Although I just moved back to my childhood hometown, I really didn’t spend that many years here. I am the oldest in my family, and I spent most of my formative years growing up in Southwest Missouri on a dairy farm. There are seven years between my brother and me and that made a big difference growing up on the farm. Although I was a girl, I in essence became my dad’s boy.

I was expected to be able to do the same things that a boy my age should be able to do. And since it was my dad, I had to do it even better. I hauled hay, milked cows, fed the cows and the calves, drove tractors, shoveled manure and did pretty much anything my dad asked me to do. I was his female boy. I was the oldest, so I had responsibilities to take care of and I had to be sure they were done correctly the first time. There were no second times with my dad.

Now, my dad really wasn’t harsh. He just needed help on our 105 acre farm. I was the oldest, so it fell to me to do the work. My brother and my sisters were just too little at the time. I remember one time when the grain auger quit functioning and I had to haul 5 gallon buckets of grain to fill the bins in the milking stalls. I was quite strong for a girl because I had to be. It was during this time that a young man stopped by to see me and finalize the details for our prom date. When he inquired after me, my dad told him I was in Prom training. It was about this time that I came around the corner with my buckets of grain. He didn’t think that was too funny. But I did and so did my dad.

So why am I reminiscing about the days of the past? Well, it became apparent to me yet again that I am still my dad’s boy. I may be a mother and appreciate flowers and lotion and all of the girly stuff, but I am still my dad’s boy. He just got to have two of them to boss around since my husband is working by his side. My husband was laying floorboard in the bathroom and I was hauling in boxes of tile to lay.

I may be my dad’s boy, but I am also his little girl. It doesn’t matter how old I get over the years. And that is enough to make me smile.

Photo provided by Robb

This past month has found me making some life changes and returning home. My husband and I felt compelled to make a move back to our old hometown from our youth. We never thought we would return to our hometown except for short visits to see our families. But we felt a very strong urge that we needed to return to keep an eye on the parental units. It seems that they are getting older and are not in the best of health. So we packed up our established home and made a move.

We are still in the process of selling our old home and trying to move into our new one. We are moving into my grandparents old home. While it is a neat old house, it wasn’t ready to be moved into. I am currently going through 60 years of stuff and sorting it. There are lots of memories involved. I am perhaps a little less attached to some of the stuff than my mom. She wants to keep everything. I am more prone to throw things out. I have incentive…the sooner I am done, the sooner I can move out of my parents home. (We are currently sleeping at their house.)

My propensity to throw things out has caused a few arguments. Mom contends that some things just can’t be replaced. I argue that I don’t know who needs 8o+ years of funeral programs. My grandma will be 89 in September and has kept every single program from every funeral she has ever attended. I am so not kidding. I threw them out.

The bathroom and kitchen are completely gutted. I don’t have running water yet. But all of that should be changing this week. I have fought a valiant fight to get tile floors in those rooms. I purchased the tile, so I will win. Even though we had to level the bathroom floor by 3 inches.

It has been an interesting process so far. Sometimes I wonder what we were thinking, especially when my husband has had to leave and attend trade shows for his job. But I remind myself that it will be worth it in the end. The house will be awesome. I made progress this week and almost got the office set up after pulling up 4 different layers of carpet. I found wood floors. There is a certain charm beneath the 40+ layers of wallpaper within the walls of this old home.

Returning home can be a good thing, indeed. Even if it is a lot of work in the process.

It is that time of year when homeschool families are searching and planning for the curriculum they use this next school year. In my case, it will be a revamping as we will focus on what worked for us this past year, and make changes to what didn’t work as well.

I am going to take a more eclectic approach this next school year. I am going to be taking the best of several different curriculums and meshing them into one solid plan. By doing this, I am ensuring that the boy will get what he needs. I have at my disposal, the best of the best. I have been searching and planning for this all during this past year. My hope is that he will progress even more than we did this past year, which was a lot.

