While there are a lot of ways to raise children, there are a few parental qualities that I see repeatedly held up as ‘ideal’. Mainly, in an ideal situation, a parent will have high expectations of their children, while also showing them ample warmth and love. A parent will set and maintain appropriate limits. A…
My husband and I are coming up to our twelfth anniversary. In terms of marriage length, it still feels like we are babies. My parents have been married for nearly 40 and my grandparents for decades more than that. I hope, though, that babies-in-marriage though we are, we are babies who aim to building something:…
At the first lecture for my masters in education, my professor told the class that research was clear: assessment dictates how and what students learn. If you want your students to achieve certain educational goals, you have to get your assessment in line with those goals. For an MA in education designed to prepare students…
I have been on a slow and evolving mission to manage the way I use technology and social media for the past two or three years. I’ve had a number of moments of clear conviction that I was frittering my time away, basking in the shallows of other people’s lives and failing to live my…
Over the past few weeks we’ve explored Charlotte Mason’s educational tool of discipline from various angles: the limits of this tool, how habits work on our hearts, and even how to approach building good habits. After this week I’ll depart from habits for a while, but not until we take a look at how habits…
This week I finished reading Rethinking Positive Thinking by Gabriele Oettingen (referral link). I relate to the premise so much. I love to imagine achieving big goals, whether it is related to homeschooling, my website, a health and fitness related challenge. In my mind, I can feel the sense of accomplishment and my sense of…
Last week we considered the limitations of habits. When we talk about habits, I think it’s always good to begin with a few qualifications. Habits are not a form of lifehacking. They are not a quick fix to our problems. They can be hard work, and as we saw in the Parents’ Review article last…
Sometimes it seems that if we could just get the knack of habit training, that we would immediately be better parents, educators, and human beings. Imagine doing the right things on autopilot! No power struggles, no internal arguments, just the “smooth and easy days” that Charlotte Mason mentions in Home Education. I do agree that…