It's Saturday night and I just got back from the park with my dog. It's become a ritual this summer, walking my dog at the park on Saturday nights and listening to the free bluegrass concerts. The band tonight had one of the very best mandolin players I've ever heard. (Keeping in mind I used to play mandolin in a bluegrass band way way back when, I know a good one when I hear one!) The guitar player was also very good, as was the fiddle player. Individually, they were some of the best musicians I've heard in a long time. However, they just weren't connecting with their audience.
The people who attend these concerts are die-hard bluegrass fans. They don't mind a little country gospel mixed in once in awhile, but they want their bluegrass clean and traditional. These guys were into jazz....they jazzed up one Doc Watson tune so much I couldn't even recognize it. Great musicians, but they were either just in the wrong venue, or didn't know how to read the audience to figure out what they wanted to listen to. One by one, people got up and walked back to their cars until there was just a handful of people left.
As a writer, and someone who has taught writing, this is a key theme in helping people turn into great communicators. You've got to connect with your audience. I learned this early in my writing career. I had just finished up my Ph.D., where you have to write very academically, citing everything, and sounding as erudite as possible. When I first wanted to share my Ph.D. research with the homeschooling community, I wrote a big ol' book called something like "Educational Philosophy and the Home Schooling Movement". You all remember that one, don't you? Huge success.
After a bit, though, I re-grouped, started thinking like a homeschooling mom again, and turned it into my Countdown to Consistency workshop, and actually eventually sold out of that big old first printing. Later, I wrote a very simple book, called "The Relaxed Home School", and the rest, as they say, is history. But I didn't do well at all until I figured out who my audience was and starting thinking like they did.
That's what this blog is all about...I suddenly had one of those epiphanies where I realized I wasn't connecting with an entire generation of new, younger homeschooling moms, the ones that were raised in an electronic generation. It isn't easy to start new things when you're a little older, or remain flexible and open to new ideas, but I realized that if I wasn't willing to try something new, the only homeschoolers I'd be connecting with would be "ex" ones....
So whatever you're doing, be sure you're connecting. Even if it just trying to see life from the standpoint of a teenager, or a mother-in-law, or a husband who doesn't support your homeschooling ideas, you won't get anywhere if you don't stop for a minute and try walking in that person's shoes.
Okay, time for bed now...I've had a busy day, digging up tulip bulbs to try to trick them into thinking we live in Wisconsin or Michigan. Hope you all are coping with the heat wave!
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Bring Back an Old Concept
When I was young, one of the things I remember my mother telling me, over and over, was the importance of doing things in moderation. Back then, almost everyone who was older and wiser would say that you should walk the middle ground, avoiding extremism.
To some extent, the world has simply changed. There are times one must be a bit of an extremist these days because the middle road can lead to compromise. It's true. However, I think a lot of us could benefit from bringing back the concept of moderation.
One example is in the area of food and diet. Some of my friends are really into the "no white sugar, no white flour, everything whole grains" thing. Others are vegetarians or vegans. Others pig out on just about anything that isn't nailed down in the kitchen. I've found that, in general, the people who are absolutely adamant about eating healthy at all times often have a real hard time sustaining it over the long haul. Then, when they do succumb to the occasional dish of ice cream, they beat themselves up to the point that they are damaging their own self-esteem.
There are those, of course, with genuine health concerns. My daughter used to vaccilate between being a vegetarian, a vegan, diagnosing herself with lactose intolerance, etc. Finally she discovered her real problem, which is that she is gluten intolerant. Now, she is again able to enjoy an occasional piece of meat or dairy, but really has to stay away from gluten, or she faces the consequences. Real health concerns are a whole different issue than what I'm talking about today.
For those of us who don't have a specific intolerance, I still maintain that moderation is the key. I've found that as I eat less sugar, I crave it less. As I get more used to eating fruits and vegetables, I don't miss having meat at every meal. However, once in awhile, I just really feel like having a candy bar or a bowl of ice cream. If I allow myself to enjoy these things in moderation, I dont' feel guilty and I don't feel deprived. Plus, I'm able to actually stick with the resolve to eat in moderation....I don't know about you but if I tried to give up all foods I like cold turkey, I'm betting I'd "fail" and then beat myself up about it.
Exercise is another example. One man I know goes back and forth. One week he is exercising every day, hiking ten miles, working out on the machines every morning. Then for a month, it is nothing. Some of the exercise programs are even labeled "extreme" these days...Personally, I go running at the state park almost every morning. When I can't go for a couple of mornings, I miss it, but I don't yell at myself all day about what a slug I've been...I just try to get it back on the schedule for the next day. What I call running is what a lot of people would call bouncing up and down while walking. Every morning, I'm passed by real runners. You can tell a "real runner" by the spiffy new running shoes they are wearing, the walkman they are listening to (I prefer to listen to the birds in the early morning), and by the fact that I will probably see them for about six days in a row and then never again. On the other hand, some of the early morning walkers and bouncers have been there just about every day with me for the past two years. Once again, establishing some moderate form of exercise that you will actually enjoy and be able to sustain over the long haul is usually better than choosing something too extreme for you to continue day after day.
One more example: technology, especially social networking. A little is fine, laudable, good, productive, and fun. However, when it truly becomes your "social" outlet, to the point you have no real friends, or you wind up getting up in the middle of the night and turning on your computer to to let everybody know you are having trouble sleeping, it can easily become an obsession.
So now I'm getting off the computer and going to do my exercises (in moderation). Bye.
