parenting

A Healthy Skepticism About Medicine Shouldn’t Deter You From Vaccines

We interrupt this blog for a public service announcement.   Here’s what I get — the 21st century U.S. medical establishment is not all that trustworthy. HMO’s sometimes limit testing and doctors prescribe unnecessary drugs. I am not a doctor, or any kind of expert, but I have read enough doctors’ opinions to have a healthy skepticism that the number of ADHD and anti-depression prescriptions being written seriously outpaces the actual instances. I think they are over-medicating and misdiagnosing regularly. True, funny story: one of my son’s school’s staff asked my wife what medications he was on. When she said “none”, they were visibly shocked. We… Read More »A Healthy Skepticism About Medicine Shouldn’t Deter You From Vaccines

Why the TSA Groping is a Big, Big Problem

I’ve been pretty horrified by the new TSA security procedures since I first caught wind of them. The Boing Boing blog has been doing excellent coverage of the fiasco, providing the best examples of how damaging these new exposing and groping procedures can be to innocent Americans, and why crossing over from threat detection to threat assumption policies is bad, bad, bad

The Offensive Bardwell Defense

You might have read about Keith Bardwell, a man out of his time, who, throughout his 35 year career as a Justice of the Peace in Louisiana, has steadfastly denied marriage licenses for interracial couples. For their own good, of course. And the good of any children they might bear. Some might consider Bardwell an old coot who means well, when he defends his cruel and discriminatory behavior as being based on his expert opinion that interracial marriages generally don’t last, and it’s cruel to subject children to a world where they will be pariahs to blacks and whites alike. But I can’t listen to his defense of bigotry with anything but an understanding that he has a choice: he can “protect” children from the hate he perpetuates, or he can stop being hateful.

Why We Homeschool

The decision to homeschool our kid wasn’t a slam dunk, but it was the right one. We made it after thoroughly investigating everything — our son’s learning style, both through the school system and via our local Children’s Hospital; every public, private, and non-public school within about a six town radius; and conversations with educators, administrators, parents and other experts. Given what we now know about how our son learns and what options are out there, we aren’t guessing that this is the best route. We’ve verified it.

Succession Planning

Idealware’s blog is not the best place for me to talk about my kid. There’s Facebook and Flickr for that sort of thing. But I want to talk about him anyway, and open a discussion, if possible, about children and the nptech community.

Horton Homeschools a Who

As anyone who has kids, was a kid, or was an adult who has the good sense to read great kid books knows, Horton was an elephant who heard a tiny voice on a speck of dust and sought to protect the infinitesimally tiny population therein. His antagonist in Dr. Seuss’ classic “Horton Hears A Who” was a sour kangaroo who maintained “A person on that? … Why, there never has been!”. Not to belabor the obvious, but we have Horton representing imagination and free thinking, and the kangaroo preaching narrow-mindedness and suspicion. So, I took my family to see the movie yesterday. The movie… Read More »Horton Homeschools a Who