Barbara Frank

Video Games and the Developmentally Disabled

April 29th, 2011 § 6

Recently fellow blogger and homeschool mom Amy tweeted some interesting news: a new study suggests that kids with Down syndrome can benefit from playing the Wii even more than from occupational therapy.

Now this is just one study. Also, our son Josh has been fortunate that he hasn’t needed occupational therapy. But our experience with the Wii has been that Josh is not only very good at playing video games on the Wii and enjoys it tremendously, but that it’s been good for him in other ways, too. For instance, when he doesn’t understand written directions on the screen, he’ll write them down and show them to us so we can explain them. He sometimes keeps those directions and refers back to them. So he’s practicing his printing and reading skills.

Most importantly, the Wii levels the playing field between Josh and his siblings, and between him and other teens. He may not be able to keep up with them when playing basketball or baseball, but they’re all amazed at how often he beats them at Wii games. It’s the one area where no one cuts him any slack and yet he can win. So it does wonders for his self esteem. That alone makes it a pretty valuable tool.

I know many homeschooling parents are opposed to having video game systems in the home. I was, too. In fact, we never allowed one in our home until my sister sent my kids a system when they were teens. They played it a lot for a time but none of them became addicted to it.

Josh, on the other hand, fell in love with it early on. But it’s turned out to be a great tool for him. I think homeschooling parents should consider allowing these systems as long as they keep control of them. (They may even find they like playing them; my husband plays against Josh for a little while most evenings, and while he does it for Josh, he sure looks like he’s having fun, too!)

Preparing Our Kids for a Challenging Future, Part 4: College is a Tool, Not a Goal

April 18th, 2011 § 7

(Note: this is the fourth and last post in a series related to my new book, Thriving in the 21st Century.)

Over the past few months, we’ve seen that preparing our children for a challenging future means not replicating school in our homes. It also means giving our children the opportunity for free exploration, hands-on learning and discovering the upside to failure. These are important components for raising children to thrive in the rapidly changing 21st century.

But just as we no longer teach our children to use the slide rule or achieve perfect penmanship because they’re not necessary any more, there are some things we may not need to do to prepare our children to thrive in the 21st century. One of them is to push our children to earn a college degree.

Not attending college is a touchy subject for homeschooling parents. Back when homeschooling first hit the public consciousness, there were many naysayers who didn’t believe that parents could teach their children well enough for them to succeed in life. Here’s the gauntlet those critics of homeschooling held up: “How will homeschooled kids ever get into college?”

They got their answer when homeschooler Grant Colfax was accepted to Harvard; years later, when he and his homeschooled brothers had all successfully completed college, there was more proof. And when some suggested the boys were simply products of excellent genetics, their father pointedly noted that two of his boys were adopted.

Since then, college has become the holy grail for most homeschooling parents. A home-educated child with a college degree is proof to friends and family that this homeschooling thing works. So to suggest that most of their kids probably won’t need to earn a college degree may seem almost sacrilegious to some. But looking at college graduation as a badge of honor doesn’t necessarily help our children.

The push for college in society as a whole over the past 40 years has ignored the fact that many kids are not cut out for college. They may not be book learners, or they may have gifts that are better served by on-the-job training or tech school. Evidence shows that forcing all kids into college has resulted in a low graduation rate (only half of all college students graduate within six years) and a lot of dropouts hampered by large levels of student loan debt racked up during the time they were in college.

Even young people who excelled in college are finding that the high-priced degree they earned is not much help in the new economy. If they can find work, it may not be in their field of study; it may also pay less than they expected to earn. This can result in real hardship if they took on a lot of student loan debt, which can almost never be discharged through bankruptcy, leaving them with a burden of debt that could weigh them down much of their lives.

The fact is that most of the job growth over the coming decade as predicted by the U.S. government does not require a four-year degree, and college won’t be necessary for most workers (I’ve included those statistics in my new book, Thriving in the 21st Century.)

This doesn’t mean that we should discourage all of our children from going to college. Those with the smarts and the desire to have careers that logically and/or legally require advanced education (physicians, scientists, etc.) should certainly be encouraged and helped to attend college. But the idea that every young person can and should go to college makes no sense in light of the changes in our economy. We parents need to be brave enough to buck the trend and look at each of our children as individuals, determine which (if any) will likely benefit from going to college, and then help the rest figure out the best way to proceed so that they’ll thrive in the 21^st century.

