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 […]

I am at Suzuki cello camp. Again. Somehow I gave birth to a child who loves being with people. I don’t think there are any genes for this on either side of his family. For generations. But still, I am trying to address his needs, and he loves getting together with swarms of young kids […]

Where are the blogs with posts about homeschool drama? How can homeschool be as sunny as it appears on homeschooling blogs? It seems inevitable that these are some under-reported conflicts in homschooling families: Men who think their wives are too scattered to homeschool but are scared to say so. Moms who are insanely bored teaching […]

Public education is a complete mess in the US. A deep, structural, crisis kind of mess. Anyone who does not see this is totally out to lunch. Fortunately there are a lot of very smart, very well funded people working on that issue. In the meantime, I don’t want my kids to be part of […]

During the industrial age, when parents moved from farms to factories, it became more cost-effective to put kids in school than put them to work. So parents bought into the idea of state-run school. At that point, school became the most expensive babysitting operation on the planet. In the pre-industrialized world, only the kids with a governess […]

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