch just happened to be right down the middle and I cranked it," Casey said. "Everyone thought it was cool that I hit one right after my sister, and she called me a copycat."

In a washed-out video projected on the wall of Bethany United Methodist Church at her memorial service Saturday, Rose Louese Mayr tumbled and fluttered in a dance portrayal of a girl with her eyes turned toward God. The dance put on display one of the many talents family and friends ascribed to the 2010 Mount Hebron High School graduate, killed last week in an Ellicott City train derailment along with longtime friend Elizabeth Conway Nass. Ms. Mayr's pastors said they hoped her performance would also offer mourners some comfort.

Stephanie Parente wasn't the kind of student who would blow off a college chemistry exam. The 19-year-old Loyola sophomore and speech pathology major was far too studious for that, her friends said. After she didn't show up for class Monday, college officials called the Sheraton hotel in Towson, where her family was staying on a visit from Long Island, N.Y. There, inside a locked room about 3 p.m. Monday, a hotel employee found the bodies of Stephanie Parente, her 11-year-old sister, Catherine, and their parents, William, 59, and Betty, 58. They were not shot or stabbed, and one of the parents was likely responsible for the murder-suicide, Cpl. Michael Hill, a Baltimore County police spokesman, said Tuesday.

DEAR AMY -- I have a 79-year-old aunt who is driving everyone in the family nuts. I think she has some form of dementia, but my mother and their younger sister say she has always been this way, changing her targets throughout the years. Nearly seven years ago, she began a campaign to convince the rest of the family that her younger sister is insane -- in her words, "a sociopath," and when we disagreed with her, she demanded that we cease contact. This year, she targeted my mother. I wrote my aunt, only to have the letter returned with her address scratched out so viciously she tore holes in the envelope.

Sister Melvina L. Bennett, whose work with poor women and families won her the respect and admiration of her peers in the School Sisters of Notre Dame, died of complications from cancer July 23 at Union Memorial Hospital. She was 64. Born in Charleston, S.C., to Lee James Bennett and Rosetta Chavis Bennett, she was raised a Baptist but converted to Roman Catholicism while attending college at the Hampton Institute in Virginia. Her mother died when she was 7, and she and her younger sister, LaVerne, were left in the care of her maternal grandmother, Sarah Chavis.

Glenelg senior pitcher Becky Schmidt was crossing home plate, getting high-fives from teammates after hitting a home run against Mount Hebron earlier this season as her younger sister watched. Freshman first baseman Casey Schmidt, was up next. She didn't want to be outdone. "I went up thinking, `Man, if I could only get one good pitch right down the middle, then I could measure up.' The very next pitch just happened to be right down the middle and I cranked it," Casey said. "Everyone thought it was cool that I hit one right after my sister, and she called me a copycat."

Secret Girl Molly Bruce Jacobs St. Martin's Press / 232 pages / $22.95 Molly Bruce Jacobs was 13 years old when her parents first told her she had a younger sister named Anne who was in an institution. She was 38 when she met Anne for the first time, and 48 when Anne died in 2002. Now she tells Anne's story in Secret Girl, a compelling and disturbing page-turner that lays bare the secrets of a privileged Maryland family. Anne was the elder of twin girls born in 1957 to Bradford Jacobs, who would become the editorial-page editor of the Evening Sun, and his wife, the former Molly Carter Bruce of the Maryland and Virginia Bruces, related by blood or marriage to a broad swath of the old WASP elite.

Details on family life murky in murder case On the day after Christmas, 20-year-old Jason Chen said, he discovered his father assaulting his mother during a morning argument in their three-story Ellicott City townhouse. Chen told police that he stepped in to protect his mother, took a knife from his father and stabbed him multiple times. The murder case against him will largely hinge on whether prosecutors and police believe his story. "Because he confessed, all of the work that normally would be done prior to an arrest is being done after it," said Sherry Llewellyn, a spokeswoman for Howard County police.

"Overseas," at the Charles, has three things right with it: It is overintelligent, overinsightful and over here.A graceful choreography of ironies and epiphanies on the subject of the decline of empire, the French film follows as three sisters, beauties all, begin 1946 as the inheritors of the mantel of stewardship of Algeria. We see them first in a dinghy approaching the shore from a beach outing: fair, windblown, delicate and yet beaming with strength and confidence. The daughters of a powerful retired Colonial officer, they look forward to that which befits their status: prosperity, honor, stability, a sense of belonging.

"Overseas," at the Charles, has three things right with it: It is overintelligent, overinsightful and over here.A graceful choreography of ironies and epiphanies on the subject of the decline of empire, the French film follows as three sisters, beauties all, begin 1946 as the inheritors of the mantel of stewardship of Algeria. We see them first in a dinghy approaching the shore from a beach outing: fair, windblown, delicate and yet beaming with strength and confidence. The daughters of a powerful retired Colonial officer, they look forward to that which befits their status: prosperity, honor, stability, a sense of belonging.

The frenzy surrounding the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to the U.S. Supreme Court paid a short visit to a well-trimmed golf course suburb off Route 40 in Ellicott City yesterday, where the nominee's parents and two sisters crowded around an arsenal of microphones to say how proud they all are. Flooded by telephone calls and several visits from reporters the past two days, Roberts' family members said they coordinated the news conference with...

Sylvester Cox spent much of the Baltimore City volleyball championship tapping his fingers on the bleachers and wiping his brow with a handkerchief. He was trying to remain calm while watching his daughters - senior Lindsey Cox of Western and freshman Erin Cox of Poly - play for the city title last night. "I can sit back and enjoy the game more," Sylvester Cox said after the second game. "The championship goes to either one and I don't really care who wins." In the end, Lindsey Cox and her Western teammates celebrated as the visiting Doves swept the Engineers, 3-0 (25-21, 25-20, 25-23)