(Thriving in the 21^st Century: Preparing Our Children for the New Economic Reality is now available! It’s packed with ways to prepare your children for the future. Learn more HERE.)

Missed the first three parts of “Preparing Our Kids for a Challenging Future”? You’ll find them here: #1, #2 and #3.

A “New” Old Tactic for Saving Money on Groceries

April 7th, 2011 § 8

I did all my grocery shopping the other day and was dismayed to find that prices continue to go up. To make matters worse, in some cases the price increase is disguised by smaller packaging, which just makes me mad that food companies think we’re so stupid that we don’t realize what they’ve done.

For instance, a can of tuna is now 5 oz. I have recipes from when I was a newlywed (back in 1979) that refer to a 7 oz. can of tuna. So now, when I double a recipe using tuna, I have to buy three cans of tuna, not two. Do they think I don’t notice this?

As I’ve written elsewhere, I do the usual things to combat inflation. I bought 10 pounds of ground beef when it was on sale, cooked up 3 pounds and froze it, and froze the rest raw for meatloaf, etc. I watch all prices and only buy items when they’re on sale for a good price (as opposed to “sale prices” that are actually regular-price items placed on the sale aisle with a big sign, which is why we need to know our prices).

But as each grocery shopping trip reveals higher prices, I’m thinking I need to add a new tactic, one that makes sense but that I hadn’t really thought about in recent years: we need to eat less.

So instead of freezing one-pound packages of meat, I’m freezing ¾-pound packages, figuring a little smaller hamburger patty won’t hurt any of us. I’m putting fewer chicken pieces in each bag before I freeze it. I’m making cookies and rolls a wee bit smaller than usual.

This will make the food I buy last longer, and will hopefully help me shed a little weight, too. It’s healthier, and it also goes back to the way we lived when I was a child.

For instance, my grandmother used to split a can of pop between four of us kids. Each one’s share barely filled a juice glass (and we knew better than to ask for seconds!) Her logic was that pop wasn’t good for us so we shouldn’t have too much.

In an age of 32-oz. soda cups in fast-food restaurants, I think our society has lost that sense of limiting ourselves. But the era of unrestrained appetites may be coming to an end, thanks to inflation. I guess every cloud really does have a silver lining.

Previous posts on saving money that you may have missed:

Exercises in Frugality

Exercises in Frugality, Part 2

Exercises in Frugality, Part 3

Exercises in Frugality, Part 4

Exercises in Frugality, Part 5

When Homeschooled Kids Should (and Shouldn’t) Compete in Academic Contests

April 5th, 2011 § 1

I never get tired of reading that a homeschooled child has won a spelling or geography bee. In the most recent case, it was a girl named Annie who won Illinois’ Geography Bee. Congratulations, Annie!

But though I love hearing about homeschooled kids winning these contests, I’ve been dismayed by some homeschooling parents I’ve known who think these bees are some kind of referendum on homeschooling, and for that reason push their kids and others to sign up for them.

I think pushing a child to compete in any contest is unfair. Some kids are overwhelmed by contests, and others just don’t care. To me, the child who wants to be in a contest is the only one who should be in it. Note what motivated Annie to compete in the geography bee:

Ulrich was prepared for the challenge. During the week leading up to the competition, she spent five hours a day studying atlases, geography books and reference materials online.
She was not only driven to win, but passionate about the subject as a whole.

Note also her mother’s role in the process:

“She really did all the work, I just drove the bus,” said a near-speechless Janet Ulrich, who doubles as mother and teacher.

Smart girl. Smart mom.

Vacation From Homeschooling

March 28th, 2011 § 4

Today was my first day back to homeschooling after a 2.5 month vacation.

Ok, so it was a working vacation, as I spent the time finishing my new book. My husband took over my teaching duties, and I have to say that he did a great job. Josh got to make a life-size human skeleton (complete with organs and muscles) out of paper. (My husband is very artistic.) They also made several different animal and car models and did a study of bird anatomy that included making several lovely paintings.

