When I can’t cope I clean. And if everything is clean, I organize. Once I overheard my younger son giving a tour of the house and he said, “This is our bedroom. My mom makes us put our stuff in her boxes so everything is her colors.”

I thought I was teaching my kids to clean their rooms. But my kids recognized I was teaching them to make their room the way I like it. I started paying attention to what other kids rooms look like. I noticed that if you go to someone’s house and a school-aged kid’s bedroom is really neat and stylish, that says more about the mom than the kid; it looks like the mom cares more about her own needs than the kids. Read more

I have been working with my son on a research about perfect pitch. He was was constantly emailing hundreds of research subjects.

I told him he needs to use special software to keep track of a mailing list that big.

He told me to shut up.

After he lost track of 30 people, I went on strike. No more help until you start using a mass email service.

I thought the hardest part about helping with his research would be that I have very little science education. But I’m starting to love the science (fascinating to me: people with perfect pitch have autism.) And actually the hardest part of helping him has been predicting the reaches and limits of his digital literacy.

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This post is about a new course I’m doing. Oct 22.

But first, I have stuff to say. I recently wrote about the breakfast table effect, which explains why kids who have great science projects before college have parents who are scientists: they talk about science over breakfast because that’s what the parents like to talk about. Read more