Busting Myths or Overgeneralizing?

My m-i-l gave me a copy of this Chicago Tribune article about raising a child with Down syndrome.

I'm kind of torn here, because I agree with both the moms who say their children are a joy and those who say making Down syndrome look like butterflies and sunshine could mislead people. The bottom line is that while having a child with Ds is both good and difficult, it's not up to us to decide whether a fetus with Down syndrome should live. God has already given that child life. He made the decision...it's not ours.

I hope all parents of unborn children with Ds are being told that there are parents who will adopt their child if they can't handle him or her. One agency that does that is CHASK.

Homeschoolers = Green?

Susan notes that her homeschooling lifestyle is just naturally green (i.e. environmentally beneficial). I think she's right. I think ours is green, too. We don't use individually packaged anything either. We don't need to, because, like Susan's family, we eat using plates and silverware at home.

What do you think? Is your homeschooling lifestyle green, too?

Treasures

Remember when you were a kid and you got hold of a special treat, like a box of Chiclets or a bag of M&Ms, and you couldn't wait to share some with someone special?

That's how I feel about Elisabeth Elliot. Anything she does is so wonderful that I just want to share it with my friends. She's so encouraging, so wise, so Biblically accurate that I can never get enough of her work.

Here are some Elisabeth Elliot treasures I want to share with you. First off, here's a list of back issues of her newsletters. At her Web site, you will find a link to her very encouraging radio broadcasts, which she stopped doing in 2001. (Here's a direct link to the transcripts of those broadcasts.)

I was fortunate to receive one of her books for my birthday: Keep a Quiet Heart. The most recent book of hers I read was Discipline: The Glad Surrender, and it was certainly a good one!

I included her fantastic book Shaping of a Christian Family, The: How My Parents Nurtured My Faith in the reading list found in my own book, Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers, Second Edition: A Parent-Friendly Curriculum For Teaching Teens To Handle Money, Live Moral Lives And Get Ready For Adulthood, and all three of my older kids have read it.

One of her most famous books is Through Gates of Splendor, the story of her first husband, missionary Jim Elliot, who was murdered by some of the Ecuadorian Indians he and his fellow missionaries were trying to reach with the Gospel (the movie End of the Spear is also about that sad event).

You'll enjoy Elisabeth Elliot's work. And lest you think she can't understand what your life is like because she only ever had one child, you should know that her daughter is a homeschooling mom of eight :)

Thoughts on Turning Fif....Fif...25x2

It’s true: time flies when you’re having fun. That’s why I’m having a hard time believing that I turn 50 today…I just don’t feel like I’ve been alive that long. And yet when I consider how much the world has changed since I arrived well into the Baby Boom years, I realize that 50 years is a long time (gulp).

When I was little, ladies wore hats and gloves to church; now some wear jeans and show cleavage. My dad, my grandpa and all of my uncles smoked, as did several of my aunts. Many of the adults I’d see in cars, restaurants and on the street smoked; now I don’t see many smokers in public at all, and no one in my family smokes except one aunt.

As a child, I rode in heavy metal cars with lots of chrome; now cars are plastic or thin metal, and they’re smaller and have more safety features. I remember holding my baby sister in the car; no, she wasn’t in a baby seat, nor did I wear a seat belt.

Like the rest of the kids in my neighborhood, I walked to school in the morning, walked home for lunch (and Bozo’s Circus on channel 9 at noon), walked back to school after lunch and walked back home at 3 o’clock. I always felt safe, because most of the houses I passed had moms in them. In fact, I didn’t know anyone whose mom had a job outside the home until I was in high school.

I never thought much about what it would be like to be 50 someday, but I have to admit there have been a few surprises. I didn’t think I’d need bifocals until much later, and who knew all those fillings my childhood dentist gave me would give out in my 40s, so that I now have more crowns than the Queen of England?

I don’t mind the gray hair (my crown of glory, according to the Bible) or the crow’s feet and smile lines (from lots of good times and laughter), but gravity is definitely taking its toll in a few places. Luckily, I don’t have my glasses on when I come out of the shower, which faces the mirror.

A sad surprise has been how many friends I would lose before I hit 50. A couple of my high school friends passed away within a few years of graduation. One of my childhood friends was murdered the year we turned 30; a pregnant homeschooling mom I knew passed away in her sleep two years later. My friend Linda died four years ago this month after fighting an aggressive cancer. My friend Gary died suddenly a few months ago. I guess I assumed all of us would make it to old age.

