Archive for the ‘Parenting’ Category

Announcing the release of my Brand New Book!

A Gracious Space_Fall Edition 500x650CopyrightAll rights reserved

50 Daily Readings for Fall

Homeschooling can be a lonely road. You are at home with children, embarking on a task that changes every year (sometimes every month!) as your children grow and mature. The ability to sustain that commitment comes from sheer grit, idealism, faith, and trust. When in doubt, where do you turn? Some of us rely on close friends, homeschooling support groups, and Internet communities. These companions are important and must be nurtured and cherished.

In addition, though, it helps to refresh your philosophy of education and parenting. How do you renew your faith that you and your children will know what to do when you face challenges and obstacles to a harmonious home education?

A Gracious Space is a non-sectarian compilation of fifty essays about homeschooling and family life designed to encourage you, the homeschooling parent even on your worst day. Read an entry with your morning coffee or tea to help you focus on the principles and ideals that undergird your homeschool.

Essay titles include

  • It All Adds Up!
  • Content, not Conventions
  • Know Your Kids as They Are
  • Less is More, Really!
  • It’s the Relationship, Sweetheart
  • Prophecies of Doom
  • In Defense of the Disillusioned
  • How You Say it Matters
  • To Plan or Not Plan Your Lesson Plans
  • When Your Kids are Unhappy, What Can You Do?

This collection of essays currently comes in two formats: PDF and ePub (for iBooks). You will receive both of these formats when you order.

Purchase Price: $9.95

Order Today!

Posted in BW products, Homeschool Advice, On Being a Mother, Parenting | Comments Off on Announcing the release of my Brand New Book!

How to wean your child off your constant presence

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-vertical-woman-scrubbing-plate-sink-image38709943If you wish your child had more independence, wean your child off your side-by-side presence. Sit with the child for, say, the first three math problems, working them together. Then say, “I need to rinse the breakfast dishes. Keep going. I’ll be right here. If it helps, say aloud what you are doing as you work the problem and I’ll listen. I’ll help you, if you need it, from the sink.”

Some version of that lets the child know you aren’t abandoning him or her, but it also allows a little space for the child to “test” the practice without double checking your facial expressions or asking you to do the work for him/her.

Once the kitchen sink is a safe, reachable distance for your child, try leaving the room for a few moments (to change a load of laundry, to take the mail out to the box, to water a few house plants, to make a bed in another room). Don’t leave to go to a computer screen (you’ll lose track of time). Be gone no more than 3-5 minutes. Then check back and see how the child is doing.

Whenever you leave, rub the shoulders of your child (or gently, affectionately squeeze them or offer a kiss on a cheek or run your hand across the child’s back).

When you return, touch your child’s arm and look over the child’s shoulder. Let the child know you are back and interested in what went on while you were gone.

Avoid judging and correcting. Validate the independent effort. Then ask if the child needs help. If not, keep going in and out of the room in the same manner.

Help your child be indepedent

Image of woman washing dishes by Stephenkirsh | Dreamstime.com

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Homeschool Advice, Parenting | 1 Comment »

You are the Blueprint

You are the Blueprint

In our eagerness to proudly represent homeschool to the world, we can get distracted by academic achievement as the measure of success. We are told again and again that homeschoolers are smarter than kids educated in traditional school environments. We expect our children to prove that homeschooling works when we get the test scores from the end of the year exams or the SAT/ACT for college.

We might switch from relaxed, eclectic-style homeschool to textbooks or rigorous education models when we hit high school.

Home education is hard work (it takes investment, ongoing self-education about learning and subject matter, stick-to-it-tiveness, and passion).

That said, home education is first and foremost the place where your children have the opportunity to catch the family culture and grow in it.

  • Families who love sports produce kids who excel as athletes.
  • Families who work with their hands produce kids who rip out dry wall and install toilets.
  • Families who care about the disadvantaged produce kids who want to help others.
  • Families who are hospitable and generous to their own families, as well as their neighbors and beyond, will produce kids who are open to others and who freely share their belongings.
  • Families that have a great sense of humor and a penchant for creativity produce silly, artistic kids!
  • Families who think a big vocabulary is a sign of being an adult will raise kids who trade “new” words via text to stump each other (yeah, those would be my kids).

