Billy was up all night coughing, the slime trail that the boys leave at the moment would drown a snail and there is a definate subdued air to the home at the moment..... I'm just praying I don't get it!

Socialisation

The most common question reguarding homeschooling is about socialisation. I think I will print out this article and hand it out to anyone who asks in future. ETA: This one is pretty good too!

Or if you just want a giggle, here is a parody of what so many families seem to think a home schooling family MUST be like! Written and performed by a homeschooling family

Thought for today....

Anger makes you smaller,
while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were.

Cherie Carter-Scott

Our neice

Please pray for our Niece Ariana. I got a call this morning to let me know that she is in hospital. She looks like she's going to be OK, but she became seriously ill after eating some fertiliser out of a pot plant. They are thinking of taking out her tubes etc. later today. I can't imagine how Darryl and Katrina her parents are feeling, eating pot plants is so something MY boys would do. Ariana is about to turn one. Her parents do not attend Church and I do not know what kind of spiritual support they have other than phone calls from my mother-in-law and Beloved. Queensland is a long way a way and I have never met this little girl or her mother, but they are very strongly in my heart right now.

Update

Where has the year gone? I can't believe it is December already!

Erin:
is all into academics at the moment. She spends hours reading and writing and the practise is really paying off. I am glad I restrict us to short, 15 minute lessons. It has meant that she leaves every session wanting more therefore she spends much of her own time doing her own practise.

Billy:
may be coming to the end of having naps. If he has a long day nap, he tends to find it difficult to get to sleep that night. For now, I am just trying to keep his nap time short (about an hour and a half). I would prefer to keep his nap time going until well after the baby is born and he does tend to get overtired if he goes more than a day or two without one.

Christopher:
is sleeping through reliably at the moment for which I am very, very thankful. One major key to this is keeping his days regular. Too many disrupted days usually makes for disrupted nights. He is using pointing to communicate a fair bit lately. I should take this opportunity to teach him sign language!

The New Baby:
There is a definite twinge in my lower back at the moment. I should call the osteopath again but my reluctance to part with the money has prevented me thus far. I will have to do it though. Movements aren't quite as leaping about at the moment as there is less room to move in there now. I do have trouble breathing sometimes though as bub presses up on my diaphragm.

The Home:
I did it. I cracked. I've hired a cleaner. I put a notice up at the post office and a lady who I know responded. She gets on famously with the kids and is a really practical, down-to-earth sort. There is a part of me which rails against this eventuality. A little voice shouts gruffly in my ear "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps girl! You are home ALL DAY! You ONLY have three kids all of whom are perfectly healthy individuals with no special needs. If you got up earlier, stuck to your routines, cut out rest times, went to bed earlier at night and just DID it you wouldn't need a cleaner!! That money could go toward (insert worthy cause here) or improving the comfort and lifestyle of your family" But the reality of it? The house is not clean and tidy and the ironing is piled up on the ironing board and my back is starting to twinge again and I just feel exhausted and helpless thinking about it. The family is suffering, Jon had to iron his own shirt twice in the last fortnight and Erin hasn't been able to invite friends home to play because I am too embarrassed by the boxes STILL around the house and the state of the living room rug. So next Monday Sarah will be coming to visit us and the guilt I feel is far outweighed by the relief.

The Garden:
strawberry plants abound among the weeds, Peonies bring the scent of summer indoors. Poppies and Johnny-jump-ups continue to be a joyful serendipity around the yard.

Exercise:
gentle walking is about it for me at the moment. The swimming pool should open soon so I really need to get myself some bathers (although I may be mistaken for a beached whale!

Jess

Monday Mythbusters: short, not stupid

Just to step away from the whole family and motherhood myth busting, I just wanted to take a moment to say:

Children are short, not stupid!!

It is one of the greatest myths of today, that children are stupid. They get spoken to as if the lack the ability to understand the most simple words. People use the silliest voices and say the silliest things. Children are not expected to know or retain any useful information. It drives me (and often them) barmy! *warning, I may rant a little today!*

Now, my kids are bright, there is no arguing that. But they are on the brighter end of perfectly normal. People are astonished when I speak to Billy in a normal voice and using normal language and he understands and responds. He is 2 1/2 for crying out loud! Of course he can understand me! Christopher understands most things! When Christopher has finished his meal I often ask him "Would you like some more food?". More often than not he nods, sometimes he points to the exact food he wants. I respond with: "Yes please Mummy." and nod back to him to let him know that I understand and then give him what he wants (if appropriate). We have worked out this communication simply by talking together. Sometimes he shakes his head if he is full (that is rare though!) and once when I asked "Would you like to go to bed then?" he responded with a nod, got put to bed and went right to sleep. Because I take the time to talk to him and I watch carefully for his response, we can communicate. I know he knows what he wants, my role is simply to help him learn to communicate that want effectively!

