When I was a kid, you did not want to mix up your adverbs and adjectives around me. Forget to the put the -ly on an adverb and you were sure to hear a swift rebuke. Heaven help you if you ever split an infinitive or uttered a double negative. If we could hear commas, … Continue reading Confessions of a Grammar Nazi
The Problem with Punishment
We rarely ever punish our children. To this point (at age 5 and 2) we haven’t often had any reason to. We have relatively good-natured kids, I guess, but I also think it’s important to distinguish between a punishment and a consequence. Consequences are natural, unavoidable events that result from any given action. If you … Continue reading The Problem with Punishment
How I Learned to Trust my Children (a Little)
The wife and I both work from home. Jackson gets home from school at 1. He runs over to the couch while I get him a snack and head back up to work in my office. Christine is doing her own thing. He watches cartoons or plays with his trucks and airplanes. He likes jumping … Continue reading How I Learned to Trust my Children (a Little)
The Right and the Righteous
Someone sent me a blog post the other day by a young school teacher. The setup was interesting and well-written. She reflected on how she referred to her students as “her kids” when talking with her husband. My kids drew me the sweetest picture today. One of my kids scraped his knee on the playground. … Continue reading The Right and the Righteous
On MAGA Hats
I have a confession. The high school me would have worn a MAGA hat. I may also have smirked on occasion. I was the kid who, when taking a political affiliation test in Civics class, was off the right side of the chart. That doesn’t tell the full story, though. Our teacher was a radical … Continue reading On MAGA Hats
Dark Lords of Definition
We’re all familiar with He-who-must-not-be named, the evil Lord Vol—well, you know, and before him there was another “him who we do not name,” Sauron, and before those all the folklore and legends of a nameless evil from which these derive. No coincidence, either, that both take the title Dark Lord. Darkness conceals, hiding the … Continue reading Dark Lords of Definition
How to Parent Like a Child
In every sense that matters, parents are just bigger children. The things we did as children we mostly still do as adults, wrapped up in elaborate disguises and accepted norms. My children, if I let them, would eat snacks all day long. The only thing preventing it is the fact that they are too short … Continue reading How to Parent Like a Child