Other surprises: My dh and I bought our first house when we were 22, which might explain why I never dreamed I’d be renting a home at 50. But that’s how it worked out, and I’m certainly not complaining! God has blessed us with a nice home in a beautiful area, and while I don’t know what the future holds, I know He has it in His hands.

I also assumed I’d be working full-time outside the home by now, but instead I have a small business and can work at home, plus I’m fortunate enough to still have two kids at home, and to be able to homeschool them. This sure beats the high-powered career the 1970s feminists told my generation we’d need in order to be happy.

A few things do not surprise me. I’m not surprised that I’m still married…I never had any doubts that it would last, because God gave me a wonderful husband. Nor am I surprised that I love motherhood every bit as much as I thought I would. It’s been a fantastic experience that I continue to enjoy as the mom of two adults and two teens….and since last year, mother-in-law to one more!

As for the future, and the thought of turning 60, or 70, or 80, or even older (my great aunt lived to be 104!), that’s in God’s hands. Each year, more and more, I see His hand in everything, as He patiently reminds me that He’s in charge, and it’s all good.

A True Story of God's Provision

An American playwright, known not only for his highly acclaimed works ("Death of a Salesman," "The Crucible") but also for his marriage to the world's most famous screen siren, dies without admitting to the big secret in his life...the son with Down syndrome whom he institutionalized soon after birth. But after the playwright's death, it's discovered that he left his son a portion of his enormous wealth equal to that of his siblings, and now his son is set for life financially.

You know what struck me after reading this true story? How God looked out for the young man with Down syndrome....how his life turned out to be full of the love of others, even though his earthly father rejected him.

A friend of mine and I (we both have children with Ds) recently discussed wills and special needs trusts. She reminded me that God loves our boys and will look out for them. This article told me the same thing.

As a writer, I also found the ramifications of this father's act to be especially interesting:

It would be easy to judge Arthur Miller harshly, and some do. For them, he was a hypocrite, a weak and narcissistic man who used the press and the power of his celebrity to perpetuate a cruel lie. But Miller's behavior also raises more complicated questions about the relationship between his life and his art. A writer, used to being in control of narratives, Miller excised a central character who didn't fit the plot of his life as he wanted it to be. Whether he was motivated by shame, selfishness, or fear—or, more likely, all three—Miller's failure to tackle the truth created a hole in the heart of his story. What that cost him as a writer is hard to say now, but he never wrote anything approaching greatness after Daniel's birth. One wonders if, in his relationship with Daniel, Miller was sitting on his greatest unwritten play.

Who knows if he could have gotten his greatest play out of it? What matters is that he missed out on knowing his son, which was an enormous price to pay:

He had a bank account and a job, first at a local gym and then at a supermarket. He went to parties and concerts, and he loved to go out dancing. He was also a "natural athlete," says one social worker. He learned to ski, and competed in the Special Olympics, in that sport as well as in cycling, track, and bowling. "Everyone loved Danny," says Rich Godbout, who ran the supported living program. "His greatest joy was helping people. He would insist. If someone needed help moving, Danny was always the first guy to volunteer to help."....

Some wonder why Arthur Miller, with all his wealth, waited until death to share it with his son. Had he done so sooner, Daniel could have afforded private care and a good education. But those who know Daniel say that this is not how he would feel. "He doesn't have a bitter bone in his body," says Bowen. The important part of the story, she says, is that Danny transcended his father's failures: "He's made a life for himself; he is deeply valued and very, very loved. What a loss for Arthur Miller that he couldn't see how extraordinary his son is."

We're Going to School!

Cooking school, that is.

I've known about the Taste of Home cooking schools for years because my mil and fil regularly gift me with a subscription to Reiman Publications' Country Woman (wonderful magazine, btw....lots of nice articles, recipes, crafts, no ads...what's not to like?), and Reiman also runs the cooking schools.

Recently I heard on the radio that a cooking school event was scheduled near me in a few weeks, and that tickets would go on sale at the local grocery store Sept. 10. While running errands yesterday, my wonderful dh picked up tickets for dd17 and I!

