Editor’s Pick. Written by Jay Griffiths. Take a step back for a moment. Letting children have their own way? Doing just what they like? Wouldn’t that be a total disaster? Yes, if parents perform only the first half of the trick. In the cultural lexicon of modernity, self-will is often banally understood as brattish, selfish…
Tag: parenting
Flowing with the Stresses of Kids
Editor’s Pick. Written by Leo Babauta. Parenting can be stressful. That’s probably one of my bigger understatements, but as the father of 6 kids, I’ve learned a little about handling these stresses so that it’s not such a big deal anymore. Kids throw tantrums, demand to have their way, don’t see anything but their own…
Self-Ownership as Birthright
Send him mail. “One Voluntaryist’s Perspective” is an original bi-weekly column appearing every other Monday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by the founder and editor Skyler J. Collins. Archived columns can be found here. OVP-only RSS feed available here. I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of “children’s rights” over the last several months; really wrestling with…
Control Your Child! Oh Wait, How did you do that?!?
Editor’s Pick. Written by Ariadne Brill. I was at the store recently, doing groceries at the end of a long day. Our dog had died the day before and the kids had come down with a cold. I was feeling sad, grief struck, tired and really all I wanted to do was buy some food,…
Radical Unschooling vs. Permissive Parenting
Editor’s Pick. Written by Dayna Martin. Over the years, Radical Unschooling has been mistaken for “permissive parenting,” and many judgments have been made about it based on this misbelief. The truth is, Radical Unschooling is an extension of Attachment Parenting philosophy and is a very hands-on, involved approach based on connection, rather than control. The…
How to Teach Your Child To Do What’s Right
Editor’s Pick. Written by Laura Markham. Kids need our hugs, but that’s not what teaches them to do right. How do kids learn? Our modeling. When we take responsibility, when we apologize, when we regulate our own emotions so we aren’t yelling at them, children learn to take responsibility, to apologize, to regulate their own…
The Measuring Spoon, or Enjoy It While You Can
Send her mail. “Living with Wild Abandon” is an original bi-weekly column appearing every other Tuesday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by Breezy V. Stevens. Breezy is a long-time radical unschooler, an advocate for children’s rights, a crazy dog lady, a crafter in various mediums, a lover of all things tropical and beachy, and the designer of “EVC…
5 Strategies to Tame Your Inner Critic
Editor’s Pick. Written by Laura Markham. The inner critic’s goal is to protect us. It thinks its job is to constantly scan for threats so it can keep us safe: future dangers, past problems we keep reliving to prevent their recurrence (or prove we were right!), defects in others that we need to control and…
When Does Discipline Begin?
Editor’s Pick. Written by Kelly Bartlett. Parents often ask, “When should I start disciplining my child? At what age is it appropriate?” It is a common question of when it’s time to transition from the nurturing parenting of babyhood to using more of the “discipline” tools of toddlerhood and beyond. To answer this, we first…
Unschooling Ourselves
Send him mail. “One Improved Unit” is an original bi-weekly column appearing every other Monday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by the founder and editor Skyler J. Collins. Archived columns can be found here. OIU-only RSS feed available here. Over the last 12 months, I’ve read a total of 57 fiction books, and I’m on the premier of…