“Most of the answers left me not only saddened, but pretty soundly annoyed. One mom posted a laundry list of all of the things her son knew. Counting to 100, planets, how to write his first and last name and on and on. Others chimed in with how much more their children already knew, some who were only 3. A few posted URL’s to lists of what each age should know. The fewest yet said that each child develops at his own pace and not to worry.”
So began a tale that ends much more peacefully, and begins here. Read and enjoy.
A toddler in a ball pit. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A sweet mom has asked how to know if she is doing well when her toddler acts up and is rowdy and loud in public, far worse than in the home. Should she even THINK of homeschooling if this is the best she can do?
Here is my answer. You can add to it in the comments, if you like. Two heads are better than one, right?
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Wow. I love your honesty! You definitely will make it through this if you keep on being honest with yourself. Good job. And being quiet is SUCH a good goal for the child. It has saved many a family during Gestapo raids.
The answer is manifold. Let’s ask a few questions to narrow in down, okay?
First, is he a sick-o?
Be sure your two-year-old is physically able to do what you desire.
How?
Take care of his health, for one thing. If he is full of sugar and artificial ingredients, you are asking the impossible. If he is not getting enough sleep, who wouldn’t act up under his circumstances? Is he hungry? Is he teething? Does he have a cold?
Any time your physical well-being would normally tempt you to be grumpy and non-compliant, you can figure a “two” will give in to such temptation.
Think of baby Moses. Scripture tells us, “The babe wept.” What does it say about the unregenerate princess who fished him out? “She had compassion on him.” That’s what their little meltdowns are for–to cause us to take notice when they have a trouble they cannot communicate with words. (Read Exodus 2.)
It is only natural for an untrained child to act up. That’s why God gave them parents. And yes, it is your job, not that of the state. Of course, eventually you do not want him acting like a two-year-old. Eventually, say, when he is 10, you expect him to communicate his sore throat or headache or hunger pangs, but when they are two, their showing out can be life saving.
Second, have you taught him he should act wrong?
We have had a couple or little ones who were more fidgety. It really showed up in church. We always made our children stay with us during the sermon. It is a wonderful chance for the parents to teach the children to sit still and be quiet. We would let them draw or color, have a Cheerio or two now and then, fold up the bulletin, change laps from Mom to Dad occasionally, “read” the hymnal, play quietly with quiet toys, or sleep. Not much else.
If they balked or fussed, we took them out for a moment to adjust attitude, then brought them right back in and expected improvement.
People thought we were cruel, at first, keeping them out of the nursery and children’s church (although we KNOW that’s where all our colds come from) but later they saw the fruit and praised us. It was not cruelty, anyway, not with Cheerios, paper and pencil, toys, hugs, a lap to sleep on, etc. No, it was loving, caring teaching.
We don’t believe in children’s church, by the way, because it divides families during the most important time of the week.
Are you asking him to pass the test before he takes the course?
You can do most of the teaching at home. You can have a fun game called “practice being quiet”. Set it up however you think would work, and set a timer for a short, short time–like 15 seconds–then practice.
Make it fun. It can include rice “sand” play, coloring, play dough, or any other quiet activity.
Reward him with something you don’t mind him having, and that he likes a lot, such as apple chunks or pretzels or whatever suits your idea of acceptable dietary stuff. Also reward with praise and with telling him how proud Gramma or Daddy will be he is learning to sit quietly. Make it normal and fun, with toys, or whatever, but REQUIRE QUIET SITTING. If he fails, you can start the timer over a bit later, or just let him know you’re disappointed and try again later in the day. Do this daily or even twice daily. Gradually lengthen the time until you can tell him to sit quietly for a while with a timer going, like 30 minutes, with plenty of quiet things to do, and it works.
The reason public schooled children can sit and be quiet is the teachers practice “crowd control”, which is a wicked form of manipulation. No kidding, they learn how to make robots out of children in college, I guess. It is the NEA’s preparation for controlling them all their lives, for taking over the world and being the ones at the top, they think.
It will not work, actually demonstratively is not working, and has not worked in the past, but they think this time they will be different and actually succeed. That’s why they fight home schooling.