We're really excited, as I've heard lots of good things about this event, which includes food, coupons and samples. We can't wait :)

Lookin' Good, Little Brother

A lot has happened politically and culturally since I posted last week about Sarah Palin's baby boy. Let's not go there. Instead, I want to share this cute moment at the convention last night. Dd17 and I loved this! We just about fell off the sofa laughing. Anyone who's ever had or been a sister can understand :)

Balancing Work and Family: Some Labor Day Thoughts

I've written before that homeschooled kids tackle adult life with great gusto. At least that's been my experience. My adult kids have eagerly embraced their schooling and/or work. In today's world, that means lots of work hours and steady commitment to the job.

My son and his wife both have jobs that they love and in which they're successful. Work takes up enough of their lives that they have to commit to spending time together. It doesn't just happen. This is a lesson we all learn sooner or later, but they're learning it right now; so far they appear to be keeping up with the balancing act.

But at some point they're going to want children, and that's when the balancing act becomes more complex. Men in particular feel the need to excel at their jobs in order to feed, clothe and shelter their growing families. But sometimes they can become so involved with their jobs that work takes priority over their families, and they can't see it.

That's what happened to Sir Richard Attenborough, the acclaimed British actor and director. Over the course of his life, he achieved fame and fortune while staying married to one woman (for over 60 years!) with whom he had three children.

While on vacation in 2004, his daughter and granddaughter died in the tsunami that hit the areas around the Indian Ocean. This tragedy forced Sir Richard to reassess the way he spent his life (as excerpted from his recently released autobiography):

When I look back, I see the whole of my adult life crammed with ceaseless activity. But in all my roles as actor, director, producer, charity fundraiser, chairman of this, president of that, I've always been aware that it was Sheila, not me, who held us together as a family.

Yet, eternally optimistic and, to a degree, selfish and egocentric, I always believed in a future when I would make it up to the children. In determining the allotment of my time between public and private, work always took precedence.

Supposedly, weekends were set aside for the family. But not as conscientiously as I would now wish. If it needed a Saturday morning to conclude some business, then I took it.

When we lost Ginny - my nickname for Jane - and Luce, that opportunity was gone, never to be recovered. And that has changed my relationship with those who are left to the extent that I will do anything to be with them and we spend much more time together.

I can talk to people about Jane now, although sometimes I can't get the words out. I can also see her. I can feel her touch. I can hear her coming into a room. She comes in laughing or excited or determined, but always full of commitment. That was the very essence of Jane - commitment.

And music. After they died, I started to hear music in my head all the time. Handel is Jane; Puccini is Lucy. I can no longer turn on the radio or listen to CDs because they clash with their music in my head.

Just thinking about Jane now, I am listening to the Messiah: I know that my redeemer liveth. How about that? Me, an agnostic.

I have, I know, been one of the privileged creatures on this Earth, not just slightly but hugely privileged. Even as early as my mid-20s, I was aware of leading a charmed life.

I won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Then, unlike many of my contemporaries, I survived the war unscathed and went on to marry the most wonderful girl in the world.

My career blossomed in so many different areas. I had fame, fortune and good friends.

I became a knight, an ambassador, a president, a commandeur and a chevalier, several kinds of chairman, a university chancellor and latterly a lord. And although I now have hearing aids in both ears and my heart is ticking courtesy of a pacemaker, I have made it to my mid-80s.

Before the tsunami, I had always thought of myself as a sort of ridiculous male Mary Poppins, the eternal optimist whose glass is always half full. But, after the loss of my daughter and granddaughter, nothing would ever be the same again.


In case you're wondering, yes, I did send this to my son :) And as a side note, isn't it interesting that Sir Richard hears "The Messiah" in his head....how do you suppose that got there?

Every Child Has Special Needs?

Got back from several days in Chicago yesterday, weary but happy. It was the first time I've ever taken a trip alone with dsds15, and it went very well. We stayed in a hotel near O'Hare with ds23, who was in town on business. This was a great help to me, as I could take a shower without worrying that my youngest was downstairs hailing a cab or something, because his big brother kept an eye on him for me.

Came home very tired, and found this in a homeschool email newsletter I receive:

Todd Wilson, Familyman Ministries

I have special needs children. In fact, ALL my children are special needs children. First, there's Ben (15) who really needs me to listen to him talk . . . because he talks a lot. Then there's Sam (13) who likes to tease but who needs me to know when it's time to stop teasing and be understanding. Katherine (11) needs me to be extra gentle during these "changing" years.

