children – Page 17 – Home's Cool!

Home School, Homemaking, Inspiring, Sayings, Who's the mom here?, Womanhood

One Mom’s Description

Posted on August 20, 2012October 5, 2016 by Katharine

I couldn’t believe my eyes and my mouth hung open while I read this. Then the chuckling began and grew until I was laughing too loudly for the library. This is great!

Found on the Internet:

A woman named Emily, renewing her driver’s license at the County Clerk’s office, encountered a woman recorder demanding to know her occupation. She hesitated, uncertain how to classify herself.

“What I mean is this,” explained the recorder, “do you have a job, or are you just a . . . “

“Of course I have a job,” snapped Emily. “I’m a mom.”

“We don’t list ‘Mom’ as an occupation. ‘Housewife’ covers it,” said the recorder.

I forgot all about her story until one day I found myself in the same situation, this time at our own Town Hall. The clerk was obviously a career woman, poised, efficient, and possessed of a high-sounding title: Town Registrar.

“What is your occupation?” she probed.

What made me say it, I do not know. The words simply popped out. “I’m a Research Associate in the field of Child Development and Human Relations.”

The clerk paused, ball-point pen frozen in midair, and looked up as though she had not heard right.

I repeated the title slowly, emphasizing the most significant words.

Then I stared with wonder as my pronouncement appeared in bold, blue ink on the official questionnaire.

“Might I ask,” said the clerk with new interest, “just what you do in your field?”

Coolly, without any trace of fluster in my voice, I heard myself replying, “I manage a continuing program of research, in the laboratory and in the field (normally I would have said ‘indoors and out’.) I’m working on my Master’s, and already have four credits (all daughters.)

“Of course, the job is one of the most demanding in the humanities, (any mother care to disagree?) (any dad care to disagree?) and I often work 14 hours a day (24 is more like it.) But the job is more challenging than most careers and the rewards are more of a certain satisfaction rather than mere money.”

There was an increasing note of respect in the clerk’s voice as she completed the form, stood up, and personally ushered me to the door.

As I drove into our driveway, my glamorous new career buoying me, three of my lab assistants – ages 13, 7, and 3, approached to greet me. Upstairs I could hear our new experimental model (the 6-month-old baby,) in the child-development program, testing out a new vocal pattern. I felt I had scored a beat on bureaucracy!

And I had gone on the official records as someone more distinguished and indispensable, to many, than “just another mom.”

Motherhood – what a glorious career! And what fun to have a title on the door!

Does this make grandmothers “Senior Research Associates in the field of Child Development and Human Relations” and great-grandmothers “Executive Senior Research Associates?

I think so.

I also think it makes aunts “Associate Research Assistants”.

May the wind sing to you and the sun rise in your heart!

Please forward this to anyone you want.

And what about you? Can you make up some clever response for this age-old competition/comparison?

How do YOU answer when they want to know if you work, where, or your work phone number? Later, I will post my usual answer(s).

____________________

photo credit: Wikipedia

Blessings of Habit, Home School, Inspiring, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

All Parents Home School – 2

Posted on August 16, 2012August 13, 2015 by Katharine

No Escape

No matter which decision we make, we will teach them.

When we keep them at home to educate them, ourselves, we teach them one thing.

If we send them away to receive their education elsewhere, we teach them another, ominous thing.

When we bother to keep our children with us where we can smile at them and watch over them daily, we teach them that we value them.

When they are teens and begin seeing many childhood things from the outside, they learn how important they are to us. They learn how much we cherish them. They learn the value of a child, the value of a parent, and apply this value to their own children, to all children in general, and to themselves, someday.

If we ditch this responsibility along with our children at the front door of some worldly institution, we still teach them—that they are important to the world, which has bothered to take up our slack. They learn to measure the value of a child with the only measuring stick that we have given them and to translate this to the value of all children, foreign, handicapped, and unborn.

