Posted in Believe it or not!, Who's the mom here?

More Shots

Two people, including a security guard, were reportedly shot this morning at the headquarters of the pro-life group Family Research Council.

According to information provided to LifeNews from a Washington pro-life source, a man posing as an intern shot the guard at the FRC office located at 801 G Street, NW. FRC staffer Anna Maria Hoffman added more information on Twitter, “Our security guard Leo [Johnson] got shot in the arm. Please keep him in your prayers.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins confirmed the security officer was shot and said in a statement, “The police are investigating this incident. Our first concern is with our colleague who was shot today. Our concern is for him and his family.”

You can read lots more about this here.

Posted in Homemaking, Photos, Who's the mom here?

Weekly Photo Challenge: Wrong

Again.

I am so accustomed to being wrong. People tell me I am wrong all the time.

They say I pronounce words wrong, and I shrug.

I am a linguist . . .

They say I load my dishwasher wrong.

I offer them the job . . .

But in the kitchen, I am usually right. I love to cook from scratch and invent recipes. I love to eat and watch others loving eating. Since all my kids are spoiled with extraordinary food, they all have learned how to cook, at least the basics of my secrets, and have begged for my recipes, freely given, before they would move out — even all four of my sons.

So-o-o-o, when I get it wrong in the kitchen, I am miffed at myself. No excuse. You know how to do this and you just didn’t do it.

That’s how I talk.

How ironic that since I believe in no excuses in the kitchen, today the photo challenge should be “wrong”. Sighs.

Today I burned a whole pan of rolled sugar cookies. These are the fiddly ones you bake only when the grandkids are present, but I volunteered to donate these for a charity function, so had a nonchalance that proved expensive:

wrong again
 

What can I say?

I could make excuses about an important phone conversation,

but I know to take the timer with me on such occasions.

But I didn’t.

Posted in Inspiring, Who's the mom here?

Sylvia

鞋 拖鞋 時尚 塑料 卡駱馳 Crocs

A Great Loss

Today, at about 06:00 Central Daylight, my good friend, Sylvia, died.

She was a very sweet, elderly lady who never did really grow old.

She had the loveliest natural silver hair and pale skin, which made her look really good in pastels. She wore pink a lot, long before it was the current fad .She wore lots of modern fashions, including Crocs shoes on her tiny feet, in pink or powder blue.

She lived quite a life. Being only about 5 feet tall and sweetly quiet in personality, she married a lumbering guy who had many long, loud opinions, and whom we all, also loved. I am sure he is devastated, right now, although we all knew Sylvia’s time was at a close.

A teacher by profession, Sylvia never backed down from imparting proper English upon anyone who needed it (with an appropriate Southern drawl, of course.) Long after her retirement, she was still at it, peppering conversations at church with corrections of our grammar. Somehow it never felt like correction; more like a blessing. I guess that was a sign of her closeness to Jesus.

However, she also taught Spanish, and would greet anyone in that language, once she learned they had even a smattering of a grasp on it. “Hola, Catarina,” she would greet me. “Como estas, hoy, mi amiga?”

And we would have to answer in Spanish.

Since I majored in languages, we could converse a long time before one of us got stumped.

Sylvia was a people lover. She always believed everyone was innocent. Of course, while she could rationalize with Lizzy from Pride and Prejudice that we can’t ALL be good, she ignored that rational thought as much as possible. It was so easy for her to love anyone, and for anyone to love her. Even those who felt silly mispronouncing Spanish in the aisles of the church just loved her. My daughter, who knew ASL and some French, would answer her in one of those, and Sylvia was delighted to learn “just a bit more — you never know when you might need it.”

And because she was a lover of all people and thought all people innocent, she loved me when others thought me guilty. She had no evidence. In fact, the evidence made me look mighty guilty, but she refused to believe all that, and just loved me. I want to be like her, some day.

Her funeral will be huge.

I toy with not going. I don’t want to see her dead. It’s too late to hug her one more time. Her husband’s tears will cause mine to drown me. I don’t like some of the people she loved and who loved her in return.  There won’t be enough room in the church for us all, anyway.

Besides, I just want her back. Selfish, I know.

Posted in Home School, Who's the mom here?

All Children Home School: A True Story

English: Don't waste your time and do your hom...
Don’t waste your time and do your homework!

Once, a dear friend was explaining to me how the State school experience was better, and how her children were receiving the best education available.