Ike (9) needs lots of one-on-one attention. Abe (7) needs snuggling and closeness. Maggie Rose (4) needs me to help her use self-control. Cal (2) needs me to read books to him and Jed (7 mos.) needs me to smile at him.

Now before I get an angry note from some well-meaning mother who insists that I'm making light of or minimizing special needs children, let me say that I am not doing that at all. I know some of you have children who demand incredible sacrifice and labor on your part. I know you lie awake at night wondering if you can make it through another day. I'm certainly NOT trying to equate my "special needs" kids with your "special needs" kids. But I am trying to point out that ALL of our children have special needs and that we've done our children and ourselves a disservice by labeling our special needs children as "special needs." They're just children like all the rest.

Yes, they have special needs, but as I've already described, all children do to some extent. Amazingly, God has given you the abilities to meet those special needs and has given your children the mom and dad just right for them. You don't have to feel inadequate or apologize for their lack of progress, or label them as a "special needs" child.

All you have to do is love, train, and prepare them for THEIR future. Oh, yeah, and one more thing . . . . . .
Be real,
Todd

Wow. That didn't sit real well with me yesterday. I pictured myself reading that back when my son was little and we were trying to adjust to homeschooling three kids while caring for a toddler on an apnea monitor who couldn't keep weight on because of severe reflux, and I think that attitude (no matter how well-meaning) would have really hurt me.

Also, having just seen family in Chicago who have a daughter (our niece) with delays of unknown origin and how they have to fight to get the right kind of education for her out of their local school district, and having some idea of the pain they have gone through with and for her, his message kind of got me going:

Hi Todd,

I read your column in TOS' THM occasionally, and usually find it amusing. But I've got to tell you that you stepped in it today. I get your drift about all of our children having special needs, but you're off track here, and I'm afraid you probably hurt some parents of children with disabililties.

We have four kids, currently 15, 17, 23 and 24. They were all homeschooled from birth. Like your children, they're all special. But our youngest has Down syndrome, and let me tell you, once you have a child with true special needs (i.e. mental retardation, not a need for extra hugs), your entire life changes, and it will never be the same.

Todd, kids with special needs aren't kids like yours (and my older three) who simply need to gab a lot or snuggle a lot. We're talking about kids with major physical and/or developmental issues. This is life-changing stuff, not "Love Language" preferences. Flip through an issue of the wonderful magazine NATHHAN puts out and you'll see what some families' daily lives are like. You might also want to read The Dance Goes on by Roberta Bandy for a true-life description of the joys, blessings and heartache of a Christian family whose oldest son was born with a chromosomal defect.

I'm certain you didn't mean to offend anyone, but some of your comments came across as a bit flippant, to say the least. Like you, we have a 15-year-old son who needs us "to listen to him talk...because he talks a lot." Of course, his speech is extremely delayed, so we have to work to understand him. He may well be telling us about what happened in one of his beloved Winnie the Pooh videos, which he's told us a hundred times before, but it's important to him, so we listen. BTW, at 15 he can't play outside by himself because he runs off and has no sense of danger. He was in diapers until he was almost eight.

We love him dearly, and are grateful that God gave him to us just as he is. But telling us or other parents that all we have to do "is love, train and prepare them for THEIR future" is incredibly naive. Newer parents of the disabled (who are still coming to terms with their child's disability) are likely to consider it insensitive, and I would agree.

Todd, be real: please consider issuing an apology.

Sincerely,
Barbara Frank

Each of my kids is unique, no question. And they are all special and very dear to their dad and me. But one of them does have special needs. We didn't give him that label. He got it when he arrived with an extra chromosome. It is what it is.

Homeschooling a 12th Grader.....Again

It’s a bittersweet fall for me, as I once again have a 12th grader.

The first time it happened, it was exciting: wow, we’ll soon have our first homeschool graduate!

The second time it happened, the very next year, it was still exciting, but it went by so fast I couldn’t believe it.

This third time is different. I now know firsthand how very quickly this year is going to pass. One of the great things about homeschooling for high school is that your teens can do it their way, which means lots of stuff going on. And we all know how time flies when you’re busy.

Reaching the end of 12th grade, no matter how gratifying, is tough on Mom. Another one ready to fly the coop. I miss the first two a lot; I can’t imagine letting go of this one. Let’s not go there right now, ok?

Instead I want to talk about homeschooling for 12th grade. When I was in high school, senior year was pure torture. It seemed like such an afterthought. After all, by December I’d already been accepted to the university. Hanging around high school seemed so….anticlimactic.

