When your son says he wants to be an astronaut, and he’s already wearing glasses, why do you tell him that he can do it if he works hard? He can’t. No one can be an astronaut with glasses. Read more
Every time I hear a flight attendant tell me to put my mask on before I help my child, I realize how that moment might be worth the price of a the plane ticket, just for a reminder that I can’t help my kid if I can’t breathe. Read more
When you look at this headline, the important thing appears to be unschoolers. But in fact, the important thing is “turn out.” That is, what does it mean to “turn out well?” Read more
Did you know that people pick their partners based on:
1. smell
2. eye spacing
3. nose-to-mouth spacing Read more
It turns out that the more a boy misbehaves in school, the more likely he is to earn a lot of money as an adult. This research comes from economists at Johns Hopkins, and in a one-two punch to conventional education, the researchers also find that misbehaving does decrease the amount that a kid learns in school, but the lost learning is irrelevant to future financial success. Read more
I have been reading tributes to Joan Rivers for the last three days. Some, like this sign my friend saw in London, are very funny. Nearly all of the tributes acknowledge how Joan Rivers was groundbreaking in comedy. Read more
My younger son wants to go to school. I won’t let him.
It’s clear to me that he has no ability to understand why school is crushingly terrible. I mean, most adults can’t even see it. Read more
Cheating is really a build-or-buy decision. Should you develop in-house competency or just get it done and move on? Cheating is a really only a word to denigrate someone who refuses to reinvent the wheel. Read more
Sometimes I look back at my life before I started homeschooling and luckily, and yesterday I came across this post, 8 Tips for anger management. It describes what was a typical morning getting ready for school: I try so hard, my kids fight and cry, I scream at them. There are 250 comments weighing in on the crazy morning rush to get kids out of the house.
Traditional school focuses on well-roundedness, but a well-rounded kid has no idea what their value is to other people or how to offer it up to a potential employer. It’s late in the game to help your kid to figure out how to be useful when they are 22 – they expect to be more independent from you at that point. Read more