When I brought my first baby home from the hospital, I thought, “Now what? What do we do now?” And that feeling has never completely disappeared. I still worry that when I have uninterrupted time to be with the kids, I just sit with them. I’m not sure what to do. Now if I feel […]
I meet with the elementary school principal. I bring her lunch so it feels more like friends having lunch and less like I am the most demanding and unsatisfied parent in the school. I’m a half-hour late, which is an improvement from last time, when I missed our time slot completely. The principal is incredibly […]
I get a lot of free books in the mail because my not-homeschooling blog is so big. The topic of all the books is “how to have a great career” and I throw almost all of them out. When I was dating the Farmer, he used to feed the extra books to the pigs. Now […]
I’ve been doing homeschool math experiments all summer with my older son. I started division in April, when I realized it’s a third-grade topic that his third-grade classroom was not going to get to. At this point, we’ve been doing long division for six months and he still can’t do it. I’ve sat next to […]
I have no business teaching any kid social skills. I have terrible social skills, and my younger son, the one who does not have Asperger’s Syndrome, just amazes me when he can make conversation with anyone. My younger son should be giving us all lessons in social skills. But the truth is that I’m not […]
In a moment of great math self-doubt and great faith in my ability to earn money, I called a very expensive math tutor in Washington DC to see if she could tutor my son online. He is six and doing third-grade math, but I have no genes for math skills and neither does his dad, […]
Now that I have this blog I have talked with tons of parents who homeschool in groups rather than on their own. I can tell it is the way to avoid making my social son into a socially awkward homeschooled kid. But look: I hate talking to people. I have Asperger Syndrome and I’m awkward, […]
Suzuki camp. Again. I am by the pool. Next to a mom. There is a girl who is a great swimmer. She is doing butterfly across the length of the pool. With straight arms and perfect double-kicking toes. I say to her mom, “She’s a great swimmer.” “She’s on a swim team.” “How many days […]
I get a report from my nine-year-old son’s overnight camp that he is largely unable to read the nonverbal responses kids have to his humor. And, unfortunately, those responses are very negative. And, unfortunately, this is a camp for kids with Asperger’s so the bar was not very high to begin with. I am sad. […]
I wonder if among homeschooling parents there is a thriving black market for off-label pharmaceuticals. Xanax is so nice, but it takes away my drive to get my making-money work done during the day. But if my sole work during the day was to make sure my kids were doing self-directed learning, well, I think […]