But there I was, marking the time until I was released.

My kids didn’t have that experience. Each one’s 12th grade year has been different.

Our eldest made it very clear that she didn’t want to go to college. So we used that year to do projects that would give her a leg up on the independence she craved so much. (They’re the basis of Life Prep.) She worked through a math-review-for-adults book from the 1960s (my dad had used it to prepare for his military exams, and for some reason I had it on my bookshelf.) She read some good literature. She put in many hours a week watching a neighbor’s baby while she was at work (and bought a car with her earnings). She ran a fundraising table for Rock for Life. She got into local concert promoting. And then April came, and we called it graduation for the one-woman Class of 2001. She moved out on her own two years later.

Number two was a different story. He wanted to go to college. He studied some subjects at home, plus took a noncredit Chemistry course at one local college and Spanish at another. The latter was at the community college, so he got college credit for it. He was on the board of our church’s youth group, a great job for someone with an eye for ministry. He also worked at a local grocery store. He spent the year after his 2002 graduation doing much the same things, except he didn’t study at home. In fact, he was rarely home! So 12th grade and real life a year later were very similar. And then he went off to college. Shortly after college graduation, he got married and moved to his wife’s hometown, ten hours from here. Another one flies the coop.

Now we come to number three. She has neither the fierce independent spirit of her sister nor the academic desires of her brother. But she is very creative and has many interests. This year will be spent exploring them further. Sure, we’ve got some formal studies planned, and she’ll continue to work her way through Life Prep, too. She’s also taking a few for-credit college classes (one online, one in person). And if there’s time, she’s going to enroll in a Christian Writer’s Program. But she’ll also be playing her violin in the county’s youth orchestra. She hopes to keep growing her craft business and her web design business. And she just got a new job in a coffee shop, where she’ll be working a few days a week. Before we know it, the year will have flown by, and it will be graduation time again.

Looking back over the 12th grade experiences of all three of my older children, I see that they look more like real life than a school year. That satisfies me. It means my kids weren’t marking time the way I did senior year. I realize they can’t appreciate that the way I do; from birth to age 17 or 18, all they ever knew was homeschooling. But it makes me feel good to know they had it better than I did.

Number three doesn’t want to leave home yet; she says she’ll still be around for a while. That should make this third high school graduation a little easier on Mom. :)

Still, in many ways, this year marks the end of homeschooling as we knew it. After number three graduates, homeschooling will be the day job of our 15-year-old with Down syndrome and me. He won’t ever need our very useful (if not always loved) copy of Saxon Algebra, or our A Beka High School Literature series. By the time he reaches 12th grade, he’ll still have many years of study left, and he’ll be nowhere near ready to leave home. That’s ok. His senior year will consist mostly of real life, just as it did for his brother and sisters. And like the others, he’ll be just fine.

Playing Catch-Up

I've been pretty busy lately, but I didn't realize how busy until I noticed that I hadn't posted here since Friday. Seriously, it seems like I just posted a day or so ago. Time flies when you've got a long to-do list, I guess.

So I had better get caught up here. First off, you won't want to miss this week's edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling, which is being sponsored by Janice Campbell, who very kindly parked the cover of my book next to my post. Thank you, Janice! BTW, you can tell that many people are getting back to homeschooling this time of year by the great variety of posts at the carnival this week.

Next, I want to thank Melissa Markham for the lovely review of my book. We're offering a special price on the book, but only for those who visit her blog and read the review. Again, thanks, Melissa!

I don't know where the time went since Friday, but part of it was spent shopping so I could do another round of bulk cooking. The nearest Sam's Club is an hour away, and just happens to be down the road from the community college where dd17 started classes this week (more on that in an upcoming post). It just made good sense to combine those two trips. After stocking up at Sam's yesterday, I spent today making red sauce (40 cups, now frozen in bags), chicken parmagiana (five dinners) and pork ribs with sauce (two dinners).

Before we went to Sam's, we went to JoAnn Fabrics, where I bought three yards of a layered set of fabrics called Warm Windows. It was $27/yard but I had one of those 40% off coupons. I'm going to make window covers for our bedroom. We just signed another year's lease on the house we're living in, despite the difficulty we had last winter keeping this house affordably warm (that was the only downside to this house; it's wonderful in every other way!) Since we're staying another year, I'm ready to make a few improvements.