To some extent, the world has simply changed. There are times one must be a bit of an extremist these days because the middle road can lead to compromise. It's true. However, I think a lot of us could benefit from bringing back the concept of moderation.
One example is in the area of food and diet. Some of my friends are really into the "no white sugar, no white flour, everything whole grains" thing. Others are vegetarians or vegans. Others pig out on just about anything that isn't nailed down in the kitchen. I've found that, in general, the people who are absolutely adamant about eating healthy at all times often have a real hard time sustaining it over the long haul. Then, when they do succumb to the occasional dish of ice cream, they beat themselves up to the point that they are damaging their own self-esteem.
There are those, of course, with genuine health concerns. My daughter used to vaccilate between being a vegetarian, a vegan, diagnosing herself with lactose intolerance, etc. Finally she discovered her real problem, which is that she is gluten intolerant. Now, she is again able to enjoy an occasional piece of meat or dairy, but really has to stay away from gluten, or she faces the consequences. Real health concerns are a whole different issue than what I'm talking about today.
For those of us who don't have a specific intolerance, I still maintain that moderation is the key. I've found that as I eat less sugar, I crave it less. As I get more used to eating fruits and vegetables, I don't miss having meat at every meal. However, once in awhile, I just really feel like having a candy bar or a bowl of ice cream. If I allow myself to enjoy these things in moderation, I dont' feel guilty and I don't feel deprived. Plus, I'm able to actually stick with the resolve to eat in moderation....I don't know about you but if I tried to give up all foods I like cold turkey, I'm betting I'd "fail" and then beat myself up about it.
Exercise is another example. One man I know goes back and forth. One week he is exercising every day, hiking ten miles, working out on the machines every morning. Then for a month, it is nothing. Some of the exercise programs are even labeled "extreme" these days...Personally, I go running at the state park almost every morning. When I can't go for a couple of mornings, I miss it, but I don't yell at myself all day about what a slug I've been...I just try to get it back on the schedule for the next day. What I call running is what a lot of people would call bouncing up and down while walking. Every morning, I'm passed by real runners. You can tell a "real runner" by the spiffy new running shoes they are wearing, the walkman they are listening to (I prefer to listen to the birds in the early morning), and by the fact that I will probably see them for about six days in a row and then never again. On the other hand, some of the early morning walkers and bouncers have been there just about every day with me for the past two years. Once again, establishing some moderate form of exercise that you will actually enjoy and be able to sustain over the long haul is usually better than choosing something too extreme for you to continue day after day.
One more example: technology, especially social networking. A little is fine, laudable, good, productive, and fun. However, when it truly becomes your "social" outlet, to the point you have no real friends, or you wind up getting up in the middle of the night and turning on your computer to to let everybody know you are having trouble sleeping, it can easily become an obsession.
So now I'm getting off the computer and going to do my exercises (in moderation). Bye.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Learning about "Social Studies"
On the fourth of July, it seemed like a good time to address a question I'm often asked, which is, "what exactly should we be teaching for social studies?" I just answered this question this week for a mom who was thinking about high school and wondering what the colleges expect.
As with any homeschooling plan of action, the first thing is to ignore purposefully what the public schools would be doing in any particular grade. As long time readers know, I am not opposed to everything/everybody that is involved with the public school. My own mom worked there for many years. However, social studies education is one area where the public schools have done a very ineffective job for many years.
So here we are on the 4th of July. As many people know, recent polls have shown a pathetic level of knowledge of even the basics of American history. Most young people these days have only a vague idea of what they are supposed to be celebrating on this holiday. I have known supposedly well-educated young people recently who had no idea who many of the founders of the country were, who thought Thomas Jefferson wrote the Constitution, who didn't have any clue what the Bill of Rights was, and who genuinely believed that the first amendment said something about the separation of church and state.
None of this is news to the average homeschooler. Today I want to address a slightly different issue...the issue of ethnocentrism. Yes, it is important to know about American history, to understand (and actually READ the Consitituition), to know how the U.S government works, the basics of capitalism, and the ideas of the founding fathers. However, as Christians, we owe our allegiance to something greater than a country.
Along with the U.S. history in your curriculum, be sure to help your children develop a knowledge of the rest of the world. One thing I saw, over and over, at our resource center, was that by the time a student came to us for a high school level class, he or she often had huge gaps in their knowledge. Those unit studies that were popular homeschooling topics, like Romans, or Vikings, or Greeks, or the Civil War, had been covered extensively. Yet hardly anyone could tell me the names or locations of the countries in South America or Africa, or explain the history of "the two Chinas"....Everybody knew about World War II, and nobody knew about World War I. Everybody knew about the Great Depression in the United States; nobody knew anything about the major depression that hit in Germany between the wars, resulting in the rise of Hitler.
Of course, this is exactly what makes moms come to me asking for help. Everybody is deathly afraid that they will somehow "miss" something important when working with their homeschoolers, thereby somehow rendering them hopeless and unable to get into college. In the long haul, what matters most is developing a love of learning in your children and giving the desire and skills to enable them to continue learning throughout their adult lives. Nobody can know "everything" at the age of 18. (Although most 18 year olds think they know everything...but that's another topic.) However, a little thought and planning can avoid such huge gaps and help provide a basic platform for further learning.
When planning for teaching social studies, I would follow these steps:
1. Forget/ignore what public school instruction is in social studies at a particular age. It doesn't matter, and your own plans will probably be superior to whatever they would be learning in school. (Note to any public school parents who may be reading this: Read to your kids, take them interesting places when you can...You can add on what the schools aren't teaching them and have fun doing it!)