Your children may not grow up to root for your sports team (though it’s likely they will), they may not choose your religion (though it’s likely if you are passionate about your faith, they will have opinions about religion for the rest of their lives), they may not vote how you vote, but if you do vote, they are likely to vote, too, according to their consciences.

Your modeling of what it means to be an adult is the primary way your kids know how to tell themselves that they have arrived: “I’m an adult because…”

  • If you are a risk taking, curious person, your kids are likely to be too.
  • If you read widely and talk about what you discover in books, your kids will too.
  • If you speak a foreign language, your kids will believe it’s possible to learn and speak one.
  • If you travel and show reverence for other cultures, your kids will be fascinated by people different from themselves. They won’t be fearful or judgmental.
  • If you play with math like a toy, your kids will think math is approachable and useful (at least, this is what families good at math tell me! We had the opposite effect on our kids.)

And that’s a good point! What is difficult for you? That’s likely to be challenging to your kids (short of finding them a qualified mentor who can transform how they see that “difficult” subject or character quality). Don’t worry too much. It’s easier to focus on what you are naturally passionate about and good at. That’s what your kids will see and value anyway.

You shape who your kids become. Think about the affinities and skills you exude, live, naturally express. Your kids are going to look like you. Start valuing what you’re good at, because like it or not, some measure of that legacy will be indelibly stamped on your kids as adults.

Like this:

If you quilt, teach not just your girls, but your boys too! If you woodwork, show both boys and girls how to build a bookcase.

Everyone should know how to cook nutritious, tasty meals for themselves from the “recipe book of your family’s nightly dinners.” Comfort food. Home.

Your dinner time conversations will tell your kids what you value the most. They will get the meta-lesson: this is what it is to be a grown up.

  • Do you want your kids to think adulthood means “ripping” the politicians you don’t like on an endless loop?
  • Do you want them to think that education is just something to be “done” rather than a life to be lived well beyond school?
  • Do you want them to believe that money is the most important part of a career choice?
  • Do you want them to hand-wring over success and failure, or to enjoy the exploration of life with you at their sides?

How you live as a family will have more to do with who your kids become than any curriculum you purchase.

What’s so amazing is that if you keep an open-hand, if you don’t “prophesy doom” or overly script what the one-right future should be, your children will grow up to be even better adults than you and your partner. They have you, these intentional, caring, invested role models sharing their best stuff with them.

This is the best education possible! One that goes well beyond book lists and math skills.

When they get to college or their chosen career field, you will see the fruits of all those conversations and tasks you shared. They will look like you, as surely as their red hair and freckles. But a fresher, vibrant, optimistic version.

You’ll be so proud. The blueprint—turned into the finished (finishing) product of young adult.

The Homeschool Alliance

Image by Jessie Pearl (cc cropped, text added)

Posted in Homeschool Advice, Parenting | Comments Off on You are the Blueprint

In Defense of the Disillusioned

In Defense of the Disillusioned Image by Donnie Nunley
Sometimes your life doesn’t work out how you planned it,

line by line,
promise by promise,
heart beat by heart beat.

Sometimes the vision that dances in your head like sugar plums and happily ever afters and smart, successful, contributing citizens called your children, turns into a puzzle you can’t solve or a missing piece you can’t find under the cushions…

or that thud thud in your chest…

. . . a persistent “something’s not right, something’s not right” that clicks with your heels and follows you into the grocery store.

Sometimes the ideal shatters through no obvious fault of your own (though you wish it were, so you could fix it, naturally, like you fix everything else)—someone else’s implacable will thwarts/harms/crushes yours or finds happiness in someone else’s.

Sometimes your body succumbs to germs or cells that won’t stop growing and they take over your organs and ruin your chance to do all you had planned for forever and a day. Sometimes the out-of-control cells live in the body of your dearest friend and deepest love, or precious child.

Sometimes, no matter how diligently you protect them and worry on their behalf, your children stumble into tragedy or crime unimagined and never planned.

