School is coming!

EEK!  There's only a couple more days of summer!  How did that happen?  Well, we have done some school during the summer, but mostly my focus was on the newest member of our class and his arrival. Introducing baby William!:

 It was nice to have a baby in the summer because I felt no guilt in dropping the ball on everything but being BIG and pregnant, and on getting to know our sweet new family member.

As for school, it will start on Labor day (monday!---gulp) and I am more or less ready.  Well less then ready to be honest, but I figure I'll ease into this year.

This year we are studying Biology, the New Testament, and Modern World History.  Hyrum will be our kindergardener, and Maxwell will be in 2nd grade.

I'm not going to stress with Hyrum (age 5), however.  He has been diagnosed as having a "Language processing disorder" which I now believe is really not accurate.  I think he's just extremely right brained.  I just got a book called "Disconnected Kids" which is supposed to help children learn how to use their whole brain and connect synapses between the two halves of the brain. Let's hope it helps.

I was going to language therapy with Hyrum, but it seemed pointless.  It was only a half an hour twice a month, and she almost never gave me things to work with at home.  She would say "look how much he's improved because I did such and such" and I would be thinking "That was a month ago, I think he's improved because time has passed and because I do my little preschool."

I'm not sure if I even want to do it this year.  They are frustrated with me that I'm homeschooling because that throws a kink in their system (even though kindergarten is NOT required or subsidized by the homeschool organization.)  It's funny. They say things like "he'll have trouble in large groups" "he needs lots of one on one" "he needs a quiet atmosphere to focus" and in the next breath want him in public school.

I'm not worried about Hyrum in the long run.  He is incredibly creative, artistic, and has amazing dexterity.  He is writing his name very well, and I know he'll do Handwriting Without Tears excellently this year.  He knows the letters and their sounds, but I really don't know how reading will go.  We'll just take it one day at a time.  Math----I'm a bit worried about math.  (See why I think he is severely right brained?) Last year at this time he couldn't count to four.  Now, after drilling and drilling, he can count to ten, but well---let's just say Daniel (3) might be at a higher math level then Hyrum.

The good news is, he's a summer birthday. Really, if he was going to public school, I would hold him back until next year.  That way, instead of being the youngest, he would be the oldest.  I will still try to have him on a kindergarten curriculum, but I'm not going worry if he doesn't accomplish everything I'm planning on right now.

Hyrum & William

Maxwell (age 7), my homeschool guinea pig, I have many expectations for, however, and many of it will be catching up in reading and writing.

Daniel (age 3), well, I don't think I'll ever have to do any kind of preschool with Daniel.  He just picks it all up through osmosis. I have to tell him not to help Hyrum when I'm doing school with Hyrum.

Why would anyone Homeschool?

FYI: This is my last preachy/opinionated post of the summer :)

Homeschooling your kids is hard. A mom needs to be "converted" to the idea for it to last.  But the good news is, statistically speaking, homeschool in general is undeniably a great choice.  I found the study to prove it.

Brian D. Ray, Ph.D. shared his study of adults who were home schooled in his book "Home Educated and Now Adults."

He interviewed 5,254 people who were home schooled for 7 or more years, ranging in age from 16-69 with 74% of them being age 18-24.
He got his data for the general U.S. population statistics from the National Opinion Research Center General Social Survey, filtering it by ages 16-29.

These were the results (click on table to enlarge):

More statistics for adults who were homeschooled:

96% Agree with the religious beliefs of their parents.
95% Were glad that they were homeschooled.
92% Say homeschooling was an advantage to them as an adult.
88% Say homeschooling did not limit educational opportunities.
94% Say homeschooling did not limit career choices.
82% Would/are homeschooling own children.
3.2% Smoke cigarettes at all.
3.3% Had 5 or more alcoholic drinks in a row.
0.1% Ever convicted of a felony.
0.8% On welfare.
Homeschoolers score 15 to 30 percentile points above the national public school norm on standardized academic achievement test scores.

The odds seem to be in favour of homeschooled children!

However, I have one complaint about the study.  I think it's unfair to compare home educated children with the general public.  Home educated children, more often then not, come from two parent families where one parent is a stay-at-home parent.  These parents obviously care about their kids enough to try an unconventional education by sacrificing time and giving effort.  They come from larger families (around 4 children,) and the vast majority of these homes are religious.