2. Whatever you do, try to make it relevant and fun. History can be the driest subject in the world or the most exciting one. Start with local history, consider reenactments or theatre involvements, go on interesting field trips, read good books instead of textbooks.
3. When dealing with children 12 and down, there is nothing wrong with doing this a bit "hodge-podge"...but a good time line on the wall might do wonders in helping to tie things together. Also, whatever you are studying, start with local, go to U.S., but don't ignore the rest of the world! Learning about other cultures is vital in today's world. Two of my own children live outside the United States; all but one have done extensive traveling. I didn't leave this continent until I was in my fifties. My mother never left the U.S. My grandmother never left Wisconsin. Things are changing, and we have to change along with it!
4. When the kids are about middle school age it is a good time to do some subjects more linear...U.S. history from the beginning to current, a good overall view of world history and geography, perhaps some emphasis on missions work. Middle school years are a good time to prepare them for high school level work. Emphasize the skills they are developing (research, public speaking, reading and writing, thinking), as well as the specific knowledge base they are developing. Both are important at this stage.
5. When high school comes around, the typical social studies curriculum includes U.S. History, World History, World Geography, and Political Science/Economics. Most homeschoolers already know a lot of U.S. History by then, so my tendency is to go heavier on the more difficult subjects in high school, such as economics, Constitutional law, and World History. This doesn't mean you have to switch to boring methods of instruction...it just requires a little bit more planning, which should always involve the students at this stage.
6. No matter what the age of the student, textbooks are always the worst kind of instruction in this area. The best is personal involvement, (like real family trips), the second best is reading a good book written by someone who is actually interested in a particular topic. Good quality videos can also provide interesting vicarious experiences. When I was teaching a world history class at the resource center, I always got the video of the bomber pilot who bombed Hiroshima discussing his experiences that day. (For those of you in Georgia, it is available at the Cobb County Public Library). Just a little more interesting than reading about it in a textbook!
For those of you who have coops or resource centers where you can have group experiences, one final suggestion....my social studies classes at the resource center were also always my thinly-disguised speech classes. Over and over, my old students who have now graduated college, come back and tell me this was the best thing we did for them there. In middle school, they were expected to do group oral projects; in 9th grade they began taking ten minute pieces of class to teach, and by their senior year they were each teaching two complete classes a year.....An important part of this, I believe, is that they got to choose their own topics...It is always much easier to learn to speak in public when you are talking about something that you are interested in yourself! I'm a great public speaker when I'm talking about homeschooling, but put me up there on a topic of someone else's choice, I'd probably be horrible.
Okay...way too long a post on a holiday weekend. Get out there and enjoy the day with your families!
As with any homeschooling plan of action, the first thing is to ignore purposefully what the public schools would be doing in any particular grade. As long time readers know, I am not opposed to everything/everybody that is involved with the public school. My own mom worked there for many years. However, social studies education is one area where the public schools have done a very ineffective job for many years.
So here we are on the 4th of July. As many people know, recent polls have shown a pathetic level of knowledge of even the basics of American history. Most young people these days have only a vague idea of what they are supposed to be celebrating on this holiday. I have known supposedly well-educated young people recently who had no idea who many of the founders of the country were, who thought Thomas Jefferson wrote the Constitution, who didn't have any clue what the Bill of Rights was, and who genuinely believed that the first amendment said something about the separation of church and state.
None of this is news to the average homeschooler. Today I want to address a slightly different issue...the issue of ethnocentrism. Yes, it is important to know about American history, to understand (and actually READ the Consitituition), to know how the U.S government works, the basics of capitalism, and the ideas of the founding fathers. However, as Christians, we owe our allegiance to something greater than a country.
Along with the U.S. history in your curriculum, be sure to help your children develop a knowledge of the rest of the world. One thing I saw, over and over, at our resource center, was that by the time a student came to us for a high school level class, he or she often had huge gaps in their knowledge. Those unit studies that were popular homeschooling topics, like Romans, or Vikings, or Greeks, or the Civil War, had been covered extensively. Yet hardly anyone could tell me the names or locations of the countries in South America or Africa, or explain the history of "the two Chinas"....Everybody knew about World War II, and nobody knew about World War I. Everybody knew about the Great Depression in the United States; nobody knew anything about the major depression that hit in Germany between the wars, resulting in the rise of Hitler.
Of course, this is exactly what makes moms come to me asking for help. Everybody is deathly afraid that they will somehow "miss" something important when working with their homeschoolers, thereby somehow rendering them hopeless and unable to get into college. In the long haul, what matters most is developing a love of learning in your children and giving the desire and skills to enable them to continue learning throughout their adult lives. Nobody can know "everything" at the age of 18. (Although most 18 year olds think they know everything...but that's another topic.) However, a little thought and planning can avoid such huge gaps and help provide a basic platform for further learning.
When planning for teaching social studies, I would follow these steps:
1. Forget/ignore what public school instruction is in social studies at a particular age. It doesn't matter, and your own plans will probably be superior to whatever they would be learning in school. (Note to any public school parents who may be reading this: Read to your kids, take them interesting places when you can...You can add on what the schools aren't teaching them and have fun doing it!)
2. Whatever you do, try to make it relevant and fun. History can be the driest subject in the world or the most exciting one. Start with local history, consider reenactments or theatre involvements, go on interesting field trips, read good books instead of textbooks.
