Avant Parenting Archives
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Avant! Welcome to my parenting blog archives
My children are grown, my interests have moved on, so this blog is no longer being updated. However, there’s good stuff here, much of it as true now as when it was written. Please feel free to browse, or click the headline above to access quick links to my favorite topics. One last piece of…
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Review: Getting gifted homeschoolers (almost) right
As a teacher of gifted learners, I am always interested in how they are portrayed in kids’ books. Generations of smart kids had to see themselves portrayed as clueless, clumsy, antisocial idiot savants. The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl avoids almost all the tired all tropes.
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On raising a “tryer”
One of the major issues that parents struggle with is food. Why, living in a time and place of plenty, is food such a struggle? Food choices often relate to family harmony, neurodiversity, gender, relationships with grandparents, health… In other words, food is related to everything in a way that few other aspects of human…
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Armchair expertise strikes again
So many people can’t be bothered to take part in our public discourse without constantly trying to undermine others, as if they think they are contestants on Survivor, hoping to be the last one on the island.
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‘First world problems’ are everyone’s problems
When someone replies to your expression of despair with the phrase “first world problems,” they are dismissing you. They are saying that your despair is not valid, that by expressing your despair, you are insulting the millions who suffer greater physical distress than you do.
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Trust the Transfer
“This was not my idea. I don’t want to be here.” In my goal-setting course and in my book Homeschool with Confidence, I walk teens through the process of setting and achieving goals. And each semester, I ask the students to tell me whose idea it was for them to be there. Since 2016, only…