Avant Parenting Archives

  • Avant! Welcome to my parenting blog archives

    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    As you can see by the dates below, this blog is no longer being updated.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…

  • Process over product: why does it matter?

    When teachers talk to each other about teaching writing, they often talk about “process over product.” Most teachers try to instill this idea through how they teach. I think that teens, who often focus on the product, can improve their writing experience by rethinking their mindset and intentionally focusing on process over product while they…

  • Open Source Parenting

    My mother remembers driving home from the hospital with my newborn older sister on her lap. She says that she and my dad looked at each other and just started laughing. “We asked, ‘So what do we do now?’,” she remembers. In the intervening years, a lot has changed. But the biggest changes have come…

  • From soccer to leadership

    My daughter has been going to soccer camp since the day she saw a flyer and said she just had to go. We’re not a big organized sports family, so she had to drag us along as she wanted more: soccer camp every summer, then recreational soccer in the fall then softball in the spring.…

  • Family travel to troubled places

    We recently got back from a trip to Greece, where we traveled around the country with our children. Back home, people asked, “Are you sure you want to go there with all the trouble that’s happening?” Well, yes, we were sure. And yes, we had a fabulous time. The news out of Greece these days…

  • UC Scout curriculum: a new option for homeschoolers

    Note: This post is outdated. I am leaving this post up in order to provide information, but since this piece was written, many more A-G certified options have become available. Check out currently certified providers here. Please see comments below for more recent feedback! I have known a lot of homeschoolers who have approached the…