when naming your sons. 
A new study has found that boys with unpopular names are more likely commit crimes than boys with popular names. 
True, the idea that a name can have lifelong implications is not new.  But the idea that these study results should be used to "identify individuals at high risk of committing or recommitting [...]

Ok, well I don’t hate reading; I happen to LOVE it!  Reading, in fact, is one of my all-time favorite past times.  But far too many boys hate reading.
According to the research:

boys take longer to learn to read than girls  (Interesting note:  According to Why Gender Matters, the area of the brain that handles language [...]

Playing games is a big part of our homeschool.  Our latest fascination is Qwirkle, a match-the-colors-and/or-shapes game that involves more than a little Scrabble-like strategy.  It’s the perfect game for a multi-aged household:  younger kids can enjoy simply handling and sorting the colored blocks (while learning their shapes and colors), while older children and adults [...]

Here in Wisconsin, we’re waking up to below 0 weather.  -2 degrees Farenheit, to be exact.  Add in wind chill, and it feels more like -13.  If we’re lucky, it might get all the way to 12 today.
Weather like this is not exactly conducive to outdoor play.  And when boys have been cooped up in [...]

My boys (ages 3,5, 8 and 11) fight constantly.  Don’t believe me?  Check out this excerpt from my article in the January - February issue of Home Education Magazine: 
     "Battles are part of our daily existence.  Some are imaginative recreations of light saber battles or elaborate pirate swordfights.  Others are purely physical explosions of energy (think [...]

I began this series of posts on authenticity by quoting Yvon Chouinard. So it seems only fitting that I complete the circle and end with his company, Patagonia. It’s certainly among the most authentic of any organization that seeks to operate sustainably and contribute to society. What’s my evidence? Consider the following.
As I wrote in [...]

Recently, I came across a book that advises marketers to push past their demographic research and trends analyses, and start focusing on how best to create solutions to customers’ real-world problems. Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters , by marketing consultant Tim Manners, spotlights an idea that I’ve been talking about for the past year: [...]

Any company that truly aspires to be authentic must dare to wear the see-through. It must have the courage to publicly bare, for all to see, its good, bad, and ugly impacts on society and the environment. Only then can an enterprise make a convincing case that it’s authentic—that its actions live up to its [...]

In many ways, authenticity is a synonym for integrity. A company that aspires to be authentically good says what it’s going to do and then does it. And when it stumbles along the way (stumbling is inevitable, as I well know), it doesn’t try to greenwash or explain away its mistakes—it exposes its setbacks and [...]

Has authenticity become just another artifact of our shiny, pre-fab world, where nearly everything we encounter is created for consumption? Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard certainly thinks so. In his compelling book, Let My People Go Surfing , Chouinard recalls seeing someone wearing a sweatshirt with the word “authentic” emblazoned across the chest. “The fashion [...]