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
My new company is Quistic. We provide online learning for people who want to have a fun, interesting career without giving up the rest of their personal life.
If you’re looking for the ultimate secret for how to launch a company while you homeschool, here is what I know: I didn’t write on this blog for a week and my sons spent way too much time playing video games in bank lobbies while I dealt with transferring money from investors. And we have an employee in the Ukraine, and you’d probably be shocked to learn how hard it is to pay someone in the Ukraine without having to bribe everyone. Read more
The Today Show just featured homeschool parents who put six kids in college before the age of twelve. These parents are a terrible representatives of the homeschool movement. They are just as bad as the parents who homeschool so they can intellectually isolate their kids from views that differ from their own. Read more
I’ve climbed the corporate ladder and I’ve supported my family for years as a professional writer. So I’m going to tell you—with total certainty—that however you’re teaching your kid to write, it’s the wrong way. Read more
Just because your kids like to play video games doesn’t mean they should learn to program. You drive all the time. Does this mean you should be a car mechanic? Probably not. Very few kids should learn to write code. Read more
School is designed to help kids succeed in the workplace. The genesis of compulsory education was to create effective factory workers. Today, enlightened schools realize they are creating knowledge workers rather than factory workers. But here’s the problem: most women don’t want to work full-time. Which means it’s overkill that school focuses so heavily on the workplace. What about home life? Why don’t we educate girls for home life as well? Read more
I am not an expert on child rearing, but I am an expert in career planning, so it seems to me that I should be pretty good at helping my kids find careers. Here are things I’m doing:
1. Exposing them to the idea that career is important.
I do a lot of career coaching, and I do most of it in the car, while I’m driving the kids long distances. The coaching makes the drive better for me, and an unplanned offshoot is that the kids are learning about how to focus on issues surrounding a career. The best quote from the back seat: “Mom! Tell him to take the Myers Briggs test!” Read more
My son, who skateboarded every day last winter, appears to have quit skateboarding. I try to play it cool — he can do whatever he wants, is what I tell him, but I’m not thrilled with the decision: He’s good at skateboarding and it seems like a good balance to his cello and piano lessons. But he’s done.
What I remind myself is that quitting is an important trait of people who understand their personal value. Read more
Even though the whole world seems to be going back to school, it’s still summer for us. We don’t start school and stop school because that would send the message to my kids that learning is something you start and stop. The whole back-to-school hoopla is for people who teach their kids to be poor.
Steve Siebold, author of How Rich People Think, spent nearly three decades interviewing millionaires around the world to find out what separates them from everyone else. It turns out it has little to do with money itself. Rich kids have a different mindset. (via Business Insider). And, it looks to me like the whole back-to-school ritual embodies what Siebold identifies as a middle-class mentality. Read more