Brave Writer News: September 2026

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[Podcast #356] Parenting Strategies or Teaching Tactics

Brave Writer Podcast

What if the missing ingredient in your homeschool isn’t a better curriculum, but a bigger toolkit for teaching?

When kids resist a lesson, it’s easy to reach for familiar parenting strategies: consequences, bargaining, reminders, and demands for cooperation. But learning asks something different of us.

We need teaching tactics that spark:

  • curiosity,
  • invite collaboration,
  • leave room for contemplation,
  • and celebrate real growth.

On today’s Brave Writer podcast episode, we explore playful, practical ways to make math, history, writing, and other subjects more meaningful, while helping our kids develop genuine ownership of what they learn.

Tune in and discover how to trade “Come on, you guys!” for richer learning experiences.

Show Notes

Many of us begin homeschooling with a beautiful picture in our heads. We’ve researched the curriculum, gathered books, and planned activities and field trips. We sit down to offer our children this feast of learning and expect them to recognize how wonderful it is.

Then somebody starts poking a sibling. Someone decorates the math worksheet instead of completing it. The dog suddenly becomes much more interesting than phonics.

And we hear ourselves saying, “Come on, you guys!”

That moment points to an important distinction: parenting strategies and teaching tactics are not the same thing.

Cooperation Isn’t the Same as Learning

As parents, we already have strategies for getting through daily life. We set timers, offer consequences, and remind our child that shoes have to go on before we leave the house.

Those tools are designed to produce cooperation with an adult agenda.

Education requires another set of skills. Our job as parent educators is to provoke curiosity, make abstract ideas meaningful, help our children practice what they’re learning, and create conditions where understanding can grow.

A completed worksheet may show cooperation. It doesn’t necessarily show learning.

So what can we do instead?

We can start with four capacities: curiosity, collaboration, contemplation, and celebration.

Curiosity

Before asking, “How do I make my child do this?” try asking, “What would make my child want to know this?”

Division gets more interesting when we’re dividing M&Ms fairly. Math becomes useful when a video game requires us to calculate how much a crop will cost and what we can earn by selling it. Ancient Greece becomes inviting through mythology, museum exhibits, movies, stories, or games.

Every child has different doors into learning. Our work is to look for them.

Collaboration

Helping is not cheating.

Think about how many times we help children learn to tie their shoes. We don’t demonstrate it once and announce that they should now be independent forever.

Academic skills work the same way. Children may master one level and need us again when the work becomes longer or harder.

Just because a child can walk doesn’t mean we refuse them a stroller at Disneyland. Ability and stamina are different things.

Contemplation

Learning needs room to marinate.

Read the comic book, then make a comic. Visit the museum, then draw the painting you remember. Talk about geography, then copy the names of the continents.

And leave some empty space.

When every quiet moment becomes an opportunity to assign another task, children lose time to think about what they have already encountered. Conversation, reflection, and even loafing can be part of an education.

Celebration

Finally, notice what happened.

Not generic praise. Not simply, “Good job!”

Notice the specific thing that grew: “You wrote three sentences today.” “Look at those R’s.” “You stayed with that problem even when it was hard.”

We can celebrate the planting of the seed, not only the full sunflower.

That shift changes the atmosphere of learning. Instead of relying on strategies that enforce an academic agenda, we begin collecting teaching tactics that help our children become curious, engaged, thoughtful learners.

That is the professional development of homeschooling.

Resources

Connect with Julie

Connect with Melissa

Produced by NOVA

Brave Writer Podcast

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NEW Literature and Grammar Handbooks

Brave Writer

Two beloved books now have fresh literature and grammar handbooks! Teach grammar, punctuation, spelling, and literary devices through these engaging stories (books not included).

Arrow (ages 11-12): The Penderwicks 

by Jeanne Birdsall

Join Rosalind, Skye, Jane, and Batty Penderwick as they set off for a summer in the country and enjoy unexpected adventures. This heartwarming story celebrates family, curiosity, and the magic of an ordinary summer.