We have always spoken directly to the kids in normal voices doing our best to help them understand because that is simply the way we do things. As a consequence, they learn to communicate quite effectively at a fairly young age. This cuts down amazingly on tantrums (doesn't get rid of them entirely unfortunately!) and simply taking the time to explain things to them has meant they have a much better handle on their world. Even when they are not quite savvy with vocabulary, the definitely understand tone. That is why saying "come here, come to Mummy" in a sugary, sickly sweet voice to a small child running in the other direction rarely works! The words may say "come here" but the tone says "I don't expect you to obey and I shan't punish you if you don't!". The same words said in a kind but business-like tone (especially if usually backed up with consequences) is much more likely to get results.

Often when people chat to me on the street they talk over the kid's heads about them. It is well intentioned, but really, why not talk to them? I often redirect the questions to the kids. For example when someone asks how old the kids are, I ask Erin. Children are rarely included in conversations and people are surprised when they reach their teen years with no conversation skills. Where do you expect them to learn conversation skills? At school with groups of other kids who have never been spoken to?

The thing that really gets me is when people have decidedly ADULT conversations over the top of kid's heads thinking that they don't understand. I am talking about discussing intimate details of their sex life etc. They may not be able to understand the exact details, but the certainly retain enough. Some of the conversations I overheard between two and three year olds when I worked as a child carer were, shall we say, enlightening. Again, they are short, not stupid or deaf.

Also, the 'cute' things they say are often their way of trying to work out their world. To adopt their lisps or mispronunciations into your 'family dialect' and try and get him or her to say it again for relatives, reinforces what was probably an honest mistake. When a child asks for "Wa-wa", rather than starting to call all water "wa-wa", how about responding with "OK, here's a drink of water"? Accepting their approximations but not reinforcing them is a positive way to help them get on with the business of learning. Imagine you went to a different country and you were learning a different language. Imagine your guides found your mispronunciations cute and started using them too. Imagine your frustrations when you tried to communicate with people other than your guides who simply could not understand your garbled speech. Now do you understand why three year olds throw tantrums?!

Now we do use silly voices and made up words when playing around in our family. In fact, we have done since before the kids were born! For example, we sometimes call sneezes "sneezles". Our kids know they are called sneezes by most people and can shift easily between the two words. We use silly voices when playing or reading stories, but easily switch into our normal voice when we aren't doing those things. The point is, we don't speak to our kids exclusively with silly voices and made up words. I once knew a family with seven kids who spoke to the younger four (who they referred to as 'the babies') almost exclusively with silly voices and made up words. Even the five year old was almost impossible for people outside the family to understand, not because he was stupid but because he never had opportunity to learn any different. He learned that talking in a silly voice got him attention and often made his family think he was cute therefore made them more likely to give him what he wanted. Why would he speak properly? Silly, "cute" speech was a far more effective way of getting what he wanted.

So please don't fall for the myth that kids are stupid, it does nobody any favours!

Another thought for the day...

Wisdom is not a product of schooling, but of the life-long attempt to acquire it.

Albert Einstein

The Richest Family

The Rich Family In Church
By Eddie Oga

l never forget Easter 1946. I was 14, my little sister Ocy was 12, and my older sister Darlene 16. We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was to do without many things. My dad had died five years before, leaving Mom with seven school kids to raise and no money.

By 1946 my older sisters were married and my brothers had left home. A month before Easter the pastor of our church announced that a special Easter offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially.

When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save $20 of our grocery money for the offering. When we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as much as possible and didn't listen to the radio, we'd save money on that month's electric bill. Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us babysat for everyone we could. For 15 cents we could buy enough cotton loops to make three pot holders to sell for $1.

We made $20 on pot holders. That month was one of the best of our lives.

Every day we counted the money to see how much we had saved. At night we'd sit in the dark and talk about how the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We had about 80 people in church, so figured that whatever amount of money we had to give, the offering would surely be 20 times that much. After all, every Sunday the pastor had reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering.

The day before Easter, Ocy and I walked to the grocery store and got the manager to give us three crisp $20 bills and one $10 bill for all our change.

We ran all the way home to show Mom and Darlene. We had never had so much money before.

That night we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didn't care that we wouldn't have new clothes for Easter; we had $70 for the sacrificial offering.

We could hardly wait to get to church! On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn't own an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn't seem to matter how wet we got. Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her feet got wet.

But we sat in church proudly. I heard some teenagers talking about the Smith girls having on their old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt rich.