Sometimes one of your precious kids is violated horribly while you were pinning new kitchen photos to Pinterest and having devotions.

The disillusioned suffer twice and three times.

Not only do they face the excruciating pain of tragedy, at night, and in the middle of the afternoon. They also face the natural tendency of those we love most to assign blame for the failure.

Pain, loss, divorce, disease, violation—to the not-yet-suffering, these are as contagious as mumps or the common cold. All who are not afflicted look for the cause so they can stay safe and not make the horrible mistakes you’ve made.

You didn’t do it right.

You didn’t pray enough, go to therapy, read the right books, get the right doctors, eat the right foods, follow the right advice, use these steps, take this tone, follow this practice, behave in that way, honor this code, believe that set of precepts . . .

The list goes on endlessly and no protestations of how much you tried calms the advice-givers. They want to believe they have identified the one or ten key ingredients that you missed, that they can embrace, to avoid your fate.

They don’t try to figure out your failings to be cruel. Know that. It’s desperation. To avoid your tragedy.

But you can face this disillusionment—this failed bargain with God or life or nature—differently because these awful conditions are real for you. Not theory. Not avoidable. They’re here now, waiting for you to deal with them, not with what you “might have done” or “could have done differently.”

Disillusionment is the beginning of new chances—a chance to find a new way to live or love, for however long you have.

It’s the beginning of asking real questions rather than seeking iron-clad answers.

It’s your chance to take some risks, to explore some forbidden secret ideals you had overlooked before in your safety.

It’s your chance to have an authentic, self-created journey rather than the second-hand one the books and leaders tell you to have.

It’s a chance to pay attention to people as they actually are rather than as you wish them to be.

It’s often your first real chance to ask yourself: Who am I? And then another better chance to become that person in a whole new way.

I love talking with disillusioned homeschoolers because they are closer to being good at educating their kids than the ones who think they have a “system that works.” If homeschooling has failed you somehow, if your marriage is not working, if your children are reacting against you and you don’t know how to bring them near, you are much closer to having a life built on a foundation of truth and reality than you’ve ever been.

Hold on. Face life on its terms: the pain, the disillusionment. Don’t judge your life. Pay attention to it. Let it tell you what you need to know. And by all means, find others who’ve walked similar journeys. They will have wisdom to share.

You are not bad, wrong, or a failure.

You are not foolish, uncommitted, or selfish.

You are human. Everyone, by the time they get to 50 or 60, will have experienced the humbling realization of being time-bound and planet-dwelling among germs and people.

That you would attempt (for example) to be married (till death!), to have children (to home educate!), and to love your life (despite cancer!) is brave and optimistic.

Draw on those resources as you face your disillusionment squarely. Then see what happens. You might be amazed.

Posted in Parenting | 1 Comment »

Be Curious

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-botanist-image10644347

A follow-up to yesterday’s “Take Your Time” post.

“Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it can resurrect your homeschool!”

“I’ve got the powah.”

Everybody agrees—parents, children, media, government—parents have the power in the parent-child relationship. (We parents don’t always feel it, so we get a little crabby and pushy about it; but clearly, there’s not a child alive who doesn’t know that his or her parents have more power than they do.)

Power is a heady thing. We do stupid stuff every day just because we’ve got it.

We expect little people who’ve been on the planet a mere 3, 7, or 13 years to:

  • make consistently good decisions,
  • always listen to us,
  • be “rational” the way we’d be rational,
  • show interest in what our interests are,
  • be happy to do what we expect them to do…

…All. The. Time.

One mom I spoke to on the phone, for instance, told me she had four strong-willed children.

I paused. “Is it possible your four children have a strong-willed mother?”

After all—how can all four be strong-willed? It seemed more likely that this was a case where mom was frustrated that her superior way of living was not fully embraced by her kids, you know…All. The. Time.

I remember another mother saying to me: “I don’t get it. If my kids would just do what I said, everyone would be happier. Life would be so easy if my six kids would just go with my program.”

Of course, right away, you can see the problem.

Life would be easier for these moms, but clearly the kids don’t feel that way—that’s why they aren’t following the program!

