So often as parents, we don’t really know what we’re doing. To what do you turn to restore your trust in yourself, as well as in your family’s place in this crazy world?  Read More…

Leave a comment | Posted in Balance

“I need you to help me,” he was complaining, as usual, even as he was putting pieces of the puzzle together with no hesitation. This time, however, I really heard the message underneath his words. It wasn’t a message about helplessness, but about connection.  Read More…

2 Comments | Posted in Consensual Living, Parenting Philosophies, Responding With Sensitivity

“Who enjoys my company?” my son would ask whenever we were at the table, and he’d laugh when my husband and I raised our hands and said, “I do!”  Read More…

3 Comments | Posted in Consensual Living, Parenting Philosophies, Responding With Sensitivity

I wear the boobs in this family: / pale, blue-veined, and larger than they’ve ever been before….  Read More…

4 Comments | Posted in Breastfeeding, Feeding With Love

What image could evoke the attachment that involves no bindings?  Read More…

3 Comments | Posted in Attachment Parenting, Parenting Philosophies

Certainly, one essential aspect of finding balance as a work-at-home parent is to establish and maintain boundaries between your professional and family life, for example by setting schedules, setting a budget, and setting aside space for your work within your home. But another essential — and overlooked — aspect of finding balance when working at home is making connections.  Read More…

8 Comments | Posted in Balance, Work and Family

As a teacher of creative writing, I work with both poets and fiction writers. We read both poetry and fiction, and the students write exercises in whichever genre they are working on. When the week’s assignment is based on a poem, the fiction writers sometimes protest, “But I don’t understand poetry!” “Don’t worry about understanding or not understanding,” I tell …  Read More…

2 Comments | Posted in Homeschooling, Language, Natural Learning, Reading

At a birth center, great trust is placed in the laboring woman and her ability to give birth without intervention. That trust is truly empowering. Is giving birth at a birth center right for you?  Read More…

1 Comment | Posted in Birth, Preparing for Parenting

Whether or not you are an educator and whether or not you see yourself as your child’s primary teacher, knowing your philosophy of education can help you to see and ensure that the day-to-day reality of your child’s education — what he or she is learning and how she is learning it — is aligned with your most heartfelt hopes for him or her.  Read More…

19 Comments | Posted in Balance, Homeschooling, Natural Learning, Parenting Philosophies, Radical Unschooling