Still adjusting

I love to entertain. I love to have a couple of friends over for a glass of wine, several couples for a nice dinner, whole families for a weekend, or big shindigs for whatever occasion I can drum up.

I'm not Martha Stewart. All those cool party ideas on Pinterest are merely aspirational for me. When we invite friends over to hang out at the pool or the fire pit we throw together a plate of cheese and crackers or bowls of chips and salsa and a roll out a cooler full of beer. Even my big parties aren't much on decor or presentation.

But I enjoy them. Colin enjoys them. Our friends must enjoy them, unless they just feel compelled to show up out of politeness. We always have tasty food and plenty of it. And although it's work, it's also--in a weird way--kind of effortless.

Except for this time.

We have a graduation party this weekend. This is our fourth and final graduation party. Our oldest son has graduated from college. Our youngest son has finished his homeschool studies. And their cousin has also graduated from high school. It's outside-party season, which is my favorite.

This should be a breeze.

But it just isn't clicking. I've flip-flopped on my menu 87,000 times. I can't seem to get my mind wrapped around what needs to be accomplished. And then, suddenly, this weekend, I figured out what my problem is.

I don't have my Beppy.

This is the first major party that I've thrown without the help and input of my daughter. I try to bounce menu ideas off of my sons, and they stare blankly. I think about favorites that I would like to make, but realize that I can't do that much last minute prep alone. I dread Saturday morning with a crew of three--very helpful--males for last-minute party prep, and not another female in sight. (Because, you know, there are some things that we just KNOW need to be done.) She has been my right hand in  party-throwing since the first birthday party that we had for one of her brothers, probably around 1995.

 I may never manage to serve olive cheese balls again. It's another in a long string of adjustments to  my oldest child/only daughter/cooking-shopping-scrapping buddy abandoning me growing up and having a life of her own.

Oh, I'll survive. The party is slowly coming together, but things won't be quite as good as they would have been. No one else may even notice. (Please God!) But I'll know.

Times to remember

So, for the last 11 days I've been in Tucson. This is a new adventure for me.

I'm in Tucson because my beautiful daughter lives here now--thank goodness not permanently--and she is having a bit of a busy time, having given birth to our first grandson, John Ronald, a couple of days after I arrived.

My main occupation, joyfully so, has been chasing after, feeding, playing with, bathing, etc., my 20 month old granddaughter Helen. Between this activity and spending lots of time with my daughter, this has been the best two weeks I have had in a very long time. Sure, I miss home. But I have spent most of the last two and a half years missing my daughter, and, after this visit, I am sure I will be missing my granddaughter nearly as much!

Today we were out running a few errands and had one of those moments that make you think, "This. I want to remember this feeling." We were driving north toward the Catalina foothills on a slightly windy, pretty road. We had the windows down, enjoying the breeze of the sunny, mid-70s afternoon. We had our Starbucks drinks and Helen was enjoying a bit of a cheese danish and the feel of the wind. And we were all rocking to "Sweet Child o' Mine," with Bethany and I both singing out loud.

Yep. Happy.

It reminded me that even if we're apart most of the time, we're still us. When we're together, we still laugh, sometimes until we cry. We have all of the memories from the 25 years that we lived under the same roof. And now we have Helen to share them with.

Well-rounded and hating it

When it was time for our oldest child to start high school, I played devil's advocate. I told her every wonderful thing about high school that I could think of. We discussed it a lot. She thought about it. And in the end she decided, to my great joy and immediate terror, that she wanted to continue homeschooling.

Her reason for that decision dovetails nicely with topic of my post. She knew that if she went to high school she would have lots of homework for classes that she wasn't even interested in and that this would cut into her time for the two things she really was interested in: playing the piano and reading.

She didn't want to be well-rounded. None of my children are particularly well-rounded. And I'm okay with that.

A friend recently linked to a blog post titled The argument against raising well-rounded kids. That piece is responsible for this post. Although that blogger is more career-focused and sees encouraging kids to focus on their strengths largely as a tool to build a more successful career, while I see it more as a means to live a satisfying and fulfilled life, I still found much in her piece that struck a chord.

