COMMUNICATION

Many years ago I read A Joyful Mother of Children by Linda Eyre and was struck by the idea of watching and listening for the "tone" in your home.  She said, "parents are the 'sound system' in the home, and the mother is the 'volume, balance,and station selector.'"  If you were to enter our home on any given day you would see we are not the quiet type.  We are loud!  We are talkative!  Loving, but strong-willed!   I've come to accept that family trait as "ours." However, oftentimes I've noticed that we will "freak out" before we communicate our needs. And I'm sure we all know what I mean by "freaking out!"

"Mom! He won't stop bugging me!" 
"Get out of my room!" 
"Stop playing with my things!"
"I can't concentrate!!" 
etc....etc....etc....

And so I am now training myself and my children to communicate before the frustration hits.  For instance, the other day A. was stirring marshmallows on the stove (for our delicious peach pies) when suddenly, without warning she blurted in exasperation, "I just need a stool!!!"  I simply asked her, "A., did you communicate that need before getting frustrated?"  That's it.  One simple question. 

I'm thrilled to say it's working!  I have seen progress, mostly in myself.  I react less often to their reactions because I have a question in my head just for these moments:  "Did you communicate before the frustration hit?"  Or if I hear some sibling rivalry happening, I simply say, "Communicate" and they (sometimes) catch the hint.

Changing the Tone in Your Home
Eyre also gives a guideline of how to make these types of changes in our homes. 

1. Write downt he behavior that causes problems in your home.  This can be a collective family weakness, the behavior of an individual child, your spouse or in yourself. 

2. Write how you usually react to that behavior when it occurs.

3. Write how you will react in the future

You cannot change bad habits simply by saying, "I'm not going to _____."  There needs to be a positive to replace the negative.  There needs to be a planned response.  For me, this week, it has been, "Did you communicate that need before getting frustrated?"  Just having that question in my mind has helped me to be calm rather than stressed, in control rather than reactionary.

A Personal Note

All were happy at our house today! 

Mom (me) was happy because there was FINALLY a schedule to follow, some structure for the day!  Yippee for that.  This summer was the worst for me in that aspect and I have been itching to get started again.

 For Group Learning Time  today we had a fun activity.  I hid fairytale words around the room.  Then we wrote a fairytale together.  Each child would find a word and add to the story.  They had a blast . . . I'm sure we'll be doing it again.  We also started our family read aloud book, The Frog Princess by E.D. Baker.                                                                                            
JW (10yo son) was happy today because he started public school today (5th grade).  I cried, of course, as he entered the classroom door and on the bike 
ride home.  But once coming home and having the other four to distract me, I was able to smile instead.  :-)  And  he came home pretty pleased with the whole experience. 

B. (9yo daughter) was happy because she caught a spider eating a bee!!  I should have taken a picture  (duh!).  We put it in our bug magnifier. . . the best thing we have found by far for observing nature!! And she got to let Penny (her bunny) run free in the yard.  We have been waiting all summer to find a bunny run for cheap.  Finally, today I just said, "Let her run free."  Both B. and Penny were elated!

A. (8yo daughter) maybe wasn't all that happy to do her spelling but we had a beautiful moment together reading books.  So, that made up for the unpleasantness of everything else.  And she got to make "after school cookies" for JW.  :-)

I think JL (5) & E (3) were the most unsure of what to do with themselves.  They've always had JW around to entertain and harrass them.  Not anymore!  I seriously think they spent half the day wrestling!  Boys will be boys! 

And Mom (me) was happy yet again to enjoy some pleasant afternoon time with JW again and to get all the juicy details about the last 6 1/2 hours of his day.  :-)  Though I've had normal nervousness with this big transition, I have not regretted nor felt any apprehension whatsoever.  This will be a good change for him, my girls, and myself. 

Oh, and Dad was happy because he got a BIG breakfast of eggs, sausage and pancakes.  :-)

Getting Back to a New Year

Yes, it's time!  Back to schedules and lots of activities.  This year, I am so ready to get back to our normal schedule.  I'm excited to start teaching again . . . I've been slacking with my kids this summer.   I'm excited about the things we're going to learn!  Here are some things that we plan on using:

Sequential Spelling - This has been great for my non-readers.  It helps with learning how to decode words.  I'm hoping this will inspire them to write more and to feel more confident with their reading!

