children – Page 28 – Home's Cool!

It Is Kidnapping and It Is Legal

Posted on April 8, 2011April 8, 2011 by Katharine

Question: When is a person not a person?

Answer: When he is a child.

Ladies, just think: You are one day post-partum and your doctor tells you that you may take your baby home if you want. But the nurse doesn’t want you to, so she calls the police. In an unheard-of tug of war, Dear Mommy, weary from labor and drained from lack of sleep, this nightmare unfolds before your eyes, in the land of the free.

And as sorry as you may feel for yourself, you cannot escape the fact that your precious new daughter is a mere pawn in a manipulator’s reach.

Read about it here.

And as sad as that may make us feel, should your child ever feel sadness, herself, better be prepared for another attack.

But don’t you DARE die!

If your precious daugher ever loses her parents and must be placed in foster or adoptive care, the State could place her in a home with two mommies or even with two daddies because it might hurt their feelings if the State did otherwise.

And this is no matter what the voters think.

Read about it here.

Oh, protect the children!

And pray…

Inspiring, Who's the mom here?

All My Men Have Been Good to Me – Sons

Posted on March 29, 2011March 28, 2011 by Katharine

God has blessed us with four sons. Sometimes I can hardly believe this. And I can hardly count the joys. But I will try.

They have played with each other for their whole lives. They truly care about each other.
They are careful to honor their mother. It is such a blessing.
They all have applied themselves diligently in school. They have made good names for themselves with teachers and employers. They are known for hard work.
The guys at church like them, enjoy teasing them, and they can hold their own when it happens.
They bring me things—amazing rocks, wonderful feathers, gifts, songs, gadgets, cards, books—I lose track, but they seem to enjoy bringing me things.
They ask me for advice. Not often, but on important occasions.
They call me and write me.
They remember what I have taught them. When they forget, just a look, a touch, can remind them.
They have given me three incredible daughters-in-law.
Those who have children have taught their children to love me.

This list could go on, but ten is a good place to stop. To summarize, my sons have been good to me.

Brothers, Inspiring

All My Men Have Been Good to Me – Brothers

Posted on March 25, 2011December 16, 2014 by Katharine

I have two brothers. God knows I could not have stood any more. And I don’t mean that in a mean way.

My brothers spoil me. They are extravagantly generous to me. If I had one more brother, I would pop.

First, they endured my obnoxious childhood foibles as a sister. I know they learned their extreme patience from living with me for all those years. If I wasn’t trying to get them to play dress-ups with me, then it was playing school. Which was worse? With me taking charge of everything, it didn’t matter!

Second, they grew up to be strong and loving husbands and dads. They gave me wonderful nieces and a wonderful nephew, and have raised and are raising them right. I rejoice in knowing they all, all, all are my family.

Third, they call me, visit me, write me, and bring or send me gifts. Just recently this lovely bouquet arrived at my door. I can hardly believe it. When they visit, the closest one travels about 500 miles. This is devotion, friends. I wish I could grow to deserve it.

But I see similar devotion in my sons, for their sister and it gives me such hope.

Blessings of Habit, Good ol' days, Inspiring

All My Men Have Been Good to Me – Dad

Posted on March 24, 2011March 10, 2015 by Katharine

I wrote of my dad already, but left much unsaid.

A WWII veteran, my dad was a factory worker. He lifted heavy bags of plastic pellets into a machine that turned out knobs, duck calls, and laundry baskets, at high temperatures. He seldom took sick leave and came home exhausted every night. For that he received $100 per week and a party sometime in December.

Yet he had such energy left for tomfoolery! He played with us kids as if he were one himself. Airplane rides (on his feet), jigsaw puzzles, carom games, goofy drawings, and croquet were among his repertoire. He made the stand for our carom board, himself, without any plan or pattern. He also made several bookcases and two desks the same way. And he repaired our toys.

One play activity he initiated with us was about trust. Did he think it through and decide to teach us trust? Maybe not—he was having fun. He encouraged and coaxed us to fall backward into his hands, if we believed he was strong enough to catch us. Was that ever hard to do! And how insulted he acted when we were scared to try it! He never dropped us, though, and we learned something, I think.

