By: Beth Carter

Beth Carter — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 12:05:28 +0000

I love hearing your ideas and approach. I agree with much of what you said. I would love to hear some examples of how you handles things like fights between kids, not wanting to clean up, things that parents who do send their kids to school can do at home to help encourage problem solving and critical thinking.

By: Natalie

Natalie — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 03:15:10 +0000

Thank you for sharing your experience and philosophy on parenting and homeschooling. I would LOVE to hear more and would be very interested in a master class.

By: Gabriella Newcomb

Gabriella Newcomb — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 01:44:01 +0000

While I appreciate your views, and especially your willingness to share much of what has happened in your parenting journey, I do think I disagree with several of the premises you make in your argument.
I think you and I would both agree that our children would be underserved in several more traditional schools, that common core standards are not truly descriptive of what a child knows or can do, and that our desire for our children is that they blossom into happy, healthy, and productive members of society (in whatever role that may be).
However, I think our reasoning in how to accomplish that end goal differs quite a bit. Before I became a homeschool mom, I taught in the classroom for 6 years. I still teach in the studio. I taught social sciences, foreign language (Spanish), grammar, and music. I still teach music, though not in the classroom.
I can say that I seldom see a child curious enough to master a discipline. They might be attracted to what, for example, a musician does, but not attracted at all to the years of study it takes to become a musician. They might want to travel to Mexico or Spain someday and speak conversational Spanish, but have no drive to learn the (frankly mundane) rules of grammar and syntax.
The problem with this reality is that (especially) during the early years of education and development, the lion’s share of what a child needs to learn is the rote stuff: memorize your ABCs, your multiplication tables, the requirements for constructing a complete sentence, etc. Those disciplines are seldom, if ever, learned just because a child is curious. He may talk of being a famous writer, but he may not have learned to construct a paragraph yet. And the harsh truth is that one needs to learn how to write a sentence before a best seller.
And these lessons are hard. They are tiring. They can even be boring, especially if done over and over and over again. And curiosity is hard to keep alive during those times.
I think when you speak of letting a child pursue and develop their abilities in an area of interest can only come after the hard, rote work is done. And that comes later in the developmental years, not at the beginning.
I will close with this example. My son, a kindergartner, was given the challenge of completing 40 addition problems (numbers 1-7) in under 5 minutes with 100% accuracy. It took a while. He struggled, often coming short by only a few problems. He vented his frustration to me one day by saying, “Mom, I work so hard and I still can’t get it!”
It was a hard decision to make him try again the next day. And again. But, last week, he did it. And he smiled the biggest smile and hung his work up on the “wow wall”. Discipline achieves mastery, and in order to get there, a child needs more encouragement and, yes, coercion than we might care to give.
I think it’s worth it. And I think my son will too, someday.

By: melody

melody — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 05:26:55 +0000

I’m intrigued that it takes children 1 year to catch up with a formal education. Can you please reference where you learned this interesting fact. Thanks!

By: Lacey

Lacey — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 19:29:14 +0000

I love this episode and hope you continue with this topic!!

By: Amanda

Amanda — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 16:32:28 +0000