Eek! Kids are Getting Fat and Dumb!

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Barb

We must take away summer vacation because it’s making kids stupid and obese!

That’s the battle cry from Peter Orszag, who decrees in this article that:

Kids lose some of what they learned during the school year over the summer.

Kids get bigger over the summer.

Therefore, summer vacation is bad.

His recommendations?

Make the school year longer (a euphemism for getting rid of summer vacation).

Put low-income kids into six-week long summer school sessions.

Put low-income kids into summer reading programs.

At the end of the article, he suggests that one or more of his solutions be implemented via an act of Congress. Sigh.

This is so silly. America’s public schools are graduating increasing numbers of kids who can’t read or do math; when something isn’t working, why on earth would we want MORE of it?

As for kids getting bigger, it’s true that some parents let their kids sit inside and watch movies, play videogames and text their friends instead of sending them out to play for fresh air and exercise. A bad idea, for sure, but it’s not up to the government to take over those kids’ lives. Besides, there’s another reason some kids get larger over the summer. Remember when you were a kid starting back to school after summer vacation and you noticed that some of your classmates had grown noticeably bigger and taller? They’d had a growth spurt. That’s what kids do (unless they’re sickly); they grow. One has to wonder, do these do-gooders like Orszag even have kids?

Remarks coming from Orszag and his ilk these days aren’t really about kids’ well-being anyways; it’s about control, government control of our children. We need to shoot down their arguments, including their assumption that kids learn more during the school year and lose at least a third of what they learned over the summer.

Kids don’t lose what they’ve learned unless it was something they were forced to learn that they merely memorized and forgot once it was no longer needed (i.e. school). Here’s how we know this:

How many kids forget how to ride a bike?

How many kids forget the lyrics to their favorite songs?

How many kids forget how to play their favorite video games?

We learn what we’re interested in, what’s useful to us and what we find irresistible. Public education rarely offers such things to kids, Increasingly, today’s kids are faced with more indoctrination than instruction; the instruction they do get is apparently not working for a lot of kids. Masking these issues by blaming summer vacation is a cop-out

If the do-gooders really wanted to know what works for kids, they’d study homeschoolers. The success of homeschooling is well-documented. Homeschooling parents will tell them that their kids are learning all the time, even during summer vacation. And when homeschooled kids do forget something they learned (usually something their parents expected them to study, as opposed to something they wanted to learn), they pick it up again pretty quickly when they go back to their studies. But as long as they’re getting plenty of time and opportunity to learn at their own pace and to pursue their own interests in addition to the studies their parents require of them, they don’t lose much of what they’ve learned. (I know this from observing my own homeschooled four.)

But the do-gooders will never study homeschooling. Why? Because most homeschooling parents’ goals for their children are about learning, not control. And these days, sadly, our government seems primarily bent on control.

Helping Our Kids Find a Career

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Barb

A recent article I read about a 13-year-old boy who wants to be a chef when he grows up included a comment that jumped out at me:

This young cook plans to attend culinary school and one day would like to teach cooking classes or own his own restaurant.

“I think I could be a chef anywhere. I like working with my hands and always being in the game and not sitting in an office all day,” Steven said. “So I think that may be a job for me.”

He’s a smart kid. He knows he wouldn’t be happy sitting at a desk all day. I wish I’d been that smart at his age (or even when I was a little older). Once I graduated from college, I worked at a couple of “desk jobs” and found that I was miserable. Even though I was trained (via many years of formal education) to sit at a desk all day, that didn’t make me like it.

Most homeschooled kids don’t have to sit at a desk all day. My kids didn’t. They had a few hours of daily bookwork, but once that was finished, they had freedom to pursue their own interests. And now that they’re all grown, I can see by the jobs they choose that they, too, clearly have no interest in sitting at a desk all day. My eldest has two online businesses supplemented by a part-time job working in a warehouse store. My son is a manager for a publishing company, which requires a lot of business travel. And my younger daughter works for the police department writing parking tickets while she works her way up to becoming a full-time officer (she was one of the few women to pass the physical agility test recently, woohoo!)

Now that it’s so hard for young people to find good jobs, it’s more important than ever that they pursue the kinds of careers that are a good fit for their personalities and experience, because once they get a job, they’ll need to hang on to it. Homeschooled kids who are accustomed to freedom may have a difficult time sitting at a desk, computer or phone all day. They might be better suited to active work or even outdoors work.

As parents, we can’t force them to come up with a career plan, nor can we make them do what we want (my dad still thinks I should have majored in accounting, but I’m so glad I didn’t!) But we can encourage them to pursue their interests, provide the tools they need to pick up a skill they want, and share helpful information whenever we happen to find it. By supporting them in this way, they’ll have a better shot at finding the work that’s right for them (even if they want to do something that requires sitting at a desk all day!)

Don’t Be Intimidated by Homeschooling for High School (Part 2)

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Barb

One question I’m often asked is how involved you should be with your teen in their daily work; my answer is that it depends on the teen, but that your goal should be to work towards independent study by the end of high school. This is good for your teen, but it’s also good for you, especially if you’re homeschooling younger children at the same time. If your child is college-bound, you’ll cripple her if you don’t send her off to school accustomed to independent study. And even if she’s not going to college, being able to work independently is a valued skill in any employee.

When I homeschooled my teens, I gave them increased independence each year, so that by senior year, I was giving them assignments on Monday morning and not working with them again until Friday afternoon, when we went over everything. This didn’t mean I was unavailable to them during the week. But I encouraged them to research things for themselves before coming to me with questions. This worked well for us.

