What?!

I’ve been thinking about doing this blog for some time. When my wife was pregnant with our first child, she bought me a book, Dude You’re Gonna Be a Dad. I’m sure its great for some men, but as a nerd who’d seen 3 of my siblings born at home I found it’s presumption that I had no education in womens health and MUST like football… slightly offensive. Though honestly, thats probably many, if not most, men. If you really like football and don’t know anything about pregnancy, quit reading this and pick up that book.
This will be mostly about my ideas and philosophies on raising children. I don’t have a lot of time… so I’ll be doing these during my morning poops (hence the name, it sounds catchy to me anyway). What experience do I have? Not much really, I have a two year old daughter (which means I’ll probably say ‘she’ a lot when I mean a P.C. genderless could-apply-to-your-kid-too term). I did grow up in a big family though, I remember a lot from my childhood. I remember what I liked, what I didn’t like. I remember what helped me and what didn’t. Most of all I remember what I was confused about, greater-and-less-than symbols, IT’S THE SAME THING JUST BACKWARDS, oh poor first grade me.
I was homeschooled and after a valiant effort of structured education my mom fell on ‘Unschooling’? (I might look that up at some point, I really don’t remember, if so that will be corrected and this will be deleted). It basically assumes children are curious and will educate themselves given the resources to do so. A lot of people are REALLY negative about homeschooling, especially unstructured homeschooling, I guess everyone has a team. Admittedly I could have really used some clubs, I wish I’d known about Makers clubs, but to my moms credit she really tried. I have anxiety, though I didn’t realize it as a young’n, and I put up a FIGHT at the mention of going ANY where. However, I taught myself maths through programming video games. I read a LOT of science. I read quite a bit in general and to this day I still love learning. I had a few gaps in my education, though I never figured out what was missing, I didn’t get algebra until I went to college. I didn’t need it, I could isolate any variable by typing it into WolframAlpha. I knew orders of operations from computer programming, but every time I tried an algebra problem, feeling fully confident I knew what I was doing, it would come out with a different wrong answer. When I was lucky enough to get it right, I had NO idea why. So that, and some history, were missing. When I got my GED my scores were good though most of my siblings (also homeschooled) actually did much better. I can teach quantum mechanics and calculous to kids, because I know whats understandable and what will take time and practice. I know no subject is hard to grasp, its just different and sometimes takes time and practice. I know whats important and whats just “busy work”. My point is, this education greatly affects my opinions and I’m preemptively defending it as viable. At the end of high-school age I was as well educated as most high-schooler graduates. I’m taking it one step further and suggesting that through little effort a child will pick up reading, writing, arithmetic and more, just by being, if you behave certain ways. The important things to teach a child are the most difficult, most ignored and hardest to define. Grit, compassion, stoicism, humility.

SO. I won’t be citing sources often, you probably won’t check them anyways. I’ll try to accommodate questions as time allows, but  honestly you’ll probably believe it more if you Google it for yourself. If I say something wrong and you have proof, I’ll change it, I’m not dogmatic about most of my viewpoints. However a single study or someone else’s opinion blog (even if that person has credentials) isn’t proof, that’s supporting evidence at best. I’ll update information and insert references as I learn and my mind changes, I’m not a politician, I’m allowed to change my mind. I’ll do this for a while and see if it goes anywhere. I hope someone out in the internets finds it helpful.