We train our children to be individuals–not robots–to respond to proper authority, which the P.S. is not. Peer pressure at that age is astounding, and it is not our goal, with our children.
Believe me. Those kids know they are being watched and assessed, they know their futures are already being formed, and they know if the government likes them, they’ll succeed, and if not, not. Mere kindergarteners have police records for smacking someone on the playground.
Not. Our. Goal.
Are we missing the whole picture?
A homeschooled child may be acting up, especially if Mom is there alongside, say, a museum curator, because he is confused about who is in authority at that time.
The public schooled kids, on the other hand, have no doubt–when it’s a decision between mom and teacher, the teacher definitely has all authority, hands down.
Don’t take your child there.
So, do you have the time? Will you give up the time?
It takes a lifetime.
You will never feel “done” perfecting this precious child for God, but eventually you will have to let go and let him stand on his own, like when he is in college, or sometime like that. So make the best of it, while you can.
There is no trick that will make a child suddenly be good forever. It is daily, hourly. It can be tiresome, discouraging, and intimidating.
I think of it as a taste of how our Heavenly Father must feel exasperated at me.
Welcome to motherhood!
Some days it can seem like the enemy is winning. Some of the worst days will be when he is getting sick, and will make you feel like a mean mom for correcting him when he had a fever, or something else you did not know about until later.
Some days, though, people will marvel at what he knows about God.
Take him there.
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So, what do y’all think? Any additions? Add them below, please!
Let’s think about a bucket, some rocks, and some sand.
Let’s say the rocks illustrate our priorities, our bucket list, and the bucket represents our life. The sand represents all of the other things in life that we have to do.
What happens if we put the sand in the bucket first?
We cannot fit all the rocks in, can we?
Our priorities find themselves crowded out.
However, if we put the rocks in the bucket first, the sand sifts around the rocks. They fill in the cracks or the time we have left after our priorities are accomplished.
A woman in a traditional Icelandic costume teaches a child to read. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Let’s apply that to our “how-to” ideas about home schooling, shall we?
Our priority must be that each human being on this earth should learn to read. Why? Because of Habakkuk 2:2 “[…]the Lord replied: ‘Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that whoever reads it may run with it. […]’”
It is recorded forever in the Word of God, that He expects reading to happen. The very fact that He inspired men to write to us, logically leads to His expectations that we read.
Learning to read does not always happen in some educational settings. The child who is slow to read might never learn in some settings.
We, however, in our own homes, have the privilege of customizing the curriculum to fit the child who needs his schoolwork to come at him from a unique angle. We can drill one phonic concept for two days, if needed. We can read while pointing to allow “sight reading” to materialize. We can try glare management, page masking, and many other techniques, at will. No matter how good a teacher might be, she can hardly do this when she is dealing with 20 new readers at once, can she?
So we prioritize reading.
As the student ages, the obvious may surface, that the child is unable to learn to read. “Unable” is not the same as slow. After a couple of years, if reading is not happening at all, no matter what, then it is time to dump the bucket out and rearrange priorities. The new priority is to make sure literate content reaches this child’s mind through whatever means it takes.
Any writing can be found or created in the audio format.
It becomes the teacher’s duty, then, to provide this input. Although this is a big job, it is not too difficult for one mom with one child, but imagine a teacher of 20 handling it. It’s unfair to her, right?She wants a life, right? But you can do it. In fact, these helps become your priority: They are your life. So at this age, we insert any learning that is age-appropriate, especially Bible, math, and science, always in the audio format. Often, this is how our greatest minds have emerged to benefit mankind. Often, those not programmed to read well, find far more capacity in other disciplines than a good reader does. Although we never stop trying to impress reading skills upon our students, and although they may learn to read as adults, we insist they learn the essentials through whatever means necessary, always looking for that one thing that will be the spark for your own child’s chance at brilliance.
Make a list. Prioritize the big rocks to go into the bucket first.
Yes, you can make a child live happily ever after. That’s a good goal for a life, don’t you think?
Once Baby was all bathed and dressed for bed, a secret and almost sacred ritual would begin.