In the coldest month last winter, it took $300 worth of natural gas to keep the house at 65 degrees. Not good! So the landlord is going to have the boiler tuned up, and we're going to try to make the house a little tighter against the cold Wisconsin winds. After I make the window covers, I'm going to hem the thermal drapes I recently bought to go over the dining room windows. The curtains and the Warm Window fabric are a creamy white, so we can take these window treatments with us to the next house, wherever and whenever that might be.

I'm hoping to get that work done over the next few days. Next week, dsds15 and I will be heading to Chicago, where we will visit with some dear homeschooling friends. Ds23 happens to be there on business those days, so we're going to meet up with him, too. It will be great to see them all!

My New Site, Plus Newsletter Update

My new Web site is now live! BarbaraFrankOnline.com has many articles and freebies related to homeschooling, including two new articles, More on Bulk Cooking and Quiet Kids. C'mon over and check it out!

The site is designed and run by Mary, aka dd17. She worked on it diligently this summer, and I want to thank her for taking the time to do that for me. She’s a great girl (and I’m not just saying that because I’m her mom!)

BTW, her plan is to move this blog over to the new site very soon. But I’ve told her I want to take it slowly. All this change is a bit much for technologically challenged me.

Also, the latest issue of the “Imperfect Homeschooler” newsletter is now available. Most subscribers received it this morning. If you’re a subscriber and you did not receive it, most likely you forgot to renew your subscription when we changed over in June. Please reread your June newsletter to see how to do this (you’ll find back issues here), or just go here to subscribe again.

Please note: You won’t be officially resubscribed until you click the confirmation link we’ll send you. I hate to add in that extra step, but it’s necessary so we don’t get attacked by spambots again >:(

Nannies 24/7: Why Have Kids at All?

The photo of the little munchkin that accompanies this article just breaks my heart. It's the middle of the night, and she's being comforted not by the parents she doesn't see during the day because they're at work, but by the night nanny they've hired so their sleep isn't interrupted by their adorable baby.

The article explains that Mom and Dad are tired from their day jobs and need their rest. Before Congress gets wind of this and votes to offer taxpayer-subsidized night care, I'd like to point out who's driving the demand for night nannies:

The bulk of Nocturnal Nannies’ clients are dual-career, professional families, Ms. Seveney said, and revenue has been increasing 25 percent a year.

So this is not an economic necessity. The fact that there are actually agencies with names like "Nocturnal Nannies" for the convenience of parents who don't have time for their kids at night much less during the day is really depressing. Poor kids. Why have children if you don't have any time for them?

(By the way, ours is not the only country where babies are often seen as an inconvenience. In Australia, they're saying that babies are a drag on the economy!)

Something New

Just added a few new links to the blog, and they're for freebies :)

Both are special reports that you can download. One is called Teaching Your Children to Write, and the other is Ten Tips for Coping with Temperamental Teens.

Scroll down a wee bit and you'll see the links for them on the right side of your screen, in the section under the photo link for Life Prep.

The first report comes from my vantage point as a writer as well as a homeschool mom. The second comes from my experience living with and raising teens (we're on our second pair.)

In the name of fairness, the next special report we publish will be written by my 17-year-old daughter, and will be titled Twenty Tips for Coping with a Menopausal Mom.

Just kidding....maybe. :)

When Kids are the Center of the Universe

A recent thought-provoking article at a British newspaper's Web site caught my eye. It laments the rise of the child-centered world, where keeping Junior’s self-esteem intact becomes Job 1. The large number of comments after the article makes it clear that the writer struck a nerve with a lot of people. Apparently, there’s a bumper crop of self-absorbed young people around these days.

It’s easy to bash schools where teachers aren’t allowed to correct students’ work in red pen because it could make them feel like failures. It’s natural to lament parents in the store who fall all over themselves trying to make their children like them by buying them presents (yes, I have actually seen mothers begging their child to choose a large toy. It’s an amazing thing.)

But it’s also tempting to think that it won’t happen to us when, as homeschoolers, it could easily happen to us.

I mean, homeschooling takes over your life. You find yourself poring over curriculum catalogs, spending hours on the phone signing your children up for co-ops and lessons and staying up late planning upcoming learning experiences.

And that’s just in the summer! Then there’s all the time you put in working with your children, reading to them, making sure they understand concepts they’re having trouble with, taking them to zoos and museums ….add in feeding them and clothing them and making sure they live in a healthy environment, and you can easily end up living in a child-centered world. And that’s not a good thing.

