Remarking on the “pressure to deliver exceptional days,” Kim John Payne laments the loss of ordinary days. Why does it have to be a great day? “If we hold on to the exceptional—if our children adopt that as their measure of success—most will fail, and almost all of them will feel like failures,” he explains. …
Expecting only excellence denies the scope of authentic situations. “To demand perfection is to turn our backs on real life, the full range of human experience,” explains Kristin Neff. @neffselfcompassion We benefit from being conscious of the reality of our blemishes. I’ve noticed that I tend to use either/or language about my own attempts to homeschool. …
Homeschooling cannot be shown step-by-step. There is no way to give precise instructions. To rephrase a message from Seth Godin in his book Linchpin about other creative endeavors, “The reason that [homeschooling] is valuable is precisely why I can’t tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there’d be no need to …
The Optimistic Child by Martin E.P. Seligman A child throws down his pencil in exasperation, and shoves the book away, shouting, “I hate this math, I can never learn to do it! The problems are always too hard! My schoolwork is impossible!” As homeschooling parents, we have all seen frustration like this begin to cloud the …
Playtime Permutations: A Christmastime (or Anytime!) Tradition One of the reasons I love homeschooling my children is so that they can have the time and shared experiences that will allow them to develop good friendships with each other. But, since we are home together most days, I find that sometimes I feel like we are …
Canadian psychologist Gordon Neufeld has this to say about the mindset of socialization : “The belief is that socializing—children spending time with one another—begets socialization: the capacity for skillful and mature relating to other human beings. There is no evidence to support such an assumption, despite its popularity.” That sounds like the beginning of a …