3. When dealing with children 12 and down, there is nothing wrong with doing this a bit "hodge-podge"...but a good time line on the wall might do wonders in helping to tie things together. Also, whatever you are studying, start with local, go to U.S., but don't ignore the rest of the world! Learning about other cultures is vital in today's world. Two of my own children live outside the United States; all but one have done extensive traveling. I didn't leave this continent until I was in my fifties. My mother never left the U.S. My grandmother never left Wisconsin. Things are changing, and we have to change along with it!
4. When the kids are about middle school age it is a good time to do some subjects more linear...U.S. history from the beginning to current, a good overall view of world history and geography, perhaps some emphasis on missions work. Middle school years are a good time to prepare them for high school level work. Emphasize the skills they are developing (research, public speaking, reading and writing, thinking), as well as the specific knowledge base they are developing. Both are important at this stage.
5. When high school comes around, the typical social studies curriculum includes U.S. History, World History, World Geography, and Political Science/Economics. Most homeschoolers already know a lot of U.S. History by then, so my tendency is to go heavier on the more difficult subjects in high school, such as economics, Constitutional law, and World History. This doesn't mean you have to switch to boring methods of instruction...it just requires a little bit more planning, which should always involve the students at this stage.
6. No matter what the age of the student, textbooks are always the worst kind of instruction in this area. The best is personal involvement, (like real family trips), the second best is reading a good book written by someone who is actually interested in a particular topic. Good quality videos can also provide interesting vicarious experiences. When I was teaching a world history class at the resource center, I always got the video of the bomber pilot who bombed Hiroshima discussing his experiences that day. (For those of you in Georgia, it is available at the Cobb County Public Library). Just a little more interesting than reading about it in a textbook!
For those of you who have coops or resource centers where you can have group experiences, one final suggestion....my social studies classes at the resource center were also always my thinly-disguised speech classes. Over and over, my old students who have now graduated college, come back and tell me this was the best thing we did for them there. In middle school, they were expected to do group oral projects; in 9th grade they began taking ten minute pieces of class to teach, and by their senior year they were each teaching two complete classes a year.....An important part of this, I believe, is that they got to choose their own topics...It is always much easier to learn to speak in public when you are talking about something that you are interested in yourself! I'm a great public speaker when I'm talking about homeschooling, but put me up there on a topic of someone else's choice, I'd probably be horrible.
Okay...way too long a post on a holiday weekend. Get out there and enjoy the day with your families!
Sunday, June 26, 2011
The Rhythm of Life
I'm stealing this title from the book, "Plain Wisdom", by Cindy Woodsmall and Miriam Flaud. Miriam is an old order Amish woman, and Cindy is from the modern world, but they share a lot in common just by virtue of being women..It's a good book. You should all read it some time. I know I've been enjoying it the past few days.
Two rhythms strike me as important this morning...the rhythm of the seasons and the rhythm of the days. It's a good time to be thinking of this, just as July shows up. July, by nature, is meant to be a slow time of year. It's a time for lying around in a hammock, taking a nice siesta during the hot hours of the day, spending the 4th of July with family and friends, and maybe taking a trip to the beach, or just splashing around with the family in the back yard pool.
The problem is, so many people have allowed themselves to get out of rhythm with the natural world. It is so easy to hide inside climate controlled houses and let July pass unnoticed. When I was a kid, the neighborhoods would be filled with children playing outside all month long. Think of Calvin and Hobbes and how much Calvin loved the summer, when "the days were just filled" with lots of nothing to do... In my job as an appraiser, I drive neighborhoods almost every day during the week. The kids are usually nowhere to be seen. A few might be found in the subdivision's pool, but rarely do you see children just fooling around out in their yards... I guess it is just too easy to sit inside in the airconditioning and play computer games, and I find that desperately sad.
It is also very important (at least for me) to move in the natural rhythm of the day...and that also changes for me from season to season. In the summertime, down south, I get up early every morning and before the sun gets too high, I do a little praying/inspirational reading, do my flexibilty exercises, feed the animals, feed myself, go running at the state park, water the outside plants and my gardens, and then water the inside plants and fill my bird feeders. Only after those "morning things" are done do I turn on my computer. I never allow appointments to infringe on these early morning hours...my work day starts at 10:00. Period.
Except yesterday. Yesterday, my boss really needed to talk to me at 6:00 a.m. That talk just kind of continued until about noon...and none of my "morning things" happened. That threw me off for the entire rest of the day. Of course, one of the important things to learn in life is you have to be flexible, and he really did need me yesterday morning. I understand that. I also promise that if he started to "need" me very often at that hour, I would soon be looking for another job. I've talked a lot about establishing boundaries lately. This is one boundary I simply have to have in place!
When my kids were little, we had a lot of flexibility and freedom in our homeschooling and our household, but every morning we had a bit of a routine, what we used to call our "morning things". We always started out with a few chores, a little personal private time, and a sit down breakfast together at approximately the same time every day. I've written many times that if we ever looked a little bit like a school when the kids were young, it was when we were at the breakfast table. I figured I had them all gathered together, so we might as well use the time together. We always started with a little Bible study, mostly using Pearl Buck's "The Story Bible", and then did one other thing...often a unit study, sometimes some foreign language study.
The important thing, to me, was that we had a routine established...Again, we could sometimes alter it for a day or two if life got in the way, but established routines and rhythms are very important to maintaining sanity, and the more they can mimic the natural rhythms of life, the happier and calmer everybody is typically going to be.