On the other hand, my third child is an auditory/kinesthetic learner, so some of the advanced reading assignments I gave her during 11^th and 12^th grades were too hard for her to learn from based only on her reading of them. But we found that if I read the hardest books aloud to her while she knitted, she absorbed much more of the material, so that’s what we did. I had the time to do this because I was only homeschooling one other child besides her. Interestingly, once she went to college, she no longer needed my help in this way.

In addition to your teens’ daily assignments at home, you may find it desirable or even necessary to enroll them in outside classes. My son took a homeschool chemistry class at a local Christian college, primarily because I didn’t have the time or the inclination to teach him chemistry at home. He also took Spanish at a community college because Spanish is best learned in a group environment where conversation is emphasized. Several years later, after we had moved to another state, his younger sister took graphic design classes at a tech college near our town. We found that having our teens take a few community college classes during high school gave them classroom experience as well as college credits, and I recommend this to other homeschooling parents of teens.

As your teens get older, you’ll find that they won’t need help filling their days. When given the freedom to pursue opportunities that interest them, they do so. Our eldest daughter started a weekly Christian coffeehouse/concert series in our town after writing dozens of pastors asking for a place to hold Christian concerts. Our son joined the youth board at our church and participated in several mission trips. Our younger daughter started a small business selling her stuffed animal creations online and at the farmer’s market of the tourist town we lived in during her teen years. None of these activities had anything to do with my husband and me, other than the use of our car. Our teens pursued these things on their own, with our approval. These activities gave them self-confidence and showed them that they’re capable of following their interests and dreams. For homeschooled teens, living in the real world offers far more challenges and joys than the unreal world of football games and proms that public school teens live in.

Part of that real world living is having responsibilities. Homeschooled teens (especially younger ones who don’t have part-time jobs yet) can help with cooking, cleaning and childcare of younger siblings. Those years are also prime time for learning homemaking and mechanical skills that they’ll need when they’re on their own. It’s important to raise young people who can fix things, cook things and make things. Believe me, such people are a joy to have around the house!

(Excerpted from Stages of Homeschooling: Letting Go (Book 3), now just $2.99. Learn more HERE.)

Don’t Be Intimidated by Homeschooling for High School (Part 1)

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Barb

First off, remember that homeschool high school is nothing like public high school, and it doesn’t need to take nearly as long each day. There are no passing periods, no assemblies, no waiting for buses. So there’s no need to stick to the same time schedule that they do. Many people have asked me how long our high school day was. I usually required my teens to work on their studies in the morning, and as far into the afternoon as it took them to finish. I encouraged them to get an early start so that they’d have time to pursue their own interests the rest of the day. (Later on, their various part-time jobs, which we strongly encouraged, also came into play.)

Next, keep in mind that the curriculum you choose will determine how long it takes to study each subject. A very demanding math curriculum will require more time than a basic arithmetic review. Which one you choose will be based on your teen’s future aspirations and goals. If he wants to be a chemistry major in college, you’ll need a solid math curriculum. If he wants to go into the dramatic arts, you’re better off finding a basic math course and spending the time saved on the study of classic plays. And if he wants to be a car mechanic, use that same basic math course so he can spend the time he saves apprenticing with a self-employed car mechanic in your town.

Never forget that the goal of homeschooling a teen is to customize upper level studies to your teen’s needs. Those needs may not be as obvious at age 14 as they will be at 17 or 18; to make matters more complicated, teens change dramatically during those years and so do their needs. But you’ll recognize general areas of interest that really won’t change much. For instance, my son went from wanting to be a computer engineer at 15 to a business major at 18, then felt called into the ministry at 20. As it worked out, he’s now in his late 20s and is a manager for a Christian publishing company with plans to eventually enter seminary as a second career pastor. But during his teen years the common threads we could see were a desire to study beyond the high school level and a love of management and business principles. So we (he and I) designed his high school studies with an eye toward college prep and an emphasis on management.

A friend of mine who homeschooled several teen sons aimed the studies of the first three toward vocational prep because they were clearly “gear heads” who loved doing anything mechanical. But her fourth son was more studious, so she designed his studies to be college preparatory.

Each child is different; one big advantage of homeschooling is that you have the time and opportunity to plan a course of study with your teen (note that I said with) to capitalize on his or her interests and plans. That’s why you need to take all information that you get from books or friends with a grain of salt, tailoring the things you learn to your specific child.

(Excerpted from Stages of Homeschooling: Letting Go (Book 3), now just $2.99. Learn more HERE.)

Hot Off the Press: Letting Go

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Barb

The third book in the “Stages of Homeschooling” series, Letting Go, is now available for $4.99 at Amazon.com.

Like the previous books in the series, this book is a combination of new material and a variety of articles I wrote while homeschooling my four children. Stages of Homeschooling: Letting Go (Book 3) focuses on:

“Making the Choice to Homeschool Older Children and Teens” (Motivations for homeschooling through high school)
“Which Subjects Should Homeschooled Teens Study?” (Includes those your local high school probably doesn’t offer, but should)
“The College Decision” (Not which college to attend, but whether your teen should even go to college)
“Preparing Our Teens for the World of Work” (The 21st century world of work, not the 20th)
“Tips for Homeschooling Parents” (Hints and hope for parents of homeschooled teens)
“Books and Resources” (A few of the best)
“Personal Memories of Homeschooling Teens” (Glimpses into the life of a longtime homeschooling family)

Learn more about the entire “Stages of Homeschooling” series HERE.