too little butter

That's how I feel lately. Like Bilbo Baggins said, Too little butter spread over toast. We have been sick and I am still recovering. Tired as I am, simple tasks seem overwhelming, like doing dishes, putting kids to bed, school time... It doesn't help that Kaylee woke us up three times last night and two times the night before.

It also doesn't help that I have been so focused on writing. This week, it was a race. Knowing that I would be starting a job next week, I wanted to be done. But then I want to be finished. It feels like it is long past time, and the act of polishing is becoming quite tedious. I am so close to finishing this book I can almost taste it. And there's a self-published book contest in May. If I can finish in February and publish in March, maybe, just maybe I could enter this contest in time.

I wonder how other mothers do it all because I sure know that I fall down and struggle and mess up so much. The house is a mess and I often feel 10 steps behind. There is only so much I can do in a day, and I wish I had two of me. One to clean and move the children in the right direction (to pick up their clothes and toys, to sit down and eat, to head off to bed), and one to do the schooling and the writing.

Kindergarten and preschool teachers have teacher aids. And I want one too. Someone to keep the focus and keep things moving and help me get things done. They would get the kids' breakfast while I put dinner in the crockpot, and then they'd do the morning dishes while I do schooltime. They would entertain Kaylee while I work with Makani and Rowena, and then I would sit down to write while they put the kids down for naps. They'd make sure everything was straightened up and put away and maybe do the laundry.

When nap time's over, the house would be wonderful, and there would be plenty of time to have dinner and do the dishes, and I would then have plenty of energy to play with the kids. After bedtime, I could write some more and still do schooling, parenting, and have a clean house. Oh yes, life would be great if I could duplicate myself for just the hours between 9 and 3.

Or be rich enough to hire a maid.

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.

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.

Celebrating Successes to Beat Depression

As a home schooling parent, I sometimes get lost in the worry that I am not doing enough. I am sure the whole world over, parents struggle with this issue, but when parents decide to take responsibility for their child's education with home schooling, it's as though that worry gets amplified ten times over.

Lately, I have felt a bit like a hypocrite. I write about parenting and home schooling, and although I do follow my own advice, I don't feel like I really do have it all together. Especially not right now. I'm a working mom, and I'm about to lose my job. So in the midst of home schooling, I have to keep working at my current job and find another one.

Only, there are no jobs in my field in the city where I live. All the jobs are located in the bigger city to the south of us. With the housing market the way it is, we are trapped in our house unless we decide to abandon it, ruining our credit in the meantime. Otherwise, I will have a long commute, and rather than being away from home 9 hours a day, I could be gone 10 or 11 hours a day.

I have cried myself to sleep several nights in the past two weeks. And with the feelings of discouragement and fear, I have been very negative with my words. I have railed at God, and I have said some very foul things about myself.

I decided today that I need to say something good about myself. I hate to hear my children speak negative words, and when I hear it come from their mouths (which thankfully is rare), I immediately make a move to build them up. Why is it that I don't give myself that same grace?


1. I hugged and kissed my children before bed last night and again this morning before I left for work.
2. I hugged and kissed my husband ten times this morning just to be sure he knows I love him.
3. I packed a tasty, gluten free salad for lunch today, taking good care of my health and tantalizing my taste buds. (roasted pumpkin seeds, ham, mozzarella, spinach, tomato, and avocado with olive oil & garlic vinegar dressing) It is important to eat healthy, but it is even more important to enjoy every bite.
4. I take time aside to exercise with my husband several times a week. It's good for me, but it is also good for him. In this way, I help to take care of him while I take care of myself.
5. The days that I don't exercise with my husband, I often get the family out for a walk in the park, so that we all move together. This is having family time, sharing the joys of nature with my children, and teaching my children to exercise.
6. I am not a helicopter mom. I don't hover too close, and I don't give constant instructions. I don't do everything for them. This means that they aren't dressed like perfect angels with spotless clothes and their hair done with cute little ribbons. I sometimes feel like a failure for this, but I believe it is better for them to dress themselves than that their clothes match and that they have the right kind of shoes for their outfits.
7. I actually get down and play with my kids.
8. I try to listen to my kids. I try to stop and hear what they are trying to tell me. Sometimes I have to stop daydreaming first, but I do get down on my knees to be eye level with them and hear what they say.
9. I spend time doing what my husband is interested in. I quite happily follow him into whatever adventure he has for us. I play his games, watch his movies, and enjoy every minute of it. I talk about the geeky things he likes, and he is always so proud to tell his friends about how geeky his wife is.
10. I have written a 450 page novel. That is by no means a small task. OK, there are many people who write novels and think its good when it is just crap. I have learned quite a bit about writing in the past year, and I know when I started what I wrote was crap. My characters were flat, the detail was empty, and my plot had holes. I kept coming back to it and changing it, making it grow into something better. I didn't give up.
11. I always keep moving forward. I never give up. No matter how discouraged I get, I am not a quitter.