I grew up well-rounded. I went to school and did well in all subjects. I played sports, and was mediocre or worse in all of them that I tried. I took piano for years, having neither the talent or passion to be good. I also took lessons in other instruments, voice, dance and gymnastics--for which my body could not have been less suited--even roller skating. Bless my mother's sweet heart, she was trying to find something that I was good at, something that would make my slightly chubby, bookish self happy. And I was, too.

Even though I already knew what made me happy. Reading. Writing . Playing with my friends. Reading some more. And more. And more. Writing letters to my friends and pen pals. And reading some more.

But what made me happy wasn't really an acceptable pursuit. Being smart, loving words, and loving to play with words wasn't enough. It wasn't a talent. So we searched. And when I hit high school I did what I was told to be the well rounded college prep student. I took math, even doubling up my sophomore year on Algebra 2 and Geometry to leave room for Calculus my senior year. I took Biology, Chemistry, Advanced Chemistry, and Physics. Because I was jumping through the college prep hoops, I couldn't fit in world history, which I would have loved, although I did get to take a one-semester philosophy class that is still one of my most memorable classes ever. Fortunately for me, English was required, and we had an excellent English department. I got to read real literature and quite a bit of it. I got up very early my freshman year to go to swim practice, because well-rounded people did sports. After three years of high school, I still had people pressuring me to go into engineering because that's what smart people should do. Why would I want to be a writer?

My senior year I finally rebelled. I had had good grades and was near the top of my class. I had the highest PSAT scores in the history of my school; getting into college and even getting money wasn't going to be a problem. I took English and government. I was editor of the yearbook. I dropped physics after one semester and I decided not to take calculus. I was a class officer. I read books, wrote, and spent a lot of time hanging out with my friends and my then-boyfriend, now-husband.

In college, I crashed and burned rather spectacularly. Nothing I wanted to do was practical. What was the point? I was lonely. I was removed from any support for my faith. I changed majors so many times that even I have lost count. I changed schools several times.

But what if from the age of 14 on I had been able to focus on what I was good at and what I was interested in? Would I be this person who still, at almost 50, doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up? Would I be this person who can do lots of things, but as I seem to have been reminded frequently in recent weeks, none very well? And once a person, especially someone as ADD as I am gets in the habit of dabbling, can they get out?

My kids aren't well-rounded. I am glad. Bethany immersed herself in her books and music. She went to college to major in history and minor in music. She dropped the music minor after a while because it was too time-intensive, and she really doesn't enjoy performing, but she still gets a great deal of joy from her piano. She got perfect grades, aside from one B+, and could have gone on to grad school almost anywhere, but knew herself well enough to know that that wasn't really what she wanted. Now she's busy being a fabulous, happy, wife and mother.

Patrick is a reader and wordsmith. He is majoring in history and German with stellar grades. (One B+ there, too.) His depth and breadth of historical knowledge astounds me. His writing reflects the fact that growing up he immersed himself in good books. Whatever he decides to do he will do well, because he knows his own mind and is comfortable with who he is.

Jonathan is a singer. His teen years had the minimum of academic work necessary for college admission, but he sang with multiple choirs, took voice, and was in several productions with various groups, including two at the same time. He never could have done this if he were in school. He is not well-rounded. He is focused.

Andrew is the most like me in personality. Gregarious and out-going, he needs his social time, but he has also found his strength. He is skilled at, and enjoys, languages. He has learned Koine Greek well enough to help teach it. He has learned some Latin and German and intends to learn more. He is also very industrious and has had his first job for over a year and has now added a second. Both of his jobs are in the service industry, allowing him to use and hone his people skills and to socialize while at work.

Of course all kids need to be taught to read and write at a functional level. All kids need survival math. (If we taught math as a life skill it would go better, but that's another post.) But we do young people--and our society--a disservice by emphasizing well-roundedness, standards, college preparation, etc. We would all be much better off if from, about the time they hit double digits, we let our kids follow their passions and quit trying to shove them all into a few neatly labelled boxes.

