Reasons to Ignore Parenting Advice

Everywhere you go, people spout their opinions.  In-laws and parents alike, neighbors, coworkers, people at church:  they all have their opinions and freely tell you what you should and should not be doing.

Listening to wisdom is a good thing, but sometimes these people aren't offering wise advice.  Sometimes they are just bragging about how much better they are, building themselves up at your expense.  Sometimes they've never had children.  Sometimes you watch them say some pretty nasty things to their own kids.  Sometimes their advice just won't work for your family's needs.

And when you are a home schooling family, everybody feels the need to put in their two cents about your child's education.  This often leads to carrying burdens that we would do much better without.  Here are a few reasons to ignore unwanted and often foolish advice.

1.  There is more than one way to solve a problem or to do something.  You need to find the resources and the methods that work for you.

2.  Every child is different.  What works for one does not always work with another.  I have three children, and I have to deal with each child differently.  How much more so when you go from one family to another!

3.  God put your children in your hands.  It is your responsibility before the Lord to raise your children with wisdom and kindness and love and nurturing admonition.  That job does not belong to anyone else.

4.  Other people are not omnipotent.  They do not have all the answers.

5.  You can often get conflicting advice.  One person tells you to make your child cry it out, but another says that is cruel.  If you listen to everyone, you'll just tie yourself into knots.

6.  And if you allow yourself to be sidetracked from your purpose by every wave of advice, then you will just be spinning in circles.  You will lose your purpose.

I have had people tell me that my kids can't learn from me because I'll be too soft.  Or I'll give them all the answers, and then they will only learn to depend on me.  Or only a teacher can appropriately discipline a child.  Or they won't get socialized.  If I focus on these things (and there have been times that I have), I'll find myself trying to prove them wrong or be overly hard with the discipline or extra tough on their schoolwork.

And then home schooling has lost its joy for all of us.

Here I am saying to ignore the advice of others when I am writing a parenting / home schooling blog to give advice.  But hey, even I can get on my high horse and spout nonsense every now and then.  Even I can become all high and mighty and not really meet your needs as a parent.

So when someone does give you advice, look at it carefully.  Ask yourself:  Is this wisdom?  Would this work for us?  Is there a smidgeon of truth in this criticism?  If so, what do I need to do about it?  If not, be sure to move on and ignore it.

Finally, do your own research.  Decide for yourself what is the best parenting approach, and then test all advice against your personal plan.  Study up on wise parenting written by people you trust.  I always enjoyed books by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish or by Jane Nelson Ed.D.

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and How to Listen So Kids Will Talk is a practical guide to communicating with children.  They tell you how to express yourself clearly, how to listen effectively, how to motivate, and how to discipline.  But they don't just tell you what to do.  They tell you why.

Liberated Parents, Liberated Children:  Your Guide to a Happier Family is Adele Faber's and Elaine Mazlish's personal story as they learned to apply their parenting method to their children.  Between the two of them, they had 6 children, and they relate honestly their own triumphs and failures.  It made me feel less guilty for my own failures, and more humble about my triumphs.

Positive Discipline by Jane Nelson Ed.D. in some ways builds on some of the concepts I learned in Faber's and Mazlish's books.  In other ways, she has her own perspective on discipline.  I gotta say, discipline became a lot more effective when I applied her wisdom to my methods.

Toddler Gift List

I admit that I am not looking forward to the toy dump we will get this coming Christmas. The last thing we need in our house is more toys. We have so many toys that I doubt that they can enjoy what they already have.



Knowing that grandparents and aunts and uncles flood the girls with plenty of toys, we have tried to find a way to make Christmas special without toys. When they were little, we focused on learning toys and art supplies. So here is a great list of educational things to get for young children.




Reading:

For her second birthday, little K got a LeapFrog Little Touch LeapPad for ages 6 to 36 months. Prior to getting this present, she had no patience to sit for a book. Suddenly, it seemed like a whole new world had opened up for her. She would love to sit on my lap and flip the pages. I didn't have to read or say anything. I would just watch as her love for reading blossomed.





From there, I started getting baby board books for her from the library. She was hooked. Sandra Boynton board books are colorful and cute as well as entertaining for child and adult alike. TJ and I exchange smiles at our favorite lines, and where we once quoted our favorite movies while cooking, you can now hear us saying, "But not the armadillo."



