Tag: parenting

In a perfect world, our children would romp out the door after completing their chores and their schoolwork (we homeschool) and knock politely at their best friend’s door, who lived just around the corner in our quiet, speeding-car-free neighborhood, and spend a couple of hours engaged in free creative play, or a massive self-directed building project, or an epic game of Scrabble. How I sometimes wish we lived in that world!

All of parenting is risky because nothing is more important to us than our children. And the decisions we make do matter, sometimes greatly. But if we allow risk to dominate our thinking and practices, we will become unmoored from reality and pass down this paralyzing anxiety to our children.

I didn’t intend to welcome two children into an era marked by so much bleakness and turmoil. With James’s help, I’ve remembered that there is no project more local, no gift more world-changing, than the calling of parenthood.

At age 12, our daughter discovered that our front yard could be more than a place to turn cartwheels. It was also an evergreen...

"Therefore, it is clear that the care of the household concerns human beings more than material property..." Aristotle, Politics "Here Aristotle infers that the chief aim...

“That day when Turnus raised the flag of war… The high commanders… From every quarter drew repeated levies And laid the wide fields waste of their...

“Fleecy sheep are weighed down with wool, and women bear children who resemble their fathers.” Hesiod, Works and Days In describing “a city that prospers,” Hesiod...

“For the begetter is the ruler by reason of love and age…” Aristotle, Politics Perhaps we do not normally think of parents as rulers. Aristotle...

“…and when anything needs doing it ought not to be left undone, whether it be day or night. There are occasions when a householder...

Holland, MI. Like many readers, or perhaps more accurately, like many readers with children, I read with great interest Mark Mitchell’s piece on “Cultivating...