That is not the case with the general public.  I have no idea how you would do a fair study, so I will appreciate this one as is.

Homeschooling is becoming more and more prevalent, in the past decade the number of homeschoolers has doubled from one million to two million in the U.S.  I look forward to this type of study being done again now that there is more diversity out there.

In the mean time, study or no study, I feel homeschooling is right for our family, and it's nice to see that others are succeeding at homeschooling as well.

Why Public School's Social Skills Stink Part 6: Peers

I have come up with 6 reasons why public schools are one of the worst places to learn social skills. If children come out of public school with social graces, I place most of the credit on their parents, communities, and the parents of their friends.  NOT on the public school system. I will post these six reasons separately (because I'm very opinionated about this and need space to vent.)

Reason 1: You only associate with children your same age.
Reason 2: You only have friends the same gender as you.
Reason 3: You are not friends with your siblings.
Reason 4: Teachers, in a broken system, have a hard time making a positive influence socially on the children they teach.
Reason 5: Public school monitors do not teach social skills.
Reason 6: Peers matter more then parents and other caring adults.

I have a friend who is an incredible mom who is very involved and thoughtful in her parenting.  She said she would never homeschool because she believed that her children needed socialization for much of the day every day, and where she lived, that would be too hard to do if she homeschooled.

I know many people feel the same as her.  Being forced to spend most of the day every day with peers takes away boredom, shyness, boosts self-esteem, takes away awkwardness, and teaches kids how to get along.  WRONG!

More and more studies are proving the opposite.  Yes children need other children in their lives, but they need parents and caring adults a lot more.

Introducing one of the best books ever:

I recently reread "Hold On to Your Kids" by Gordon Neufeld.  This is not a homeschool book at all.  It is a child psychology/parenting book. Often in the book he shares the extreme of what happens when peers are more important then parents, but this book still sheds light on parent/child relationships in a very poignant way.

This is basically the premiss of the book: Children today increasingly look to their peers for direction-their values, identity, and codes of behaviour.  This "peer orientation" undermines family cohesion, interferes with healthy development, and fosters a hostile and sexualized youth cutler.  Children end up becoming overly conformist, desensitized, and alienated, and being "cool" matters more to them than anything else.  We need to "reattach" to our sons and daughters.


Here are some quotes from the book:

Parents ask "Aren't our children meant to become independent of us?" Absolutely, but only when our job is done and only in order for them to be themselves. Fitting in with the immature expectations of the peer group is not how the young grow to be independent, self-respecting adults.

The ultimate ethic in the peer culture is "cool"-the complete absence of emotional openness......In such an environment genuine curiosity cannot thrive, questions cannot be freely asked, naive enthusiasm for learning cannot be expressed.  Risks are not taken in such an environment, nor can passion for life and creativity find their outlets.

What they learn, however, is not the value of thinking, the importance of individuality, the mysteries of nature, the secrets of science, the themes of human existence...What children learn from their peers is how to talk like their peers, walk like their peers, dress like their peers, act like their peers, look like their peers.  In short, what they learn is how to conform and imitate.

Boredom is epidemic among the peer-oriented.

The belief is that socializing-children spending time with one another-begets socialization: the capacity for skillful and mature relating to other human beings.  There is no evidence to support such an assumption despite its popularity.

When a child knows her own mind and values the separateness of another's mind, then-and only then-is she ready to hold on to her sense of self, while respecting that of the other person.  Once this developmental milestone is achieved, social interaction will hone the child's individuality and hone his relationship skills as well.

It's not that children shouldn't spend time with one another, but we should not expect such play to meet their deepest needs.
-------------------------------------------------

Well, maybe that gives you an idea of this book's point.  Parents need to matter more then peers, and in the book it does help guide parents on how to make that happen, but it is in the last half of the book, which kind of drove me crazy, but it's still an eyeopener book.

Throughout the book, it seems evident that he is talking primarily to parents with children in public school on how to make sure their children don't get sucked into peer orientation and explains how just because children go to public school doesn't mean they have to be dependent on their peers.  And of course I know that many public school parents make sure that they never lose the attachment that they need with their kids.  So "Reason 6" is NOT something that I believe happens to all public schoolers by any means. 