In a child-centered world, kids are the center of the universe. That’s how they come to believe that their needs are more important than anyone else’s, and often turn into adults who continue to believe that.

Over the years, I’ve struggled to maintain a balance between giving my kids what they need in order to grow and develop properly, and giving my kids what they need in order to learn that they are not the center of the universe. I haven't always been successful.

Being sensitive myself, and having been hurt in childhood by some adults, I wonder now if I protected my children’s feelings too much. As they’ve ventured out into the world of work, they’ve sometimes gotten their feathers ruffled over things that aren’t the end of the world. Maybe I should have been tougher on them.

There were also times when I wondered whether I’d gone overboard in creating a learning environment for my kids, because once they discovered an interest in something, they took off with it on their own, with no encouragement from me. Perhaps some of the time spent making lesson plans would have been better spent on a dinner date with my husband.

Oh, yes, him. That patient guy I married. He worked to pay for all the books and educational games and craft supplies, and he never complained about how much time I spent with my nose in the Rainbow Resource catalog. Sometimes I think we should have carved out more time for ourselves.

But on the other side of the scale, there were times when I managed to make my kids understand that the world does not revolve around them. We limited their outside activities so we could have time together as a family. Occasionally, they’d find me on the sofa with a good book or having fun using my sewing machine and they knew that anything they asked me to do right then would be denied. Of course they had chores and responsibilities that they had to do, whether they were in the mood or not. And then there were the evening walks-for-two that were reserved for their dad and me.

As they say, hindsight is 20-20. The end result is that my kids, while not perfect, are doing fine. But looking back, I can see that if I hadn’t struggled with maintaining a balance between their world and ours, they might not have turned out so well. That’s why even now, with only two children left at home, I keep fighting to maintain that balance. Because it’s when you’re not aware that you need that struggle between your world and theirs that you fall into the child-centered universe.

Erma, She Ain't

I realize this gal is trying to be funny, but she lost me pretty quickly with her essay about the horrors of having her kids home all summer.

As I read it, I kept thinking that at some point, she would acknowledge that despite the work involved, being home with your kids can be a time of bonding, of teaching, of loving.

Nope. Just whine, whine, whine. She also throws in a little envy of working moms for good measure:

By the end of the first day of “vacation,” every stay-at-home mother is rethinking Linda Hirshman and scanning help-wanted ads surreptitiously. The working moms, meanwhile, sit in their orderly, air-conditioned offices, oblivious to the sweat and stench that accompany the sticky children of summer, and thinking wistfully of their own childhood summers spent catching fireflies in Mason jars and selling ten-cent Kool-Aid from a card table on the front lawn. Wishing that they could revisit those days, they think — fleetingly — that maybe the SAHMs have it right, and really, they should march into the boss’s office and offer two week’s notice. But then it occurs to them: If they were home now, they’d be making peanut-butter sandwiches, and consuming half-eaten crusts for their lunch. Better Ruby Tuesday’s salad bar, and joyously back to work.

Wow, the working moms I've known missed their kids. Guess I hang with the unenlightened crowd.

I think this writer is trying to imitate the late Erma Bombeck and other female writers of the 60s and 70s who made a career of writing humor pieces about life as a housewife and mother. But no matter what Ms. Bombeck wrote about her kids, she made sure you also knew how much she loved them. I’m not getting that vibe with Ms. Graham’s essay, and that could be why it fell flat with me. I mean, how else do you interpret her closing statement?

Like Steve Buscemi’s character accepting the imminent destruction of Earth in the movie Armageddon, we must learn to embrace the horror. Without summer vacation, there would be no school teachers, and we’d have to hang out with our kids all year.

Hanging out with your kids all year. Who could survive that???

Nationalized Child Care? It Could Happen

I always considered staying home to raise our children to be a great privilege, and I'm so grateful that God enabled me to do so. Naturally, I want my children to have that option once they have children (no pressure for grandchildren yet, guys, I'm just sayin'....)

So, articles like this alarm me. One of the presidential candidates has an "education" plan that involves infants:

Sen. Obama's plan begins with a "Zero to Five Plan". That is not a plan for pre-kindergarten students; it is a plan for infants beginning just after birth. In fact, one of his "Success Through Education" header statements is "A Pre-School Agenda That Begins At Birth". Sen. Obama would plunk $10 billion a year in federal tax dollars down to provide "high-quality child care" for children, to expand access to Early Head Start (is this redundant?), Head Start, and pre-school, and create a council to the president (himself) which would coordinate these efforts nation-wide.