Over the next several days, I will be discussing the many different curriculum choices that are available to us as homeschool families. I want to give the pros and cons of these as I see them. My hope is that we can learn about the many options together and make informed decisions about what is available for our own homeschools.

What is your favorite curriculum? Why did you choose it? What are the pros and cons, if any, of using it? Leave me a comment and let me know what you think or want to know more about.

This past month we took our school with us on the road. My husband needed to go South for a business trip and as it was still fairly cold at times where we live, I demanded that he take us along for the ride. This is something that just wouldn’t have been possible in a regular brick and mortar school. But with a little ingenuity, we accomplished a great amount of schoolwork in the car without putting my son’s education in the backseat. (Although, that is where he actually sat on the trip!)

The key to car school is planning and preparation! I spent a little time before our trip planning out the work that would need to be accomplished and proceeded to gather the materials we needed. I printed out all of the worksheets and study guides so I didn’t need to carry ALL of the books that we normally work out of each week. I organized things into folders by subject and created a master plan on my computer. Then I gathered the books and folders we needed and packed them up in a schoolbag. I even remembered the scissors and crayons that we needed for a math lesson!

I was amazed at how quickly my son did his work each day and all with a willing and positive attitude! It was perhaps one of the most stress free weeks we have ever had and he accomplished more in a shorter amount of time than he ever has before. I plan on taking this approach more often in the future as I drive my son’s education in the direction he needs to go.

What are some of the ways you steer your child’s education in the right direction? What are some of your tips and tricks?

Photo by Marykbaird

I thought this was a great little reminder that parents are just people. And that we were once little kids ourselves. Do you remember what it was like to be a little kid? When was the last time you thought about it?

Perhaps we should do ourselves and our families a little favor and try to remember what it was like to be a child. Maybe we will be able to better relate to our kids and that can only bring a closeness that needs to be there. Put ourselves in the shoes of our kids and maybe we will be a little less quick to judge and perhaps judge less harshly.

Then again, it may just help us to stay one or two steps ahead of those kids too! Remember what you were thinking at that age and I’ll bet your kids will be surprised. Just a little thought…

I found this to be adorable and I just had to share. I hope that you enjoy it. Kids are so cute!

What, you ask, is “Butt Dust?” Read on and you’ll discover the joy in a
child’s sincere originality. No adults in this!!

JACK (age 3) was watching his Mom breast-feeding his new baby sister.
After a while, he asked: “Mom why have you got two? Is one for hot and
one for cold milk?”

MELANIE (age 5) asked her Granny how old she was. Granny replied
she was so old she didn’t remember any more. Melanie said, “If you don’t
remember, you must look in the back of your panties. Mine say five to six.”

STEVEN (age 3) hugged and kissed his Mom good night. “I love you so much
that, when you die, I’m going to bury you outside my bedroom window.”

BRITTANY (age 4) had an earache and wanted a pain killer. She tried in
vain to take the lid off the bottle. Seeing her frustration, her Mom
explained it was a child-proof cap, and she’d have to open it for her.
Eyes wide with wonder, the little girl asked, “How does it know it’s me?”

SUSAN (age 4) was drinking juice when she got the hiccups. “Please don’t
give me this juice again,” she said. “It makes my teeth cough.”

DJ (age 4) stepped onto the bathroom scale and asked, “How much do I cost?”

MARC (age 4) was engrossed in a young couple that was hugging and kissing
in a restaurant. Without taking his eyes off them, he asked his dad, “Why is he
whispering in her mouth?”

CLINTON (age 5) was in his bedroom looking worried. When his Mom asked
what was troubling him, he replied, “I don’t know what’ll happen with
this bed when I get married. How will my wife fit in?”

JAMES (age 4) was listening to a Bible story. His dad read, “The man
named Lot was warned to take his wife and flee out of the city, but his
wife looked back and was turned to salt.” Concerned, James asked, “What
happened to the flea?”

