Some days, the cares of this world press hard upon us and our children. Frailties become undeniable as our minds crave rest, our bodies need healing, or loved ones need our immediate care. Isolation, loneliness, financial or work pressures, and world unrest can tumble us into suffocating torrents that threaten to take our breath away. […]
Category Archives: Special Needs
Four years ago our family of three—my husband, myself, and our daughter—was joined by twin boys. This was perhaps the most special moment in all of our lives. Twins: two souls sharing from the first of their existence. A miracle. But our joy soon turned into worry, followed by grief. At just four weeks of […]
David was small in stature. He had only five small stones. By any measure, David stood no chance against the Philistine Goliath. But the Lord was with David. This became an illustrative hope for me. As an adoptive mother I fretted when my twins were young. My son’s legs were twisted, his muscle tone floppy. […]
On a blessed August morning in 2012, I gave birth to our third child, Austin. Our prayers for a healthy and happy little boy, adorned with two unexpected dimples, were answered. He was an immediate treasure. We savored our first few months with him as in no other season in our life. Austin seemed to […]
My first-born son was a late talker. Children much younger than he were speaking in sentences much longer than his while my husband and I were getting excited when he said “Pop!” as the speech therapist brought out the bubble machine. The parenting journey for late-talking children can be tricky, since sometimes it’s autism and […]
My family delights in finding older, out-of-print books on Christian education because I delight in reading them. Written by Christian pedagogues in the 1800s or earlier, such books become a time capsule for all of us interested in passing on the best of classical Christian education. In a recent find called The Discourse of Errors […]
When we raise or teach young children, we must do so with the understanding that our Christian children are simultaneously citizens of a temporal realm and citizens of a heavenly realm. In both realms they are in need of Truth. In the temporal realm, Aesop’s fables have been prized as an ideal pedagogical vehicle. They […]
In 1946, for the preface to How Heathen Is Britain?, C. S. Lewis shared this observation: Education is only the most fully conscious of the channels whereby each generation influences the next. It is not a closed system. Nothing which was not in the teachers can flow from them into the pupils…. A man whose […]
My son loves a good find. Antique malls and secondhand stores delight his mind. Yesterday he showed me his latest purchase, a set of old radio comedies on cassette to enjoy from his retro-tech cassette player. My daughter is the same way. She once rescued a bedraggled doll with legs dangling. Michelle gave the doll […]
The Door in the Wall is a slim work of children’s literature that welcomes a student into the world of the Middle Ages, enchants his imagination, and shares a poetic knowledge of life itself. More than this, the little book also embraces all that we hold true in Simply Classical by helping us as parents […]