February, 2023 | PulseonParenting

The Post Without a Title

Feb 23 2023

The post I had planned for this week is just not going to happen. So instead, I bring you The Post Without a Title. No time spent on focus keyphrases or headings or ALT text for images or on improving SEO rankings. It’s just not that kind of week, but I hope you’ll stick around and read this anyway. My kids are finally experiencing high school, for real. One of them experiencing in-person, in-classroom learning for the first time since fifth grade (or, the equivalent of 6th level in the New Zealand school system). Learning differences, COVID and our trans-Pacific…

New Zealand kids don't graduate. Here's what they do instead.

Feb 16 2023

I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. The quality, the vibe, that makes New Zealand different from the U.S. Then, on a car ride along the vibrant Tasman coast, my mother-in-law hit it on the head. Life is simpler. Not as a euphemism for backward, far from it. Simpler as in less burdensome, less effort to keep up with the Joneses. Things just are. In an authentic, take-it-or-leave-it manner. I wrote last week about my boys’ Last First Day of school. In less than a year, their senior year (or as it is called in New Zealand, Year 13)…

The Last First Day shot of our twin boys.

Feb 09 2023

This week I posted on social media the photo and caption I’ve been fearing. TOW* tall figures stand half-smiling, full sets of straightened adult teeth barely visible, hands hanging stiffly at their sides, empty of the sweet signs announcing which grade they are to start that morning. TOW Mom gets to say: Last first day. Last first day. Milestones Our twins were just eight years old when I started pulseonparenting.com, and if we had stayed in the U.S., their graduation from high school would have been within days of pulse’s 10-year anniversary. Not by design, which makes this a meaningful…

Archive - February 2023

The Post Without a Title

New Zealand Kids Don’t Graduate. Here’s What They Do Instead.

The Last First Day: Endings, Milestones, and New Beginnings