When his family grew, he built an addition to the house, himself. Alone. He hired help with digging and pouring the basement, and with the rafters. All the rest he did with our help. We gained a new living room, bedroom, basement, and bath. It was hard, but he did it. He wired, plumbed, hammered, sawed, plastered, sanded, and varnished. And I still can back any nail out of any board, no matter how bent or stuck. Just ask my kids.

He kept a huge garden, too. Corn, tomatoes, beans, and cucumbers, I remember. Sometimes he hired it plowed in spring, sometimes he could only afford to burn it off and attack with a shovel. But he had a big-wheeled cultivator and we pulled weeds. And there is still something about pulling weeds that pulls me into the garden.

How I loved to sit on his lap while he watched television! Mostly I did not watch, but just nestled and played with his hands. I twirled his wedding ring round and round his finger and rubbed the calluses on his palms and ridges on his fingernails. Sometimes he would give me one quarter of one of his Throat Disks from their slender tin he kept in his pocket. He also had a smaller tin of tiny, black Meloids that were too spicy for me.

One thing bonded me to him more than any other. When I was very little, he would give me piggy-back rides. He sat on a big chair while I climbed up to grab hold around his neck, then he stood up and bounced me around the living room. What fun we had! The day came, though, when the ride was over, I slid down his back, and my leg caught on a screwdriver in his back pocket. I screamed. He was absolutely heartbroken. I had never seen a grown-up cry before and it riveted me.

Oh, to be that concerned about my own precious children!

Blessings of Habit, Good ol' days, Inspiring, Wisdom

All My Men Have Been Good to Me: Grandpa

Posted on March 23, 2011December 16, 2014 by Katharine

My grandpa used to gather us kids around to play a mouse game with us. He somehow folded his handkerchief into a cylinder shape with a tail and would hold it in his hand and stroke it like a pet mouse. Then he would talk us into petting it, too. Suddenly it would jump up his arm while he acted surprised and we nearly jumped out of our skins, although we knew what was coming, each time. It was the only kid entertainment at their stuffy parsonage, and we loved it, couldn’t wait to go there and beg to play the mouse game. Oh, the giggles!

Imagine my awe and shock when my mother revealed to me the truth: my grandpa never did like children much. Imagine!—Oh, just imagine!—What dedication to doing right prevailed in this man who did not like little children yet took them into his arms and blessed them with a silly game!

Outside of that game, our activities with him were on adult level. He lived in St. Louis, and took us often to Shaw’s Garden and the Climatron. Anyone who has ever been there knows a child can be totally impressed with such a ho-hum-sounding activity. I was. I loved it there; the waterfalls that ended in fish-filled pools with floating lava rock amazed me. That the birds could live there for our enjoyment, that we could climb stairs to be near the treetops, that the birds were used to us, was unbelievable. I grew up to be an amateur botanist and birder.

After retiring from parish life, he took a simpler job as proofreader at a large publishing company. Twice he took me there to see the processes, every step conducted in house, in the good ol’ days. I remember a long set of cover-less books aligned side-by-side with an enormous screw clamp, waiting for their corporate edges to be gilded. I grew up to be a writer.

Grandpa also had a pump organ and played very well. He would not let us play on it unless we could pump it ourselves and knew an actual song to play for him. My brother was better at that, but when Grandpa took us to the big, old church that had a real pipe organ, when the organist was practicing, it was sublime. I soaked in it and grew up to prefer richly chorded classical organ music.

One activity bonded me to my grandpa more than any other thing: milk toast.

For the uninitiated, that is a bowl of torn-up toast, doused in milk, to eat with a spoon like cereal. A-a-ah!

I liked milk toast and none others of Grandpa’s fourteen grandchildren did, that I know of. He liked to eat a bowl of it every night before bed and if we were there, he would make me one, too. We sat together at their antique oak dining table that was covered in hand-made lace, old man and little girl, happy as coons in corn, eating a meal he prepared just for me.

Home School, Inspiring, Pre-schoolers, Sayings, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

Why Do People Put Their Children in Schools? Part – 3 – Can We Fix the Schools?

Posted on March 19, 2011June 6, 2014 by Katharine

From all the research that has been done, I think we might, might, might be able to make some progress solving the problems in governmental institutionalization of our children. It would take drastic change, though.

No matter what you are thinking, I meant more drastic than that.

Most classrooms have far too many children in them.