For the record, it has been in the 90s for days down south, and right now, at just after noon, the air conditioner is still off. I have a routine for that, too, (which, I'll admit, is sometimes a bone of contention in the family)..First thing in the morning, windows open, attic fan on.....Later, attic fan off, windows closed....At some point in the later afternoon, if it gets just too bad, a couple of hours of AC...then it is off again and the windows are opened and the attic fan is on....Not only does it save gobs of money, it helps me to live my life like my cat...going in and out of the house all day long at will....not getting so used to a nice cool house that I don't want to go out and do things in the garden.
Of course, I know not everybody is the "nature girl" that I am....But whatever, you need to establish your routines and your rhythms...it is part of the entire process of learning how to be relaxed without having things deteriorate into chaos. Then remember to set your own goals for your homeschooling and just stop obsessing over all the things that don't matter much in the long run. Live an interesting life, read a lot together, and make sure to enjoy some of these long, hot, summer days with your kids out in God's beautiful world!
Two rhythms strike me as important this morning...the rhythm of the seasons and the rhythm of the days. It's a good time to be thinking of this, just as July shows up. July, by nature, is meant to be a slow time of year. It's a time for lying around in a hammock, taking a nice siesta during the hot hours of the day, spending the 4th of July with family and friends, and maybe taking a trip to the beach, or just splashing around with the family in the back yard pool.
The problem is, so many people have allowed themselves to get out of rhythm with the natural world. It is so easy to hide inside climate controlled houses and let July pass unnoticed. When I was a kid, the neighborhoods would be filled with children playing outside all month long. Think of Calvin and Hobbes and how much Calvin loved the summer, when "the days were just filled" with lots of nothing to do... In my job as an appraiser, I drive neighborhoods almost every day during the week. The kids are usually nowhere to be seen. A few might be found in the subdivision's pool, but rarely do you see children just fooling around out in their yards... I guess it is just too easy to sit inside in the airconditioning and play computer games, and I find that desperately sad.
It is also very important (at least for me) to move in the natural rhythm of the day...and that also changes for me from season to season. In the summertime, down south, I get up early every morning and before the sun gets too high, I do a little praying/inspirational reading, do my flexibilty exercises, feed the animals, feed myself, go running at the state park, water the outside plants and my gardens, and then water the inside plants and fill my bird feeders. Only after those "morning things" are done do I turn on my computer. I never allow appointments to infringe on these early morning hours...my work day starts at 10:00. Period.
Except yesterday. Yesterday, my boss really needed to talk to me at 6:00 a.m. That talk just kind of continued until about noon...and none of my "morning things" happened. That threw me off for the entire rest of the day. Of course, one of the important things to learn in life is you have to be flexible, and he really did need me yesterday morning. I understand that. I also promise that if he started to "need" me very often at that hour, I would soon be looking for another job. I've talked a lot about establishing boundaries lately. This is one boundary I simply have to have in place!
When my kids were little, we had a lot of flexibility and freedom in our homeschooling and our household, but every morning we had a bit of a routine, what we used to call our "morning things". We always started out with a few chores, a little personal private time, and a sit down breakfast together at approximately the same time every day. I've written many times that if we ever looked a little bit like a school when the kids were young, it was when we were at the breakfast table. I figured I had them all gathered together, so we might as well use the time together. We always started with a little Bible study, mostly using Pearl Buck's "The Story Bible", and then did one other thing...often a unit study, sometimes some foreign language study.
The important thing, to me, was that we had a routine established...Again, we could sometimes alter it for a day or two if life got in the way, but established routines and rhythms are very important to maintaining sanity, and the more they can mimic the natural rhythms of life, the happier and calmer everybody is typically going to be.
For the record, it has been in the 90s for days down south, and right now, at just after noon, the air conditioner is still off. I have a routine for that, too, (which, I'll admit, is sometimes a bone of contention in the family)..First thing in the morning, windows open, attic fan on.....Later, attic fan off, windows closed....At some point in the later afternoon, if it gets just too bad, a couple of hours of AC...then it is off again and the windows are opened and the attic fan is on....Not only does it save gobs of money, it helps me to live my life like my cat...going in and out of the house all day long at will....not getting so used to a nice cool house that I don't want to go out and do things in the garden.
Of course, I know not everybody is the "nature girl" that I am....But whatever, you need to establish your routines and your rhythms...it is part of the entire process of learning how to be relaxed without having things deteriorate into chaos. Then remember to set your own goals for your homeschooling and just stop obsessing over all the things that don't matter much in the long run. Live an interesting life, read a lot together, and make sure to enjoy some of these long, hot, summer days with your kids out in God's beautiful world!
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Moms and Working
I've been thinking a lot this week about the issue of moms who need to earn extra income. This is the first time in a long while that I've been working for a "boss", although I'm still technically an independent contractor in my real estate work, which gives me a certain amount of leeway. Working for someone else makes everything so much more difficult when you have a household that needs somebody's full-time attention.
I read a good book a long time ago, (the title of which escapes me), which talked about women going through various stages in their lives. For the majority of women, this looks something like: young, unmarried, just out of college; young and married without children; 7 years (or so) of being married with small children, then married with children in school, and eventually married with kids all grown up. Of course, there are also single women at all phases,whose issues are somewhat different than the majority of homeschooling moms.