TAMMY (age 4) was with her mother when they met an elderly,
rather-wrinkled woman her Mom knew. Tammy looked at her for a
while and then asked, “Why doesn’t your skin fit your face?”

The Sermon I think this Mom will never forget … This particular Sunday
sermon … “Dear Lord,” the minister began, with arms extended toward
heaven and a rapturous look on his upturned face. “Without you,we are
but dust …” He would have continued but, at that moment, my very
obedient daughter, who was listening, leaned over to me and asked
quite audibly in her shrill, little, four-year-old-girl voice, “Mom, what
is butt dust?”

One of the challenges of parenting and dealing with children is discipline. At times it can be difficult to know what to do to rein in a child and help them to mend their ways. The biggest challenge comes from knowing that what works for one child, may not work for the next. The learning curve is steep and constantly changing.

Personally, I love the challenge. I can’t think of a better mental stimulation than staying one or two steps ahead of my child. It keeps things interesting. Although I only have one child of my own, I do work in the children’s program at church each week. There I find a veritable field of choices to make in discipline that is continually creative and unexpected.

Let’s take last week for example. I had a three year old boy lock himself in the girls’ bathroom. The bathroom is made for small children, so everything is much smaller than you would normally find in a public restroom. The song leader had taken him down to use the restroom and within minutes, she had returned with a “Tag, you’re it…”

I went to the restroom to retrieve the child and quickly realized that he had locked both of the stall doors. Have you ever tried reasoning with a 3 year old? It isn’t easy.

I asked him to please come out and he replied with a firm “No!”

I asked again, and he replied, “Go get my mom and dad!”

Now here is where creative discipline can be fun…

“Well, since you want me to get your mom and dad, I’m not going to.”

“Go get them!”

“No. But I will count to three and if you don’t come out, I’m going to climb under the stall.”

“You can’t fit under here. You are too big.”

“No, I’m not. One…”

“Yes you are too big!”

“Two….”

“Get my mom and dad.”

“Three…”
The look on his face was priceless as I slid under the stall. His eyes were as round as the Nerf ball that we was playing with. I calmly took him by the hand, unlocked the door and marched him back down the hall to his class. He asked when he could see his mom and dad and I told him after church.

Another instance was with a boy that was 7 years old. He was acting up and refusing to sit in his chair and listen to his teacher. I chatted with him for a few minutes and discovered that something he would really like was to receive a letter in the mail. I made a deal with him that if he would behave for the rest of church that day, that I would write and mail him a letter. He was angelic as a 7 year old boy can possibly be the rest of the day.

Creative parenting and discipline is simply learning how to listen to your children. Then once you are inside of their heads and how they think, coming up with a solution that they will least expect. Then you must always follow through. It is fun. It is challenging. Most important of all…it works. Every time.

As parents we have a tendency to set boundaries for our children. We do this because we want the best for them. Often we set them as a form of protection. But it is always out of love for our children that we set them. However, do our children know and understand how to respect the boundaries of other people? Do they understand how to set their own boundaries with others? And do they know how to do all of this without offending anyone?

Learning to respect the boundaries and personal space of other people has been a long and drawn out battle with my son. He tends to want to be loving to everyone and doesn’t always understand that not everyone likes the constant physical contact, and that at times it is not appropriate. But yesterday found him on the other side of the fence as a younger girl tried to initiate a display of affection that he was not comfortable with. Her mother made her apologize to him.

I find myself in the unique position of saying,”See,that is what I am talking about. That is how other people feel when you do this or that.” But I also feel empathy for him. Aggressive members of the opposite sex aren’t always fun to deal with, especially when you are just 11 years old. So what is the answer to teaching your child respect for boundaries? I am sure it will be an ever changing answer as he grows and continues to learn and as I grow and learn in this journey called parenthood.

