Why is it that whenever a discussion turns to unschooling *someone* will come back with something to the effect of "that's great for your kids, but if I let my child do whatever he/she wanted, he/she would do nothing but sit around and play video games/watch tv/use the computer all day"? What is up with that? Do people REALLY believe that, or is that just what they are AFRAID will happen? How do they know that's what their child will do if they have never tested this theory for longer that a few days? And why is sitting around doing workbook pages or reading a book BETTER than sitting around doing anything else? Sitting around is sitting around.
Yeah, I realize there's not really a point to this post. Just thinking out loud.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
Nature Find of the Week
I wish I had had my camera with me this morning, but I'm not in the habit of taking the camera with me to work in the garden. I went out to the barn to get my gardening gloves so that I could pull weeds before the kids got up, and guess what I saw. All over the side of my barn there were teeny tiny praying mantids! I mean these were seriously small. They were smaller than the fingernail on my pinky. We have praying mantids all over our yard in the summer, and we've seen plenty of little ones, but these must have just hatched because they were the tiniest things I've ever seen! So freakin' cool!!!
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Some Fun Questions
On one of my favorite e-mail lists, someone posted a few questions as a convo starter. I had so much fun answering that I thought I'd post my answers here too, especially since I'm not exactly coming up with new blog posts on my own lately!
These questions originally came from:
http://www.bzoink.com/S53948/
If you could rid the earth of one thing, what would it be?
child abusers, especially child molesters
If you could eliminate one emotion from your life, which would it be?
unnecessary guilt
What is one personality trait you've tried hardest to change in yourself?
Impatience. I feel like I'm very impatient, yet some of my friends think I'm uber-patient for some strange reason. Maybe because I've worked on it so much? I don't know. But my kids and husband can tell you otherwise!
What would you say is the most beautiful word in your own language?
YES!!
If you had the gift of magic for one day, what would you do?
Use a time-turning spell over and over and over. I could visit people who have died, right some of my wrongs, and relive some of the bestdays of my life so far.
If you were 6 inches tall for a day, what would you do?
Well, first I would raid my daughter's doll clothes because obviously nothing I own would fit and I'd be running around naked. Then I would sneak up on a bird and take it for a ride just to see what it's like. I would take up residence in the fairy house in the woods behind our house and take a nap on a bed of bird feathers and thistle down. I would sip flower nectar straight from the flower and dine on berries from a wee little acorn top bowl. Then I would go for a walk in the forest of grass in my yard (because it hasn't been mowed in two weeks). Of course I would have to steer clear of all the snake holes and spider webs. I should probably avoid the mud puddles too since I can't swim. And the cat. She doesn't see very well anymore and I don't want her to get me confused with a mouse. And I should probablyavoid the dog too since she's a better mouser than the cat. And we have hawks and owls, so I'd have to watch out for them too. And...hey...wait a minute...this isn't sounding like so much fun anymore!
Did you ever have an imaginary friend? How would you describe them?
I had lots of "fantasy friends" and they changed quite frequently. Some were stuffed animals that would come to life and some were completely imaginary. If I wanted to have a koala or a polar bear or an alien as a pet *poof* I had one! Others were people - both people I knew in real life and totally imaginary people. As I got a little older many of my imaginary friends were characters from favoritebooks. For instance, I remember going through a phase where I pretended that the big tree outside my bedroom window was the Faraway Tree (from the Enid Blyton books). All the characters from the book who lived in the tree were my friends. I visited every day and we would climb to the top of the tree to visit the different lands that were there. (Oddly enough, both of my kids do this too.) As I go tolder I began to use my imaginary world to work through things thatbothered me in real life. I would bring imaginary versions of real people into my fantasy world to make things go the way I wished theyhad, or I would practice how I wanted something to go if it hadn't happened yet. Heck, I guess I still do this to a certain extent!
If you could invent one new home appliance, what would it do?
Damn, how can you possibly beat Rosie from the Jetsons?
If I couldn't have Rosie then I guess I would either invent an automatic laundry machine that would sort, wash, dry, fold AND putaway the laundry.
Or I would just invent a robot that would do nothing but go aroundand pick up after my kids. That alone would give me so much more freetime!
These questions originally came from:
http://www.bzoink.com/S53948/
If you could rid the earth of one thing, what would it be?
child abusers, especially child molesters
If you could eliminate one emotion from your life, which would it be?
unnecessary guilt
What is one personality trait you've tried hardest to change in yourself?
Impatience. I feel like I'm very impatient, yet some of my friends think I'm uber-patient for some strange reason. Maybe because I've worked on it so much? I don't know. But my kids and husband can tell you otherwise!
