The Gift of Sound

November 30, 2012

Raise your hand if you were Googling “phelps Olympics headphones” when you saw Michael Phelps walk out to the pool before his first race of the London Olympics. I was certainly intrigued by those funky looking headphones with the interchangeable headbands Phelps was using to get himself pumped up. It only took seconds to learn [...]

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Don’t Fear the Teacher

November 20, 2012

When my son was learning to ride his bike, he was afraid of falling down and getting hurt. So I always made sure to run along with him while he was figuring out how to do all those complicated bike things at the same time, like pedaling, steering, braking, and balancing. I never let him [...]

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Stop Homeschooling

November 16, 2012

There are many reasons why people decide to start homeschooling their kids. But what prompts a family to stop homeschooling? Last summer some friends of ours decided to pull their two boys out of public school because they were frustrated with the quality of teaching and worried about the negative influences of certain bullies on [...]

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High Standards

November 3, 2012

I have very high standards for my kids. I expect them to be clean, polite, well-fed, friendly, and respectful, among other things. But nowhere do my standards rise to such lofty heights as they do with the education of my children. Because we school at home, I have the luxury of expecting so much more [...]

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Out-of-Town Dads

October 22, 2012

I put my foot in my mouth again. This time I was at a homeschool event and found myself chatting with a nearby mom I’d never met before. At some point she said to me, “It’s very nice to see a dad doing all the teaching. So many fathers don’t have the patience to do [...]

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End of Summer

September 26, 2012

Summer has to end some time. For me, it felt like it ended this past weekend with a Boy Scout camping trip on the shore of Lake Coeur d’Alene. We also hiked 20 miles, but I’m trying to forget that part. It was the last weekend of truly warm weather, so everybody swam and played [...]

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What’s in a Name?

September 18, 2012

One of my kids has requested that I change my name. They’ve always called me “Daddy.” There may have been some period of “Da-Da” back in the early days, but I actually don’t remember it. I’ve just always been “Daddy” since they were born. But apparently it’s not cool for a teenager, or a pre-teen, [...]

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Rise from the Depths

August 25, 2012

It’s a bittersweet day. My kids have announced that they no longer want to homeschool. In the basement. That’s right, they no longer want to do their schooling in the basement classroom that I painstakingly designed and set up four years ago. They said something about it being too cold, too dark, too boring. Which [...]

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The Boy Scout Dilemma

August 8, 2012

A few months ago, the Dadcentric blog published a post about the discriminatory policy of the Boy Scouts of America. I read it, nodded in agreement, and then went and got ready for my son’s Boy Scout meeting. That’s right, we’re staying with the Boy Scouts. But why? The answer is complicated, of course, but [...]

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Lazy Summer

August 1, 2012

You wouldn’t know it from looking at this picture of my son napping on the beach yesterday, but our summer hasn’t been lazy at all. It seems like we’re busier now than ever. At least for one afternoon, however, we took the time to be lazy.

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