To Be a Princess - This is our whole history cirriculum for the year.  Yes, we will supplement with other books and throw in some US history as we go along, but for the most part it's all about royalty at our house this year!  When my girls said they wanted to learn about royalty, I went on a hunt for something that taught about the "real" princesses in history.  I stumbled upon this book on Amazon and instantly fell in love with it.  It's just short biographies of twelve princesses:  Elizabeth, Marie Antoinette, the last Hawaiian princess and others.  Each princess will lead us on a journey into their country, their culture and more.  I'm really excited about this one!

Singapore Math - This will be used for my younger children  (K & 2nd).  I wasn't planning on getting anything for my K child but when looking at math books for the other kids he asked, "What math book am I going to use?"  I told him I wasn't going to get him anything and he didn't like that answer.  I asked if he wanted to just finish the K workbook I'd gotten him for last year and his response was, "No, I don't like that one.  It's too easy!"  And then when his book came in the mail I have never seen someone so excited about math!  I'm also hoping this will be more appealing to my 2nd because she needs a little more nudging.  I will be using Saxon with my 4th.

That's ALL the "cirriculum" I'm using this year.  But we've got a LONG list of read aloud books that I hope to get through.  That is one thing this summer that was so successful.  We read and read and read!  We're almost done with our third read aloud book this summer.  That may be nothing for some families, but that's a big deal for ours!  What did we read?  The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall, How to Train Your Dragon by Clarissa Cowell, and Summer of the Monkeys.  

Oh, and science we're going to do lots more nature studies, kitchen chemistry and some human body unit studies. 

I hope everyone's summer went well and that your year is all ready to get started!  Good luck!

Daughters and Liberal Education

I just got back from a wonderful vacation with family.  More on that later, maybe.  I first wanted to post my response to an email I had waiting for me upon my return.
"It doesn't seem logical for a woman to train for a career in the event of widowhood or a rare emergency, if by so doing she bypasses a rich cultural education which would make her a better wife and mother. A man may as well train for motherhood and homemaking if this logic is sound.


The best education of a young woman is a broad, liberal, education. It better prepares her to understand her children, and help them with their education and their life ahead. It helps her equally as a wife. She's more interesting, more open to new ideas. She has a better understanding of the world and is therefore a better citizen.
The woman with a liberal education is actually better prepared to meet and emergency than the woman who has been trained for a career. Her broad education is more inclined to develop creativeness, intelligence, sound reasoning and wisdom. When faced with an emergency she has more ingenuity to solve problems. If she must work, she can find her way into the working world and qualify for a job better than the woman who trained for a career ten years earlier and now finds it out of date."
-Helen Andelin, Fascinating Womanhood

My first thought was that this quote goes against what we've been taught by our prophets and apostles to "get all the education we can in case of calamity."

My second thought was that there is not reason why we women can't get an education for a career AND a liberal education at the same time. I don't necessarily believe we can get a liberal education and automatically get a career. I do believe that you can still get a liberal education while seeking a specific career. Now, if your whole goal in getting an education is to get a degree and a career, then you're not fully preparing yourself for the future. All people must be educated and able to figure out what's next if they lose their jobs. All people need to get as much education as they can.

Liberal education is termed "a philosophy of education that empowers individuals with broad knowledge and transferable skills, and a stronger sense of values, ethics, and civic engagement ... characterized by challenging encounters with important issues, and more a way of studying than a specific course or field of study" by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU). (Wikpedia definition)

A liberal education originally consisted of language and mathematics. Then Plato and Aristotle came along and added grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. "These seven were the requirements in order to become a bechlor of art." (from How to Speak, How to Listen by Mortimer Adler). These requirements now constitute what we call "the generals" in college. Most people (myself included) believe these generals to be unimportant and mundane steps in order to get to the classes we really want to study. I no longer believe this, and wish that I'd taken advantage of these general classes thus more fully receiving a liberal education simply by my attitude. Does that make sense?

So, yes I agree that to get a degree for degree's sake "in case of emergency" may not be the best reason to get an education. But I do believe that we can have BOTH - - a liberal arts education AND an education leading toward a specific career. I agree with ____ that I want to teach my daughters their number one priority is in the home (see Family Proclamation) but that they can be prepared for either emergencies or "out of home" type opportunities. Sister Hinckley once encouraged her granddaughter to not major in Home Economics so that she would have more interesting things to think about while she did her ironing. :-) That's the kind of attitude I want to raise in my daughters.