What would you say is the most beautiful word in your own language?
YES!!
If you had the gift of magic for one day, what would you do?
Use a time-turning spell over and over and over. I could visit people who have died, right some of my wrongs, and relive some of the bestdays of my life so far.
If you were 6 inches tall for a day, what would you do?
Well, first I would raid my daughter's doll clothes because obviously nothing I own would fit and I'd be running around naked. Then I would sneak up on a bird and take it for a ride just to see what it's like. I would take up residence in the fairy house in the woods behind our house and take a nap on a bed of bird feathers and thistle down. I would sip flower nectar straight from the flower and dine on berries from a wee little acorn top bowl. Then I would go for a walk in the forest of grass in my yard (because it hasn't been mowed in two weeks). Of course I would have to steer clear of all the snake holes and spider webs. I should probably avoid the mud puddles too since I can't swim. And the cat. She doesn't see very well anymore and I don't want her to get me confused with a mouse. And I should probablyavoid the dog too since she's a better mouser than the cat. And we have hawks and owls, so I'd have to watch out for them too. And...hey...wait a minute...this isn't sounding like so much fun anymore!
Did you ever have an imaginary friend? How would you describe them?
I had lots of "fantasy friends" and they changed quite frequently. Some were stuffed animals that would come to life and some were completely imaginary. If I wanted to have a koala or a polar bear or an alien as a pet *poof* I had one! Others were people - both people I knew in real life and totally imaginary people. As I got a little older many of my imaginary friends were characters from favoritebooks. For instance, I remember going through a phase where I pretended that the big tree outside my bedroom window was the Faraway Tree (from the Enid Blyton books). All the characters from the book who lived in the tree were my friends. I visited every day and we would climb to the top of the tree to visit the different lands that were there. (Oddly enough, both of my kids do this too.) As I go tolder I began to use my imaginary world to work through things thatbothered me in real life. I would bring imaginary versions of real people into my fantasy world to make things go the way I wished theyhad, or I would practice how I wanted something to go if it hadn't happened yet. Heck, I guess I still do this to a certain extent!
If you could invent one new home appliance, what would it do?
Damn, how can you possibly beat Rosie from the Jetsons?
If I couldn't have Rosie then I guess I would either invent an automatic laundry machine that would sort, wash, dry, fold AND putaway the laundry.
Or I would just invent a robot that would do nothing but go aroundand pick up after my kids. That alone would give me so much more freetime!
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Sheltering One's Child
This dreadful topic has come up in my life yet again...the idea that "sheltering" ones child is somehow a bad thing. Why is being a buffer between your child and the negative things that happen in the world so horrible? Saying that my children need to have he experience of dealing with bullies and negative peer pressure in order to learn about the "real world" makes about as much sense as saying they need to be handed a loaded gun to teach them that guns are dangerous. I wouldn't starve my children to teach them that the world is full of people who don't have enough food. I wouldn't throw them in the lake to teach them about drowning. I wouldn't let them play in traffic to teach them how dangerous cars are. Most parents would not *purposely* put their children in harms way in order to "teach them a valuable lesson", so why do so many parents think it is acceptable to purposely put children in situations where they are in danger of being teased, ridiculed, beaten up, or otherwise harmed by other children in order to teach them that the world has nasty, mean people in it? I just don't get it.
I'm a PARENT. It's MY JOB to protect my children from harm. To do otherwise would, under different circumstances, be considered neglectful or abusive. If one were to suggest that parents should put their children in situations where they were in danger of the same treatment from an adult, most parents would be outraged, and rightly so, but in the case of schoolyard behavior parents are willing to accept the potential harm to their child because it's "normal".
Just because most adults in our society managed to survive the kind of pressure and abuse that is so much a part of the school experience does not mean it's OKAY! People need to get over this idea that just because they were forced to endure something and "turned out okay" that that somehow makes it acceptable to continue forcing the next generation to endure the same thing. It's reprehensible.
I'm a PARENT. It's MY JOB to protect my children from harm. To do otherwise would, under different circumstances, be considered neglectful or abusive. If one were to suggest that parents should put their children in situations where they were in danger of the same treatment from an adult, most parents would be outraged, and rightly so, but in the case of schoolyard behavior parents are willing to accept the potential harm to their child because it's "normal".
Just because most adults in our society managed to survive the kind of pressure and abuse that is so much a part of the school experience does not mean it's OKAY! People need to get over this idea that just because they were forced to endure something and "turned out okay" that that somehow makes it acceptable to continue forcing the next generation to endure the same thing. It's reprehensible.
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