How do you fix this clash of emotions in a 24/7 home… school?

Curiosity

That’s right.

Being curious. About your kids.

You’re the big person, with the power. You’ve

  • spent years in school,
  • had your feelings hurt,
  • failed a test or three,
  • gotten cut from a team,
  • worked a couple of jobs,
  • pretended to eat your vegetables,
  • not made your bed,
  • been late with income taxes,
  • complained about the line at the DMV,
  • been blamed for something you didn’t do,
  • been forgiven for something you did do…

You’re either navigating a marriage, or you’re a single parent who figured out what to do after a relationship,

You know about life.

Your kids don’t yet. They’re just starting to accumulate experiences that will teach them.

Most conflicts (I dare assert) could be—at minimum—relieved of the strain, and at maximum—resolved, if the person with the power (Dad, Mom, Grandma, teacher, adult in charge) directed a curious gaze at the offending child before launching into a tirade or asserting on behalf of the youngster, the nefarious meaning of the act, thoughtless word, or behavior.

Let me spell it out a little more clearly.

Curiosity is your deliberate choice to not assert your power.

You can be patient for a moment,
you can choose not to fly off the handle,
you can stop wringing your hands…
and instead, draw on the depth of your experience of life—

that things work out,
that you can fix problems,
that time is on your side,
that opinions and feelings change, and aren’t irreversible,
that moods swing,
that we’re all learning, all the time.

Parents must carry and exercise their power gracefully if they want to preserve a loving, mutually satisfying relationship with their kids which in turn fosters academic growth (amazingly!). How cool is that?

When a conflict arises such as

  • resistance to the math page,
  • reluctance to write,
  • pinching baby sister,
  • throwing away a perfectly good sandwich,
  • spouting beliefs contrary to the family expectations,
  • “forgetting” to clean the bathroom,
  • arguing about time limits for media, etc.,

then the child already knows that the parent has the power to win the argument.

Starting with judgments

  • “You’re lazy,”
  • “You know better,”
  • “You have to learn to spell or read or write,”
  • “Your sister is not a punching bag…”

leads to longer arguments and unhappiness in the relationship.

Curiosity can defuse an explosive situation—it allows a child to express a point of view before a summary judgment is rendered. Not just the “What happened?” question, shouted with exasperation; but the “I’m curious to know what you were thinking,” question expressed with gentle directness.

Curiosity allows problem solving. If you’ve got a child who every day for a week tells you she hates copywork, it’s a good idea to find out what “hate” means rather than assuming she is lazy, resistant, or trying to “get out of” the work.

If you ask a question like, “What’s going on inside you when you try to handwrite?” you may discover the exact bit of information you need. Perhaps the chair is too low to the big table and her forearm is leaning too hard against the edge, which hurts. Maybe her baby brother keeps gurgling and it’s hard to concentrate. Or maybe it’s something so silly: She wishes she could use a purple pen.

Likewise, if your child is laughing at the disturbing part of a film, rather than shame him for not seeing the cruelty between characters, find out what triggered the hysterics. Could there be some antic happening in the corner of the screen you missed? Or it may be that he doesn’t yet grasp the horror of the moment because he lacks life experience and just thought the bombs were cool. You may need to teach him nothing. Just knowing he’s not mature enough to get it could be okay.

In homeschool, curiosity is the key ingredient
to educational growth.

Our kids are not supposed to be repositories for adult information. They are meant to be like plants unfurling their light green limbs toward the sun of illumination. Insight (that fabulous experience of lighting up within when you “get” it) comes when a person connects the dots in their own mind. It does not come secondhand (by lecture, or requirement).

What promotes insight is the opportunity to talk about all the fragments of information with an interested person.

When that person listens and mirrors without judgment, scripting, tricking, manipulating, or controlling the outcome of the conversation, the child has the chance to make connections for him or herself. The actual conclusions drawn by the child are less important than the process that helped form that tentative conclusion.

Allow your child room to grow in the sunlight of your curiosity and love!

Image © Vasiliy Koval | Dreamstime.com

Posted in Parenting | 2 Comments »