Like many children's books, Moo, Baa, La La La discusses the sounds animals make. Well, except that the three singing pigs don't say oink. They say, "La, La, La." I could easily read this book over and over again without getting bored or annoyed.



In But Not the Hippopotamus, the animals are all doing things together, except the hippo which just hides to watch everyone else have fun. Then finally the animals stop what they are doing and get the hippo to join in. Now all the animals are together. Well, except for the armadillo.



Dinos to Go is about 7 dinosaurs with different personality traits. One dinosaur named Hey-Ho Howdy sings loud, real loud, and I can't help but think of near and dear friends of ours that fit this description. Some of the pages get long for young ones. I would often read the first few lines for each dino, and then as the girls grew older, I'd read more of the descriptions.




Art:

M and R already have their own art supplies. Their own scissors. Their own glue. K has watched and wished. Christmas is a good time to get her some supplies of her own, but also art is a good way of keeping little hands busy. Toddlers are often left out of the school planning. We are often so focused on teaching the oldest their spelling words and teaching the middle one how to read that the youngest gets forgotten.



Putting the toddler at the table with a piece of paper and a pair of safety scissors is a way to keep them occupied while you teach. I like this particular pair of scissors. They are not sharp enough to hurt a child, but they still work well on paper. It took us a long time to find a pair of scissors that didn't leave both us and the child frustrated.



A bottle of Elmer's glue gives the child an opportunity to glue their cut pieces of colorful constructrion paper onto another paper. Scissors, glue, paper? Sound like a cheesy gift? Not to a toddler. Add some washable markers or better yet some Mix-Ems, and you will have hours of entertainment that keeps your toddler's hands busy and you free to work.



Keep these stored as part of your school supplies to control the mess and to help teach responsibility. Although these are gifts, it is okay to keep them in a cabinet to be used when you can oversee the projects.




Fine Motor Skills & Mathematics:

These toys are meant to build fine motor skills and are great tools for teaching mathematics as well.



Building with MegaBloks promotes hand coordination, spatial awareness, geometry, and imagination. Believe it or not, I have even used it for pre-reading skills by creating stories around the things we built. As my children grew, I used MegaBloks to teach other mathematical skills, such as sorting & classification, patterns, addition, and subtraction.



Stringing beads and lacing & tracing shapes are more great tools for keeping young kids busy. Keep some wooden puzzles, a toddler tote, a bag full of interesting rocks, another bag full of plastic lids, and some playdough, and you will have a wide array of interesting things for toddlers to explore at the kitchen table.

Book Review: My Cat, The Silliest Cat in the World

My Cat, The Silliest Cat in the World

by Gilles Bachelet

I am an elephant girl. My husband loves wolves, and I like elephants. Our unity candle sits on the mantel, surrounded by wolf and elephant figurines. So when I say I liked this book, I gotta admit I am a little biased.

Reading this book to the girls was fun. With each page, M compared the "cat's" behavior to real cats. R just sucked her thumb and listened. And K scrunched her nose and said, "That's not a cat. That's an elephant." Unfortunately, I do not have the ability to write baby speak very well, so I cannot add the cuteness that she had when she made that statement.

I said, "Yes, that's not a cat, but the owner sure thinks he is." K just looked more deeply at the pages. This was a new concept for her, calling something by something other than what it is. She was quiet for a few moments. I wonder what her little brain was thinking.

I love the pictures of the elephant doing cat like things, grooming, sleeping, and chasing a ball of yarn. Somehow the artist did a magnificent job drawing the elephant grooming in the same posture you would see a cat. Or the more amazing part was the Siamese cat-elephant, the Persian cat-elephant, or the calico cat-elephant. Sometimes it seemed as though my eyes were playing tricks on me.

In the end, the owner tries to find his cat's breed in a cat book. He decides his cat must not be listed in the book.

Excellent story. Very fun to read. I highly recommend that you check this book out from your library or buy it here.

Finding Creativity

That's me in this picture.  Being silly.  Finding creativity. Finding myself.

I was browsing amazon.com for books on writing, which led me to books on writing about motherhood, which led me to a book called The Creative Family. The picture intrigued me. It made me feel homey. It made me yearn for home and family and children. And creativity.