When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the second row from the front. Mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us kids put in a $20.

As we walked home after church, we sang all the way. At lunch Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes! Late that afternoon the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she didn't say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp $20 bills, one $10 and seventeen $1 bills.

Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn't talk, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling like poor white trash. We kids had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn't have our Mom and Dad for parents and a house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the spoon or the fork that night.

We had two knifes that we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn't have a lot of things that other people had, but I'd never thought we were poor.

That Easter day I found out we were. The minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we must be poor. I didn't like being poor. I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes and felt so ashamed—I didn't even want to go back to church. Everyone there probably already knew we were poor!

I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of my class of over 100 students. I wondered if the kids at school knew that we were poor. I decided that I could quit school since I had finished the eighth grade. That was all the law required at that time. We sat in silence for a long time. Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. What did poor people do with money? We didn't know. We'd never known we were poor. We didn't want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day, we didn't talk on the way.

Mom started to sing, but no one joined in and she only sang one verse. At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun dried bricks, but they needed money to buy roofs. He said $100 would put a roof on a church. The minister said, "Can't we all sacrifice to help these poor people?" We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week.

Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene. Darlene gave it to me, and I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering.

When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over $100. The missionary was excited. He hadn't expected such a large offering from our small church. He said, "You must have some rich people in this church."

Suddenly it struck us! We had given $87 of that "little over $100."

We were the rich family in the church! Hadn't the missionary said so? From that day on I've never been poor again. I've always remembered how rich I am because I have Jesus!

Here is the link to the original story - it touched my heart and reminded me to count my blessings!

Creation

I surprised myself last night when I was sitting watching television with Beloved with knitting needles in my hands. It has been months since I touched them, most evenings I have just been too mind-numbingly exhausted to even consider it. But it makes sense, at the end of each pregnancy I have turned into a mad keen knitting machine! There is something soothing about the stitches slowly coming together to create something new. There is something about carrying a child that brings out the desire to create, a small thumb print on my soul left by the Creator when He made me in His image. The same way Erin sits down and painstakingly makes list after undecipherable list in mimicry of my own list making habits, I create small, flawed items in mimicry of the Creator. And His creative power is rarely more apparent to me than now.

This is the first time I have been so big and heavy in the heat, my other babies all being winter or early spring babies. It does not bring out the best in me. I walked down to the post office this morning to get stamps after leaping about with the children during their once-a-month music session. Uncomfortable Braxton-Hicks impeded my progress. It was a relief to sit Christopher on the cool counter and visit with the post master as the children snacked from his ever-ready lolly jar (I love life in a small town!). I trundled along to the craft shop to choose the last Christmas gift on my list, fair waddling in the heat. The children were threatened with dire consequences if their chocolate covered fingers touched ANYTHING. They didn't touch, but I was on edge the whole time we were in there. I had a short visit with Jane - the kind-hearted lady who runs the shop. She once confided in me that she didn't much like children as a rule and never felt the desire to have any herself - but my children are different and they are just lovely to have around. I don't know if she has changed her mind now that Christopher threw up his chocolate frog all over her floor.

Of course, by the time we were heading home the children had fallen in to their three stooges act. They have never seen the show, but I think it is written somewhere in the DNA of young children that they must behave in such a way when it is hot, they are tired and their mother is about ready to tie them to a tree.

Phrases I never thought I would have to say:

"Will you PLEASE get your fingers OUT of his eyes!"

"Do not lay on your brother, you may be littler than him but he still doesn't like it"

"Well if you yell like that, yes he will find it funny and do it again won't he. Try not yelling and asking him NICELY to get his finger out of your ear"

"Yes, I'd like a drink too, but where do you think I will get one from? Do you think I am the drink fairy? Home is just over there, I will get you a drink then."

"Your legs are tired? Shall I cut them off then?"

So tired, hot, sore and exhausted, I sit. I have a list of things to do as long as both my arms (including washing the pram - Billy didn't quite 'make it' all the way home). I feel heavy.

And yet...

As I run my fingers over my yarn, and my swelling belly, I remember again the act of creation being completed in me. The miraculous creation of new life. The double creation of this child, and the re-creation of me, His child.

What a privilege, what a joy.

Gifts

#46 the 'ripe' feeling of late pregnancy, like a summer fruit about to burst with potential
#47 sticky fingers holding out a fragment of chocolate "just for you"
#48 rest, when true tiredness sets in. Precious moments in an armchair
#49 a small boy "quacking" to himself as he "reads" a book about ducks
#50 Blond pigtails bouncing as she runs ahead, words tumbling from her mouth with careless abandon.

The poor bear!

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