Instead, each classroom would have to reduce to only around 5 children per adult. Many homes have something like that, and national research shows it is the best way to learn. It certainly would be more natural. Some high school children might make do with 10 to 12 per adult, if they were mature .

It’s how the ancient Greeks taught.

Most classrooms have all same-age children in them.

Bizarre! Instead, each child should be allowed to receive the gift of relationships with vastly different-aged others. Most homes have that and the learning potential is expanded when the students are of differing levels of learning. Especially the older ones would learn, truly learn the subjects if they were, in this more organic approach, occasionally in positions to help teach.

We do learn most when we teach, right?

Most classrooms labor under the false assumption that touch, being sexual and subject to lawsuit, should be prohibited.

Instead, we all should acknowledge what we instinctively know, and has been proven, that hugs and pats and other touch, including light corporal punishment, are part of socializing and leaving them out is wrong. Most homes have touch. Remember, orphans who are never touched die, whereas touched children are healthier and grow taller.

To protect the child from the occasional bad teacher, and the teacher from the occasional bad parent, of course video cameras in every room and every hall would be essential. That way, any teacher or child who doesn’t care about God, could realize that Big Brother is also up there.

We have the space, really. We are closing schools every day because we’ve aborted zillions of the children who could have filled them.

We do not have enough teachers, but how quickly they would come if they learned we’d solved the discipline problems, wouldn’t they!

It would take a large staff of volunteers, but what better place to volunteer! Lots of families have become single-income these days, so one spouse must be somewhat free. Then that parent could discover the joy of watching or even helping his or her own child learn things of great value, even about volunteerism. It would be a whole lot like home schooling, and might even get the better results of homeschooling, but would happen at the school.

Or, we could just send them all home, which would be lots more cost effective.

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

Why Do People Put Their Children in Schools? Part – 2 – The Solution

Posted on March 18, 2011December 31, 2015 by Katharine

Reasons for being at home Children need to be in homes.

Arresting thought, isn’t it.

If there exists any type of divine design, then for argument’s sake, we must think that children were put into homes for a reason.

But even those who cannot swallow the idea of a God must consider why all creatures seem to have evolved to higher and higher plains while passing through a home- or family-type stage, and the higher the plain, the longer the prerequisite familial stage, with homo-sapiens needing a family for the longest time of all.

It is worth a thought.

Many who have given it a thought have withdrawn their children from the bedlam outside the home. Then—surprise!—their children begin auto-correcting their psyches, learning more, retaining more, doing more with it, and growing up to be more productive.

I am not making this up. It is heavily-researched scientific fact that no thinking person should ignore, especially if that person cares about children, about the state of his country, or about the future at all.

And before we continue, we must define a home: a set of parents who function adequately, with each other and with their children, as mom and dad. To use a broken, dysfunctional, or abusive home as a reason for schools is as fair as using a broken, dysfunctional, or abusive school as a reason for home schools.

But bad schools are not the reason to homeschool.

CHILDREN are the reason to homeschool.

If you have them, you should.

Today’s children are being destroyed in schools. They were not made to be in schools and do not thrive there. They are tormented daily, growing warped personalities we see depicted in the worst national headlines.

And they’re not allowed to pray

Putting children into a school is asking them to pass the socializing test before ever receiving any instruction, correction,or reinforcements about HOW to socialize. They encounter children even less trained than they are, with no chance of escape from this zoo.

Sink-or-swim is often a great way to drown a kid.

The typical classroom is sink-or-swim. When drowning, it is natural for the inexperienced to attempt survival by pushing down on other swimmers.

Just natural.

Empathy is the natural product of a home education. Each older child who cherishes the home’s newest infant later has patience with that same child doing wrong, cares if that sibling falls down, laughs with—not at—that little one.

Resilience is another natural product of a home education. Encouraging, even requiring social resilience, leads to practice in resilience. The old “get back on the horse” motto prevails and in time, becomes instilled. As the child matures, he develops the ability to keep going, no matter what, if only someone has taught him how.

Confidence is another natural product of a home education, and it is born of hope. A child who is dumped at the door of an antagonistic, institutionalized experience has no hope. A child who has a mommy who will keep everyone on a good social plane while they learn, just because she loves them, has hope and learns confidence.

Tomorrow, part 3 about how to fix the schools. See ya’!