The problem with homeschooling moms is that phase three, married with children, doesn't last just seven years for us....it lasts about a third of our lifetimes! That makes it more important than ever for homeschooling moms to consider carefully whenever we are trying to earn an income. I still believe that it is much, much better for moms to either not work at all when their kids are still needing them a lot, or to figure out some way to do it being their own boss....An outside employer throws a real wrench into your priorities when you still have kids at home that need you at odd hours.
Even now, with just two "kids" at home (aged 20 and 33), I find there are still moments when I'm needed. As they get older, these moments are rarer, but they seem to be all the more critical at the exact moment of need. Even though I have deadlines now, I still have a little flexibility since much of my work as a real estate appraiser is done at home at my computer (and often in my jammies at midnight!) Still, I could never have done this job when my children were younger, because the stress would have made me crazy.
For those of you whose kids are still young, I strongly encourage you to explore any options you can find to make money on your own schedule. Nowadays, that probably would be easiest to do using the internet. My daughter Laura is thinking about making a variety of handcrafted items and selling them on an internet site. I had so many botched attempts to make money when my kids were little. The worst one was distributing phone books. I had pictured walking down the street with a little red wagon while Sam and Ginny took turns running up to place a phone book on a porch...Instead I wound up with 400 phone books I had to haul up to the 15th floor of an office building while they sat at home being babysat! The best job I ever had as a young homeschooling mom was teaching piano lessons to school kids after school at my house. By then my little guys were ready for some quiet time in their rooms, and as long as I kept it down to 2 students a day, it worked fine. Then later, as I began working with homeschoolers, things also worked fairly well because it was all homeschool related, so the kids could usually be around and moderately helpful.
I don't regret the last four years, working and studying in the field of real estate. It has definitely helped me learn more about computers, marketing, and lots of technological areas that I'd been avoiding to that point. However, I could never have done this when my kids were all still at home. I miss the more leisurely days of homeschooling and working with other families and I''m looking forward to putting this real estate work aside again someday and returning to the field of education....But for now, gotta go...I have a deadline to meet!
I read a good book a long time ago, (the title of which escapes me), which talked about women going through various stages in their lives. For the majority of women, this looks something like: young, unmarried, just out of college; young and married without children; 7 years (or so) of being married with small children, then married with children in school, and eventually married with kids all grown up. Of course, there are also single women at all phases,whose issues are somewhat different than the majority of homeschooling moms.
The problem with homeschooling moms is that phase three, married with children, doesn't last just seven years for us....it lasts about a third of our lifetimes! That makes it more important than ever for homeschooling moms to consider carefully whenever we are trying to earn an income. I still believe that it is much, much better for moms to either not work at all when their kids are still needing them a lot, or to figure out some way to do it being their own boss....An outside employer throws a real wrench into your priorities when you still have kids at home that need you at odd hours.
Even now, with just two "kids" at home (aged 20 and 33), I find there are still moments when I'm needed. As they get older, these moments are rarer, but they seem to be all the more critical at the exact moment of need. Even though I have deadlines now, I still have a little flexibility since much of my work as a real estate appraiser is done at home at my computer (and often in my jammies at midnight!) Still, I could never have done this job when my children were younger, because the stress would have made me crazy.
For those of you whose kids are still young, I strongly encourage you to explore any options you can find to make money on your own schedule. Nowadays, that probably would be easiest to do using the internet. My daughter Laura is thinking about making a variety of handcrafted items and selling them on an internet site. I had so many botched attempts to make money when my kids were little. The worst one was distributing phone books. I had pictured walking down the street with a little red wagon while Sam and Ginny took turns running up to place a phone book on a porch...Instead I wound up with 400 phone books I had to haul up to the 15th floor of an office building while they sat at home being babysat! The best job I ever had as a young homeschooling mom was teaching piano lessons to school kids after school at my house. By then my little guys were ready for some quiet time in their rooms, and as long as I kept it down to 2 students a day, it worked fine. Then later, as I began working with homeschoolers, things also worked fairly well because it was all homeschool related, so the kids could usually be around and moderately helpful.
I don't regret the last four years, working and studying in the field of real estate. It has definitely helped me learn more about computers, marketing, and lots of technological areas that I'd been avoiding to that point. However, I could never have done this when my kids were all still at home. I miss the more leisurely days of homeschooling and working with other families and I''m looking forward to putting this real estate work aside again someday and returning to the field of education....But for now, gotta go...I have a deadline to meet!
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Building (and Appreciating!) Community
This past weekend, for the first time since my New Year's Resolution to blog every weekend, I didn't do it....hence the mid-week post. The reason I didn't is that, for once, I was actually part of a community for a few days again. I went up to Virginia to see my daughter, who was visiting a friend in grad school. The friend lives in a house with five other young women, and it was so great to feel like a part of a group again for a change. I think the thing I like the best is that, when you want to go to a farmer's market, or a movie, or a swimming pool, there is almost always someone there who wants to go with you.
I've been a part of a community many times over the years, like during school, or when working at Goodwill when I was in my twenties, or when creating the resource center in Kennesaw where we worked with homeschoolers for nine years...but I've also experienced a lot of alone-ness...Note this is somewhat different than loneliness...the more you know yourself, and the more connected you are to God, the more alone-ness you can tolerate without giving way to loneliness. Still, connections are important, and I crave more of them.
When my kids were little, in a lot of ways, they were my community. I remember, back then, though, that I often craved a little adult companionship to balance it out. Every once in awhile, I'd experience true fellowship with other homeschoolers, or sometimes other adults that weren't homeschoolers. Once Steve was on a baseball team that travelled a lot, so I got to really know the other moms and dads in a deeper way, but this was the exception, rather than the rule.
