I never meant for homeschooling to be a political decision. I never even thought about education reform when my kids were young. I had an autistic son with forty hours a week of state-funded therapy and I had a newborn with a facial disorder that would require three surgeries. I had no time for education reform. Read more
My older son went on a trip with Melissa. It was so exciting to watch them leave because they always do amazing things while they’re together. But I couldn’t help thinking, while I was dropping them off at the airport, that my kids are growing up like rich kids. It’s the last thing I expected after moving to rural Wisconsin. Read more
I woke up early today and told myself I had to do all the stuff on my to do list that I don’t want to do. One of the things was a written interview about personal development. Read more
The big barriers to work‑life balance are time and guilt. The best way to solve those problems is to homeschool your kids. I know because I work 70 hour weeks, and when I pulled my kids out of school, I didn’t work fewer hours, but my life got a lot easier. Here’s why. Read more
The problem with sending your kid to school and complaining about school is that you send the message to your kids that you are not the locus of control. That’s positive psychology talk that means you are doomed to despair. Positive psychology is sort of the anti-Freudian psychology. It’s the study of what makes people happy, instead of Freud’s obsession with what makes people sad. Read more
The question of how to homeschool as a single parent is actually how to make money and homeschool at the same time. Because of course it only takes one person to homeschool. Read more
Matthew and I went to couples therapy this week. I have a long history of going to couples therapy.
This post is potentially offensive to everyone’s sensibilities. I’ll just start right now and tell you that if you’re a little kid being sexually abused by your dad, you are living in a messed-up but really close, special relationship. So in hindsight, when my dad and I went to therapy with a child psychologist (because for some wild, mysterious reason that no one could figure out I was a difficult child), it felt like couples therapy. Read more
There’s a difference between good worries and bad worries. Psychology Today points out that the cave men who didn’t worry probably died quickly; some level of worry helps us overcome real problems. When we worry about crazy stuff, then worry shifts into the OCD realm. It’s not surprising that the worries of homeschooling parents are different than those of parents who send their kids to school. Read more
I coach a lot of people about how to earn money from home while they homeschool. Many of them have a spouse who is either living with them or paying child support. My answer is almost always: “Forget it. Let your spouse take care of the money. You take care of the kids and maintaining your sanity while you’re doing it.” Read more
It’s funny that we have studies to show that the kid who can look at a marshmallow and not eat it will do better in life than the kid who eats it right away. But what about the parents? Read more