IQ Testing

I found an interesting old post and conversation a while ago about a sad article in the New Yorker. The New Yorker article was about a young gifted child who committed suicide. The brief facts are that a young 14 year old boy committed suicide with the gun at his parents’ farm. He had been homeschooled [...]

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Adventures in atheist parenting

Inspired by Deborah’s great series on atheist parenting within the public school system, I share with you this conversation with Chatterboy.
Me: Yes, it’s true, the easter bunny is not real. But don’t tell Hungry Boy, because that would spoil it for him. But how did you work it out?
Chatterboy: Well I know that the easter [...]

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Questions about Children, safety and freedom

Jody at Raising Weg has answered some really interesting questions from Amber at American Family about changing parenting norms, and how we trade off safety and freedom – it’s clearly changed, but how and why? This is something I think a lot about, so I’m going to answer them here. Chatterboy and Hungry Boy are 7 and 5.
1) At [...]

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School Acceleration

We’ve recently been having a bit of an acceleration dilemma. When we first went through this process, I remember how thirsty I was for real stories, so I’m going to share mine here.
Chatterboy was born in September. He learned to read pretty much on his own, and around the time he turned four, he progressed [...]

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Helicopter parenting?

The boys’ school has a real emphasis on public speaking. From the last term of Kindergarten up, they have to do a two minute speech each term (on a defined topic). The top two from each class get chosen to go to the speak offs with their fellow winners from the classes, and there are [...]

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In the Classroom

Julia has a post where she asks her readers what they think of the many opportunities there are for parents to come into the classroom these days – what does that do to working parents?
Certainly compared with when I was at school, there are many many opportunities for school attendance. My mother was a stay-at-home mother – [...]

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It’s Carnival Time!

Those Hoydens lauredhel and tigtog are always looking for ways to enliven the feminist blogosphere. Welcome to the latest instalment of  one of their great ideas - the sixth downunder feminist blog carnival.

My feminist posts are often about the workplace, so that’s the main theme of this carnival. I’m invoking my host’s privilege to give you an old [...]

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The temptation of redshirting

In the US (and increasingly here) they call holding children back from starting school (if the rules allow it) redshirting – based on some sporting terminology.
We had the choice for HungryBoy. He turned five in May. If your child turns five any time between the start of school (1 February) and 31 July, then in NSW [...]

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Boys and fairies

Thanks to bluemilk, I got quite a few comments on my last post, so I feel I should follow it up with some actual commentary.
It seems to me that there are two issues with toys for boys, in opposite directions. The overly militarised aggressive toys - I’ll leave them for another post - and the strong societal [...]

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Raising Feminist Boys

A few weeks ago, the SMH’s weekend magazine, Good Weekend (not online), had an article about tweens. I can’t remember the headline, but it seemed to promise an article relevant for the parent of a child between 8 and 12. Since Chatterboy is about to turn 7, it seemed like something I should read.
But the [...]

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