She's a grown up

Watching your kids grow up is one of the scariest, best, hardest, most wonderful things a parent gets to do. Each stage from sitting up and taking first steps, through driving lessons and teen-age angst, is a new experience, especially with your first child.

This is an eventful time around our house. Last Wednesday night the proud papa and I watched as our oldest was named outstanding senior by the IPFW history department and honored for being at the very tippy-top of this spring's graduating class. Two weeks from tomorrow she will graduate.

Today we got additional happy news. She has been hired by a local law firm to be a paralegal. A real, full-time, grow up job with benefits! She is excited about the job, which should be interesting and challenging.

We have another graduate this spring. Patrick is finishing high school and will be attending IPFW in the fall. He's not certain about a major yet, but is looking forward to getting started.

I have to admit that the homeschool mom part of me is feeling a certain amount of vindication. Oh yes, I realize that I still have two more to graduate, and Patrick isn't DONE with college yet, but I'm seeing that they have the ability to function as competent adults. I'm beginning to feel more confident that I haven't ruined their lives.

Tomorrow we will celebrate another big birthday. But that's another post.

Help! My son is nine and he can't read!

(Originally posted January 2006, edited slightly)

I've posted before about why we started homeschooling and about some of the difficulties we faced, but the reading issue was a huge problem for us. Patrick couldn't read when he was six. Or seven. Or eight. Or nine.

My oldest child had been reading since she was four. When she was in school, she had a hard time getting them to let her check books out of the library that she wanted to read, because the librarians didn't believe she could read them. Add to that the fact that my husband and I both come from families that have a lot of teachers and are very conventional. Kids are supposed to read in first grade. End of story.

So we started trying when he was six. But he absolutely could not read phonetically. He had to learn all words by sight. He would "learn" a word one day and the next he wouldn't remember it at all. It was frustrating for both of us.

Our family had been dubious about homeschooling anyway, and I think that all of them, except for my mom, were sure that I was in WAY over my head. But I knew that he was going to read and read well. He was a very bright little boy. He was fabulous at math, had a huge vocabulary, and a fantastic memory.

Then I read a book, that led me to another, and another that began to give me hope. There are a lot of kids, especially boys, whose brains are just not ready at the age of six or seven or even nine or ten for the kind of processing that reading requires. I started talking to other moms who had boys with reading difficulties and had overcome them.

I quit trying to teach him to read when he was almost seven. But that doesn't mean we forgot about books. If anything I read to him more. Sometimes he'd sit by me and follow along with a picture book, but more often we read really good interesting books for the whole family and he would just listen. Every once in a while he'd pick up a book and try to read. He also had several books memorzied that he would "read" to his little brothers. He would spend hours poring over the DK Cross Sections Book that he bought with his own money.

At nine-and-a-half he was still barely reading. It was getting harder to convince friends and family that things were okay, but for some reason I still felt confident. Shortly before his tenth birthday, many people in our homeschool group were in an uproar over the first Harry Potter book. A group of them even burned it. Well, that convinced me that I needed to read it. Patrick's best friend read it and Patrick really wanted to read it, too. We bought it and Bethany made short work of it, pronounced it "good" and then passed it on to Patrick. I didn't think a lot about it, but a couple of days later I realized that he was carrying the book around everywhere and was actually making progress. And he finished the book. After that, he just picked up speed.

And now, at 17, he reads whatever he wants with good speed and excellent comprehension and retention.He has read many of the great works of western literature. He has read things that I haven't tackled.

What worked for him may not work for everyone, but I think it is vital as parents that we trust our instincts. I knew that Patrick was smart, but already in kindergarten he was being pigeonholed as being behind. It would have only gotten worse. I feel sorry for kids who are in school and labeled. All three of my boys would be wearing a closetful of labels if they were in school. But our goal isn't to keep our kids up to some arbitrary school schedule, it is to produce human beings who love learning. For that we don't need labels.

Why we started and why we almost didn't make it

(Originally written in December 2005, tweaked slightly)

Before I tell you this LONG story I need to give you a picture of my son in the present. Patrick is 17. He is a wonderful son. He is mostly polite, respectful, smart, funny, helpful, and loving. He is serious about his faith and loves acolyting at church. He is a voracious reader (currently reading Anna Karenina) and loves politics, movies and sports.

