Yesterday, I heard a parent say her son, who’s about to graduate from college this spring, had done pretty well in college, and that he’d cheated “a little bit.”

By “a little bit,” she meant her son had paid people to do assignments for him. I knew this sort of thing happened. I’d just never heard anyone say her own son had done it, much less say it in such a resigned way. Sure, this parent didn’t like it, yet she accepted it, and, in a way excused it. …

Where to carve out time for writing when essential activities take precedence and consume over 14 hours of your day? By “essential” I mean my 9-hour a day job (which pays the bills), showering, spending time with my husband and sons (just enough so they don’t feel downright neglected), visiting my mom, and shopping for groceries, just to name some.

I don’t know about you, but I steal time for writing from the nonessential, including my reading, sleeping, exercising, TV watching, cooking, MasterClass taking, and podcast listening time. My reading and sleeping blocks have suffered the most.

At first, I…

Three years ago, we bid on a trip to South Africa at a fundraiser for Abilis, the agency that assists Diego, our 27-year-old autistic son. Since the deadline to use the trip voucher was about to expire and South Africa was no longer on the table (you know, COVID), the travel company offered us various trips in the US and we selected the one to Teton Village, Wyoming, right by Grand Teton National Park and an hour drive from Yellowstone.

So, though our travel package no longer included an African safari and seeing all the animals Diego’s obsessed with, we…

Diego, my 27-year-old autistic son, has posture issues. He tends to look down, which compounds the problem. So on our long hike yesterday, my husband (Cesar) kept trying to find ways to motivate him to lift his head and look up.

“What’s that over there?” he’d say, pointing at something in the distance. Other times, he’d remind Diego to be on the look out for wild animals, which our son loves to “summon,” just like Aquaman, his favorite Superhero, summons sea creatures. Cesar would wonder out loud: “Where are all the animals?”, “Where did the animals go?” …

Do you believe starting kindergarten as one of the oldest in the class confers children an advantage?

Otherwise put, do you feel your child would be at a disadvantage if she was among the youngest students in her kindergarten class?

Many parents have strong opinions about this, largely based on very small samples that include their own children, and their relatives’ or friends' children.

These examples are meaningless in that no general conclusion can be drawn from such small numbers or without controlling for other variables that might have affected the outcomes — or our views on such outcomes.

Let’s…

“Remembering to attend to counterevidence isn’t difficult; it is simply a habit of mind.” Kathryn Schulz

Humans “have the capacity to reach very big conclusions based on very little data,” notes journalist Kathryn Schulz in Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, her phenomenal book about how we think about and react to wrongness.

This capacity, known as inductive reasoning, is mostly a wonderful thing. As young children, it allows us to quickly generalize grammatical rules as we acquire language. …

To be a writer of any kind, you must love, in a painful kind of way, the writing process. As to promoting your work, you must at least accept that it’s part of the deal — that is, if you want readers.

When I first started blogging, I hated the idea of promoting myself. Silly me, I expected people would just find my writing if it was any good or relevant to them. Not only that, I thought those readers would be clicking the “forward” or “share” button every time they read any of my writing.

Go ahead. Laugh. I…

Here’s what I have for you this month:

My Autistic Son Drives Me Nuts and Cracks Me Up

This first article’s based on a quote I came across recently: “God created autism to help offset the excessive number of boring people on earth.” Yeah, I guess — to an extent…

Is Your Special Needs Child Ready for Kindergarten?

My take on redshirting preschoolers with special needs. What does it even mean to be “ready” for kindergarten?

Keep 😊 smiling,

Daniella

PS: As always, forward to anyone you know who might be interested in our Special Nation.