Copasetic Flow

"So, How do you measure outcomes?" The engineer meant well, when she asked the question and, to be fair, she'd never heard of unschooling.  Still, I had to double-clutch several times as the gears in my mind shifted to traditional schooling terminology.  The kids and I were at a small company in San Francisco where they were testing a new game package that was supposed to teach coding.  While the kids were testing, another engineer was asking me about the coding work we did at home.  I mentioned that the kids had been working through Google's CSFirst for the last several months.  This inspired the outcomes question. I went with the not so elegant, but oh so pragmatic initial response of, "What...?" Buying myself some time while I boggled at what the hell an outcome was... Wait, I had it!  That's right, other schooling methodologies measure what's 'taught' by 'testing' what the kid has learned compared to 'the expected outcom...

Just a little note to concerned ‘grownups’ everywhere.  If you look at a kid—and I mean really look—I don’t mean notice a person shorter than you, I mean make eye contact, notice their facial expression and observe their body language—If you look at a kid, don’t assume they need your help unless they’re obviously distressed, or ask for it.  You might think this is difficult call to make.  You might think, not having kids of your own, that you’re unable to make this determination.  You are.  You do in fact, already have the skills even if you’ve never been around kids  It’s a remarkably simple call to make, just use the exact same criteria you would for determining if an adult was in distress.  Because, guess what, kids and adults are in fact the same species of animal and communicate in the same way.  Honest.  If someone—adult or child—doesn’t need your help, feel free to say hello, give a wave, give a smile, but don’t—do not—try to force hel...

If you only buy one parenting book, it should be “ Small Animal, Parenthood in the Age of Fear ,” by Kim Brooks.  If you’ve grown up anywhere near children, chances are you’ll parent just fine.  Sure, you could buy a copy of Dr. Spock.  I did.  I made it as far as Spock telling me that my daughter would envy me for my penis.  I snorted, set the book down, and promptly ‘misplaced’ the tome a few weeks later.  You could also buy a copy of Sears' Baby Book.  There are some good tidbits from place to place in this massive volume.  He’ll tell you that babies spike fevers—just like the rest of us—and that it’s the body's natural way of staving off infection; that made me feel better during pretty much every baby fever we endured.  He’ll suggest you babywear, co-sleep, and attachment parent in general.  So will I.  Where Sears lost me was when I realized that in all likelihood, his wife, did all these things with his children rather than h...

I haven’t changed a poopy pull-up in two weeks!  I may never have to change one again!  I might be all done with poop!  Woohoo!  It turns out you can unschool potty training too!  Three year-old No. Three decided two weeks ago that she was going to potty train herself, and then she just did!  We’d been asking her for about the last year to head for the potty when she thought she needed to poop, but to no avail.  We didn’t stress too much over it, and neither did she.  We’d had the same experience with now six year-old No. Two.  One day towards the end of being three years-old, he decided he was potty trained.  That was it.  From then on, no poopy pull-ups, no pee, no nothing.  Three days later he switched from pullups over to ‘big-kid underwear’, and that was that. What kids can learn on their own still surprises me, even though—at this point—it shouldn’t.  They literally didn’t need me to help them learn.  The...

I saw an article this morning on Male postpartum loneliness.  Among other things it suggested that men frequently found themselves more lonely after the birth of their child, and that they could and should seek support groups as a resource.  That’s good.  The article also mentioned that the loneliness might be a result of said men’s spouses spending more time with the baby and less with their husband  What the article failed to mention is how easy it is to remedy that situation.  Miss your partner?  Jump into what she’s doing.  Here are some ideas: Wipe the kid’s ass.  If you’re not the primary diaperer on a particular diaper change then at least take on getting rid of the dirty diaper duties Take bottles to the fridge during pumping. Clean said bottles after they’re used. Co-sleep.  Take shifts with your spouse getting the tike to bed at night.  Does your wife like to get to sleep early or does she perfer having uninterrupted slee...

While I was out of town for work, the gang—7 y.o. No. One, 5 y.o. No. Two, and 3 y.o. No. Three—continued their CSFirst work with my partner.  Google cleverly refers to CSFirst as a club.  No. One took it a step further and decided the club was in fact a camp, you know, like summer camp.  One decided that as a camp they of course needed a banner, and went to work. I heard during the day that the gang had worked together to set up One’s sandbox—the web app where CSFirst students do their programming work. I also heard that they were pair-programming; I’m a huge fan of pair-programming, so I was excited to get home last night to find out how everything went. NOTE:  For those who aren’t into programming in general, or agile programming methodologies in particular, pair-programming is the practice of two programmers sitting down at one screen to work on a piece of code.  As one programmer types, the other checks their work.  They both discuss ideas for the...

The gang—7 y.o. No. 1, 5 y.o. No. 2, and 3 y.o. No. 3—and I received our materials for our CSFirst computer club from Google in the mail last week!  Google had indicated it might take as many as three weeks for the materials to arrive, but I suppose since we’re only 40 miles or so from Google headquarters, the materials arrived in a few days.  If you haven’t heard of CSFirst yet, it’s a program from Google to teach kids how to program. We’re trying out the Music and Sound theme.  With a group of kids, some of whom aren’t reading yet, this seemed the better choice for us.  I’m hoping the outcome of the programming activities will be aural output each member of the gang can appreciate on their own.  Also, one of the activities is a dance party.  Everyone in the gang loves a good dance party as evidenced by the number of times we’ve watched Xanadu in the last seven years. When it arrived last week, we dug through our box of materials.  There was...