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

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.

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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

Parents hate going against the grain when they raise their kids because they don’t want to be wrong. It’s so much safer to be wrong when you did everything that society tells you to do as a parent. Homeschooling requires bravery from parents. It’s a risk but some parents take the leap. Read more

I woke up at 4am today to write. I’ve been doing that as a way to get time alone. It was great for a while, until my youngest son started waking up at 5am.

I said, “Can you think of something to do by yourself?” Read more