There’s a test of positive childhood experiences to see how resilient a person is. How positive your childhood was impacts how resilient you’ll be as an adult. (I think this was developed to be a pick-me-up for people who scored poorly on the adverse childhood experience test, which I scored almost 100% on.) Read more

Kids need a primary caretaker during the first three years of their life. When a baby is unclear on who that primary person is the baby gets attachment disorder – which is a nice way of saying brain damage. Other than those three years, twin studies show there is not much you can do to change outcomes in adult life.

If you separate two twin boys at birth, and give them each to different adoptive parents, and they never meet, they will still have sex for the first time at the same age, pick similar jobs and even have similar haircuts. That research really convinced me of how little impact parental steering has on kids.

Then why do parents stay home? To enjoy their kids. To make family life nicer. And to make childhood nicer. Kids who have happier childhood memories are healthier and less depressed as adults.

We have cognitive dissonance because humans have been passing off their kids to someone else for so long.

In early history, children were separated at from their parents around age seven and worked alongside with adults for the rest of their lives. The child was protected not by one parent, but by the community, or the adult who depended on the child’s labor.

In the Middle Ages, the Church was responsible for moral development of children, and it was a parent’s job to hand a child over – spiritually – to the Church. Parents handed over their children physically as well, because when kids became an apprentice or a servant and their master had the same rights as a parent.

The industrial revolution factory replaced the family when work hours became so long as to take all a child’s waking hours. And when that felt unethical, communities built schools and passed off moral development to the school. In fact, the early school doctrines expressly say that schools will take over a parent’s job of moral education because the school will do it better

In 1966 the government became a higher authority than the parents when the Supreme Court ruled that teachers can spank students even if the parent does not want it.

Giving up economic opportunity to take care of children yourself is a radical and revolutionary act given our history of childcare. There is one opportunity we have in life to feel unconditionally loved and important: our parents. But very few parents convey to their children that their children are the most important priority. Today parents balance economic opportunity and caretaking. Not out of financial necessity, but because neither parent wants to say, “My child is my top priority.” It’s too boring.

Kids have that knowledge: I am not my parent’s top priority because I am boring. And you can tell an adult who experienced that feeling because (even if they don’t know it) they are still trying to do something to get their parent’s attention

Throughout history people have told parents they are not qualified to manage their children. And parents have felt somehow unqualified to be with their children all day. But what if the main purpose of childhood is to create good memories? Then parents are the most qualified. Because the impact of feeling like you’re most important in childhood can never be duplicated and you take it everywhere you go.

It’s difficult to get perspective looking at ourselves through the eyes of the parents sitting next to us. But if you look at a more broad historical perspective, staying home to school your kids is novel and adventurous and places the values of connection, relationships and mental health front and center. Which is probably where you thought they should be all along. And it’s probably why parents love looking at photos of their kids making good memories. Instinctively we know that’s a job well done.

I was really surprised to read that since the 1960s, the professions that are deemed most prestigious remain unchanged. Medicine, military, public service, science/technology, journalism, clergy, law. Most lists, no matter how you define prestige, have these professions on the list. And if you change the modifier to admired professions, the list doesn’t change. Read more

Boy cellist going through puberty: “Mom! Listen! I woke up today and my voice was a B-flat!”‬

The deeper my son’s voice goes, the more hours a day he practices. And the more hours he practices, the more I worry about what he’ll do in a world where no one pays to hear a cellist play live.

The homeschooler in me believes my job is to create a loving, joyful childhood for my kids. And in that sense I am so happy to have cello music as the soundtrack to our lives. But the career coach in me thinks it’s a disservice to send a kid into the adult world with no marketable skill. I’ve seen what happens to those kids and it’s not good. Read more

Ever since we started homeschooling, I am always trying to keep my eye on the ball. I’ve had spreadsheets that showed me what my older son needed to accomplish each year so that he could take all the tests that he needs to take. I’ve had spreadsheets that showed me which cello competitions my younger son needed to go to each year so that he could get all the performance experience he needed to get. Read more

We can all agree that Mother’s Day is a manufactured day for people to support the chocolate, flower, and jewelry industries. But we can also agree that a mom ignored on Mother’s Day is not a happy mom. Read more

In the music world a lot more girls excel at a young age than boys do. Because, like all things that require sitting still and paying attention, girls are better than boys. So my son has a lot of friends who are girls. Read more

We know that kids who cut corners and question the status quo are the ones who make a big difference in the career arena.  Read more

This ad for McDonald’s stuck with me because I realized my kids are speaking a language I don’t really speak. My younger son texts his friends and their hours-long conversations sometimes have no words. Only emojis. Read more


Obama wants all kids to learn to write code
. As if this is the new sure-fire path to the middle class. Or higher! But this sounds suspiciously like the iconic, terrible career advice Dustin Hoffman received in the movie The Graduate: Plastics. Read more