If you also feel down and discouraged, please make a list like this. Keep going until you finally believe the good words you are writing.

Eternity of Childhood

I remember how time seemed to stop when I was a kid. Summer days would blend together into something that felt much like eternity. We would play in the dirt for hours, with nothing pressing on our minds but enjoying the hot summer air. I wonder if that is what heaven is like, the wonderment of childhood and the joy of doing nothing.

Here I am, a working mom who is also homeschooling and involved in so many activities that I don't know how I make it from day to day. And then for a moment, I sit and watch my kids play, and that feeling of eternity comes rushing back to me.

I used to work in the garden while they played in the dirt beside me. They would spend hours just moving dirt from one bucket to another. It is amazing to me how that would fascinate them. Now the neighborhood kids come to play in our yard because we have a plastic jungle gym that they love to play on. While the other kids our sitting around on the jungle gym, my kids are collecting bugs.

M comes running up to the three boys, visiting one evening. "I have three slugs," she says, excitedly.

"Why does she keep getting slugs?" one boy asks another.

And I am grinning from ear to ear because I know I have accomplished something wonderful: I have taught them to explore and not to be afraid of the dirt. I haven't overmanaged them, and thus I have the most inquisitive, most ingenuitive, most explorative girls I have ever met.

My 3 princesses wear nothing but dresses because that is what they like, but even then, they don't worry about getting dirty. They still climb, run, play, dig, capture bugs, and dance like ballerinas. R tells me that she is going to be a "superhero princess" when she grows up, and I tell her that she does not have to wait. She can be one now.

I am pleased.

Yes, I am pleased to be part of this eternal world that homeschooling has given us to share with our children. This is what life should be.

Never Let Criticism Affect Your Home Schooling Style

Every mistake I made in home schooling came when I allowed criticisms to affect me. Criticism often leads to one of two behaviors: (1) overreaction or (2) stubborn refusal to change. For me, it is usually overreaction, which isn't good for me or the kids.

One well-meaning friend (or maybe not so well meaning) related a story about an acquaintance whose children failed the achievement tests because the parents had always provided the answers in their home school. I then got ultra paranoid that if I give the kids the answers they'll never learn, but you have to give them the answers before they can be expected to know the answers.

My in-laws said that parents cannot effectively discipline their own children, and I felt the need to prove to myself that I was a good disciplinarian. I ended up being too rough on the kids, especially the whining which only led to more whining.

A stranger said I would never be able to provide the amount of time that children need to learn. Two hours? Not enough time. Three hours? Four hours? Five hours? If I gave 3 hours of dedicated home schooling and my husband also gave that much time, it still would not be enough for the kids to learn what they would need to learn. This attitude only leads to burn out.

Then there is the usual criticism: socialization. Let's just stop there. Paying any attention to this criticism only leads to paranoia and dysfunctional children. Children are naturally better at socializing than we are as adults.

So I encourage you to ignore criticisms. Even better yet, don't put yourself into a position to be criticized. Other people's opinions should just be kept to themselves.

Finding Joy in the Midst of Home Schooling

I spoke with a friend of mine about the struggles of home schooling. Like me, she has just started home schooling her oldest daughter who is just a few weeks younger than my oldest daughter. We talked much about our frustrations. She has recently come to a place of peace that I have had at times, and her words of encouragement really helped me find joy in home schooling once again. So I thought I'd share this with you as well.

Home Schooling Rule #1 - Avoid the Ruse of Perfection
Perfection is a carefully veiled lie. It sounds great, but really it saps your energy and causes you to run in circles. The perfect schedule straps you down. The perfect organization system keeps you from stepping outside the box. The perfect curriculum prevents exploration. Perfection is a sterile imitation of life.