However, it does happen to many kids in public school because of the nature of the system, and it seems that the parents and caring adults that do "hold on to their kids" do so DESPITE the public school system.

Honestly, because of the community in which I now live, my boys hardly have a day pass that they are not spending time with peers.  But it's easy to hold on to them and collect them because we are usually all together, and if we're not together, I am friends with the peer's parents, and know the child and they know me.  In the homeschool life style, that's just how it is.


SO! There you have it!  My 6 long-winded explanations about why I don't think public school teaches good social skills!


PS-There is one thing that I think the public school system is good at socially. If a child is awkward, eccentric, or different, the public school social scene is a great place to turn these eccentricities into repressed insecurity. Not that I think this is a good thing, but so many people are so scared of awkwardness, that for them it might be worth it.

Why Public School's Social Skills Stink Part 5: Monitors

I have come up with 6 reasons why public schools are one of the worst places to learn social skills. If children come out of public school with social graces, I place most of the credit on their parents, communities, and the parents of their friends.  NOT on the public school system. I will post these six reasons separately (because I'm very opinionated about this and need space to vent.)

Reason 1: You only associate with children your same age.
Reason 2: You only have friends the same gender as you.
Reason 3: You are not friends with your siblings.
Reason 4: Teachers, in a broken system, have a hard time making a positive influence socially on the children they teach.
Reason 5: Public school monitors do not teach social skills.


In reason four, I talked about how teachers (for their own sanity/I don't blame them) are usually not present for recess, lunch, down time, or most other times that youth are doing the bulk of their socializing.


But it's not like the public school system leaves the kids totally unsupervised.  They provide "monitors."  These monitors usually must have a high school diploma and a background check, and any experience working with school age children will give them preference, but is not necessary.  They usually don't receive much training on how help children have better social skills.


My best friend was a monitor for awhile, and I know she actually played with the kids and tried to get to know as many children as possible, and really got involved, but this is not in the job description, and of course, Jr High and High school monitors don't usually interact much with the kids.


But let's face it.  Even if school monitors had doctorates in child psychology, the system is still against them.  The child/adult ration is much worse for monitors then it is for teachers.  It is closer to 1 in 50 and higher instead of the 1 in 20-30 that teachers deal with.  Also, those 50 children aren't specifically assigned to the monitor.  You could have 250 children with 5 monitors with the understanding that the five adults are collectively responsible for all 250 children.


Also, I am unaware of any school that really makes an effort for the children/youth to really get to know the monitors.  It's up to the personality of the monitors and students to get to know each other.


Basically, monitors are there to take care of emergencies.  Broken bones, bleeding, throwing up etc will first be reported by monitors to the proper sources.  Physical fights, obvious bullying, etc are expected to be handled by this handful of adults.


In recent events, it's obvious that even this job description is much harder then it may appear.  I think most of us know of the infamous youtube video of the school bus monitor being cruelly bullied by the students!  I do not envy monitors.


Most likely, monitors don't know your child's name. They might not even recognize your child's face. They usually are not the adult your child would confide in or talk to about what is going on socially in school, and the monitor is most likely not going to inquire of your child about his/her social interactions or try to interfere with what happens between your children and their peers unless there is some kind of physical altercation or something quite drastic. 


And so, Reason 5 backs up reason 4's conclusion:  Public schoolers teach themselves social skills, instead of being taught social skills by mature adults.

Why Public School's Social Skills Stink Part 4: Teachers in a broken system

I have come up with 6 reasons why public schools are one of the worst places to learn social skills. If children come out of public school with social graces, I place most of the credit on their parents, communities, and the parents of their friends.  NOT on the public school system. I will post these six reasons separately (because I'm very opinionated about this and need space to vent.)

Reason 1: You only associate with children your same age.
Reason 2: You only have friends the same gender as you.
Reason 3: You are not friends with your siblings.
Reason 4: Teachers, in a broken system, have a hard time making a positive influence socially on the children they teach.


Okay people, I want to make this perfectly clear:


THE MORE I HOMESCHOOL, THE MORE I ADMIRE, APPRECIATE, AND STAND IN AWE OF THE VAST MAJORITY OF PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS.


This post is not meant to belittle them or what they do.


