With days in the Northern Hemisphere lengthening into summer, my mind inevitably turns to reading. Reading books, especially fiction, was a habit I developed in my childhood when the local library or maybe an elementary school teacher would "challenge" children to read 20 books or some other arbitrary quantity. The titles were left up to us. I would keep two stacks of books in my room: those I'd not read and those I'd read. I enjoyed the summer-long process of moving those books from one stack to another, but also, particularly the process of returning to the books ..read more

"The real world consequences of imaginary dangers -- that's what I'm trying to fight."  Lenore Skenazy, founder of the Free Range Kids movement and Let Grow, tells me on Teacher Tom's Podcast. She never planned to become a crusader for authentic childhood, but was rather thrust into her role as a leading anti-helicopter parenting crusader upon being labelled in the media as "America's Worst Mom" when she wrote about allowing her nine-year-old to ride the New York City subway alone. Lenore and her husband had discussed it and decided together that this was a "risk" worth t ..read more

Pipilotte Rist If a fortune-teller had told my 40-year-old self that I would one day be regularly traveling the world, standing at podiums, speaking into microphones, and addressing audiences of hundreds, even thousands, I would have dismissed them as a charlatan. Like most people, the idea of public speaking was a pretty hard no go. Even speaking in front of preschoolers and their parents in our cooperative preschool made me nervous, so much so that it I avoided eye-contact with the adults in the room as spoke in front of the whole class. The result was that my first year per ..read more

We were messing around with pipe cleaners and tissue paper circles. It's a craft-ish project that most of the kids know, because I showed them. You can make nifty little flowers by sliding the thin disks of paper onto their bendy stems one at a time, giving each one a gentle "crush" as you go. I don't have any pictures of them, but it's a common enough preschool activity that I'm sure most of my readers know what I'm talking about. (But if you want a look, here's a version from my friend Deborah using squares instead of circles.) Some of the kids do their own thin ..read more

For most of human history we spent most of our days outdoors, on and near savannas, under canopies, only retreating to our nooks and dens when darkness, weather, or predators drove us there. These are the conditions for which our minds evolved. Even later in the human story, once we begin constructing shelters, they were mostly one room affairs in which everyone spent their indoor time, cooking, eating, and sleeping together. I'm thinking of ancient Viking longhouses, for instance, in which entire villages resided under a single roof. Even medieval castles were buil ..read more

In a recently publish paper a team of scientists and philosophers propose what they are calling the "Law of Increasing Functional Information." In a nutshell, they theorize that it's not just biological systems, but all complex systems -- from planets to atoms -- that operate according to the principles of evolution. This law is being suggested as a "missing" law of physics that, theoretically, could stand alongside the better known laws of motion, gravity, electromagnetism, and thermodynamics. I'm sure that most physicists, biologists, and philosophers are skeptical, but, o ..read more

From the day our children are born, they are destined to become independent from us. Not only do we know this is inevitable, but according to a recent University of Michigan survey 74 percent of parents with children between 5-8 report they "make a point" to have their children do things for themselves, while nearly 85 percent of parents with 9-11 year olds agree that their children benefit from unsupervised free time. And they're not wrong. Research consistently shows that experience with real independence fosters self-confidence, resilience, problem-so ..read more

My goal has always been to make this blog seem as homemade as possible. I use a basic off-the-shelf template and the cheapest, most utilitarian platform available. I rarely engage in marketing, promotions or give-aways. I don't accept advertising. And generally speaking I steer clear of bells and whistles. I don't know if anyone else appreciates it, and well-intended people quite regularly give me advice on how I could make the blog snappier or boost my readership, and I'm happy for the free advice, but the amateur hour vibe is more or less intentional. When I'm invited to speak at ..read more

The three-year-old was messing around with some long bits of string on the floor. He was at it for several minutes, lost in his process. From where I sat in my post of observation. He was obviously planning, or attempting, or questioning, or contemplating something. It didn't look to me like he was creating order from chaos, but then he stood up, caught my eye, and said, "It's a dinosaur. I made a T-Rex." He looked from me to the string and back again. "This is the head," he explained. He showed me the tail, the legs, and the short arms. Then he forgot me again for a moment as he dro ..read more

"Only birth," writes the eminent mythologist Joseph Campbell, "can conquer death -- the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new." Occasionally, some credentialed person or another will predict that in the future, perhaps the near future, science will have conquered death, at least insofar as old age and disease are concerned. I imagine we'll still be susceptible to falling off cliffs and whatnot, but we are already seeing how modern medicine can keep our old bodies running for years, if not decades, beyond their "natural" expiration date. Of course, for ..read more