Archive for April, 2013

Self-care: Part One

Meditate

Image by RelaxingMusic

Try not to defend your life to others. It’s tempting to explain your choices, to provide evidence that you did the best you could or that your convictions are pure and your motives are selfless.

We’re all a bundle of needs, making decisions that are both selfless and self-interested. The only criteria that matters in evaluating how you spent today is the one you’ve chosen to live by… today.

That criteria shifts and changes—some years you have more energy for self-sacrifice and understanding; and others, you find you need someone to give you a break, to make up for what you lack, to be the strength you lack. Some years you find resources and help, and others, it seems no one “gets” what you’re going through and it’s entirely up to you to figure out the way forward.

Some years you’re blindsided by facts you never imagined would be the substance of your life, of your family.

We have our ideals (they matter) and we have our limits (they matter too). One person (you, me) can change the entire dynamic in a home by making better, more emotionally supportive, empathetic choices; but it’s also true that one person can wreck the peace, by not cooperating, asserting a will that is unresponsive to the best care and kindness you can give.

A family is an interdependent system—no one person can carry it alone. There must be give and take, support and nurture for each person, even if in uneven doses at times.

All you can do is become the healthiest version of you that you can be—taking care of your welfare so that you don’t wake up one day and “flip out.”

You’ll be given good advice: Be generous. Give. Share. Listen. Pay attention. Make adjustments. Become a partner to your kids, to your spouse. Forgive. Find the good, the true, the pure. Let go of petty resentments and high expectations.

But you also need to take care of you. Be sure that you, the care-giver, are being given care too—by someone, somehow, somewhere. It’s how you keep going.

When you hit your limits, you’ll get advice to give more. You’ll be told what the ideals are. You’ll be reminded of your original goals. You’ll try harder. We women are especially likely to take this advice to heart.

Just remember: in the trying (which is right and noble and good), stand up for you too. You matter as much to the whole system as all the people you love and serve freely every day.

Be good to you, no matter what that looks like. You get one life, too. It needs to be a good, peace-filled, lovely one. No Joan of Abeccas here. No Teresa of Calculadders allowed.

Stay connected to your well-being while you give to the ones you love. That’s it.

See Part Two here.

Be Good to You: Self Care Practices for the Homeschooling Parent

Posted in Brave Writer Lifestyle, Homeschool Advice, On Being a Mother | 1 Comment »

Poetry Teatime: Poems to Learn by Heart

Poetry Teatime

“If we learn poems by heart, we will always have their wisdom to draw on, and we gain understanding that no one can take away.” ~Caroline Kennedy

Set out some yummy snacks, a pot of hot tea, and a lovely book of poems. For your next Poetry Teatime consider reading from Caroline Kennedy’s, Poems to Learn by Heart.

Kennedy (daughter of J.F.K. and editor of numerous books) has lovingly put together a collection of almost two hundred poems that not only delight and engage readers of all ages, but are also intended to be memorized. The book is illustrated by Jon J Muth.

Each section is begun by a brief essay, where Kennedy shares thoughts (“Poetry can help us resist the pulls and tugs of life”) and tidbits (did you know that fairies have become increasingly smaller in modern poems?) and stories (a Little League coach shared a poem with his players at the end of every game and gave poetry as much credit as practice for his team’s success).

You and your children will have fun selecting verses to share around the table. There are poems about nature and nonsense, sports and school, family and friends, plus monsters and gnomes.

Enjoy!

Poetry Teatime

Visit our Poetry Teatime website!

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Teatime | 1 Comment »

What’s on your child’s mind?

Your kids have been pondering, thinking, and imagining their lives. Some of them spend hours daydreaming about the next level they’ll beat on a video game.

Others wish they could sew costumes or paint with watercolors. You might have a child who wants to be in a play or who wants to play an instrument.

Maybe your daughter wants to become the next soccer star of her local team and your son hopes he can take a cake decorating class.

A teen might want to spend hours a day watching the top 100 films listed by Criterion in order.

How will you know, if you don’t ask? Where will those hours of the day come from if they’re already filled with your agenda or your wishes?

Creating space for the pursuit of your children’s daydreams is one of the greatest joys of homeschool. When you care about their desire to beat the next level on a game, they are more likely to trust you when you say that the math page will only take 15 minutes.

Conversely, what if dread of a specific homeschool task fills their minds?

Find out about that. Create space for complaint or anxiety.

In some cases, your kids will have smart thoughts about how to learn the hard subject area. It’s surprising the amount of insight your kids may have about their struggles if you know how to ask them the right kinds of questions.

You might ask things like:

“I know times tables feel hard to do. Does anything help? Do you prefer to hold things in your hand or draw on a chalk board? Does it help to talk to me as you work on them? What’s the hard part for you? Is it the book? Too busy and colorful? Too plain and tedious? Do the Cuisenaire rods hurt or help?”

Don’t punch the questions at your child like a nail gun. Take them slowly, show curiosity. Sometimes a child will say one thing that unlocks the whole thing:

“I don’t get the point of the rods.”

Suddenly you can see that your child is going through the motions without true understanding! More modeling and support, conversation and suggestions can follow. So pay attention and use your maturity and compassion to help you hear where the frustration comes from.

Usually lectures about the value of a specific subject area for their eventual adulthood doesn’t work with kids. What works is breaking down each task to its smallest part and relating it to their immediate world.

If there is no immediate connection, perhaps the work should fall to you to discover one before requiring a child to work that hard on the subject. After all, these are children. They don’t have the same level of fortitude to “do what they should” as you do as an adult. So take time (since you are the grown-up) to find the connection, to uncover the meaning, and to share it with love and support before requiring follow through and effort.

Sandwiched between support for their dreams and help for their struggles are love and trust. Create those through curiosity and care, and you’ll all feel a little happier today.

What works is

Cross-posted on facebook.

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Friday Freewrite: A Craving

Chocolate Sundae

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image by TheCulinaryGeek

Must have it!

Describe something you crave. Go!

 

New to freewriting? Check out our online guide.

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Capitals, periods, and commas, oh my!

punctuation_capitalization

 

Hello Julie.
Any way to get my 11 y.o. to remember capitals and periods? He can remember when we do dictation (because that and neatness are my main emphasis with dictation) but when he is doing his own writing he can’t seem to remember, and when I ask him to go back over his writing he gets stressed. Oddly enough he sometimes throws commas in, often in the right place; and will sometimes use commas where there should be a period. Any ideas?

I love all the writing tips and I have learned from you not to nit-pick when he does his own free writing–right now he is into writing music reviews!

~Holly

—–

Hi Holly.

Maybe take the pressure off and tell him you know he knows how to use them because he does them well in dictation. Tell him that you won’t notice whether he remembers them in original writing for the next 4 months. He can think about for himself how to remember but you won’t ask him or correct him. You’ll just leave things be for a semester or so and then you can meet back up and look at all his work from that time and see if there was any improvement or not and if he found any way to help remind himself in that time.

If he wants some ideas for how to remind himself, you can tell him a couple of these to consider:

  1. Keep a notecard of “stuff to remember” for him to look at ahead of writing so it will be uppermost in his mind when he starts.
  2. He can get someone else to correct his work (not him, since that stresses him out) for him until he remembers on his own.
  3. He can wait a week or more to make the corrections so he isn’t faced with them too quickly.
  4. He can use his own original writing as copywork/dictation later in the week/month to practice with.

But only offer these suggestions if he wants them. Don’t help him decide.

I promise, his understanding is there and that knowledge will transfer. Try not to worry about it. He’s only 11.  🙂

Julie

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