Fashion

The other day I followed an online link to a list of “surprisingly lucrative” careers.  Fashion design was on the list.  I wasn’t actually all that surprised that a career in fashion could be lucrative, but its presence on the list called to mind a chronic problem which, I believe, really holds us back as [...]

Raising participants

One of the arguments I hear for keeping kids in traditional school programs, even when those programs are not working, is that if you “let” kids focus on what they’re interested in and already good at, they’ll become too self-centered and involved in their own thing.  They won’t learn to be of service.  They won’t [...]

One fish, to fish

It’s old news/old adage that if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day; teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Childhood in our culture is heavy on “teaching,” and most of us would say we believe in that old adage, but there are many instances in [...]

Good at

We have this thing called good at and another thing called not good at.  Kids learn to assess (or take others’ assessment) of which things they’re good at and which things they’re not.  Does it do them any good, this classifying?  What’s the use of knowing whether or not you’re good at something?  Or having [...]

Scratch

I just moved into a house with an old steam heating system.  I have to add water with a manual feed valve every so often to keep the boiler running properly.  Last Saturday, I couldn’t get the water feed to open. I wanted to avoid a costly weekend service call for something that probably wasn’t [...]

First

Should you be worried about whether your child is getting enough of one academic thing or another? Two parents have posed the question to me in the past few days.  These are folks whose days with their kids are characterized by a range of things – exploring social and natural surroundings, reading extensively on many [...]

Credibility

It’s tempting, when kids are struggling, to assume the role of cheerleader.  How could it not help to provide a steady stream of encouragement and enthusiasm at every turn? Here’s how: it can damage your credibility, and the older they get, the more you’re going to need it.  Kids know the difference between plain cheerleading [...]

Sticking to it

I hear a lot of people say they wish their children showed more ability to stick with things.  I was reminded of this as I was reading Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide.  Lehrer mentions an accomplished chess player who “managed to turn a childhood obsession with chess into a lucrative career.” I wonder if part of [...]

The power of “huh.”

We hear a lot about building kids’ self esteem and teaching them to be responsible, but some of the messages we send with our communication thwart rather than support the actual development of these things.  If we want kids to actually build these capacities, we have to actively invite them into the process.

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 [...]