Flashback Friday: Time Together All Year Long

Posted on September 6, 2013 by Barb

As a small publisher, I spend a lot of time at the post office. After my visit there yesterday, I walked past our dentist’s office, just a few doors down, and noticed that it was closed up and dark, which is a strange sight in the middle of a weekday afternoon. Then I remembered that this week is Spring Break around here, and our dentist always takes his family on a trip for Spring Break. He has a wife, two teenaged stepchildren and a small son, and it’s a good time for them to bond as a family; the rest of the year, they are each busy with their own schedules, and there’s not much time to be together.

It’s got to be hard to create family time on such an infrequent basis. That’s why we homeschooling families are so fortunate to have as much time together as we do. Our teens and tiny kids have the opportunity to grow close despite the gap in their ages. My adult daughter regularly calls her younger siblings and hangs out with them. Would that have happened if we hadn’t been home together for so many years? I wonder.

The concept of homeschoolers having more family time was a theme in the recent movie “RV,” which we watched on DVD last week. I don’t normally watch Robin Williams’ movies because he becomes so frenetic that I want to shoot him with a tranquilizer gun. But he wasn’t as bad in this one. He plays the father of a family whose members are too busy with their own concerns to spend much time together, and he sees that he needs to do something about it. So he takes his family on a long trip in a recreational vehicle (there’s another reason for the trip, which is part of the plot, but I won’t go into that here.)

While on their travels, they meet another traveling-by-RV family that they find quite annoying…you guessed it, a homeschooling family. That family lives in an RV, homeschooling as they travel. The family’s members are portrayed as out of the mainstream, compared to Williams’ family. But over time, Williams’ character sees the closeness in that family and decides it’s what he wants for his own.

We homeschooling families are blessed to be together every day, and even though it gets hard sometimes (financially, personally or both), we have to remember that we have something rare and precious in this world: time together. Seeing how the rest of the world, like my dentist or Robin Williams’ character in “RV,” lives can help remind us of that. I’m so glad I never had to wait for Spring Break to have time with my kids!

Originally posted 3/29/07

Summer Vacation Projects–Finished!

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Barb

It’s been three months since summer began. Where did the time go?

I spent some of it watching my son swim in his pool, gardening, planning our daughter’s upcoming wedding and buying a vintage Bernina and playing with it. I also finished a couple of projects, including this needlework pillow from a kit I bought in 1987 but didn’t start until I finished homeschooling two years ago:

I also made this quilt from fabric I bought from Connecting Threads:

Like the back? It’s a like-new, made-in-Italy sheet I bought at Goodwill for $3.99. What a find! The look and feel of it is just wonderful.

And now my summer’s gone, and it’s back to work. I’ll post here when I can, but I’m also going to share some posts from my older blogs (I began blogging in 2005) that may help newer homeschoolers. You’ll see them on Fridays…..Flashback Fridays.

For current homeschooling news, be sure to visit my other site, Thriving in the 21^st Century.

Eight Ways to Make Parenting a Pleasure

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Barb

Parenting is a big job, and can also be a rewarding one. Ultimately, it will most likely be a pleasure when the proper ground work has been done. Here are eight tips to help you lay that ground work so you can enjoy parenting your children in all their stages of growth.

#1: Minimize Choices

Yes, it’s important to develop independence in our children by letting them make choices: Red shirt or blue shirt? Ice cream or cookies? But if every decision becomes theirs, we raise kids who think they’re in charge. Let them make choices sometimes, but make sure most of the decisions are yours. As your children grow up, you can gradually cede control of more issues to them. But if your kids are under age 12, you should still be fully in charge. This keeps life uncomplicated and less stressful.

#2: Limit Activities

An overload of activities is a real problem for many families. Just because something is offered doesn’t mean your child has to do it. And the more children you have, the fewer activities should be packed into the hours after school and on weekends. Limit your children to one activity per semester and watch your stress level decrease. Be sure the activity each one attends is related to their interests, not yours. And be willing to let them switch if they discover something isn’t their thing. Be very selective with organized activities and watch your unstructured, relaxed family time grow and become more fun.

#3: Develop True Self Esteem with Chores

If your five-year-old doesn’t make her bed or set the table, or your twelve-year-old doesn’t do his own laundry, my question to you is: Why not? Kids are completely capable of doing chores around the house. More importantly, the self esteem they develop by being part of the household team is far more genuine that what develops when you tell them how special they are all the time. Put your kids to work around the house at age-appropriate tasks and you’ll relieve some of your own burden while building your child’s self-esteem in a logical and healthy way.

#4: Take a Child to Lunch

Alone, just with you. Or take one to a movie, a park, or to see Grandma. Build your relationship with your child while talking in the car en route, while laughing together and while just enjoying each other’s company. I didn’t do this enough with each of my four children, but when I did it do it, we always had a great time. (Note: the more children you have, the more important this tip is.)

#5: Limit Your Use of Technology

Children who are forced to interrupt their parents to express their needs because their parents are always on their phones (talking, texting or surfing) often become very demanding children. When your child is born, three umbilical cords need to be cut: his to his mother, and his parents’ to their devices. Limit your use of technology during your child’s waking hours and you’ll raise a happier child. Besides, there’s nothing sadder than seeing a parent pushing a child in a cart through the grocery and ignoring him because they’re on the phone.