So I used the Amazon's Look Inside feature to read a few pages. Chapter one was a very simple concept. "Teach your children to be creative by being creative yourself." Hmm, I already know that. But oh, it felt so good to hear it. I'm not sure what it was that made her words so much more powerful, but I felt a yearning waken in me.

Oh, I am creative. I love to draw and write and scrapbook. But somewhere along the line it stopped being an exploratory pursuit and turned into something else to do. It stopped being play and started being a job. Something more to get done. Something more to accomplish. Another short story. Another article. Another home school assignment.

I wanted to be a kid again and just enjoy art for the sake of art. Not to improve myself or make some money or be a better mother or make my house more beautiful. But instead, just to have fun.

With this thought in mind, I decided to be more playful during bedtime routine last night. Little R brought me some "soup." She had a bowl, a toy cat, and spatula. "I'm mixing," she said proudly to me.

"Are you making cat soup?" I said, making a yucky face.

"Eat some, Mommy!"

"Oh no, yucky, yucky, yucky!" I shake my head and make faces. She laughs.

She insists. I must try the cat soup.

I pretend to take a tiny, tiny sip. And then proceed to make the most horrible faces. She laughs again. But now the laughter is deeper, as though it came from the belly.

For the next five minutes, I proceed to exaggerate the most extradorinary expressions of disgust. And let me tell you, it felt so good to be kid for just five minutes. It was freeing. When it was done, I tucked the girls into bed, which they jumped into bed more readily than usual. They hugged me more tightly. And there was a deeply satisfied spark of happiness and contentment in their eyes that hadn't been there in a long time.

I imagine my eyes looked about the same.

Something profoundly spiritual had occurred in that playful moment. As though I had found myself once again. As though the years of stress and the heavy burdens of adulthood had fallen away.

Book Review: Tiny and Bigman

Tiny and Bigman

by Phillis Gershator

Miss Tiny is not really so tiny. She is so big and strong that it keeps her from getting married. Nobody wants to marry her because she makes them feel weak and useless. Well, that is until she meets Mr. Bigman, a tiny, weak little man who moves to the island.

I never liked women's lib stories for children. The promotion of the powerful woman at the expense of the weak man seems a bit like a childish competition to me. When M says to R, "I'm faster than you," I always say, "It's not a competition. It does not matter how fast you did something, what matters is that you did it in the first place." If you need to make someone else feel weak in order to feel strong, then there's a problem.

However, this story really isn't about the promotion of the strong and powerful woman at the expense of man. It is really just a sweet love story about a woman who loves to help others and how she finds her perfect match.

I love the cadence of this story. I can't help but fall into a little bit of an accent myself as I read outloud to the kids. And I'm not one for accents, yet this book just begs for it.

The pictures are colorful, illustrating a world and a culture that my kids have never experienced. Books are the road to experience new things, and this book brings that to life.

At the end, I always repeat the words from the story, "...kiss, kiss, kiss her on her soft brown cheek," and give them all hugs and kisses. Then they beg me to read it all again.

Book Review: The Princess and the Pizza

The Princess and the Pizza

by Mary Jane and Herm Auch

I want to retell the whole story from the beginning. I want to tell you every word about the witty princess and her side comments.

But oh for Pete's sake, that wouldn't be fair! Besides, I don't think I could do it justice. I know our kids loved the book, but not as much as we did. They didn't get it when the princess had to pass the pea in the mattress test and said, "This is so once-upon-a-time!" They didn't get it when the princess said "Oh for Pete's --- aaah," and this named the first pizza.

They didn't get it when the princess ran away, refusing to marry the prince, and started her own pizza parlor.

But they liked it all the same. And we still laugh together about the princess and her accidental pizza pie. And we still remark, "Oh for Pete's sake," and our children look at us like we are crazy.

5 secrets for busy mothers

A bit of wisdom that I have learned in the past and need to learn once again:

1. Get up while the house is still quiet. Get your breakfast. Get your shower. Have a moment to drink your coffee and plan your day. You are worth the extra effort to take care of yourself before you start to serve others.

If you let them wake you, you will be 10 steps behind the rest of the day. And you will be too tired and grumpy to tackle the day's challenges.

