Toward an ideology for healing

Sort of continued from last time… Again from Phillipé Aries’ Centuries of Childhood: “Youth gave an impression of secretly possessing new values capable of reviving an aged and sclerosed society.” I can’t help wondering this: What would the world be like if we thought about children this way? Though we say fanciful things about them [...]

Blog housekeeping

A couple of housekeeping items… You may notice that, effective today, I’ve made Comments visible.  Until now they’ve been invisible thanks to my concern for finding the time to keep up with moderating; I’m committed to keeping the content posted here moving in the direction of a fuller future for every child. There are plenty [...]

Thanks

Winter in the Northeast descends – plunging temperatures, snowy travel, holidays. I realize amidst it all how grateful I am for the readership that has emerged for this blog; you inform and inspire what I write here.  Thank you for watching and listening for the best in your children, for inviting them to grow as [...]

Art à la carte

I’m reading Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind. I’ve been meaning to read it for awhile, and much of it is as I expected.  Pink writes about the relative functions of the right and left sides of the brain and how the two sides will play increasingly complementary roles in human profession and pursuit.  But [...]

Self-watering

Last summer I built a self-watering container for one of our tomato plants.  The plant went crazy with foliage and fruit, thanks in large part to the design (not mine).  The self-watering container has a reservoir at the bottom so the plant doesn’t get watered from the top; its soil wicks up water from below [...]

New look, same stuff plus…

I’ve streamlined my blog and website so both now live in the same place (the old addresses will land you here but you’ll notice that the address in the window above reads eachonethrives.wordpress.com). Hope you like the new look, and please let me know if you have any problems navigating, etc. For those of you [...]

Waiting

I set up a table at the local farmers market today, to invite people to talk about building kids’ lives around who they already are, as an alternative to struggling in programs where they just don’t fit.  I talked to parents, grandparents, kids, former teachers, a physician, and a speech therapist.  I got the impression [...]

Mapless

Every week I meet with parents who are committed to offering their children a level of success and vigor that takes considerable innovation, determination, patience.  I’m always inspired by their willingness to proceed without a map, when it’s so much easier to just follow a well-trodden path.

More than one

It’s been a lot of years since I first read Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences; I’ve started reading again from the beginning, with Frames of Mind (1983).  It amazes me that such a compelling argument for widening the scope of what we consider worth recognizing, acknowledging, developing in young people can have brought us [...]

Stagehand’s axiom

From one of my favorite books (for its simple and delightful illustrations, wit, and metaphorical applicability), Moving Heavy Things: “Never lift what you can drag, never drag what you can roll, never roll what you can leave.” I like to think about this any time I’m trying to do anything that doesn’t seem to be [...]