Extreme Parenting with Lisa Ling

Extreme Parenting

Last night I paid our cable company to reinstate our access to the Oprah Winfrey Network just long enough to watch Our America with Lisa Ling, which was doing an episode about “Extreme Parenting.”  Ling interviewed four families: wealthy “tiger” parents who pay $40,000/year/child for a year-round high-pressure school, unschoolers who allow their four children to learn … Read more

My Reading List: 25 Books of The Year

My Reading List: 25 Books of The Year

Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by the number of books I would need to read to be a “well-educated” person.  Every time a colleague references a “classic” that I haven’t conquered, I cringe and add it to a Word document full of unread literature.  I also fall prey to guilt-inducing, bookseller-funded Top Book lists: “The Top 10 … Read more

The Best Facebook Groups for Parents to Follow

The Best Facebook Groups for Parents to Follow

If you’ve read How to Tutor Your Own Child, you probably saw Chapter 6, “iDon’t Think iKnow Where My Homework Is: Helping Kids Connect and Organize for the Twenty-First Century.”  In it, I address how to maximize the educational impact of 21st-century technologies. Now, I wish I could go back and augment the section about Facebook–since … Read more

How to increase the educational value of your child’s home life.

How to increase the educational value of your child's home life.

School’s out for the afternoon, and it’s time for real-life learning to begin! Despite the best intentions of a classroom teacher, it’s incredibly hard to keep up with the individual needs of every student. But you as a parent have an advantage: You see your children daily and can nurture classroom learning with resources at … Read more