Parenting Principles to Practice

As the children get older, I'm starting to recognize how parenting changes and how significant early habits really are!  I also just read the most fabulous book, Why Gender Matters by Leonard Sax.  WOW!  I have been quoting this book everywhere I go it seems.  People are surely getting sick of me.  There were three very real take home messages for me that I have been pondering since reading.  Three parenting principles that I have somewhat confused me all along, but suddenly became clear. 

Principle #1:  A Familiy is not a Democracy
In the book Sax talks about how it's not logical to give children choices when they don't know what they're really choosing.  For instance, if you say, "Do you want to go to Disneyland or to the museum?"  The kids are most likely going to choose Disneyland simply because it either sounds more fun or their friends have talked about it.  Sax says, "Your job [as a parent] is not to maximize your child's pleasure, but to broaden her horizons." 

I was talking to a friend about this concept and she said, "Well, this is what we've been taught to do.  Give your toddler the choice, 'Do you want the green shirt or the blue shirt.'"  Though this is an appropriate choice to give, we need to be careful of what choices we are really giving them as they get older.  And even with that simple choice, I still find my toddler screaming that he doesn't want either shirt rather than letting Mom just put whatever shirt she wants for that day!  I'm starting to think that maybe we give choices to our children too young. I also think that when we focus on "not requiring" in the TJEd world, we think we need to not ask them to do anything that might make them unhappy.    Still simmering on this one. . .

From An In-Depth Look at the Proclamation on the Family, one author writes, "Our job as parents is to help children have the experiences that will help them grow and develop their agency."  Notice he says we need to give them experiences so they can make choices.  Our job, then is to expose our children to lots of different situations (whether they like it or not, more or less) so that they can thus make wiser and more appropriate decisions.  Take them to museums so they know what museum is.  Take them to Disneyland, if that's something you want your children to be exposed to.  Then, when given the choice, they will be better prepared to decide. 

Principle #2:  As your children, they have a right to the basic needs of food, clothing, shelter and medical attention.  Anything else is a privilege. 

Duh!  I knew this but at the same time it's been tricky to implement. Difficult because we live in a more affluent society and "What does one dollar matter?"  Life is relatively easy where temporal needs are concerned.  Work isn't nearly  as necessary nor as difficult as it once was.  This is what we tell ourselves anyway.  So, it's easy to give when our children want.  We've been pretty good at not giving our children everything they want, but consistancy is one thing I'm striving to have more of.  I want to teach my children that they earn anything other than those 4 basic things.  I want them to understand that to earn them they must behave a certain way and do certain things.  Again, still simmering.

Principle #3:  "You can't discipline your child if you can't discipline yourself."

For me this equates to love as well.  Avi, a popular children's author once said, "First you have to love them.  If you can convince your children that you love them, you can teach them anything."  When I get unrighteously upset with the children, it's usually having to do with my lack of disciplining myself to teach them with love rather than punishment or criticism.  Again from the In Depth Look at the Proclamation on the Family it says, "We do not have the right to control anyone we do not love."  If we want our children to treat one another kindly, we treat them kindly.  If we want our children to study hard, we need to do our tasks with vigor.  If we want our children to clean the bathroom well, we need to train them in love and show them by example what clean bathroom looks like.  As always, it comes back to focussing on YOU not THEM. 

These are my thoughts on this Thursday evening.  I highly recommend this book by Dr. Sax.  There is so much more in there than I can write in one post.

What I'm Loving Now

I LOVE MATH!  I couldn't say that a year or two ago.  Thanks to this group, I read my first "fall-in-love-with-math" book, Fermat's Enigma and loved it!  My husband (a statistician) was thrilled that his wife was finally willing to "talk math" with him.  It made me happy when he'd go to work and gloat about me at work with his stat buddies. 

So, that was the first step.  Then, I recently read The Number Devil.  This was a great moment for me because as I talked about it, my 10 year old son got his hands on it and read it through. 