First he would shyly ease his way into the dim-lit nursery and stand a bit away from the rocker where Baby rested in my arms. Then he would ask if Baby had bathed and if Baby’s feet were all clean.
Once assured, he then would ask if he might kiss Baby’s feet.
It always awed me, the tenderness this one had for Baby and for Baby’s feet.
And those were the nights that I learned all the baby expert books in the world that predict jealousy in the displaced sibling meant nothing to me.
Don’t abandon baby girls: the characters in red on the roadside sign in Danshan Township, Sichuan Party Committee and government reads “It is forbidden to discriminate against, mistreat or abandon baby girls.” Photographed September 2005. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
1. Chinese family planning officials ran over a 13-month old baby with a small bus after they feuded with a Chinese resident over fines related to the birth of the child, born outside China’s one-child policy.
The 13-month-old boy, the third child of a couple in Mayu Town, Rui’an City, was run over on Monday by a minibus owned by the Mayu government and died in hospital, a Rui’an municipal government official said. Read here.
2. Our presumed President sent a videotaped speech to NARAL, in which he claims to celebrate the death of 55,000,000 babies.
3. The NAACP has threatened to sue LifeNews.com and black pro-life leader Ryan Bomberger, a LifeNews blogger, for a recent columnthat took the civil rights organization to task over its abortion position.
There is a sweet little boy attending our church, who reminds me of Count Zinzendorf.
How?
His grandmother is raising him in a large, friendly home in the country, because his momma is having trouble in life right now. Zinzendorf was born to a recent widow, who then remarried a common soldier who didn’t really like the boy. Both she and Zinzendorf’s grandmother thought it better to prepare him for the life of a count by letting him grow up in the grandmother’s castle.
Our little boy is quite bright, as was the count.
He has an amazing interest in the things of God, memorizing prayers, for instance, and wanting to pray them aloud in church like the men do. Ditto with Zinzendorf.
But the big similarity I see is this:
He loves putting money in the offering boxes inside the entrances of our building. Being only six years old, he has no income for putting into the offering boxes. His interest in these boxes is constant. He’s been told the money is for God, for God’s work, etc. One day he caught the church treasurer taking the money out to be deposited later, in the local bank. This would be what most churches would do, but our little guy was completely appalled because he thought the dear lady was robbing God’s money.
She was quick to explain to him that she was not taking the money for herself, but only taking it out of the box to make sure it stayed safe so it can be used for God’s work.
This set the little wheels inside his head to turning. What else could he think but that this church treasurer had an “in” with God Almighty. He was totally awed, then.
And he had a plan.
Knowing a bit about writing notes and taking notes, he has confused the two. Sitting between his gramma and his auntie every Sunday, and watching them take notes in church, he’s begun imitating this practice. Whatever the preacher says, that gets through his normal-six-year-old distractedness, he writes down, asking the adults around him for help with spelling.
He is taking notes.
Then the word-confusion begins. When church is over, he folds up his paper and inserts it into the offering box, commenting confidently, “This is a note for God.” He fully expects the church secretary to make sure it is delivered.
And the comparison, here, to Zinzendorf? As a child, he used to write prayers on small pieces of paper and climb to the top of the highest turret in his grandmother’s castle, tossing them out the window, to get them to God.
The townspeople would find these small prayer offerings floating around on the ground very touching and inspiring .
I do not often just paste something for you to follow, but here is a real shocker:
“If a small group of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have their way at a conference this week, pedophiles themselves could play a role in removing pedophilia from the American Psychiatric Association’s bible of mental illnesses — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), set to undergo a significant revision by 2013. Critics warn that their success could lead to the decriminalization of pedophilia.
“The August 17 Baltimore conference is sponsored by B4U-ACT, a group of pro-pedophile mental health professionals and sympathetic activists. According to the conference brochure, the event will examine ‘ways in which minor-attracted persons [pedophiles] can be involved in the DSM 5 revision process’ and how the popular perceptions of pedophiles can be reframed to encourage tolerance.”
I think it is important to realize that if we normalize pedophilia, it will then be illegal for public schools to discriminate against it in their hiring. We need to wake up. If they meet their goal date of 2013, then we are nearly there . . .
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