Life is changing. Life requires adjustment. Life breathes and grows and makes messes all around you. If you stumble into perfection, you will not be ready for the next problem life throws your way. You will not be ready to adjust to the new needs of your home schooling family.


Home Schooling Rule #2 - Don't Let Your Curriculum Trap You
Curriculum can get boring. Curriculum can be great for one child but completely miss the needs of another. Curriculum can be old and stale and stodgy. The great thing about home schooling is that learning is more than just a text book. Instead, learning is about life. Home schooling is about making learning your lifetime endeavor, and curriculum is just a springboard to many interesting topics.

Your job as the teacher is not to force the kids through their text books. Your job is to bring them to the well of learning and show them how wonderful it is to drink from it. The joys of reading, the wonders of science, the mysteries of history, the excitement of numbers: all these things are naturally a part of a child's wonderment. We just need to fuel it.


Home Schooling Rule #3 - Remember to Have Fun
"If you are not having fun, most likely the kids aren't having fun either," my friend said to me. My favorite learning activity was when we did a unit study on flowers. Sure we read lots of books about the life cycle of the flower and the parts of the flower, but the most fun was when we picked different colored flowers and crushed them on paper. What a colorful mess that was! We added glitter and then cut the paper in the shape of butterflies. Art and science all in one.


Home Schooling Rule #4 - Don't Be Ruled by Fear
When fear becomes our motivation, we make faulty and unhealthy decisions. Fears of failure could lead to over schooling. Fears of the state requirements could lead to an excessive amount of testing. Fears of disapproval from parents, in-laws, and neighbors could lead to putting your kids accomplishments on display in a way that is not healthy. Fears of inadequacy could lead to overcompensating with tough curriculum or too much curriculum. Fears of not finding the perfect curriculum could lead to not picking any curriculum.

See my point? Fear twists our behaviors into something that is not healthy and generally causes us to walk either the road of perfection or laziness. A healthier perspective is to let go of all those fears and jump into the fun of learning, much like a child.


Conclusion
Jesus said, "Unless you become like a little child, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven." Home schooling is the opportunity to learn what it is like to have the faith of a child again: to love learning, to explore without reservation or fear, to trust that all things will work out in the end.

My Letter of Intent, 2008

M will be 6 this summer and starting first grade. So I finally wrote my first letter of intent. Having a loose homeschooling style made it hard to document our curriculum, but I finally figured out what I wanted to use and how I wanted to present it.

Here is what I wrote for our list of materials:

Curriculum & Core Materials

Language Arts
Reading
We love to read and visit the library on a weekly basis, restocking our supply of books and reading material on a regular basis. Along with library visits, we will use the following reading resources:
* Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann

Spelling, Writing, & Vocabulary
We will assign frequent writing assignments to build handwriting and spelling skills. These following books will supplement these assignments:
* A Reason for Spelling: Student Workbook Level A by Rebecca Burton
* Wordly Wise 3000: Book A by Kenneth Hodkinson and Sandra Adams
* A child’s dictionary

Social Studies
Geography
We have a United States map puzzle, and we also have a world map on the wall and will continue to study the cultures of different countries. Along with learning about these cultures, we will use these resources:
* National Geographic Our World: A Child's First Picture Atlas published by National Geographic Society
* The Kingfisher First Picture Atlas published by Editors of Kingfisher

History
We will cover history using the following curriculum:
* History for Little Pilgrims by Michael McHugh

Mathematics
We take a hands-on approach with mathematics, building the understanding of the abstract concepts before applying it to paper. Therefore, we have many learning activities, projects, and games before we do the lessons in the workbooks.
* Math Basics Grade 1 published by I Know It! Books
* Time & Money Grades 1 - 2 published by I Know It! Books
* Count on Math: Activities for Small Hands and Lively Minds by Pam Schiller and Lynne Peterson (Chapters 10, 11, and 12)
* Reader Rabbit 1st Grade Version 1.0 computer program

Science
We take a hands-on approach to science as well, using science experiments along with science handouts and supplemental material from the library. The curriculum from which we work contains 24 different lessons, and we use these lessons as “springboards” to go deeper into the topic.
* Janice VanCleave's Teaching the Fun of Science to Young Learners: Grades Pre-K through 2 by Janice VanCleave
* Janice VanCleave's Big Book of Play and Find Out Science Projects by Janice VanCleave
* The Best of The Mailbox Science First Grade
* Supplemental Library Material