We know how this works. We've seen it before: first it's a goal, then it's an option, then it becomes "compulsory." Isn't that what happened with vaccines, and indeed, education itself? The fact that this expensive program is part of Senator Obama's plans when our country is in such bad financial shape tells you that he is really committed to it. I don't like the looks of this at all.

Her First Job

Dd17 started her first official job last week. By official, I mean not a babysitting job, or doing work for Cardamom, but working for someone else in their place of business.

She worked long days on her feet last Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and came home tired but happy. Now she has a couple of days off before it begins again. This is tourist season, so it's constant customers along with answering the phone, mopping the floor and doing all the other things that need to be done in a small but busy retail establishment.

So far she enjoys the work, and is more than ready for her first paycheck. She says her goals are to buy an iPod and then save up for a car.

It's strange not having her around during the day, and we miss her, but we're glad she's found a job that she likes.

She had applied for a job at the public library a while back, but when she didn't get it, she marched right into town and starting going up and down the main street of the downtown area, asking each of the merchants if they needed help. No one did, until she got to one of the last places remaining, and he was about to hire new help and said she could add her application to the pile. And the rest is history.

She could have applied at the local Target but said she wanted to work in a smaller place where she's get to do a variety of things, so this is working out well for her.

It's working out well for us, too, because of all the places for the child of a chocoholic mother to work, it's a candy store, and when we visit, we get a free sample of their homemade chocolate fudge (yes, she's already learning to make fudge in their big copper pot.) Of all the skills she's learning at her new job, I put fudge-making at the very top of the list :)

Getting an Education in Driver's Ed

It’s been a while (eight years, to be exact) since we signed up one of our kids for Driver’s Ed. I’d forgotten what it’s like. Your offspring's first few times behind the wheel can test your nerves and rev up your prayer life, that’s for sure.

Dd17 is doing fine, though, and it’s interesting to get her take on the classroom portion of the instruction. We’re using a private driving school because Driver’s Ed is not offered in the public schools here as it was where we used to live. As a result, the class is not run by the school district yet is full of kids from the public schools. If there’s another homeschooler in her class, dd is not aware of it.

Each time she comes home from class, she thanks me for homeschooling her. I remember my son doing the same thing when he took Driver’s Ed at the local high school. He used to come out to the car where I was waiting and say, “I feel dumber.” This might have been because the teacher (a coach) breezed through the material and then showed the kids movies (popular movies, not driving instruction movies.) This went on for an entire semester.

Dd is surprised by the amount of wasted time in class. She’s used to working efficiently, and the classroom is not at all efficiently run. Sometimes the class doesn’t start until 15 minutes after it is supposed to start. The teacher sits up front and says, “Let’s wait in case there are latecomers.” There might be one or none. Nevertheless, she does this each class. Considering the classes are only two hours long, that’s a good-sized chunk of time lost at the beginning of the class. And yet sometimes, the kids are released early.

This is not a good thing, because the classes are held at night. Dd can call us to pick her up early, but it’s 15 minutes away, so she is left waiting there in the dark with a few other kids. As a result, her dad has taken to waiting in the car with a book. This means he’s right there whenever the teacher lets the kids out, and it also saves gas (one round trip instead of two). But it also means he loses 2 ½ hours to Driver’s Ed. Starting this weekend, the classes will run ten nights in a row. Losing that much time is going to get old. We’ll have to take turns bringing her to class.

So it’s not very convenient for us, but it’s important for her, and not just in order to get her driver’s license. I can see with her, as I did with her two older siblings, that having a classroom experience for the first time (excluding Sunday School) is a real eye-opener. If you want your child to appreciate homeschooling, sign them up for the classroom portion of Driver’s Ed!

A Young Actor with Down Syndrome

In England, a new book written by the mother of a boy with Down syndrome is due out in two weeks. The boy is 15, loves acting and currently has a role in his second movie.

I love how she describes life with him in this article. She certainly captures it well. (He's almost the exact same age as our son.) I especially appreciate her comments regarding her unwillingness to have a subsequent pregnancy tested for Ds because she would never abort a baby with Ds. I think she and I would get along just fine.