Of course, the system they have to work in, is another matter.  Teachers are given 20-30 children they most likely have never met before, are given an seemingly impossible expectation by our society of what every single child should know, and then have to say good-by to all of these children after a nine month period, many times to never interact with these children again.


This is not a good breeding ground for attachments that can impact kids socially.


First of all, WHO could be emotionally and psychologically amazing enough to INDIVIDUALLY love, empathize, know, and appreciate 20-30 kids the first day they meet them?  No one.  It takes a while for teachers to get to know their students every school year, and once they've gotten to know them, can they really influence them?


The child must be able trust, love, and know a teacher before they can really respect what that teacher has to say.  Maybe in early elementary years children are more adaptable, but after that, you get jaded kids who prefer to trust, love, and know the peers around them more then the new teacher who will leave their life in 9 months.


If the teacher says it's not cool to pick on Jane, but their peer says it is cool, you have a pretty sure bet that the kid will take the side of the peer over the teacher.


And perhaps even more to the point-Are the public school teachers even "social graces" teachers?  Besides anti-bullying, I'm not aware that social graces are on the syllabus.  They have TONS that they are required to teach, and when there is any recess, lunch, or other down time, do you blame them for going off on their own to plan or relax or go to the faculty lounge to talk with other adults? 


In other words, when youth are doing the bulk of their socializing, the teachers are not even there. 


Yes teachers can teach respect in the classroom, and good teachers try to have group interaction, but for the most part, public school children teach public school children social skills, and let's just admit it-children are very often selfish, rude, and not sure how to love unconditionally.  They need grownups that they are emotionally attached to, to show them how to be mature.  It's very hard for teachers to be those grownups.


And of course, there is a small percentage of teachers that you wouldn't WANT your child to learn social skills from.  There are rude, arrogant, agenda-filled teachers out there mixed in with the good.  


Chances are, you will never really get to know your child's teacher very closely.  Doesn't that bother mothers?  Sending your child off for most of the day, five days of the week, to someone who you don't know?  That would bug me.


As for homeschoolers, well the ratio of adult to child is, of course, a lot lower.  Closer to 1 in 5 then 1 in 25.  All the adults are there for the long haul.  They have known your kids for years, you have know their kids for years.  You are emotionally attached to the kids in your homeschool group and the kids are attached to you.  Very often, adults are there to witness fights, disputes, and/or misunderstandings and can step in to be the conflict manager.  One on one talks take place after socializing, about what went on, and how the child felt, and what appropriate responses there could be.


So, in wrap up, home schoolers are taught social skills by mature adults, while public schoolers teach themselves social skills.

Why Public School's Social Skills Stink Part 3: Siblings

I have come up with 6 reasons why public schools are one of the worst places to learn social skills. If children come out of public school with social graces, I place most of the credit on their parents, communities, and the parents of their friends.  NOT on the public school system. I will post these six reasons separately (because I'm very opinionated about this and need space to vent.)


Reason 1: You only associate with children your same age.
Reason 2: You only have friends the same gender as you.
REASON 3: You are not friends with your siblings.


I never saw my brother at school.  We never sought each other out.  Is there anyone out there that did see their siblings at school?  On purpose?  My brother always walked me home,  but that was it.  I blame this on Reason 1 and Reason 2.  Your siblings are not your same age, and they might not be your same gender, thus it is not cool to hang out with them.  And so, twins are usually exempt from this social regiment.


It seems that in the real world, siblings should be your first link in social networking. Siblings should be able to learn from each others financial success and/or failures, because they should be candid with each other and tell each other the whole story.  They could be your confidents, your investors, your support group, your mentors, your beneficiaries, and/or even your business partners.


Domestically, siblings should be there for each other. They are the ones who are actually interested in ever detail of your birthing stories. They are the ones that will watch your kids.  They are the ones to tell you how to get permanent marker off of that oil painting.  They will tell you weather or not you need to go to the hospital if you think your child's pinky toe is broken. They are the ones who care about nurturing your kids, and having you nurture theirs. They are the parents of your children's cousins!


Yes, we are all individuals, and yes all of us have different views and opinions despite growing up in the same household, and yes some of the most heated arguments you will have in life will probably be with siblings, but there is something very true about "blood is thicker then water." We need our siblings.