When we keep our children with us so that we can give them the gift of reading, just as we gave them the gift of speech years before, we teach them the importance of literacy. When we carefully couple that with reading Scripture, we teach them the reason for literacy.

When they are teens and can read like adults, they learn how important and valuable literacy is, in God’s eyes, and how blessed they are to have Scripture to read.

If we turn them loose to acquire their literacy lessons from the world’s schools, we still teach them—that we do not mind if they learn to read in order to escape reality, to investigate immorality, or to accumulate prosperity. They will read things we do not approve, indeed, do not have a chance to approve. They will not read anything Godly coming from these people who value them enough to educate them.

More tomorrow.

(Photo credit: wikipedia)

All Parents Home School (katharinetrauger.wordpress.com)
Do NOT Try Homeschool – Part 3 (katharinetrauger.wordpress.com)
For Home Educators, Only, Please. Part 2 (katharinetrauger.wordpress.com)
All Children Home School: The Rest of the Story (katharinetrauger.wordpress.com)

Home School, Inspiring, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

All Parents Home School

Posted on August 15, 2012February 27, 2014 by Katharine

Have you been thinking about the future?

Have you been wondering about beginning or continuing to home school your children?

Allow me to let you in on a secret:

You have to.

Yes, whether we like it or not, we have to home school these little blessings with which God has blessed us.

How do I know? I know it simply because all parents home school their children.

Actually.

You home school yours already.

Think for a minute:

Who taught your darling that Mom is the best in the world? Did you take him to a state institution to learn that?
Who taught him to walk? Did he receive private lessons on that subject?
Who taught him to stay seated in the high chair and grocery cart?
Who toilet trained him?
Who succeeded in teaching him to pick up after himself?

Trust and obey: This duo is one of the most important lessons in all of life. We have taught these most important lessons. Yet, do we somehow feel we would not be good teachers of minor things?

We have taught our children nearly to master speaking the English language, one of the toughest on earth, as if they were natives, and yet, do we somehow feel that we are inadequate to teach the ABCs?

Or is it only that home school seems like too much work? Were we ready to be at ease and to pass them on to some other mother (oops—I mean, teacher)?

More tomorrow.

_________________

photo credit: Wikipedia

Inspiring, Sayings

Mind the Other Gap

Posted on August 14, 2012August 14, 2012 by Katharine

I don’t know how we got to the top, but we were inside a very small building atop a tower, like a firetower in a forest. My memory of many of the details of that day are lost in the cobwebs of childhood. I do remember a row of windows around the entire building, and a telescope of sorts.

I know it was a tourist attraction because there were other people up inside this building with us. In fact, it was somewhat crowded. Amazing what we do and don’t remember. I remember the floor was unvarnished hardwood and dirty, and my dress was red.

And I was wearing patent leather shoes with slick soles.

The attraction in this room on stilts, besides the magnificent view, was the ride back down to earth in a sort of passenger car on a cable. Great fun, like a zipline for civilized folks with small children. People ascended and descended regularly, and we viewed the view while awaiting our turn.

I was so little. Yet I remember a sense of needing to hurry. I suppose the quicker people loaded and unloaded the cars, the more money the owners earned. Finally we approached the doorway where the car was dangling, waiting for us to board. I watched this car swaying and heard it creaking while the owner reminded my parents of the huge space between the building and the car, with about a hundred feet of space below it. My parents cautioned me and explained the extreme danger in stepping wrong.

I froze. Anyone could see the gap was far larger than my tiny feet, and, in fact, my whole self could fit easily right through that gap. Of course, it was too huge a leap for a terrified little one.

I dug in. I was scared and wanted down. I cried.

That’s when my parents lifted me. I still was terrified, but they overcame my will with their own strength and jointly lifted me over that yawning hole, down into that cable car. I still was terrified. They had seen it was too hard for me and, after warning me not to struggle against them in my fear, had mercifully done it for me.

I am sure the view was spectacular on the ride down, but I don’t remember that part.

I do remember my parents’ loving mercy and surpassing knowledge and strength.

