Occasionally, when people ask me about this column, they wonder if I’m making this stuff up. So I thought I would take a few moments and answer the more frequent ...
Read More »The Mercy of Fatherhood
It often occurs that as a man gets older, he looks back on his life and worries about the sins of his past. As we grow spiritually closer to Jesus, ...
Read More »A New Year
As I sat down to write this article, I kept wondering what I should write about to inspire home schooling fathers for yet another school year. Let’s face it, I ...
Read More »Play Ball!
It had been a rough day. I was buried in paperwork at the office, two of my children were sick, and the rain had been drizzling since morning. It would ...
Read More »When I Went Fishing With My Son, and Was Sea Sick. At the Same Time.
Every two years, on those rare afternoons when we don’t have any ballet, baseball, basketball, violin, or swimming scheduled, I say to my kids: “Why don’t we go bowling? Bowling ...
Read More »Can Homeschool Kids Exceed Their Parent’s Education?
It’s been almost thirty years since I was homeschooled in sixth grade. Since that time, compared to most human endeavors, homeschooling has answered its critics so resoundingly that it has ...
Read More »On Sleep
When I give talks at home schooling conferences, newly married couples sometimes ask for advice. I’m impressed that these parents care enough about their responsibilities that even before having children, ...
Read More »Who’s Got You?
During the recent blizzard that befell the state of Virginia—a storm that dumped about three feet of snow on the little hamlet of Front Royal—our house lost electric power for ...
Read More »5 Ways to Stop Kids ‘Falling Behind’ in Studies and Get Back on Track
Homeschool dad John Clark explains that catching up is a process, not an event. Sometimes taking time to explain the concepts makes a big difference.
Read More »Energetic Reading
When I began my professional career, my schedule was a bit hectic. I would leave at 5:30AM, fight my way through traffic for about ninety minutes and arrive for work. ...
Read More »Love Story
Whether it comes in the persons of Odysseus and Penelope, Romeo and Juliet, or Jamal and Latika, from the ancient Greeks to modern times, every society has glamorized love stories. ...
Read More »Eight Isn’t Enough
As I started thinking about what to write about this month, I kept drawing a blank. That is rare for me. It’s not as though nothing important has happened since ...
Read More »Get Back in the Box
As a former college baseball coach and a lover of the game, I am frequently guilty of reducing life’s greatest lessons to a series of baseball analogies. I often tell ...
Read More »64 Degrees of Separation
Pregnancy and summertime don’t mix. I’m sure I’m not the first one to point this out. It was probably a comment Eve made to Adam when carrying Cain: “Boy, this ...
Read More »Decaf: Coffee, Caffeine and Catholicism
During a recent medical exam, my physician recommended that I cut coffee from my diet. Apparently, he considered my life exciting enough without the added caffeine stimulus. This was no ...
Read More »Hello, Good Men
When my oldest son Athanasius was about five years old, I observed him playing with his Star Wars toys, imagining a great battle of the good Jedi knights against “the ...
Read More »Time and Tide
As a father, one of my responsibilities is to help my children stay out of trouble. But as the years go by, I wonder if it is the other way ...
Read More »Checks and Balances
For most of my adult life, I have had my most important conversations around breakfast time. This seems to point to one of two possibilities: first, the restful sleep from ...
Read More »Long Division
There are times when I consider myself so disorganized and discombobulated that I think that I must be the wrong person to write articles about the father’s role in home ...
Read More »Conversations with Children
One morning a short while ago, I woke up before the rest of the family and started making myself breakfast. Roused from the smell of coffee, my five-year-old daughter Dominica ...
Read More »