Unfortunately for Josh, I’m not that creative. Over the weekend, he was actually pretty excited about doing school with me again today. But after a morning spent doing math, practicing sight words and writing thank-you notes for his birthday gifts, he must have decided that he hadn’t missed much. His first comment at lunch was “When are we taking a break again?”

Divorce Often Threatens Homeschooling Freedoms

March 24th, 2011 § 9

A recent case decided in the New Hampshire Supreme Court has forced an 11-year-old girl into public school against her will and her mother’s. The case resulted from the parents’ 1999 divorce and the father’s belief that homeschooling does not allow “adequate socialization” for his daughter, despite the fact that in addition to a home-taught Bible class, the mother:

…also taught her daughter math, reading, English, social studies, science, handwriting and spelling using curriculum “comparable to the public school curriculum at the same age.” She also allowed her daughter to take private music lessons and attend a monthly theater class and weekly classes in art, Spanish and physical education at a public school.

Without getting into my perception of the father’s real motivation here, I’m just saddened and frustrated to see yet another divorce cause trouble for homeschoolers in general. Having known of several divorces in the homeschool community, I think it’s a shame that these divorces not only cause misery for the children involved, but that it seems like there’s always one parent who has to punish the former spouse by taking them to court over homeschooling, vaccinations, lack of vaccinations, etc., often creating legal precedents that then affect other homeschooling families.

Seriously, divorcing parents, must you involve the courts in these things? The rest of us are getting a little irritated at being affected by your poor decisions.

How Much Do You Spend on Homeschooling?

March 21st, 2011 § 11

Have you ever added up what you spend to homeschool your children?

I used to, and still do. For the first few years (back in the 1980s), I spent around $500 a year to educate our two eldest children. I was buying books from A Beka back then, which isn’t cheap.

Once I had a few years of homeschooling under my belt, I became more interested in trying a variety of books and curriculum, so my annual expenditure actually went down a few hundred dollars or so. Most of what I did spend went to Rainbow Resource at each year’s homeschool convention; Christian Book Distributors, Miller Pads and Paper and Rod and Staff got a few dollars from us, too.

We spent only a few hundred dollars a year (even after having two more children) until the first year of high school for our eldest, when we signed her up for a correspondence school. We registered her brother for the same program the following year, and that was probably our most expensive year of homeschooling ever: $1000 total.

Before long, we jointly decided that the program involved too much memorization for tests, so we went back to doing our own thing. Since then, I doubt I’ve ever crossed the $300/year mark, no matter how many children I was homeschooling at one time.

I’m going to guess that you spend a similar amount. Am I right?

Whatever you spend, I’ll bet it’s not as much as the figures quoted for private and public education by writer Bill Walker from New Hampshire:

The Well School in Peterborough charges $7,360 for grades 1–4 and $8,800 for grades 5–8. Pine Hill Waldorf School in Wilton is $12,160 for grades 1–8. Monadnock Waldorf School costs $7800 for all grades. Here’s the fee schedule for St. Joseph Regional in Keene: “Tuition for grades K-8 for Catholics is $3,153, and $4,412 for non-Catholics. There is a 5 percent discount for one-time payment in full, and a discount for multiple children from a family.”

Now that’s private school tuition, and it far exceeds what our family has historically spent on homeschooling each year. But it’s nothing compared to what Walker says the public schools in New Hampshire spend: over $14,000 a year per student.

I have a feeling that far exceeds the most freespending homeschooling family in the country. But if you’re the exception, I’d love to hear where you’re spending all that cash!

This Week’s Carnival of Homeschooling

March 17th, 2011 § 0

I don’t always find time to promote the Carnival of Homeschooling as I should. It’s such a great resource for both new and veteran homeschooling parents. Every post gives you a peek into the world of homeschooling. You learn about the enormous variety of ways that parents are educating their children.

This week’s edition of the carnival is no exception. As a bonus, it’s very pretty, thanks to the artwork of Swedish artist Carl Larsson, whose work I adore because his favorite subjects were his family and his beautiful Swedish home (yes, I’m part Swedish). Visit the carnival and you’ll see what I mean!

Taking Carschooling to the Extreme

March 14th, 2011 § 4

Imagine traveling in your vintage 1928 auto all over the world. Imagine having four kids (born in four different countries) during the course of your travels. Imagine homeschooling them while you travel.