Photo by Genevieve Cooper

So I have recently been reminded (and alarmed) that the rate of speed that a boy grows is not even remotely consistent with any sense of normal. My child has not only gotten taller these past few weeks, but his shoulders have broadened at an alarming rate and he skipped two sizes of clothing when it comes to shirts. Frankly, he is currently built like an ape. A long upper body with broad shoulders and I swear his legs haven’t grown at the same speed. It appears that his height has come from the waist up this time.

At eleven years of age, he is currently at my nose in height. I am a “stellar” 5’5” in height and while that may be fairly average, in my family I am one of the tallest girls. I am having to buy shirts in a medium to large adult size in order to fit his shoulders. I hold up the shirt in the store and think there is no way that huge shirt is gonna fit my little boy. Then I get home and it does, but I know that it won’t be for long if he continues to grow at the same rate. I am shocked by how the shirt looks when he is wearing it. It doesn’t look so big.

My husband was alarmed the other day when he found the milk jug in the refrigerator half empty. He commented that He had just opened it that morning and had had one glass. I didn’t bat an eye and said, “Well the boy is currently going through a growth spurt. It will slow down when he quits growing for a moment.” Three gallons of milk later, he has slowed down to an acceptable pace. I feel fortunate. Last time it was about six gallons.

Although my baby was average in size when I gave birth to him, I am only just now realizing that I actually gave birth to a giant. The package was deceptive. He will probably turn out to look like someone I wouldn’t want to meet up with in a dark alley. However, he has a heart of gold and a deep and caring compassion for other people. He also has a sense of humor and wants to draw comic strips when he grows up. Yet another facet of the old adage that appearances can be deceiving! Hopefully he won’t continue to grow up too fast and I can still enjoy the child in him as he journeys to becoming a man.

How do you deal with your kids growing up too fast?

Photo by Malinda Welte

I realize that this may be a hot button topic for some people, but I feel I need to address it. I have been watching with interest this past few weeks a series of e-mails on a home schooling list in which I am a member. The topic has been enough to make my head spin as I wade through the self justification that has been present. Here is the deal….

There are many home school parents that do not like it when little Johnny or Susie is only at a particular level in their studies. Instead of helping them to complete that level and then move on, they instead search for a curriculum that will meet their desires and place their child at the level they would like them to be. For example, instead of 8 year old Johnny or Susie being in 3rd grade math, I will instead search for a curriculum that places them in 7th grade math. “See how smart my child is? They are years ahead in their math. I am so glad that I home school them. They would be stuck in 3rd grade in the public school system.”

What I fail to see is the benefit for the child by doing this. It is in essence a false sense of security for the parent and could be detrimental for the child in the long run. Why not be thankful that you are obviously using a tougher curriculum? Passing a child onto a “higher” grade in a different curriculum is NOT the answer.

When I began using the curriculum that I have chosen for my son, I will admit that I was angry at the level he was placed in. He was placed one year behind his public school peers in math, but at grade level in everything else. He had always been advanced in our public school system, but I felt they weren’t meeting his needs. They weren’t.

I was told to quickly go over the things that he knew, but to fill in the blanks on the things that he might not know as well. This would ensure a good and solid foundation in math for him. They were right. I was shocked to learn all of the things that he didn’t know and had never been introduced to in the public school system. They were in essence passing on the children to prove that they were “doing their job.” I was appalled that my son had never learned division and knew nothing about fractions. He was going into 5th grade! Granted, the curriculum that I chose is one to two years ahead of the public school system in most areas. He will soon be completing 5th grade math next month, and will be tackling pre-algebra in 6th grade. I can feel comfortable knowing that his foundation is strong. He will continue to do well and will be far ahead of his previous school peers.

This is what is wrong with the Education in America, today. We don’t want to admit that we are failing as a society in the education of our children. So we quietly pass them along to say that we are doing our job. This is why I left the public school system and found an alternative. Don’t make the same mistake in your home school. You are not doing anyone a favor, even if you temporarily feel better about your child’s “level” in school. Build the foundation, be thankful for a curriculum that is tough and reap the rewards in the end.