Avant Parenting Archives
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Avant! Welcome to my parenting blog archives
As you can see by the dates below, this blog is no longer being updated. However, there’s lots of good stuff here, much of it as true now as when it was written. Please feel free to browse, or follow these links: One last piece of parenting advice: Enjoy today even if it’s a rough…
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A Daily Act of Faith
Today I went to my son’s school to have a meeting with his teacher. It’s his first year at a new school, and the first time he’s been at a school that I haven’t been involved in on at least a weekly basis. So my situation with my kids right now is an exercise in…
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It’s Educational!
I can’t remember when I heard about the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. I’ve been on their mailing list for a number of years, and they are consistently measured and serious in their dedication to pointing out how our children’s lives have been commercialized. As far as I’ve noticed, they don’t make up overblown campaigns…
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The Speech
Yesterday my homeschooled daughter threw an impromptu inauguration party at our house. It’s tough to get homeschoolers out of their houses before 9 a.m., but we had a group of six to watch the speech, then eat and play. At my son’s school, every class stopped what they were doing to watch the speech and…
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Equal but not the same
I read this article by Jay Mathews in the Washington Post about education and sorting, and I have various problems with it. There’s been a huge to do about it on one of the homeschooling lists I read, because, frankly, homeschoolers are the ultimate expression of what he’s angry about. He writes about schools “sorting”…
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The “Gift”
I used a word I don’t particularly like when I was talking to some parents the other day. The problem is, it’s the word that is used, and substitutions for it sound awkward. I was referring to my daughter and how I’d been reading a “gifted homeschoolers” e-mail group (mostly to reassure myself that I’m…