Category: helicopter parenting


  • Why I’m giving up on ‘self-directed’

    self-directed: making your own decisions and organizing your own work rather than being told what to do by managers, teachers, etc. — Cambridge Dictionary Language is like a living organism, growing, changing, and evolving over time. Sometimes I feel like these days, that process of language shifting happens all the more rapidly, reflecting the ultra-fast…

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  • Gimme shelter

    A headline caught my eye today. Even For Homeschoolers, There Is No Happily Ever After. The writer, Linda DeMers Hummel, had a job answering phones for a curriculum company whose clients were homeschoolers. Most of the questions were about math, but then she got a call from a mother who wouldn’t let her eighth grade…

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  • Homeschooling without polarization

    This morning I came across a new book written by Michael Kenmore, a homeschooled adult. It purports to be a neutral analysis of homeschooling by someone with firsthand knowledge of growing up outside of school. I really want to read the book. I think homeschooled adults can have valuable perspectives we should all look at.…

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  • As usual, parents can’t win

    Last week I wrote about the American Conservative’s take on my comments about unschooling. The question was posed, “…will children sufficiently challenge their own predispositions toward laziness or ignorance without an older adult coaching and challenging them?” So, we have to “coach” and “challenge” our kids, but carefully, lest we become a Tiger Mom. While we’re…

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