Boomerang (ages 13-14): Beowulf 

translated by Seamus Heaney

Journey alongside the legendary warrior Beowulf as your family encounters fearsome monsters, daring battles, and timeless questions about courage, honor, and sacrifice. This unforgettable epic has captivated readers for over a thousand years and offers rich opportunities for big juicy conversations.

Brave Writer’s literature and grammar handbooks feature:

  • 4 Passages (one per week) for copywork/dictation practices
  • Lessons on grammar, punctuation, spelling, vocabulary, and literary devices
  • Planner and Skills Tracker
  • Weekly Reading Guide
  • Writing Activity
  • Discussion Questions
  • Family Book Club Party Ideas
  • Guidelines explaining copywork & dictation practices

We are cheering you on, one book at a time! 

Brave Writer

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[Podcast #355] Feed Them Well with Jennifer Anderson

Brave Writer Podcast

What if feeding our kids didn’t have to feel like a test we could pass or fail?

Registered dietitian and Kids Eat in Color founder Jennifer Anderson joins us to talk about raising capable, curious eaters without getting trapped by nutrition trends, food guilt, or rigid rules.

Jennifer Anderson and family
Jennifer Anderson and family

We explore:

  • picky eating,
  • growth and weight concerns,
  • food advertising,
  • introducing unfamiliar foods,
  • and why the “best practice” isn’t always the best fit for the child in front of us.

Jennifer also shares ideas from her new book, Feed Them Well, for helping kids care for their bodies while enjoying food.

Come rethink what it means to feed our children well.

Show Notes

Parents are surrounded by food rules.

Start solids this way. Never serve that. Buy this ingredient. Avoid that one. Make sure your child eats vegetables. Don’t pressure them to eat vegetables. Watch their growth chart. Don’t make them self-conscious about their growth chart.

No wonder feeding kids can feel less like lunch and more like an exam.

Registered dietitian Jennifer Anderson, founder of Kids Eat in Color and author of Feed Them Well, offers us a much more humane starting place: curiosity.

Trade certainty for experimentation

We love a formula because a formula promises us an outcome. Follow these steps and your child won’t become picky. Feed these foods and your child will be healthy.

Actual children have other plans.

Research can tell us what happened more often within a particular population. It cannot tell us exactly what will happen with the child sitting at our kitchen table. That means we can use good information without turning it into dogma.

Try the strategy. Watch your child. Gather information. Adjust.

That isn’t inconsistency. That is responsive parenting.

Look at patterns, not isolated foods

It is easy to become preoccupied with whether an individual food is “good” or “bad.” A more useful question is what our child’s diet looks like over time.

Did they skip vegetables today? Fine. We can offer some tomorrow.

Have vegetables disappeared for months? Now we have information worth responding to.

Could bedtime snack use a little more fiber? We can work on bedtime snack without reinventing breakfast, lunch, dinner, and every snack in between.

Small changes count.

Let food be food

One of the greatest gifts we can give children is freedom from the idea that eating reveals their moral character.

Cake doesn’t require a lecture. Vegetables don’t need to confer virtue. A child’s body size is not a report card.

Sometimes the most nourishing food is also the food a child is willing or able to eat. For a child struggling to gain weight, calorie-dense foods may be medically useful. For a child going through chemotherapy, the food that stays down may be the right food for that season.

Context matters.

Curiosity belongs to the adults too

When dinner becomes tense, we can ask ourselves a few questions.

Why does an unfinished plate bother me so much?

Was I taught that wasting food was unacceptable?

Do I fear certain foods because of my own history with dieting or body image?

Our children aren’t the only people bringing feelings to the table.

The more we can separate nutrition from shame, anxiety, and control, the more room we create for children to develop what Jennifer calls an embodied independence: the ability to enjoy food, inhabit their bodies, notice what those bodies need, and make thoughtful choices for themselves.

That may be the long game.

We don’t need children who follow our food rules forever. We want young adults who can feed themselves with flexibility, pleasure, good information, and confidence.

And that begins with something delightfully ordinary: paying attention to the child in front of us.

Resources

Connect with Julie

Connect with Melissa

Produced by NOVA

Brave Writer Podcast

Posted in Podcasts | Comments Off on [Podcast #355] Feed Them Well with Jennifer Anderson