Health & Safety
We discuss safety and fire prevention as part of our family rules and parental discipline. We will continue to enforce the following concepts that Makani already understands:
* why she should wear her seatbelt when she is in the car
* why she should wear a helmet when she rides her bike
* why she should not put a plastic bag over her head
* why she should not put a rope around her neck
* why she should not play with matches or a lighter

We will continue to educate her on these safety issues by teaching her what to do in case of a fire or a tornado.

Physical Education
Currently, we encourage dancing, running, bike riding, and other physical activity. We will continue to encourage this kind of creative play and will also enroll Makani in YMCA classes for swimming and gymnastic lessons.

Fine Arts
We enjoy both music and art within our home. We will continue to explore fine arts education with the following creative resources:
* Garage Band by Apple (music computer program)
* Finale Songwriter 2007 by eMedia (music computer program)
* Music Lessons (piano)
* Classical Music (Mozart, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi, Beethoven)
* ArtRage 2.5 (art computer program)
* Art mediums including paint, crayons, markers, chalk, and colored pencils
* Craft projects including sewing, building with wood, making puppets, etc.

Overall Approach and Focused Lessons

We recently looked at our state legal requirements as M will be in first grade next year. This upcoming school year will be our first "formal" homeschooling experience. It is not that this year was not real homeschooling; it is that I determined that kindergarten would be a trial period. If I could not do it and work too, then we could just say that we held her back a year.

So looking at the state requirements, I began to think ahead to what we would cover over the next year. With this in mind, I write today on our overall homeschooling (unschooling) approach.


READING, WRITING, AND LANGUAGE
I do not cover every subject in the course of a day, or even in the course of a week. Instead, I focus on skills I want them to learn to prepare for the future. I once heard someone complain about their kid's school: they spend one week on a math concept, and before the kid has mastered it, they are on to the next skill.

It is not that we do not do other lessons other than the skill that we currently learn, but the other stuff is "life." Art, music, and reading are things we do to enjoy life, very much like playing. It is what kids do.

Right now, M's focus is on writing now that reading is doing so well. She still reads, of course, but I no longer have to sit with her and help her through it. So, to cover writing, I write the story, and she copies it. My purpose in this to guide her towards writing on the lines (this was a major problem) and towards learning to spell, and now I am using it for vocabulary words too. She loves to write so much that, to her, this is a fun activity.

R's focus is language. To prepare her to read, I encourage her to talk. Several times a week, I sequester myself in her room with her at bedtime, and the two of us read books together. Sometimes, I read, and we talk about the book. Other times, I encourage her to make up the story for me. We also have a game that we call "The Floor," which teaches them not to interrupt and to take turns talking. We play this game at dinner, and whoever has "the floor" gets to tell a story. Normally, she let's M do the talking for her, and this gives her the opportunity to talk and not be interrupted.

ART
So, we focus on one subject that seems to need work, and then we have lots of fun in other areas, like art and music and math games. Art is something that we do everyday. The girls have access to art supplies (markers, crayons, paint, chalk, paper), and they often make up their own projects. We got some craft books, so every few days, we do a more formal craft.

For Christmas, we got for the girls a lot of sewing kits and some wooden models in order to explore new areas of art, other than paper-oriented crafts.

MUSIC
Music appreciation is also a constant part of our day. Little Einstein's opens their eyes to great composers, and then they just about go haywire over that piece of music. Stravinsky's Firebird is one of their favorites. We also have children's music for them and they each have their own CD player that they are always listening to.

In the upcoming year, we have some plans to increase their music education by giving them access to some music programs on the computer and then to enroll them in some piano lessons.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Physical education is also part of being a kid. As long as they are not put in front of the TV, they will exercise, and we often take nature walks and ride bikes--when the weather is not so cold.

We intend to increase this by enrolling the girls into some YMCA classes: swimming, dance, and gymnastics.

MATH
Unfortunately, math fell by the wayside for a little bit of time as we focused more on language, but truthfully, I think that is only because I am still used to the typical school math curriculum, which is all paper oriented. What we do with math is focused on R, and so I use a lot of games and activities that I found in the Count On Math book. We justed started chapter five, which is about one-to-one correspondance, and I doubt we will be on the topic long because M & R seem to both have already mastered the concept.