I also remember how envious I was once when I met a homeschooling group of moms down in Florida who really had developed the kind of community I was craving. They met every week at somebody's house, and talked and laughed until the wee hours of the morning. Although plenty of groups try to do this, it seems hard to get everybody to commit and stick around long enough to develop deep friendships...For those of you who do already have this, treasure it!
One of our goals with ARCHERS is to stimulate this kind of community among homeschooling moms. We don't want to step in and take over if you already have this kind of experience. However, I am finding that it is difficult to help, because people either already have it and don't need our help, or are completely clueless as to how to start. I probably get at least one email a week asking if we have an ARCHERS support group in (fill in the blank). When I respond I always say, "Not that I know of, but we'd be happy to help you start one"...Typically, there is no response. Starting something sounds like a lot of work, but back in the early days of the movement, when there were no existing groups, we all started by doing things like tacking up notes at the library or seeking out a couple of people at places like LaLeche League meetings, or food coops. Once we had a small core of people, the groups often grew, sometimes to the point that they became too large and had to either split or change character.
My dream continues to be to create a special retreat/conference center to help people build such communities....In the meantime, I treasure the occasional times when I get to be a part of a group of special women, like I did last week. If any of you are reading this, thanks for the memories!
I've been a part of a community many times over the years, like during school, or when working at Goodwill when I was in my twenties, or when creating the resource center in Kennesaw where we worked with homeschoolers for nine years...but I've also experienced a lot of alone-ness...Note this is somewhat different than loneliness...the more you know yourself, and the more connected you are to God, the more alone-ness you can tolerate without giving way to loneliness. Still, connections are important, and I crave more of them.
When my kids were little, in a lot of ways, they were my community. I remember, back then, though, that I often craved a little adult companionship to balance it out. Every once in awhile, I'd experience true fellowship with other homeschoolers, or sometimes other adults that weren't homeschoolers. Once Steve was on a baseball team that travelled a lot, so I got to really know the other moms and dads in a deeper way, but this was the exception, rather than the rule.
I also remember how envious I was once when I met a homeschooling group of moms down in Florida who really had developed the kind of community I was craving. They met every week at somebody's house, and talked and laughed until the wee hours of the morning. Although plenty of groups try to do this, it seems hard to get everybody to commit and stick around long enough to develop deep friendships...For those of you who do already have this, treasure it!
One of our goals with ARCHERS is to stimulate this kind of community among homeschooling moms. We don't want to step in and take over if you already have this kind of experience. However, I am finding that it is difficult to help, because people either already have it and don't need our help, or are completely clueless as to how to start. I probably get at least one email a week asking if we have an ARCHERS support group in (fill in the blank). When I respond I always say, "Not that I know of, but we'd be happy to help you start one"...Typically, there is no response. Starting something sounds like a lot of work, but back in the early days of the movement, when there were no existing groups, we all started by doing things like tacking up notes at the library or seeking out a couple of people at places like LaLeche League meetings, or food coops. Once we had a small core of people, the groups often grew, sometimes to the point that they became too large and had to either split or change character.
My dream continues to be to create a special retreat/conference center to help people build such communities....In the meantime, I treasure the occasional times when I get to be a part of a group of special women, like I did last week. If any of you are reading this, thanks for the memories!
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Getting Unstuck, Finding Real Faith
Lately, in one of my jobs in life, being the person everybody calls when they don't know what else to do,(which I don't mind, by the way), I have noticed a definite trend. So many people are getting scared about a large variety of things, some real and close to home, some halfway imaginary and far away, that they are becoming absolutely stuck, and can't figure out what to do next (about almost everything).
Obviously, I have alot of solid Christian friends and relatives, but I also have a lot of non-Christian friends and relatives, and, quite frankly, the only difference I'm seeing between the two groups is a difference in rhetoric. One group gives me various degrees of "Life Sucks and then You Die."...The other is all about "God is good, God has a purpose in all this, God will see us through", etc. But neither group seems capable of figuring out the next move.
You know it is one thing to say the Christian words, and quite another to truly believe, deep down, that everything is going to be okay. The thing is, as much as I do believe, I have never personally experienced a situation where God just threw down money or handed me a job without my going out to look for one. (Not saying he wouldn't be capable of that, just saying it isn't the way he usually works on my behalf.)
So the question is, how does one get unstuck? How does one get over the fear of the unknown and figure out how to take the next step? How does one make that decision, especially if that next step is something scary, like letting your house go back to the bank so you can move on to the next stage of your life?
Since my son Sam never minds me talking about him (unlike a couple of his siblings), I'm going to use our recent interaction as an example. Sam has been stuck, stuck, stuck lately. He had a series of difficult situations to get through, battling cancer and then winding up bankrupt due to medical expenses, and he wound up broke and living at home, unemployed. He came very close to getting his dream job a few months ago, and when it didn't come through, he got into this rut that I'm seeing a lot of other folks in right now....a rut where it is much easier to just sit there and whine about the economy than it is to keep on trying.
The other day we had a talk about how to get out of a rut...in his case, I'm encouraging him to go back and start taking some college credits again, one class at a time..(He was close to his degree when everything started to hit the fan, and now would like to finally finish it...) In addition, he needs to just start handing out the resumes again...no matter how discouraging it may seem. The bottom line is, he has to do something, even if he isn't sure what that is! He will not find a job, or finish his degree, or find more friends, or ultimately create a family of his own, as long as he sits in this house having philosophical discussions with his mother!
