Author: divia

  • Developing Object Permanence Around Flinches

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    Many years ago, I did an exercise where I made a list of thoughts that I flinched away from. Then, I made spaced repetition cards with the thoughts. The cards were statements like: “As of March 2009, I am currently uncomfortable with the idea that quitting my job might be the right move.” (Totally fake…

  • Musings on Parenting and Slack

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    Epistemic status: Post that has been sitting in my drafts folder that seemed worth publishing even though I wish the ideas were more precise. I’m pretty sure I’m saying true things here, and I imagine this is also a useful framework for people who think like me. Zvi wrote a post on slack that I…

  • Honesty and Blogging about Parenthood

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    The older my kids get, the trickier it feels to write about what’s going on in a way that’s useful and honest. On the one hand, I really do want to share my experiences, at least with those who would choose to read them. I think sharing stories is a great way to learn, and…

  • My Friend Bob: A Brief Note on Attributing Ideas

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    I do most of my thinking out loud with other people, and almost all my ideas come from other people. I tend to be scrupulous about attributing ideas (thoughts, examples, fun stories, etc.). When I’m blogging though, I tend to think that people would prefer to be asked before named on the internet, even when…

  • High trust high investment parenting

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    I like labeling myself as an “unschooler”, but often I’m interested in explaining what I’m going for with my parenting to people that don’t already have a detailed and nuanced model of what unschooling is! My best description of what unschooling means to me is  that I’m pursuing a high trust high investment strategy. I…

  • Instrumentally Caring Intrinsically

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    A way of thinking that I’ve been using for a few years now, but I don’t think I’ve ever written up, is the idea of instrumentally caring about things intrinsically.   Caring about something intrinsically is often very useful for coordinating with others. When you care about something for its own sake: It’s easy to…

  • Discussing Tricky Stuff

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    When I’m discussing something hard, especially over the internet, I try to be careful about: Searching for and explicitly talking about tradeoffs, even when one option seems like a clear overall win to me. Trying to keep the ratio of positive to normative statements very high. I don’t think these points are either necessary or…

  • Boundaries

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    For ages, I’ve been hearing about how important “boundaries” were, and I’ve never been quite sure what people even meant by the word. A while back I went to parenting discussion about boundaries, and I think I finally figured out what the word means! (To me, that is. I’m not sure everyone agrees on how…

  • Some Indian Recipes

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    These won’t be particularly well-formatted, and I don’t have any pretty pictures to go with them at the moment, but I’ve had a few requests over the years for the Indian recipes I regularly cook, so here they are!

  • New Perspectives on IFS

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    I did some IFS with a friend last night around his nail-biting, an area where he hadn’t gotten much traction working on his own. Early in the process, when he expressed some judgements about the nail biting, I clarified that I wasn’t interested in getting him to stop biting his nails if we couldn’t first…