2. Keep a journal. Write your thoughts and contemplate yourself. Take the time to recognize your emotional state. Emotions are often warning messages, helping you know when to rest and when something is not healthy. Take the time to ask yourself who you really are. Knowing yourself and finding yourself are integral for good parenting. Then take time to pray and read a Bible verse.

3. Find time to exercise. When the children are grown and you face yourself again, you will wish that you had taken care of yourself. Just as it is not your wish for your children to be unhealthy, it is not God's wish for you either. He cherishes you just as you cherish your children. Parental duties and jobs should never get in the way of this.

4. Eat lunch. And have a snack. At the end of the day, I find that I snap more. Why? I don't feel hungry, but once I've eaten dinner my mood improves. We are finite people. Only God is infinite, and we are dependent on water, food, and God to nourish our lives. So don't be a martyr and eat something.

5. Talk quiet walks frequently. Not for the purpose of exercise. Not for some goal. Just for the chance to meander and to be quiet. To have solitude. Parents are goal-oriented. Everything we do has a purpose, whether it is to cook dinner, buy groceries, pay the bills, or get some exercise. We are always striving.

However, children are experience-oriented. They do stuff for the simple joy of being. Growing up has made us lose that eternal quality of just being.

Herding Cats

Chaos. That's all I can say to describe most mornings in our house. No wonder we're always late everywhere we go. I'm not one of those mothers who have everything under control. I'm just not naturally organized. What little organization I have, I've worked hard to obtain. And if I'm not careful, it all slips away.

Shoes are not always where they are supposed to be. And now that it is getting colder, we have to hunt down coats. Why are the only shoes in the closet sandles? Little K runs around in her pull-up, still wearing her pajama top and she has one sandal on the wrong foot. No pants. No socks. And one wrong-seasoned shoe. Little R is still asleep. And M, also still in her pajamas, is starting an art project.

And we should have left 15 minutes ago.

Food is on the table. But nobody is eating.

And once everyone is ready, I realize that I didn't even brush my teeth yet!

Herding Cats. Yes, that's exactly what our life is like.

Taking a Midday Break: a parenting necessity

My husband TJ has been the stay-at-home dad throughout the early years of all three of our children. When the second little girl was born, our oldest stopped napping. At 1 year and 9 months, she was alert and happy and did not seem to need the extra sleep anymore.

Poor TJ. He would run all day, taking care of a newborn and a toddler. He'd miss lunch, and by the end of the day, he was tired, grumpy, and unbearable.

Parents are on duty 24/7, and those that are home all day never get a break. There are no coffee breaks. There is no lunch break. There is no time to shut your eyes and take a deep breath. Because the moment you do, there are children clambering for something. "More milk, Daddy!" "I want to wear these clothes now." "I gotta go potty!"

Once you add home schooling to your parenting duties, forget having any down time. Your down time is spent with lesson plans and cleaning up art supplies.

TJ and I had a big fight one night when M was 2 years old and R was just 6 months. He hadn't eaten all day, and we went grocery shopping directly after I got off of work. Was it 8 or 9 o'clock when we got home? I can't remember, and he was hungry and had a migraine. I ruined his pizza, and he flew off the handle.

"All right, that's it," I said. "They must all go down for naps at the same time from now on. M does not have to sleep. Just let her play quietly in her room for an hour and a half."

To this day, we still have that policy. Sure, M is 6 and doesn't need the extra sleep, and R is 4 and rarely sleeps during the day. K is 2 and still needs to sleep most days. But we still need the break every day. We still need a moment to collect our selves, plan the rest of the day, and eat lunch.

The kids benefit too. The tendency in our day and age is to over schedule our days and to plan too many special events for our children. As home schooling parents, we sometimes feel the need to make up for whatever they might be missing from school or to prove to in-laws that the children really are excelling at everything. But specialists have discovered that children need downtime and unorganized play to develop. Quiet time is as good for them as it is for us.

How do you entertain younger children while home schooling?

Busy schedules and young children don't always mix well in a home schooling family.  What do you do to keep your children involved or occupied?

Do you give them an age appropriate activity that does not require your help? 

Or do you get them involved in your lessons?

Please share with everyone and include your children's ages.