Because competitive parenting is not a real sport.
Last month, I helped some aspiring first-generation college students prepare for Ivy League admissions interviews and, as usual, I had to hold my jaw off the floor as they casually described their lives. Lydia*, for example, was explaining why she wanted to study biomedical engineering when she mentioned that she learned to speak English in... Continue Reading →
Dear WOM, I have a two-and-a-half-year-old who is incredibly smart and curious. He already talks in full sentences and wants to understand how everything works. Yesterday, I found him in the dishwasher trying to figure out how the water gets in and out. I’m worried that he’ll be bored in a traditional school where he... Continue Reading →
Most of the time, I feel like I'm a perfectly adequate parent, but then my son insists that an label-less plate-of-spaghetti line graph is an appropriate visual display of scientific data and I wonder where I went so terribly wrong.
The following thoughts are culled from various one-off discussions with the children (aka “interviews”) when they felt like sharing information about this new world – Colegio de la Presentacion – that they have entered. For Retta, these discussions come in a daily hour-long monologue where the English that has been building up all day comes... Continue Reading →
The second-most frequent question people ask about our trip -- after, “Why Colombia?” in a variety of tones from simple curiosity to horror -- is, “Can you just pull your kids out of school?” This often comes in a scandalized tone, and phrased more like, “But what about the kids’ school?!” as though we were asking... Continue Reading →
The World's Okayest Mom 