Have you ever noticed how State institution school parents think they must educate us to this “fact” and we must bear it patiently, but the reverse seldom holds?

She was striving to explain her children’s bright future and perhaps she could not hear herself speaking. As I listened and tried to grasp what she was saying, I was astonished at the obvious conclusion.

Maybe it would be instructive to share it all with you.

Granted, her children were in the best State schools available in our small city. They were a wealthy family and had moved into a wealthy neighborhood for the expressed purpose of better State schooling.

That this fact was possible should be enough, alone, to terminate State education.

She wanted her children to be lawyers and she wanted them in the best colleges in the nation. I will also grant that she was a very dedicated mom, committed to performing whatever activity (except home schooling) necessary to raising up successful children.

She was misinformed, though, and not thinking about the entire scope of the picture.

To prove to me her commitment, she began itemizing the duties she undertook for her children’s education. This was a typical day:

  1. She drove her children to school, herself, to prevent teen driving troubles in their lives. They did not enjoy being the only ones arriving with Mom, but she was dedicated enough to insist.
  2. She was careful to deposit them at the school early, to give them free time to form friendships of their own choosing, so they would not be relying on whomever might sit nearby in class. This also allowed time for composing themselves before facing the day.
  3. She signed them up for sports, although they were not athletic, to help them overcome the sitting they must do daily, and to improve their chances for scholarships.
  4. After school, they had sport obligations, of course. She went to every practice and every game, with a video camera. She recorded every pertinent happening at these gatherings.
  5. During the day, she edited these videos, juxtaposing the skills of opponents and her child and his teammates, to show where more effort would benefit.
  6. After school, her children had oceans of homework. She was strict about it, allowing no play until all work was done. Since supper was prepared in advance, she helped with their homework, explaining things they could not get the teachers to answer adequately. She was their cheerleader, greeting them with encouraging one-liners, such as, “You can do it; one more hour ought to get it!”
  7. She showed them the sports videos, explaining her thinking in detail, so they could discuss how more effort would cause more success. Again, she cheered them on. (I do not know where their coach was.)
  8. Since homework reigned supreme in their home, except for a break for supper, the children labored until midnight or beyond, at which point Mom simply conked out. (She did ask me if I thought she was wrong to require them to continue until two a.m. or later, when she, herself, was unable to do so.)
  9. The next day they began again.

It was true that her children were doing well in school. They did not have as many friends as they might have liked, but they were receiving high grades in difficult subjects, and they were often on the first sports teams.

They were tired . . .

More tomorrow.

______________________

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Posted in Believe it or not!, Home School, Who's the mom here?

For Home Educators, Only, Please. Part 3

Becky Edelson taken from jail (LOC)

Who is left?

Are there any people in this country who truly cannot home educate their children?

There are a few. They are the ones who have had their children taken from them. You cannot home educate children that you do not have.

  • Those who are childless due to infertility or death, although they eventually may adopt or bring forth more children, cannot home school the ones they do not have.
  • Those who have lost their rightful children to kidnapping, whether by the state or by individual criminals, of course are truly unable to home school these children.
  • Those whose poverty includes living in the homes of others who are manipulative, or whose illness includes living in a hospital, may be forced to curtail home school activities until this situation is rectified.
  • Those who’ve signed themselves up for crippling debt may be forced to work at something besides home schooling.
  • Those whose prejudiced spouse sues for and obtains the legal right to terminate home schooling activities may feel that they are unable.
  • Anyone in prison, or whose child is in prison.

Maybe there are more, but I certainly have not met them in the last 30 years.

We need to think about our excuses.

We need to realize that when we homeschool, we are setting the high standard, setting the example, of actually raising the children we brought into this world, instead of hiring it out and farming them out.

We need to want this.

We need to do it.

______________________

Photo credit: Library of Congress

Posted in Believe it or not!, Home School, Inspiring, Who's the mom here?

For Home Educators, Only, Please. Part 2

Homeschooling - Gustoff family in Des Moines 011Should All Families Homeschool?

State educational institutions are often wonderful for adults.

For children, we have homes.

When it comes to children, God says parents should train them, bring them up, teach them. With the return to home learning of the past quarter century, we are discovering that Father knows best and that the brave new world of mandatory public schooling for all children is not the way for civilized cultures.

