Homeschool with autism. A 10-week workshop where we learn from my mistakes

The reason I have so much trouble writing about my homeschooling journey is that not everything worked. But I know if I don’t start talking about it, I’m not going to help people do it better than I did.

The biggest issue was not my kids. It was me. I made a lot of decisions I thought were for the kids but they were really for me. Because I have autism and life is really, really difficult for me. I understand autism a lot better now than I did when I started homeschooling twelve years ago. Knowing about my own autism has shed the most light on how I should have done things differently for my autistic kids. Read more

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Three parenting situations that haunt homeschoolers

Two terrible parenting situations:

Clingy little kids follow you everywhere in the house and want to show you everything, and literally tug on your clothes if you stray.

Obstinate little kids loudly not doing what the teacher tells them to do at home – read a page, tie a shoe, draw a picture, anything that counts as stuff parents need to make kids do for school. Read more

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Behind every high-achieving kid is a super-involved parent

There’s an article in the New York Times about the relentlessness of modern parenting. Americans love hearing about how hard parenting is because we all know it’s over the top. This article had some good statistics, though. For example, mothers today who work outside the home spend as much time parenting as stay-at-home mothers in the 1950s did.  Read more

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Homeschooling pep talk – to myself

Part of taking responsibility for my kids’ education means I’m always reading research to figure out what I should do. I’ve become an expert in teaching reading, playing video games, and learning an instrument. Now I’m becoming an expert on getting into college. Read more

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You can control whether staying home with kids is boring. Here’s how…

It’s true that sometimes taking care of kids is like watching paint dry. If the paint was also screaming at unpredictable intervals. Read more

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Is there a template for that? And other homeschooling questions.


I don’t want to reinvent the wheel. As a manager I get completely annoyed when I pay someone to do something and they don’t check online first to see if someone else has done it. You have to be doing something pretty special for there to be no examples that are similar to what you’re doing. So steal it. Start with whatever someone else has, and then customize it for yourself. Read more

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Why I’m sending my younger kids to school

This is a guest post from Sarah Faulkner. She is a homeschooling mom in Washington state. She has five kids, ages 13, 11, 9, 5, and 2. 

On the surface, the stories of adopting a foster child seem so alluring. The Today Show did a fantastic feature on other people who said yes, and on kids who needed someone to say it. Read more

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It’s not that homeschooling is killing me. It’s my own insanely high standards that are killing me.

I was holding my life together for a while. I was managing my son’s cello life and my crazy startup work life and my older son and my marriage. I was sort of holding it all together. Read more

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Moms do most of the homeschooling because duh

People rarely talk about stay-at-home dads. I know they are out there, but I have found that for the most part, it’s dads who are home with very young kids or dads planning to be a stay-at-home dad. But in general, the women back out of being a breadwinner when the kids get older, and reality sets in when dads can’t handle the social stigma of being a stay-at-home parent. There’s a reason for stereotypes. Read more

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Does homeschooling make me look fat?

When I first started homeschooling I hated having to tell people. You know that moment when you can see someone approaching to ask, “Did your kids stay home from school today?” I used to herd my kids away so we wouldn’t have to explain. Read more

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