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As you can see by the dates below, this blog is no longer being updated.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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Blow their minds, Santa Cruz Parents!
I pity my readers who aren’t here in Santa Cruz this Wednesday. It’s not often that you get a chance to take your kids on a free ride through avant garde history. The wonderful New Music Works (with whom my choral group, Ariose Singers, performs on a regular basis) is making it really cheap to…
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Successful on their own terms
I once heard a brave workshop leader say something that caused multiple mom faces around the room to fall with an almost audible thunk: “How many of you have exactly the same values and beliefs as your parents?” the workshop leader had asked. Three moms out of perhaps 50 had raised their hands. “Well,” she…
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Can we be funny anymore?
My family was sitting around the dinner table talking….what we usually do. Someone made a reference to the Boneless Chicken Ranch, and we all cracked up. My kids, of course, learned about the iconic Gary Larson cartoon through us, and through the fact that I treasure the Far Side books I purchased as a teen.…
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The way we do it
Until recently, pretty much every mention I found of homeschooling in the mainstream press looked nothing like what we do at our house. Or nothing like people I know do at their houses. And definitely not like what the homeschoolers I know do when they’re out of the house, which is in general a significant…
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A boy at 13
The big news in our town recently was that a thirteen-year-old boy was shot and killed in his neighborhood. Police say the boy had gang ties, though his mother and a counselor who worked with him said he’d been turning his life around. My son is thirteen. It’s hard to look at lives like his next…