Learning, Play, and Peter Gray
This week, my mom and I have been talking a lot about Peter Gray’s lecture at the Conference on Alternatives to Compulsory Education (the video is about an hour long, but it’s 100% worth checking out!). He was speaking about his research on…
Motherhood: Love, Fear & Living for Today
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mamas everywhere! I thought I would take this holiday to reflect with my mom on making the life-changing leap into motherhood. Since the beginning of this blog, I’ve had a lot of messages and…
On NOT being grouped by date of manufacture
Several years ago, before my mom and I decided to work together on this blog, she had unearthed her original journal from 1987 and had done some writing of her own, reflecting on the journal entries. One of the things…
Stay-at-home Parenting in the DIY Generation
When I talk about homeschooling with peers who are parents, or those who are planning their families, there are a couple things that come up a lot. Mostly these two issues: First, economics — how do you support a household…
Questions from Readers
In the last few posts I’ve talked about being aware that we were pursuing an alternative path. I’ve talked about having a sense of responsibility that was greater than my peers in school, and I’ve talked about being impressed with my mom’s…
A Question of Agency
I was listening to a TED Radio Hour podcast last month; the subject was The Pursuit of Happiness. One of the featured lecturers on the episode was Kathyrn Schulz, who was speaking about the very human experience of regret. She talked about regret…
Conversations: Looking back
A couple of years ago, while living in Brooklyn, New York, I was at a party, talking with a woman my age who I hadn’t met before. We were talking about dancing; she had studied ballet, and my younger sister…
The First Pages
My sisters and I are our mother’s life’s work – this is a thought that hit me with some impact when I first articulated it. She is a fiercely capable, opinionated and intelligent woman – who grew up in the height of…