Maybe it is the best way to germinate Communism or raise up a nation of soldiers, but it is not the best way to grow children who turn into the type of adults we really want managing our finances or our country when we are old.

Various excuses float around for those who do not home school and these excuses need redefining, too.

For instance, I often have heard that some people are unable to home school.

I agree, but for most, it is to their shame and not something to boast about, as they do.

Some people have disqualified themselves from being the ones who raise their children. Perhaps they attack or neglect their children and perhaps they have lost custody. (Perhaps not, too often.)

Sometimes they prefer misleading their children into sports injuries or demonic teachings, and so must drop them off where these things happen.

Many prefer making a show of wealth that requires abandoning the children for two incomes, rather than doing the right thing, as Moses did. (Hebrews 11:24-27)

The fact that these people are extremely poor parenting examples does not mean that home schooling is bad. It only means that some homes are bad and morality is taking a new plunge.

Sometimes we hear of children who do not want to home school. Surely, we do not think the parents ought to home school them!

Well, yes, we do.

Usually these sadly mixed-up children are the products of the above-mentioned types of parents. Attacked, neglected, misled offspring of unfounded and deceiving displays of affluence usually lack ideals, morals, discipline, and even discernible personalities.

If we further define “personality” as “mind, will, and emotion”, we realize that these children are losing their souls.

True, these children sometimes do not work out well in the normal home school setting, especially at first. Neither do they always perform very well in the public setting, but it is not their fault.

And their parents should quit boasting about it.

What ought to happen is that the parents should “die trying” to fix the mess they have made of their children’s attitudes, but they do not.

Some go as far as laughing about it. If there is any hope for these children at all, the remedy, still, exists only in the home. These parents should have home schooled and still should home school.

The alternatives, correctional and psychiatric institutions—as if we would prefer these to the home—usually control or mollify, only, and do not apply true, known remediation, as parents can, if only they have not disqualified themselves.

“Harsh words!” you say?

I say the words are hardly as harsh as the reality. The prisons of the godless school generation are overflowing, as are the mental institutions.

These human wrecks were America’s children, just one generation ago.

More tomorrow.

____________________

photo credit: Iowa politics.com

Posted in Home School, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

For Home Educators, Only, Please.

"Negro mother teaching children numbers a...
Homeschooling– the magnet school for share croppers in Transylvania, Louisiana, 1939. How times have changed!

Note: Please do not read this if you are against home schooling. Thanks.

Should All Families Homeschool?

Our family once celebrated a quarter century of home schooling. I could hardly believe it. The time had sped by so fast – where was it?

I thought about the huge blessing the Lord had given us – He had been so gracious to us, taking us by the hand and leading us in a way that we did not know. We believe that the Lord made all the difference in how our children might have grown up.

Any child’s education is partly dependent upon his micro-culture. For instance, if our children had remained in our public schools, they would have learned things like chewing tobacco, as appropriate behavior for second-graders. I know the tobacco manufacturers would have agreed with me: Giving it to second graders is completely unacceptable. I know it was unacceptable to me, along with many similar ideas. Our home clearly was the best place for our children.

I gave my children the best possible education available to them at that time. If they’d been educated in England, how different their speech would have been! If they’d been educated in a wealthy neighborhood, how different their science courses would have been!

I happen to believe that the home is where all children belong.

Yes, I am one of those who believe that all families should homeschool. I hear you gasping but after I define terms, you might agree.

(There is still time to NOT read this.)

Please understand I have nothing against the idea of schools existing.

I just have problems with detaining helpless Americans against their will in a gun-free microcosm that cannot defend them, indeed refuses to attempt defending them, from physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual attack, and that both proscribes their religious beliefs (but only if they are Christian) and prescribes the superstitions of others upon them.

It just does not fit the American purpose and does not set well with this American.

Participating in such a micro-community should be an act that an informed adult freely chooses. He should be free to attend or to escape, as the need arises. The course content should please him and an appropriate level of autonomy should prevail.

Of course, I define a college or university. Amazing how a little free enterprise can elevate the quality of the goods offered for sale! Paying your own way or earning a scholarship can motivate you to behave and study hard, too.

Although there are degrees of excellence in the public and private colleges and universities, there also is freedom to go where we want, when we want, or to skip it altogether, if we want. That is how it should be.

If you are thinking that is fine for adults but it would be folly to burden children with such decisions, you are right.

That is why schools should be only for adults.

More tomorrow.