I firmly believe that if he had stayed in school, things would be much different.

My daughter was finishing third grade and Patrick was finishing Kg when we began to consider homeschooling. We knew we were leaving the school that the kids were attending, and were looking at other options. Patrick had had a horrible experience in kindergarten, socially and academically. The happy, bright five-year-old that we had taken to school in September had become moody and withdrawn. He was teased because he sang too well, colored too badly, and couldn't match the sounds with the letters. He wasn't going to pass kindergarten.

We knew that he was smart because of his intuitive grasp of numbers and his incredible vocabulary. But there was no denying that in a school system that decreed that all children would read in first grade, he would be in trouble.

I looked at options, and the one that just kept popping back up was homeschooling. I finally decided that I would homeschool him for a year or so, to get him "evened out." Surprise number one: Our daughter--straight-A student and social butterfly--wanted to be homeschooled, too. Since I wasn't thrilled with any of the school options we had, we pulled her out, too.

I've chronicled our bad start in my last post, so I won't repeat that. But that truly was just the beginning. It was bad! Patrick was angry. He was mad at me for ever having taken him to school. And the more I heard what that year had been like for both of my kids the more I understood. So I embraced what was for me a brand new concept: We deschooled. We absolutely did nothing that looked like school for over six months. We, of course, kept living, and--as I've learned--that's how we learn best, but there were no workbooks, math problems, spelling words, or drills. We read lots of books, played games, went to the park, watched videos, and went for lots of walks.

I spent a lot of that time reading about how kids learn. I was especially interested by the differences in boys and girls in learning to read. I went from a reluctant homeschooler to a mom who firmly believed that our education system does many kids--especially boys--a huge disservice by trying to force early reading.

(More to come....)

Okay, they're home. Now what?

(Originally written Nov. 15, 2005, slightly updated)

I am sure that I was not the only homeschool mom asking that question on the first "official" day of homeschooling. Even you parents who have homeschooled from the start have had the moment or moments where you are pulled up short by the realization that you have taken the responsibility for the education of your children into your own hands.

I was not completely unprepared when we began this journey 13 years ago. I had read lots of books. I had heard Raymond Moore on the radio. I had ordered hundreds of dollars worth of the curriculum most frequently recommended in the books and magazines that I had found. But the information was a lot more limited than it is now, and I felt unprepared.

I didn't know any real-life homeschoolers. I had never actually met anyone who homeschooled or anyone who knew anyone who homeschooled. I come from a family with lots of teachers. Several of my aunts are teachers and so was my mother-in-law. To say that I felt a lot of pressure would be a big understatement!

So I did what hundreds of thousands of parents have done. We started.
We opened the books.
We started with lesson one.
And within a month I was sure that we'd made the biggest mistake ever!

Remember, I had chosen my curriculum based solely on what was recommended in the most books that I had read. I hadn't seen anything before I ordered it. We hated most of it. My daughter hated Saxon math. My son--who is very freaked out by clowns--had clowns all through his BJU Kg curriculum. As a history major I was totaly underwhelmed by the A Beka history book. And there was lots of theology spread throughout the books that was definitely not in line with what I was teaching my kids.

What to do? I had spent hundreds of dollars. I had to have a curriculum didn't I?

While I was struggling with this a very good thing happened. I connected to AOL. There was a homeschooling forum with hundreds of other homeschoolers from all over the country. It was like someone had switched on a bright light for me in the middle of a dark night.

I didn't have to use a set curriculum? My son needed to deschool? Unschooling?
Wait, there are other people who hate Saxon?! And Bob Jones! (This is where I learned about the rascism at BJU. These are the only homeschooling books I ever threw away instead of passing along.)

