Do Life Right

Photograph taken in Tucson, Arizona (west of I-10, near “A” Mountain), March 2008.
I’ve heard many parents say they limit their children’s television and movie viewing (both content and total “screen time“) because they are fearful their children will grow into zombie couch potatoes that essentially worship videos. It’s such an amazing sloth-like image, it [...]

From the cute little girl on the front to the brilliant long lists of ideas (and glorious lists of great picture books), Child of Wonder: Nurturing Creative and Naturally Curious Children (Common Ground Press 2008) by Ginger Carlson, M. A. Ed. had me hooked. This is a book I wish I could have been [...]

My youngest daughter just had a Parent Trap movie fest, so I have the clever “Let’s get together” song in my head as I write this blog post. We could have a real good ti-ime.

Do you know what your words mean? Pima.
I live in Pima County, Arizona. In researching [...]

I am currently looking for an agent in order to sell my children’s chapter book series. (Details about that in a post later this week.) There are many reasons why I started writing these books. One of the biggest reasons is the lack of good quality parents in children’s books.
It seems like [...]

The following post is a guest post from my 11 year old Always Unschooled daughter, Zoë. This is her very first written report and she’d like to share it with the world. She wrote it for the Harry Potter class that I wrote about in my “My Unschooled 11 Year Old — Right [...]

Science Fiction, String Theory, and Star Trek
What do these have in common? God. Yes, God, with a capital G.
I’ve heard the comments directed at Trekkies: “Oh, what geeks,” and “They just dress up and live in a little pretend world, how adolescent.” How banal that Trekkies are mistreated and misunderstood so! [...]

Every parent could benefit from being better connected with their child (no matter the child’s age).  Here are some simple ideas to get you started.

Do something unexpectedly nice for your child that you don’t normally do. Does he love video games so much he barely eats? Make him food and take it to [...]

My immediate family and I are not sports fans. Never have been and probably never will be. While we can appreciate other people enjoying sports, we don’t. [We've encouraged the kids to be sports fans, so they wouldn't be influenced by us, but they wouldn't have any of it. They know [...]

Around and around, I hear “we don’t let Junior have more than x minutes of screen time per day.” (Or worse yet, per week!) Egads, what all is considered “screen time” anyway? I really want to know, but those touting the phrase “screen time” can never give me a definitive answer. [...]

Nothing I produce is “open source”. I believe that everyone should get credit for their creations. That includes artists, writers, programmers, and musicians (just to name a few). If a work of art is appreciated by a great number of people, then the credit to the creator needs to be given in [...]