Your Time Will Come

 If you’re a mom in the homeschool trenches, you may often wonder (when you get a moment to yourself) when you’ll ever have time to do the things you used to enjoy doing. I used to feel that way a lot.

Now my kids are grown and I have more time to myself. I can finally do things just for fun. Here are a few of my recent projects. I pieced the bed quilt and began hand-quilting it in the 1980s. Tried machine quilting some of it in the 1990s but burned out the pedal on my vintage sewing machine. Recently I bought a new machine intended for free-motion quilting and decided to turn the bed quilt into my practice piece. What fun!

I bought the smaller quilt as a kit at a quilt show last year. It was fun to make, too.

What do I like best about these quilts? That I was finally able to finish them! 🙂

 

Has Facebook Stolen Childhood?

 

I used to think that it was up to parents to prevent young kids from using cell phones and older kids from using Facebook, and that by doing so, they’d be able to keep their kids from getting sucked into these time wasters.

Of course, my kids are grown, so what did I know? It wasn’t until I learned that my little nephew was being left out of play dates and birthday parties because he didn’t have a phone to receive group texts on (apparently parents don’t “do” printed or phoned party invitations anymore) that I realized just how pervasive texting has become.

Then there’s Facebook. Supposedly off limits to children under 13, it’s a huge source of bullying among the preteen and young teen set. Some kids have been driven to suicide by online bullying; how tragic!

One might think the key to preventing trouble on Facebook is to limit your kids’ time on the Internet. I was able to do that with my crew, who only had access to a desktop computer in our main living area for years. But today’s kids, who have phones to text with so they won’t be left out of the social scene, can also access the Internet and therefore Facebook on those same phones.

Parents can’t possibly supervise kids on their phones 24/7. I suppose they could make their kids check their phones at the door when they come home, but I’m getting the impression that today it would be considered child abuse to do so. Besides, some moms are too busy on Twitter and Facebook themselves to monitor their children’s phone usage anyways.

Do I sound like a curmudgeon? I feel like one. I’m with the writer who recently said that Facebook has stolen childhood. I’m not sure how parents can recapture childhood for their kids once they’ve given them phones (and unlimited use of them), but it would be worth a try.

I spent much of my childhood playing and reading books. My kids did the same. Will they be the last generation to have done so?

Flashback Friday: More Thoughts About College

Note: this post was written nearly seven years ago. My eldest now works part-time and has two small businesses. My son never did go to seminary because of his college debt. But he has a great job that he would not have gotten without a college degree.

I’ve written before about the struggle my eldest and I went through once she told me she had no interest in going to college. That was several years ago. In fact, it’s been six years since she finished homeschooling. She has worked full-time ever since, and while she has not yet found the kind of work that makes her happy and pays its way, she loves living on her own, which was one of her primary goals.

Meanwhile, in the five years since my son finished homeschooling, he has been working towards his college degree, and we are all happy for him because he graduates in a few weeks. This is not the end of his formal education, however; in August he will enroll in a Lutheran seminary, where he will begin three more years of classes (plus a year of vicarage).

So we’ve had a wide range of college viewpoints going on in our family, from adamantly opposed to college to thriving in the college atmosphere. The past six years have taught us a lot about the whole college issue. Boiling it down to several salient points:

College is not for everyone. Many young people, including my daughter, want to experience life outside of the classroom, not within it. Often, the work that interests them does not require a degree. Also, many are autodidacts like my daughter. She inhales books of all kinds because she wants to, not simply because they were assigned.

College is just what some people need. My son has thrived in the atmosphere of the small Lutheran college he attends. He has made contacts he will need as he goes about his life’s work. He has learned a lot, which was the whole point. And he cannot reach his goal of becoming a Lutheran pastor without a bachelor’s degree.

College is incredibly expensive. I say this as the mother of an intelligent and outgoing son who earned a lot of money in scholarships and grants and yet is graduating with a frightening amount of debt….and may have to rack up more before he’s finished with seminary. My daughter works with people who graduated owing thousands and who were unable to find work in their major. They earn the same money as she does (some earn less), but they have to pay back that debt in addition to all the usual monthly expenses.

College should not be the only option considered. In the years since I attended college, the way our society views college has gone from “nice if you can afford it” to “an absolute necessity.” This is patently untrue, but the result of this change in outlook has resulted in kids who have no business being there being pushed into college. That’s why so many colleges now have to offer remedial reading and remedial math.

College does not equal success. There are plenty of people in this world who have done very well for themselves without a college diploma, and many others who turned out to be failures despite having one.

Attending college is not an indicator of homeschooling success. Young people who have trouble understanding what they read or putting two numbers together are getting into colleges these days. Homeschooling parents should set their sights higher than merely bringing up future college students; raising young people with moral character, a concern for others and a wide range of abilities is a worthier goal, and if said young people decide to go to college, they’ll be a good influence on the other students they meet there.

Adapted from an April 2007 post

Flashback Friday: Our Tax Dollars Hard at Work

Just received one of the many puff pieces our local school district sends out in an effort to justify its existence. After spending years on our state’s financial and academic watchlists, it needs all the good P.R. it can buy. This particular quote is from the principal of one district school that recently “transformed itself”:

“Over the past few years, XXX School has transformed itself,” says Principal John Doe. “There is a palpable sense of the good things happening at XXX. We have embraced the philosophy, ‘If the horse is dead, get off of the horse.” (emphasis theirs)

(As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up. Hat tip to dd15, who encouraged me to put the quote on my blog.)

Originally posted 3/10/07

Breaking Up with Aldi

I think I’m slowly breaking up with Aldi.

I don’t shop there as often, and when I do, I find it frustrating. The prices aren’t as good as they used to be. The quality of the food is declining (the cottage cheese with orange blobs in it put us off cottage cheese so much that we still don’t buy it, anywhere.)  As if that weren’t enough, I almost always end up being overcharged because the gals who work there are going so fast that things get scanned too many times. So after I check out, I have to study my receipt and then go wait for a clerk to give me one or more refunds; meanwhile my frozen orange juice melts.

Aldi and me, we go way back. My dad took us there in the 1970s; it’s where I stocked up before heading back to college each semester. I shopped there as a newlywed. We were there all the time during the years we had six mouths to feed. More recently, each time we moved, we made sure to find the nearest Aldi. In fact, when we lived in Door County, we drove 50 minutes to an Aldi (in Green Bay).

But now I live 5 minutes from Aldi and I only go maybe once a month. The grocery store across the road has better prices, and offers a less-aggravating experience, so I go there at least once a week and usually more often.

I suspect what’s finally happening at Aldi is what happens to most chain stores over time. Some suits at corporate headquarters decide the employees aren’t working fast enough. So they crack the whip on them: “Speed it up! We’re spending too much employee time processing the customers.” And so the customer experience goes down while the profits go up. But sooner or later, the customers get fed up and stop coming.

That’s what happened with me and Wal-Mart; we broke up quite a while back. I haven’t been in one in months. Pay attention, Aldi. You may be next.