This is a guest post from Sarah Faulkner. She is a homeschooling mom in Washington state. She has five kids, ages 14, 13, 10, 7, and 3.

Sometimes I dream about who I would be if I sent my kids to a traditional school. Would I be more relaxed? Put together? Would we parents have more friends? Would I be thinner? This weekend we went RV camping at the Pacific ocean, next to a playground and a three-family reunion of some sorts. They were nice people. I wondered what I looked like to them. The frazzled woman who should send her kids to school for a break? The great mom that has it all together, or the mom that doesn’t care about her kids? Read more

I was struck by this interview on NPR with the authors of Becoming Brilliant:

NPR: What led you to write this book now?

Golinkoff: We live in a crazy time, and parents are very worried about their children’s futures. They’re getting all kinds of messages about children having to score at the top level on some test. The irony is, kids could score at the top and still not succeed at finding great employment or becoming a great person.

Hirsh-Pasek: If Rip Van Winkle came back, there’s only one institution he would recognize: “Oh! That’s a school. Kids are still sitting in rows, still listening to the font of wisdom at the front of the classroom.” We’re training kids to do what computers do, which is spit back facts. And computers are always going to be better than human beings at that. But what they’re not going to be better at is being social, navigating relationships, being citizens in a community. So we need to change the whole definition of what success in school, and out of school, means.

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This is a guest post from Sarah Griffith.

This a story I’ve read many times on Penelope’s blog: How I started homeschooling. But my story feels like the white trash version.  Read more

My younger son asked me to help him find out if anyone breeds Pokemon for a job. So we look up breeders and yes, there are professional breeders. He uses his birthday money. Read more