So, as I’m learning, the Macron dandruff flick has a name, in primatologists’ world – it’s called “dominance grooming”.

I’ve been on the receiving end of it so many times, and it always felt wrong – now I know why.

stoweboyd:

A term coined by Richard Louv in Last Child in the Woods, in which he argues that ‘American childhood had become overly standardized, overly structured, and overly saturated with technology’, as Conor Williams writes in the Atlantic. He goes on:

There is something oddly paradoxical about the whole concept of outdoor early education. For the most part, the ideas that animate the American conversation around early education treat it as a targeted, structured intervention to foster children’s healthy development and eventual success. No wonder outdoor early education—with its counterintuitive promise that children will develop best if adults spend less time trying to intentionally develop them—seems so radical. “I’m constantly having to unlearn my training as an educator … letting go of what I think makes sense,” said Emma Huvos, the founder of Riverside Nature School in Charles Town, West Virginia. “It’s more about giving children the freedom to take control of their own learning.”

As they say in the article, it “only works for parents who can afford to stop work and be available to pick kids up at 12:30 p.m. (or who have a full-time nanny or relative who can step in).”

There is a forest school in our old neighborhood. I would have loved to enroll L there if I could, as would many many others. It’s $345 for 8 once-a-week, 1.5 hour classes from 9 till 10:30. And then what?

It is very popular with many rich families in our old progressive and forward-thinking neighborhood, people with their parents’ trust funds or with fathers who work at hedge funds (and not in tech or operations) with moms who don’t really have to work, and who can still afford to live in $4M apartments there. This is not for the regular folks.

winenot:

“Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.”

— Saint Francis de Sales (via briqou)

This is what I am told every day because I do not do it.