Impossible? No: the Zapp family has done so for the past 11 years, living out of their car or staying with strangers most of the time. They homeschool their children using curriculum from an online school, but their children’s real education comes from meeting people and seeing the sights in North and South America, Australia and New Zealand, and most recently, the Far East.

They tried settling down in Mrs. Zapp’s homeland of Argentina, but only lasted a few weeks before they gave in to the urge to be back on the road again.

Check out this article ; there are some great photos and a map that vividly illustrates just how far this young family with wanderlust has traveled.

Children and Television Viewing

March 10th, 2011 § 6

How do you feel about letting your children watch television?

I have to admit, my feelings have changed over the years. When I was a young parent, I only let my kids watch “Sesame Street” and “Mr. Rogers.” The rest of the time they played: in their rooms, in the living room, in the yard and at the park. VCRs were still new and expensive; we rented one once in a while so that we could watch a movie, and we often rented an old Disney movie for the kids. But that was the limit of our children’s television viewing. We didn’t even buy a color television until 1989; even then we bought a tiny one, hoping its size would keep the kids from becoming addicted.

Then we had more kids. I found that homeschooling the older kids was a lot easier if the little ones had a video to watch. Yes, it was on the tiny television, but it kept them glued in one spot for a while so that I didn’t have to worry too much about someone climbing up the kitchen blinds while we worked on long division in the living room. The rest of the time, however, I limited how much television the kids could watch.

By the time we got a bigger television, » Read the rest of this entry «

History, Homeschooling and the Internet

March 7th, 2011 § 8

I’ve been addicted to reading since I was three years old. I can’t help it, it’s what I do.

For many years, well into adulthood, I spent several hours each weekend reading the voluminous Sunday edition of the Chicago Tribune. But it’s now a shadow of its former self, thanks to the Internet, which is where I do most of my reading these days.

I love having such a variety of interesting things to read. Once in a while, however, I hit on something really good, something someone has written that is so spot-on that I just have to share it with others. And have I got something good to share today.

Prolific writer and economic historian Gary North has written an awesome piece entitled “Public Education is Going Down” that clearly explains how the rise of the Internet is slowly killing public education. His theory is that, thanks to the growing availability of knowledge online at an increasingly lower cost, we parents are regaining the educational control that was lost centuries ago:

Home schooling is a throwback to the fifteenth century. It lets parents choose the content and structure of their children’s education. But it goes far beyond anything available then. One size does not fit all: all parents or all children. There is enormous diversity today, and it is getting even more diverse.

Read the entire article for yourself, and be sure to catch his last line. It made me smile :)

My New Book is Almost Ready!

March 3rd, 2011 § 5

Last year I wrote about how I was buckling down to finish the book I’ve been working on for a long time. Well, it was worth it: the book will be out next month!

It’s called Thriving in the 21^st Century: Preparing Our Children For The New Economic Reality, and I wrote it to explain what has changed in our economy and what specific things we can do to help prepare our children for a world of work much different than the one we grew up in.

Here’s what it will say on the back cover:

Today’s children will reach adulthood in an economic environment unlike anything the world has ever seen. The 21st century global economy is powered by an increasing rate of technological change as well as growing foreign competition; both are contributing to the high U.S. unemployment rate and stagnating American wages. How can we as parents prepare our children for success in this growing maelstrom that many are now calling “the new normal”?

In Thriving in the 21st Century, Barbara Frank demonstrates that we must move beyond the common wisdom of the 20th century that emphasized a college diploma and lifelong employment with a large company as the only way to success. Instead, we need to set our children on a new path, one that will help them not just survive, but thrive in the 21st century.

In this book, you’ll learn:

The Seven Strengths your child will need to prosper in the 21st century, why they’re needed and how you can develop them in your children

The most efficient (and increasingly popular) way to give your child those Seven Strengths

Why public education has failed to prepare our children for the 21st century

How we can help our children become the lifelong learners needed in a rapidly changing global economy

The surprising truth about today’s colleges and universities

How economic change is affecting a variety of career areas, and which of them are projected to grow dramatically in the coming years.

This book is packed with ideas and resources for raising our children to become adults who respond proactively when faced with economic challenges, and who can prosper during times of great change. We can help our children reach young adulthood ready and able to tackle the future with all its challenges. And that, of course, is the key: we must prepare our children for the future…not the past.