#6: Keep your #1 Interest

Once we become parents, we find that we don’t have time to do all the things we like to do. This is natural, but be sure to make time for your favorite activity, whether it’s reading, playing basketball or making things by hand, like quilts or guitars. Even if you only get to do it once a month, it will help you relax and remember who you are, because in the parenting trenches, it’s easy to forget that you’re anyone but Mommy or Daddy. As your children grow and become more independent, you will get to do more of your favorite things, but for now, one thing is probably all you can squeeze in. Enjoy yourself when you can!

#7: Bedtime

A regular (and reasonable) bedtime is extremely important. It produces rested kids and relaxed parents. If you start when your children are tiny, this habit will be easier to create and maintain. Studies show that today’s children are having learning difficulties because they’re not well-rested. Put them to bed at an age-appropriate time (always before 9 p.m.) and then go do something for yourself: surf Facebook or Pinterest, have a beer, spoon with your spouse… I’m sure you can think of something. Having that time at the end of each day is invaluable for managing stress and becoming a great parent.

#8: Don’t Expect Perfection

Just when you think you’ve got a handle on things, you find yourself or your child losing it. Don’t forget that there are no perfect parents; children can’t be perfect, either. Besides, children are constantly changing and growing, which brings new challenges. Expect change, expect imperfection, love your child (remember, love is a verb) and go easy on yourself.

Child vs. Lesson Plan

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Barb

My youngest nephew is seven, and a very bright child. He loves science, and keeps busy at home with educational toys that would bore or overwhelm many boys his age.

Up until recently, he did very well in school. But his second-grade teacher expects her students to sit quietly and read; she thinks he has a problem with this so she’s been sending notes home about it, which is upsetting him and his mother.

As I said, he’s seven and he’s a boy. Sitting quietly and reading is not his natural behavior. I’m not saying he shouldn’t learn this, but I’m sad that his current inability in this area is affecting his grades.

But that’s school. The teacher plans a learning experience for the entire class; those who can’t do what she says will be graded down.

Don’t think this only happens in school. When I was homeschooling, especially at the beginning, there were times when I found “the perfect curriculum” at a homeschool convention, brought it home, made lesson plans using it, and watched my children for signs of “delight-directed learning” or whatever the catchphrase was on the cover….but was disappointed to see none of that on their faces. That’s when I realized that they didn’t do well with the curriculum. I had to learn that children learn best when the subject is presented in a way that works for them…..which may not be the way that works best for the teacher.

Ultimately, gearing materials toward the child’s interests, intelligence level and developmental stage is what works. Successful homeschooling parents learn to do that for their children. Teachers, even very good teachers, can try to do that but how do you accommodate the needs of 30 children from a variety of backgrounds? You can’t.

That’s why homeschooling is so successful, especially once we stop trying to be a school and concentrate instead on giving each of our children what they need at a particular point in time.

A Homeschool Tempest in a Teapot

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Barb

So the press has found some dissatisfied homeschooled adults. This must make them so happy. Nothing like a little controversy to boost your website traffic.

It makes sense that there will be some homeschooled adults who are dissatisfied with how they were raised. Just looking at the populace at large, what percentage are unhappy with the way they were raised? Probably a good portion, judging from the number of self-help titles published over the years for readers trying to get past their problematic childhoods. Why should homeschoolers be any different?

In this particular case the focus is on a certain type of homeschooling family, known collectively as Quiverfull, according to the article. (That name stems from a book very popular among Christian homeschoolers in the 1990s.) This has been a trainwreck in the making for some time. I knew several families like those described in the article; given their strict beliefs, particularly as they applied them to their daughters, rebellion was inevitable. After all, once your girls get out into the world and discover that there are options in addition to marriage and motherhood, some of them are going to want more choices.

When my first book (Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers) was published, I had trouble getting a booth at a certain homeschool conference to sell it. I couldn’t even get a response from those running the conference. I was later told by someone in the know that the problem with my book is that it encourages girls as well as boys to become independent adults. The families running the conference didn’t want their girls to get any ideas, I guess.

Now, I don’t agree with their mindset and my husband doesn’t either. We homeschooled all our children, daughters and sons, with the intent of helping them be all that they could be. Personally I think we can trust God to lead each child to the right career; those that think all girls should be trained only to be wives and mothers ought to give some thought to how God used Corrie ten Boom and Amy Carmichael.

But just because I disagree with families who raise their daughters to be only wives and mothers doesn’t mean I think they shouldn’t be able to do what they’re doing. There is no agenda-free schooling anywhere. There’s an agenda in public school and private school just as there is in any homeschool. Parents are free to choose how to educate their children, and children are free to embrace or reject their upbringing when they become adults. The article I cited at the start of this post is merely an attempt to foment controversy, so don’t let it bother you too much.

The irony in all this is that many of the young women quoted in the article will someday change their minds. They’ll end up being stricter than their folks. I’ve seen it happen before. Some of the biggest rebels eventually turn into the strictest parents. People are funny, aren’t they?