What I learned was that homeschooling is not a one-size-fits-all kind of endeavor. (Actually, I learned LOTS there, but that was just the most important at that point!) We decided to step back from what we were doing. We put the curriculum on the shelf. I asked my then-nine-year-old daughter what SHE would like to learn about. Boy did she have a list! My son--who was the reason we started homeschooling (that's another post)--was really struggling with wanting to learn anything at all. That struggle didn't magically end when we put those clowns in the trash. But we worked on it. I would like to say he came around quickly, but in truth it took years.

The answer to the "now what?" is that you begin to learn with them. It may go smoothly and within months they're learning Latin, churning butter, sewing their own matching clothes, and flying through Saxon math. Or it may be rough. There might be tears. You might buy something that doesn't work. You might have a child who needs to be motivated to want to get out of bed or do anything but play Legos. You might want to pull out your hair. But you just keep going. Tweak what needs tweaking. Or maybe throw it all in a closet and start over.

You can do it.

So, homeschooling

I've been spending lots of time lately answering questions about homeschooling. It seems to go in spurts, and this has been a busy time. I get the questions from those considering homeschooling, those who've just started, and those who have been homeschooling for a while but need reassurance. Or sometimes from those who are just curious.

So I'm going to revisit a couple of posts from the past, from my first blog.

As you will see, we were reluctant homeschoolers. We didn't start for idealogical reasons. We didn't start to keep our kids away from anything. We did it in desperation, because we had a child that school was hurting, and I couldn't see any other way. If I had seen another way, I would have taken it!

Now I can't imagine a different life than what we have. Homeschooling has become a way of life for us.

Prom, again

Some of the responses to my post about sleazy prom dresses take issue with the prom itself.

For the record, I love the idea of the prom. I went to four. (The grainy picture is of me in my pink Nadine formal with a four-bone hoop that I wore to my senior prom. The cute young guy is now my hubby.) There's not much I like better than getting really dressed up for a nice evening out.

I was quite excited for my daughter when she got to attend the prom with a friend from church. It was an interesting experience, and she got to wear a beautiful dress. Shopping for it was a challenge, but we got really lucky and found a beautiful $700+ dress marked down to less than $100 because of some slight damage. I am glad that when she went it was with a friend. That takes away a lot of the worries for mom and dad.

I do think that there are problems with proms. Often these are because--as with the dresses--parents aren't being parents, they're being buddies. So they let the group of couples go spend the weekend at the lake cottage unchaperoned. They charge the cost of the limo so that the kids don't have to drive. (One mother I know told me, "I know they're going to get trashed. It's part of prom.) The expectation of many parents seems to be that their teens will misbehave, so they will make sure they're relatively safe doing so.

A couple of years ago there was an ad for color-coordinated underwear for prom. Very skimpy stuff to match the dress. Exactly who was supposed to be seeing this?

"Don't those girls have parents?"

THAT was the question on my lips last Saturday night while waiting to be seated at Biaggi's. We were subjected to some of the most awful prom dresses that I have ever seen. This site, which is the first result in a google search for prom dresses will give you a clue about the kinds of dresses we saw. Lots of sequins and satin, but mostly lots of skin.

We saw cleavage on high school girls that would have been risque on a pop star. Lots of dangerously low backs and cut outs in bodices. On the other hand, we also saw some girls who looked beautiful, in dresses that were lovely and fashionable, without being skanky.

As the mother of teen boys, I can emphatically say that they would not leave the house with a girl wearing some of the dresses we saw.

As the mother of a 21 year old daughter, I know how hard it can be to find fashionable clothes that are modest. But we have to raise our daughters with enough self-respect--and respect for others--that they understand that the message those kind of dresses are giving isn't a positive one!

I'm not suggesting they need to dress like this. (Although that might be fun!) I am just suggesting that some of these girls could really use some parental guidance in the way that they dress. And maybe there are a few parents out there who need a reminder that it's okay to tell your kids no.

In the news

A couple of stories today really caught my attention.

This one is distressing. What makes kids think these kind of things are okay? Why do they do this? I've heard some pundits talking about how they want fame. They don't care why.

Then there's this one. I cannot count the number of times that I've called my kids or my nieces monkeys when they are climbing trees or simply being goofy. It's just one of those things people say!

And, while we're talking political correctness, this one.