Public school does not support this, and the natural social system that is set up by peers, tends to try to tear sibling bonds apart. Instead of working together with siblings throughout childhood and protecting and lifting each other, you are taught that your sister is so "mean, annoying, ugly, stupid" (these are the first things that show up when you google "my sister is so") and that my brother is so "annoying, stupid, selfish, weird."  Siblings should never matter more then your peers, or you are threatening that peer relationship with rivals.  True?  Come on, you know it's true in many kids minds even if they don't conscientiously realize it.


Not all public school children don't want to be friends with their siblings, but it takes more effort as a family OUT of school to make sure that family ties are respected and cherished.  It's not the public school system that teaches that.


Home schooled kids?  Well, yet again, they are forced to do things as a family.  They are big families too.  Statistically, a home schooled kid has an average of three siblings.  Of course, the Duggars are home schooled and they have, what? 19 kids? so I'm sure there are some home schooled only-child scenarios too.


When you are habitually with your siblings and have learning, cleaning, and everything else shared between you, you learn how to get along or at least cooperate with each other.  (Don't get me wrong, there are fights and BIG frustrations along the way.) But the sibling relationships that I first saw with my sister-inlaws' children was one of the main things that drew me to homeschooling in the first place.

Why Public School's Social Skills Stink Part 2: Gender

I have come up with 6 reasons why public schools are one of the worst places to learn social skills. If children come out of public school with social graces, I place most of the credit on their parents, communities, and the parents of their friends.  NOT on the public school system. I will post these six reasons separately (because I'm very opinionated about this and need space to vent.)


Reason 1: You only associate with children your same age.
REASON 2: You only have friends the same gender as you.


In my elementary school that I went to when I was growing up, there were cafeteria tables that lined two walls.  One wall of tables was the boy's side, and the other wall of tables was the girl's side.  It was social suicide to cross that line unless you were very popular.


I know that my school's social habits were not unique.  Just watch the first 15 minutes of "Little Manhattan" to get a clear picture of what I'm talking about.  Okay, okay, this movie exaggerates the reality of boy and girl relationships (or lack of) in school, but the truth is, in the vast majority of public elementary schools out there, it is very uncool to be friends with the opposite sex.  They have cooties.  They are into different things then you.  It's just not done.


That is, you can't unless it's romantic.  Oh yes, having crushes, having a "boyfriend" you write secrets letters (or texts) to, kissing tag, are all within the "okay" social category.


Is it just me, or does something seem wrong here?  I know most adults don't see anything wrong with this senario. In fact, many societies present and past have encouraged total gender segregation until marriage. It's completely natural for kids to want to be with their own gender, but in my mind, it should not be socially unacceptable to also be friends with those of the opposite sex before puberty.


What if there's no "first boy/girl party" or fist outing with both boys and girls? What if parties and outings always included both genders from the get go? Then when they get to the age of puberty, multi-gender parties and outings won't be awkward or about flirting or anything a parent might worry about.  It would just be natural because, well, that's what they've always done.


Homeschool by nature lends itself to constant boy/girl contact and friendship.  Again, families get together with families, and although for the most part boys split off with boys and girls with girls, there's just not that many people in a homeschool group to choose from, and boys and girls are forced together more often. Parties and outings include siblings getting together with another family's siblings, and gender is usually mixed.


In my experience of watching many homeschoolers throughout the years and from my own bias theories, it seems to me that when a children are in an environment where they are able to be friends with those of the opposite gender from birth through adolescence, they are less likely to be a sexually charged youth.


Also (now this really is a Lindy thesis, and I am no expert) it seems to me, that if the definition of what a boy or girl SHOULD be is not so regimented, that there is less "gender confusion."  Hear me out with this one:  In public school, your friends should be your own gender, and boys are all about sports, super heroes, war games, and bugs.  Girls are all about dance, disney princesses, hair and clothes.  If a child didn't fit in the right category, then I can understand how that child might start questioning their gender orientation (especially in a world like ours.) But if home schooled Mike wants to play dress up with his homeschool buddy Jenny, no one's making fun of him or telling him he's acting like a girl. Chances are, he's thinking "it's quite obvious I am a boy, and I really like playing with Jenny, and that's just fine."


Okay, so "Reason 2" is more of an opinion then a fact.  But I feel (obviously) that it is a valid opinion none the less.