Next, Life of Fred came into our lives.  Great series.  Even if my son weren't into it right now, I'd still work on these books for myself because they give a whole new perspective on how to think about math.  I must admit also that my son's test scores jumped after working through the first book as well.  Yay for that!

The latest excitement in the subject of math was meeting The Human Calculator at a recent homeschool convention.  This guy was amazing and completely inspirational!!  My son has been using Mathletics the past few days on a free trial and he's been fascinated as well. 

So, I can now proudly say that I do love math! 

True Confessions of a Planner

I am a planner.                                                                               

Planning makes me happy.

I have a feddish with schedules.  Any kind.  I loved planning my college classes back in the day, making everything fit like a puzzle.  I'll admit that I was even planning my future family at the age of ten . . . names and all!! 

In all honesty, I would rather spend time planning than actually following through with the plan! 
                                                                                
                                                                         Picture courtesy of marthastewart.com

With that said, I have been thinking a lot about structuring my time.  I'm getting rid of many activities next year and find my schedule looking a bit blank.  Which is good.  This leaves me with more time with which to plan!  A good thing, yes, but how structured do I really need to get, right?  And, though I love to plan, I've become recently annoyed with the constant questions, "Mom, can I . . .?" and "So, Mom, what's the plan tonight?"  Can't they just be?  No, because I've always had everything planned for them. 

I just watched  a great movie the other night.  Leap Year.  It's a silly (but very clean!) romantic comedy.  I had an ah-ha moment watching this movie.  The leading lady, Anna,  was in a plane during a turbulent rainstorm.  The pilot's voice comes on over the intercom, "We will need to land in Wales on account of the storm."  Anna begins to panic, not for fear of dying but because, and I quote, "I'm on a schedule!"  Ahhh.  Thus is my life.  A scheduled, planned, perfect (not) life.  I should know by now that I am really not the one in control, but I still keep trying.  :-)

Why do I have this yearning to plan?  Better yet, why do I expect everyone else to follow my plan?  I pondered these questions last night as I read an excellent talk on patience and I found ten definitions of patience throughout the talk:

* the ability to put our desires on hold for a time
* active waiting and enduring
* staying with something and doing all that we can
* staying with something until the end
* delaying immediate gratification
* reining in anger
* resisting evil
* accepting that which cannot be changed, facing it with courage & faith
* willing to submit all things which the Lord seeth fit
* firm and steadfast and immovable in keeping the commandments of the Lord

Now, you may be asking what this really has to do with scheduling and planning?  It has everything to do with it!  Another scene from the movie:  While travelling to Dublin, Anna and her travelling companion, Declan, find themselves trapped by a herd of cows in the road.  Declan takes out an apple and sits, ready to wait for the cows to move on.  Well, Anna wants nothing to do with it!  She proceeds to yell at, clap at and push the cows along.  All the while she's saying, "Yeah!  That's how you do it.  That's how you get things done." 

Connection?  I'm getting there!  Sometimes we want to herd the cows along, so to speak.  We want to keep things moving.  Even without transportation, rather than waiting Anna is determined to walk the whole way to Dublin (in high heels nonetheless!) rather than sit and wait for the next available ride.  When I am scheduling and planning each detail of my life, I leave very little room for patience.  I leave very little room for more direction from the Lord.  Quoting from the talk mentioned before,  "Patience is the process of perfection.. . . without patience, we cannot please God; we cannot become perfect."  Profound words.  Bold words.  And then he says this, "If children are ever going to mature and reach their potential, they must learn to wait."  How do we teach them, by waiting ourselves. 

So today I gave myself a challenge.  I didn't plan anything!  Well, okay, I did plan to take the car into the shop and to get at least most of the laundry done.  But aside from that, I didn't plan.  I followed my kids' time table.  We went on a bike ride, played a few games, I got some reading in and some church business taken care of.  They swam while I did some cleaning and reading.  We read together, went to the library and then used their free ice cream coupons at McDonald's.  Then they wanted to go play on a big hill.  And so we did.  It was a lovely day.  We had our general schedule of cleaning, dinner preparation and whatnot, but for the most part I allowed myself to take their lead.  I don't think we'll be able to do this every day, nor do I think we need to.  I simply had to give myself permission to stop planning, just for a day.  And in the process of not planning I had the opportunity to sit and wait, to learn the art of patience with myself and my children.

"Patience is a Process of Perfection."