In my work as an appraiser, I'm seeing many situations these days where people's lives have gone up in smoke, losing their homes to foreclosure. In many of these houses, you can just feel the anger...people who said to themselves (and I'm guessing to many other people!) ....Ok, you can take my house, but first I"m taking the stove and the dishwasher and all the ceiling fans, and I think I'll just make a few holes in the walls while I'm at it, and maybe I'll take all the copper piping and rip out the tile in the bathrooms....Then the other day I went into a foreclosed home and you could still feel the love in that home. The wallpaper on the children's rooms were still intact, the house had been carefully cleaned up when the family left, and the stove and the dishwasher were still in place. I don't know where that family is today, but I know that the attitude they had in the face of economic troubles will serve them well as they figure out the next step. And I'm willing to bet that God really will be with that family, and will not let them starve.
If you're having troubles, or feel like you're in a rut, just make up your mind to move beyond the "God is good" rhetoric and start really trusting him!!! Then wake up tomorrow and figure out one good thing to do to start moving in a better direction. As usual, I'm partly speaking to myself here. This morning, I had two good things to do...one was to write this blog, and the other was to clean up the patio area...a disgusting job for early on a Sunday morning, but one that had to be done, and now it makes me feel good. Instead of looking out on a winter's worth of debris, I'm looking out on a nice clean patio.
One of my favorite quotes is from an old Amish lady..."Do ye now next thing."....And then the next, and the next, and the next, and one day you will wake up and you will have gotten out of your rut and your difficult situation. Of course, life is a series of difficult situations, so part of the exercise is understanding that this is LIFE...and part of it is learning to have a good time in the midst of the difficulties. So, once again, RELAX...and don't just SAY you're trusting God, really trust God to show you what to do, one step at a time.
Obviously, I have alot of solid Christian friends and relatives, but I also have a lot of non-Christian friends and relatives, and, quite frankly, the only difference I'm seeing between the two groups is a difference in rhetoric. One group gives me various degrees of "Life Sucks and then You Die."...The other is all about "God is good, God has a purpose in all this, God will see us through", etc. But neither group seems capable of figuring out the next move.
You know it is one thing to say the Christian words, and quite another to truly believe, deep down, that everything is going to be okay. The thing is, as much as I do believe, I have never personally experienced a situation where God just threw down money or handed me a job without my going out to look for one. (Not saying he wouldn't be capable of that, just saying it isn't the way he usually works on my behalf.)
So the question is, how does one get unstuck? How does one get over the fear of the unknown and figure out how to take the next step? How does one make that decision, especially if that next step is something scary, like letting your house go back to the bank so you can move on to the next stage of your life?
Since my son Sam never minds me talking about him (unlike a couple of his siblings), I'm going to use our recent interaction as an example. Sam has been stuck, stuck, stuck lately. He had a series of difficult situations to get through, battling cancer and then winding up bankrupt due to medical expenses, and he wound up broke and living at home, unemployed. He came very close to getting his dream job a few months ago, and when it didn't come through, he got into this rut that I'm seeing a lot of other folks in right now....a rut where it is much easier to just sit there and whine about the economy than it is to keep on trying.
The other day we had a talk about how to get out of a rut...in his case, I'm encouraging him to go back and start taking some college credits again, one class at a time..(He was close to his degree when everything started to hit the fan, and now would like to finally finish it...) In addition, he needs to just start handing out the resumes again...no matter how discouraging it may seem. The bottom line is, he has to do something, even if he isn't sure what that is! He will not find a job, or finish his degree, or find more friends, or ultimately create a family of his own, as long as he sits in this house having philosophical discussions with his mother!
In my work as an appraiser, I'm seeing many situations these days where people's lives have gone up in smoke, losing their homes to foreclosure. In many of these houses, you can just feel the anger...people who said to themselves (and I'm guessing to many other people!) ....Ok, you can take my house, but first I"m taking the stove and the dishwasher and all the ceiling fans, and I think I'll just make a few holes in the walls while I'm at it, and maybe I'll take all the copper piping and rip out the tile in the bathrooms....Then the other day I went into a foreclosed home and you could still feel the love in that home. The wallpaper on the children's rooms were still intact, the house had been carefully cleaned up when the family left, and the stove and the dishwasher were still in place. I don't know where that family is today, but I know that the attitude they had in the face of economic troubles will serve them well as they figure out the next step. And I'm willing to bet that God really will be with that family, and will not let them starve.
If you're having troubles, or feel like you're in a rut, just make up your mind to move beyond the "God is good" rhetoric and start really trusting him!!! Then wake up tomorrow and figure out one good thing to do to start moving in a better direction. As usual, I'm partly speaking to myself here. This morning, I had two good things to do...one was to write this blog, and the other was to clean up the patio area...a disgusting job for early on a Sunday morning, but one that had to be done, and now it makes me feel good. Instead of looking out on a winter's worth of debris, I'm looking out on a nice clean patio.
One of my favorite quotes is from an old Amish lady..."Do ye now next thing."....And then the next, and the next, and the next, and one day you will wake up and you will have gotten out of your rut and your difficult situation. Of course, life is a series of difficult situations, so part of the exercise is understanding that this is LIFE...and part of it is learning to have a good time in the midst of the difficulties. So, once again, RELAX...and don't just SAY you're trusting God, really trust God to show you what to do, one step at a time.
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