hapter 8 of Your Teenager is Not Crazy starts off with a story of two teenage sisters. The father is driving the girls to school when the older, Jocelyn, realizes she's forgotten her clarinet. The younger, Jasmine, is immediately enraged: Are you kidding me? You always do this. Now we're going to be late. I can't believe this! Let's pause right there.What did we just learn? Two things:"You always do this." Assuming this isn't a falsehood said in anger, older sister Jocelyn has a Continue Reading
The Read Aloud Liturgy
t all started about fourteen years ago. I already had a habit of reading aloud to my toddler, but for some reason I felt like I'd had a life-altering experience the day I was reading Harvey and Laurie Bluedorn's Teaching the Trivium and arrived at the place where they recommended reading aloud for two hours per day*. As in most every day. My heart swelled a little. I wasn't sure about all that grammar, logic, and rhetoric stuff, but reading aloud was something I could embrace.Essentially, Continue Reading
Mother Culture: Why I Set A Timer
adore the idea of Mother Culture, as you know. That 30-minute habit of daily reading can bring so much growth into our busy lives as moms. But like anything, Mother Culture can become the idol around which we arrange our lives.In his book The Intellectual Life, A.G. Sertillanges warns us against being so caught up in study that we neglect our duties: [S]tudy ... is not always opportune; if it is not, the person who then pursues knowledge forgets his duty as a man, and what is to be said of Continue Reading
Using Limitations to Boost Your Focus
e all feel it as homeschool moms, right? There is this tension between needing to plan and schedule and teach and direct your homeschool (major time draw number one) and needing to be well-educated ourselves in order to do a good job (time draw number two). If you started cultivating your intellectual life before your kids were school aged, good for you! You are at a definite advantage. But not all of us did that, and now some of us feel way behind where we need to be or think we ought to be. Continue Reading