Join me on a journey of the imagination….. We’re living sometime in the distant future, and intergalactic travel has become possible. A new world, light years away, has been discovered to have intelligent life. What’s more, the beings there have invited you to come for a sort of exchange program. You’ll be assigned a host […]
Life With a Louse: How Unschooling Helped Reframe an Itchy Situation
What can you learn from a louse? A lot, it turns out. Particularly when the louse is joined by a goodly number of compatriots and comes calling on three small, unschooled heads. You guessed it: I’m talking about the dreaded head lice.When they first made their presence known (on Valentine’s Day, no less…how romantic!), my […]
That’s Not Fair!
That’s not fair! As parents, we’ve all heard this cry from our children. It gets old really fast. What are we to do? Sometimes we can find a quick and easy resolution to keep the peace. Other times we try to avoid being caught when we know some special privilege or event will upset another […]
Unprepared! How the Push-Down Effect is Stressing our Children
It’s bedtime, and Katy is pouring out her troubles to me as we lay snuggled together. She mentions the usual: the baby still gets too much attention, her brother always gets to stay up later, when can she have a playdate with Jennifer? But then she brings up something new. Something that bothers me as […]
A Pair of Sparkly Sneakers: letting our kids be who they really are
This is a post I wrote over two years ago, which is featured in my new book by the same title. Hope you enjoy it! I’m shoe shopping with Thomas; always a touch-and-go affair. Today is no different. He glumly surveys the offerings in the boys section. “They’re all black, white or blue, Mom,” he […]
Unschooling: It’s a Wondeful Life
Last night I had an “It’s a Wonderful Life” kind of experience. You know that old James Stewart movie in which the main character gets a look at what life would be like without him? Sitting with my son as he eagerly wrote a letter to a friend, I found myself “flashing sideways” to what his […]
Unschooling Thought for the Day: Youthful Insight
With few exceptions, invention is the provenance of youthful insight; cut that spring of ideas off by embedding the young in a network of rules and judgements, and you should expect important negative consequences. -John Taylor Gatto, from Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling
Kohn: Working Together
…working together to solve problems offers a vote of confidence, a statement of trust, to a child. It says, “I believe that when you understand the moral issues involved, and when you have the necessary skills, you will act responsibly.” -Alfie Kohn, from Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, […]
Screen Time: Finding the Balance
Balance. It’s an ever-moving target, that elusive “just right” blend of social activities and alone time, physical activity and rest, screen time and actual face time…. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve had several conversations with folks who are struggling to find balance between time on electronic devices and time doing other things. As […]
The proper place and the best place for children to learn whatever they need or want to know is the place where until very recently almost all children learned it – in the world itself, in the mainstream of adult life…We made a terrible mistake when (with the best of intentions) we separated children from […]