by Donna | May 5, 2016
“A penny for your thoughts; a nickel for a hug; and a dime if you tell me that you love me.”
We have talked at length on this blog about communicating with our kids. And how communication is a strong form of “teaching when…”
The ditty above is a little chant that we used to say to our kids to remind them that we want to talk to them, that they are valuable to us, that we love them “ten million times infinity and beyond.” From this saying, a valuable “object lesson” developed and tied my son’s and my heartstrings in a special way nearly twenty years ago.
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by Donna | May 2, 2016
With the addition of another child every other year or so, we knew it was important to spend time with the older children. (We were taught by our early mentors to put as much time and energy into our first two kids as we possibly could, knowing that the “trickle down effect” of teaching would come into play.)
Note: This is another reason we have felt so strongly about not letting an eight month old, eighteen month old, or twenty-eight month old determine the entire family’s schedule [i.e. have a “toddler run home”]—it never felt right to let a toddler’s “wants” override a teen’s needs. Anyway, because of the advice we received to invest significantly in our older kids for the “trickle down effect” (which majorly works, I might add), we always looked for ways to spend more time with Joshua (now 29) and Kayla (now 26). One of the ways I did this was to implement “Terrific Tuesday” or “Wonderful Wednesday.”
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by Donna | Apr 30, 2016
Not long ago my twenty-one year old son was helping me clean and cut fruits and veggies. This is a rare sight nowadays. The boys are either in college all the time or working very full time jobs (well, actually, they both do both at the same time!). I miss those times of cooking and cleaning in the kitchen with my kids.
However, I didn’t expect the boys to miss it! Josiah, the twenty-one year old pediatric nurse I just referred to, said, “You know what I miss? I miss those times that we used to gather around the table with tons of potatoes, carrots, apples, and other fruits and vegetables and peel, cut, clean, and prep them while you read aloud to us for hours!”
So do I, baby, so do I!
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by Donna | Apr 28, 2016
Our children are all different—even among each other. They have different strengths, talents, and skills—and they have different weaknesses.
And they have certain times and ages in which they are not very high need. And, of course, certain times and ages in which they are extremely high need.
Those are all expected. We wouldn’t want them to be all the same. And we wouldn’t want them to all be high need at the same time either!
What about that child who is not really high need very often? What about that one who cooperates most of the time (which means there aren’t a lot of one-on-one “training sessions”)?
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by Donna | Apr 15, 2016
If you have read my article about the Fun Factor in Homeschooling, you know that a lot of our homeschooling was hard work. Perseverance. Stick-tu-i-tive-ness. The daily grind. The day-to-day in’s and out’s. Teaching our kids contentment, work ethic, and study skills.
But we also had fun. A lot of fun. Not every subject. Not every hour. But in balance, we had fun in our school.
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by Donna | Mar 24, 2016
A good piece of advice that we received early in our parenting of many littles was to always take at least one child with us where ever we went, if possible. The thinking was that if we always took a child with us, we could talk and train “on the road.”
Thus, we made it a point to always grab a kid if one of us left the house to run an errand—or plan to take one child with us if we knew ahead of time that we were going to be driving somewhere.
Out of this theory came our mantra: “Who’s got your shoes on? Dad’s running an errand!” Or “Who’s got your shoes on? Mom’s got to take a quick trip to town.”
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