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Everything You Need to Know About Deschooling Before Unschooling
You’ve heard of unschooling, and you are ready to choose it for your family. You might even have started calling yourselves unschoolers already. But there’s this other word tripping you up. Deschooling. Deschooling is the first step to unschooling. Sadly, it’s often overlooked. Without deschooling parents have a much harder time unschooling. They may believe they are unschooling when they are not. What is deschooling? What is the purpose of deschooling? How do you deschool? When do you know that you’re done deschooling? Keep reading for everything you ever wanted to know about deschooling. Then you’ll be on your best path to unschooling! What Is Deschooling? Deschooling is a process…
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The Power of a Name
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are the central characters of a Christian Bible story. They walk into a fiery furnace and then emerge unharmed. These characters took central stage in a church sermon I heard once about cult-behavior and the three tactics used to turn someone away from god. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refuse to denounce their god, which is credited with saving them from the flames of the furnace. Ironically, the names we know these characters by are the new names bestowed on them by King Nebuchadnezzar who wanted them to bow down to him. This sermon has stuck with me for 30 years. I remember spending some time being…
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I’ve Discovered Where I Keep My Fucks
I’ve never had that many fucks to give. And I’ve also always given way too many fucks. It’s a conundrum. It’s that I’m depressed, I’m anxious, I’m an asshole thing that’s kind of hard to explain unless you, too, are a ball of depression/anxiety/badassery, and then you get it. One way or another, I’m pretty sure I’m giving fewer fucks as I get older. I am trying to give better fucks in specific, targeted ways. I want to care more deeply for the things that really matter to me, and I want to let everything else slide. Everything else can just fuck right off. As I go through this process,…
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Those Sneaky 70s
This is the story of how the 70s sneaked up on me in a dark alley once. I was born in 1977, but it was well into the 80s before I had a sense of the passage of time and the concept of decades. For me, “the 70s” was always a thing of the past. In fact, I thought of it as being completely past, over and done with. It was “old stuff”, like my parents. The Vietnam War was over and done with. Disco was over and done with. Hippies were over and done with. Anything from the 70s was “way back in the 70s”. Okay, let’s fast forward…
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Things Less Important
Originally published: 7/6/2011 On the morning of September 11th, 2001 I was a nanny for an infant I’ll call Chrissy. I was hanging out with Chrissy in the living room of her family’s home, watching a Little House on the Prairie rerun. During a commercial, I walked into the connected kitchen to get something. When I turned the corner back to the living room, I saw news footage on the TV of what appeared to be a building blowing up. In the few moments before I comprehended what was being shown, I wondered why they were showing footage of the Oklahoma City bombing. Was it an anniversary or something? Once…
