I make notes in my phone when I hear something that I want to remember: a quote, a book recommendation, a podcast recommendation, and so on. Going back through my notes? Not always timely. I found this one from May: We have the freedom and the burden to make our own identity It was from … Read more
I wrote over the weekend about K-12 school standards and their inappropriateness. A loud argument in favor of the standards is “kids need to be ready!” Ready for what? Preschoolers need to learn their letters so they’re ready for kindergarten. But we decided that they need that for kindergarten. It’s top-down. We want them to … Read more
One in three children in the US can’t read at grade level. For many people, that means that schools aren’t doing their jobs and we need more accountability and more testing. What if we redefined “at grade level”? I got into this a bit the other day, but we have completely redefined “at grade level” … Read more
We started with The Kid because it was easier. His toys are all in his bedroom except for his LEGOs, which are in “the LEGO Room”—a space in the living room specifically for LEGO. He was having trouble keeping his toys put away. LEGO were mostly in the LEGO Room but not entirely, and rarely … Read more
In my masters program, I had a class on group counseling. It was one of the most interesting classes I’ve ever taken. A tiny slice that I remember: in talking about group therapy, you can put depressed people together and they don’t amplify each other’s depression. You can put anxious people together, and they don’t … Read more
If we spent as much energy teaching our sons as we do worrying about our daughters, we wouldn’t need to worry so much about our daughters. “Boys will be boys” is a cop-out. It does a disservice to all people. To girls and women, obviously, because it leads to a society where we live in … Read more
In conjunction with the premise behind yesterday’s post, I’ve been reducing my screen clutter. This has been an ongoing project, but I’ve ramped it up a bit in the last two or three weeks. I’ve unsubscribed from email lists that I tried out that turned out to be meh. I’ve unsubscribed from most retail. (It’s … Read more
We have too much physical stuff, too much emotional stuff, too much junk to eat, not enough exercise or sleep or meaningful connections with people. Because— Society values and promotes being busy being stressed being underslept fast food large portions cheap everything convenient (to accommodate busy) sitting reactive medicine over preventative pills over natural social … Read more
This popped up in my Facebook memories the other day: “Looking up info about my student loan … It will accrue $77.45 in interest in the next 25 days. This thing has got to go.” (It’s long gone!) Years ago, I saw an exercise where the writer* took a calendar. She calculated how much she … Read more
I wrote Thursday about how some of the habits that made me a great student were actually reaction to trauma, and I wondered how my life would be different if any of my teachers saw red flags instead of the ideal. I need to follow up with that today to clarify that I don’t blame … Read more