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As you can see by the dates below, this blog is no longer being updated.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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These are people who have died
I imagine my friends, my family, and my “friends” after I go: They join a new online service and they get the suggestion that they “friend” me, a dead person. They will be able to comment on my work, which will still be out there—alive, as it were. People I don’t know will receive suggestions…
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Book Review: Creative Home Schooling grows up
It was the weighty Bible of gifted homeschoolers. You saw it on every shelf. My copy was so coveted, one of my homeschooling friends apparently walked off with it and it hasn’t been seen on my shelves since. What was it? An extensively researched book called Creative Homeschooling by Lisa Rivero, published by Great Potential Press (who published my…
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Impractical shoes
I found myself standing on one side of a sea of a chai latte river, wondering how I’d gotten myself into this pickle. I knew I shouldn’t have packed the impractical shoes. The first pair of really impractical shoes I remember owning was when I was in high school. Every girl was buying Candies boots.…
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Hitting the sweet spot at the science fair
It’s tempting to see two parenting extremes at the science fair: the slacker parents and the helicopter parents. But the truth is that many parents are trying to hit the sweet spot in between, supporting our children while letting them set their own goals and make their own mistakes.
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Five Writing Mistakes I Learned from Harry Potter
I wrote this essay a couple of years ago after attending a rather dispiriting writing workshop, which was led by agents who pretty much insisted that if you aren’t doing what everyone else is doing, you will never get published. Each of the rules below were ones I heard at this conference. I’m republishing it now…