The book’s website is www.Thrivinginthe21stCentury.com. There’s already a lot of information there, and more to come in the near future.

I hope you’ll find this book inspiring and informative.

Let Girls Be Girls

February 28th, 2011 § 20

One of the greatest blessings of homeschooling for our family is that it let us give our daughters a girlhood.

I think girls in our society are increasingly pressured to be women before they’re ready, which is a very dangerous thing. By raising our girls at home, my husband and I were able to let them become who they were meant to be without the world’s emphasis on becoming Lolita.

I was reminded of how messed up the worldly attitude toward girls has become when I read this article about companies promoting the celebrity lifestyle to young girls, complete with limo rides and fake champagne, tattoos and opportunities to strut their stuff on the catwalk.

Of course, these companies wouldn’t even be in business if it weren’t for parents who pay for these services. And while it’s every parent’s right to make that choice, it’s my right to think they’re fools. The last thing young girls need is to be pushed toward early maturity.

Our girls rode bikes and roller-bladed, played at the park and had fun with their friends outside. They read books, sewed and made crafts, cooked and baked and played with their siblings. It was our goal to give them that kind of life, and it was well worth the sacrifices it took, personally and financially, to have them home all the time instead of going to public school, where the declining morals of our society proliferate like a noxious mold.

Sometimes I had to be the bad guy. I remember one new girl in our neighborhood who became friends with one of our daughters. She was 9 or 10, and greatly delighted to own Janet Jackson’s latest album that included a lot of music with strong sexual references completely inappropriate for young girls. When I found out this girl’s mom was just fine with that music being played by the girls when my daughter visited, I intervened. This did not make me popular. So what? I was trying to protect my daughter’s innocence. I was doing my job.

Things have gotten worse in our culture since then. I’m glad I’m not raising young girls now. The other day I saw a girl of 8 or so trailing along behind her mother in the grocery store. She was busy texting someone and completely oblivious to her surroundings. Just what a little girl needs…..24/7 contact with her peers.

Texting is just one more way that young girls can act like adults today. But they need to have a girlhood first. Surely I’m not the only mom that thinks so….am I?

Schools and Chicken Legislators

February 24th, 2011 § 3

The highway that runs through the town we live in is the one Democratic members of the state legislature took recently when they ran like cowards from the state capitol of Madison to cross the Wisconsin/Illinois border so they wouldn’t have to vote against the teachers’ unions.

That event was still fresh in my mind this morning when I heard on the radio that Indiana legislators are now copying the Wisconsin chickens by crossing the border into Illinois to avoid voting on school vouchers.

How interesting that they’ll go to such lengths because they don’t want parents to be allowed to direct their tax dollars to the educational institutions of their choice.

The reason, of course, is that if all parents were to do that, the already shaky public school system would weaken, private schools would thrive, and homeschoolers would be able to use tax dollars to pay for the cost of homeschooling their children.*

I know many parents would still send tax dollars to the public schools, and that would be their right. It would also force public schools to cut back on the ridiculously high administrative costs they incur; I’m betting that the current $10,000+ per student per year average cost would drop dramatically. And that would be a good thing.

After all, when I was a kid, and we Baby Boomers clogged up schools all over the country, a school could be run with just a principal, a couple of secretaries, a librarian, a gym teacher and a few custodians. Also, there was no huge bloated district office running our school district; just a superintendent with an office staff. Why can’t this happen again? It should happen again, because in this economy, who can afford continually rising property taxes to pay for schools that can’t even teach most kids to read well?

*Personally, I wouldn’t take money from the government to homeschool my kids, because I don’t want them telling me what to teach. But all homeschooling parents should certainly have that option.

A Delightful Young Lady

February 21st, 2011 § 3

I was flipping through a quilting magazine the other day while waiting in line at the grocery store when I happened to see an article about a young lady with Down syndrome whose mother taught her to sew.

The article mentioned this young lady’s blog. Since I refuse to pay $6 for a magazine, I memorized the blog address and actually kept it in my brain until I could get home and type it into my browser. (If you know anything about menopausal brain fog, you know that was an accomplishment!)

I was rewarded with a peek into Sarah’s world. It’s a lot of fun. Whether or not you know and love someone with Down syndrome as I do, I think you’ll like this blog.