At the same time, we have worked with M on adding. She did it on paper using a number bar, but I wanted to take her away from the paper and see it more visually. So I took eleven blocks and three pieces of paper. On one paper, I placed 1 block, and on another paper, I put zero blocks. Finally, on the third paper, I wrote "1 + 0 =" in one column and "0 + 1 =" in another column. We did that ten times, adding one more block each time, to help her understand adding by ones. The next day, we added by twos.

We also started using paper and objects to practice counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's. I would set blocks in groups of twos and have her count them, and then I would reinforce the lesson by writing all the numbers 1-20 and putting circles around the even numbers. I'd have her read the circled numbers, and then we would go back to counting the blocks.

We also have some math workbooks that we have not used in a while. Very shortly, M will focus on her workbooks instead of writing.

SCIENCE
Last summer, we spent a lot of time on science. It was a natural part of our exploration and part of our reading. We actually have a first grade science curriculum that we have worked more than halfway through. We have covered plants, animals, insects, and weather. I treat the book as more of an idea book. I get a few worksheets that the girls enjoy, which I use to introduce a subject, and it has some good book suggestions. But for each chapter that they offer a week's worth of lessons, we plunge into the topic for at least a month.

Right now, we are learning about birds because the girls expressed some interest in the topic. M was birdwatching and making up names for the birds she saw (she called one a "sweet bird" because it likes to eat sweet stuff, according to her), so we got out our old field guide and also ordered some books from the library.

SOCIAL STUDIES
Social studies includes history and geography as well as building an understanding of our world. We just went through the Little House in the Big Woods, which is great for learning about history and for seeing the world from a very different perspective.

Now we are about to embark on a new road: a study of the different cultures of the world. M has a Dora World Adventure CD that has music from many different cultures, so I will use that as a means to branch into this new area. We will post a world map on our living room wall, and then we will focus on each of the major countries. The map will be a reference point as we move from culture to culture.

We will start with Russia because that is where Stravinsky's Firebird takes place, and so the girls have heard of Russia before. I have ordered from the library books that cover art, music, stories, food, and even a little of the language too.

Facing Opposition

Many people support us in our home schooling quest while others lecture us on the fallacies of our choice, and still others (grandparents) outright oppose us. Someone told us that we could not effectively discipline our children, that children need to learn that the world does not revolve around them and that they will only learn that by being one out of many.



In some ways, there is truth there. Children need to learn that they don't run the universe. In other ways, there is a big nasty lie in that message because learning that you are just one in a million does not teach you that you are not in charge. It only teaches you that there is nothing special about you and that blending into society, hiding in the masses, is the best road for life. Living by society's standards and getting by with the status quo is not the road to freedom on which our founding fathers built this nation.



Facing the opinions of others has been one of my most challenging homeschooling dilemmas. I faced it with the "I am going to prove them wrong" mantra and then overdid the homeschooling efforts until we all burned out. I really should not have allowed myself to be concerned. The appropriate response was to let it go and to carry on as normal.


So this last weekend, the grandparents came to visit. Memaw was quite impressed with our progress. She joined in with our art activities, and we talked a lot about M's progress, how well she can read, etc. We talked about R, and what she is doing too. Then Memaw talked about when TJ was young and how she taught him many things before he even started school. I did not say it, but she really was an unschooling mother. She told me how she never set out to teach him anything, but she answered his questions, which is how he learned to read and tell time before he even started kindergarten.

These last few visits, not one word of opposition has been said. The truth is we do not need to argue with opposers. When we procede as usual, the results will speak for themselves.

I think the one criticism most misinformed people state is "socialization." And I have met my share of annoying, bratty, "unsocialized" homeschooled children, especially when I was a kid. But I have also met my share of annoying, bratty, "unsocialized" schooled children as well. Being thrown in a school does not make you "socialized."

When my oldest was just a baby, I remember meeting one young lady who was homeschooled. Every time I spoke to her, it shocked me to think she was only 6. She talked with confidence, she looked you in the eye, she acted like an adult. She had no bigotry based on age as she seemed to think of herself as an equal--but not in a bratty way.