And I think of the gap between this world, that we think is so real, and the other world that exists all around us, that is really real — the Heavenly Kingdom.

The step we must take to leap from this world into the other is terrifying and too far, in our eyes.

But the loving mercy of our Heavenly Father and the Jerusalem Above, which is our mother, stand ready to bridge that gap for us, if we only will not fight it.

Love lifted me.
Love lifted me.
When nothing else could help,
Love lifted me.

________________

photo credit: Wikipedia

Home School, Inspiring, Wisdom

All Children Home School: The Rest of the Story

Posted on August 7, 2012August 8, 2012 by Katharine

My friend’s teen children were tired.

I had always thought they were shy children because they hardly said much in church. I learned though: If anyone spoke first, these children politely carried on an adequate conversation. Then they would drop back into their tired mode, like a trance.

My friend, their mother, was tired, too. I had noticed signs of it: late (or absent), hastily coiffed, testy—all out of character for her and all beginning when school began each year. I understood it more after we had the “school” conversation.

I think she was just using me for a sounding board, not realizing that I have feelings, too. Most people in a State school need to verbalize their convictions to home educators. They subconsciously need our quiet endurance of these conversations, I think, to help them go on.

Since I believe that, I usually do not listen altogether mutely. Usually I say things like, “I am so sorry,” or “I know it must be a real burden,” or “Perhaps a different teacher (grade, school, district, etc.) would make a big difference?”

I am not being sarcastic when I say these things, although the temptation is sometimes there. No, I truly am sorry to see my friends suffer so because of their State education choices. Too, because of my own mistakes in the State systems, I know it truly is a burden.

Of course, I know a different spot within the State school system does not usually make much difference, but I also desire to help them see something: To me, their situation sounds burdensome. I hope to cause them to have second thoughts, if possible, within the context of friendship.

Therefore, I tried to listen gently to my friend’s tiring tedium of tasks. I am sure my eyes widened.

She wound up with, “but I just don’t see any other way to make sure they are doing well . . .”

I said, “Sandra, I know you are tired; anyone could see it in your eyes.” She dabbed at tears. “I don’t know what to tell you. If the teachers and the coaches will not do it, I guess you must—someone must.”

I hesitated, then went on, “The reason your children excel and the reason you are tired is that you are homeschooling.

“For most home educators, it is not so tiring, though, because they homeschool from 8:00 a.m. until early afternoon. You are homeschooling a lot, during those hours, but also during the hours from 3:00 until midnight and beyond. Add to that the fact that you are worrying, and you could not HELP but be tired. You are volunteering at the State schools, and then conducting your own homeschool afterwards.”

The things I said did not help her. She was convinced hers was the only way to send her children into law school.

The entire conversation did help me, though.

It gave me several more reasons that I would never go back into the State institutionalized education program.

You can learn from it, too, perhaps. Perhaps you can see why people should stay out of that system.

Failing that, at least you will have a list of things you must do (should you decide to quit home schooling) to cause success in State-educated children.

Home School, Who's the mom here?

All Children Home School: A True Story

Posted on August 7, 2012June 26, 2015 by Katharine

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:

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!”
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.)
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.)
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

For Home Educators, Only, Please. (katharinetrauger.wordpress.com)
Is There Life After Homeschool? (katharinetrauger.wordpress.com)

Brothers, Inspiring, Photos

Weekly Photo Challenge: Growth

Posted on August 3, 2012August 4, 2012 by Katharine

This young man is growing past his fear of bugs.

Surrounded by uncles while his daddy grills hamburgers, he is almost convinced this ferocious-looking creature will not harm him.

The uncle seated behind him in the blue stripes is a firm believer in fearlessness in young men.

The uncle proffering the insect loves this little guy and doesn’t mind setting the example.

Together, they provide a teaching moment for a daddy who would completely approve.

Thus immersed in family, we grow.

Found on the Internet:

No Escape

No matter which decision we make, we will teach them.

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