Family

Making Progress

One more post about the kiddos and then I promise, it’s right back to brilliantly scathing commentary on fundamentalism. Okay, fine, it’s back to somewhat grouchy and disapproving commentary on fundamentalism.

It seems that we are in a good place with J and his school. Thankfully, he has a wonderful and caring teacher who wants to see J be successful as much as we do. I was amazed by some of the things she said to me today, particularly in regard to helping kids feel like they are making progress rather than always punishing the negative.

One reason we have been able to work through these tough issues is that I feel it is my duty as a parent to keep our son from being in the middle between his teacher and us. We’re not on opposite sides. We all want the same things. J and his classmates have the right to an education, and it isn’t fair for one child to lose out for the sake of the rest, nor for the rest to be disrupted for the sake of the one. I believe it is the responsibility of both parents and teachers to form an alliance in order to ensure a positive learning environment.

I have taken this approach with homeschooling as well. From the time we began homeschooling four years ago, I went into it with the mentality that it was important for us to work with the local district in order that our children’s needs be best met. Although it is not required by law to use them, I created J’s and now S’s IHIP (basically a homeschool learning plan) based on the school district’s forms. I found the forms to be helpful not only for keeping in touch but for my own record-keeping and lesson plans.

The evidence of how well that worked came when J went to school. School personnel were impressed with how well we communicated and J’s first teacher said he was well prepared to enter the classroom, in more ways than mere academics. We had instilled in J a love for learning which carried over into his time at public school. We are on a similar path with S, though she learns very differently than her brother.

Unfortunately, although this has been the approach that worked best for our family, I’ve faced a good measure of criticism. The vast majority of homeschooling parents have told me that I provided the district with too much information, that I would “ruin” it for others because the school would expect more from them, that I was making too much work for myself, that it’s us against the evil public school world. Nothing I said in our defense made any impression. And once J was in school, I was actively shunned by some families I had known when the kids were younger. Never mind that S is still learning at home, I had become a traitor to the cause.

The thing is, I don’t think it has much to do with homeschooling. There are some people who simply view life as a series of battles. The nuclear family is seen as an army or two, three, four, or more, and the enemy is anything on which they declare war: Public school, teaching methods, mainstream physicians, food, religion (or lack thereof). It’s not even a matter of fighting injustice. For example, take the hostility over public school. It’s usually about the belief that one’s own children are being harmed or neglected in some way. It’s rarely about the need for reform within the schools that would improve things for everyone, such as smaller classes, higher quality food, and adequate resources.

We’ve chosen to see things differently. We believe that if we support the teachers and the other staff, they will go to bat for us. So far, that’s been proven true time and again. As we work together to help sort out what needs to happen with J, we’re all keeping open minds throughout the process. My husband and I have a great support network of family and friends. It’s our job as parents to let J’s teacher know that we want to be a team in creating the best possible school experience we can for everyone.

It may not work out perfectly every time, in every situation, for every family. I don’t want to paint a rosy picture or imply that if you just do all the right things, magic will happen. Sometimes, needs are not met and changes must be made. Sometimes there are real battles to fight. But if every detail and every aspect of life is a battle, how can one ever hope to come home from the war?

Finding Inspiration and Balance

Balance, Daily Life, Writing

So…um. Yeah. I’m not feeling inspired yet.

Which, actually, might be a good thing. I spend a lot of time with random stuff floating around in my head. The flotsam usually consists of story ideas, parts of stuff I’m working on, things that really piss me off, articles I’ve read, and blog topics. There are days when I can hardly sort everything out, and days when I feel like I could write pages and pages. Today, I feel a little tapped.

I think I can be forgiven, this once. It’s been a long, weird week, and it’s not over yet. I’m thankful for great friends hanging in there with me. Not that I don’t love the cyberverse, but it’s nice to know that I can count on real, live humans when I need to.

Anyway, it’s not that I feel particularly down. Just tired, drained, and in need of a rest beyond my eight hours. I think that may be a good thing. I’m not a person who takes time off. Of course, there are a few people who think being home all day means I lie about eating bonbons and watching daytime television. Believe me, if I could, that’s what I’d be doing tomorrow. Well, the lying about and eating bonbons, anyhow. Instead, I’ll be homeschooling my daughter, catching up on chores, and taking a trip to the local library to supplement the kids’ education. Not that I don’t find all that wonderfully refreshing and invigorating, but it’s not exactly restful.

The good news is, the week is almost over. The bad news is, the weekend is coming. Normally that thought would put a spring in my step. Instead, I have a sense of impending doom. For whatever reason, this particular weekend is the busiest we’ve had so far since school started. The planets aligned just right in order to cause every single person who wanted or needed something from us to want or need it this Saturday. The upside is that we don’t have to cook dinner, as that will be provided courtesy of the Girl Scout fundraiser.

Which suddenly inspires me with a thought. This busy weekend is about fifty percent “stuff we do for ourselves” and fifty percent “stuff we do for others.” I can’t decide if I think this is a good balance. Part of me says it is; part of me disagrees. In any case, Finding that balance is one of the things I find most difficult. I know that I have a hard time weeding things out of my life that constitute business for the sake of staying busy. At the moment, I have at least three things on my plate that I need to categorize based on whether they are for me, for my family, or for the community, and then I need to decide which to say yes to.

More importantly, I need to decide which to say no to. I’m sure I’m not alone in this tough process. It’s so easy to fill every waking moment with places to go, things to do, and people to see. When everyone clamors that they must be the top priority, it can be hard to sort it out. Right now, I’ve decided that anything sorted into the “benefits the community” category (which includes most of my church-related activities) can stay and the kids can continue their extracurriculars. But if it’s just because someone wants me to do something because they personally find it interesting or fun, then it’s out. Other people’s hobbies are not mine.

I’m planning to find ways to sneak in some extra rest in the next couple of days, to prepare for Weekend of Insanity. I’m also clearing my head so that I can go into it with a positive attitude. We will survive the busyness, maybe even come out on top. Then I’ll look ahead to what we can change so that we don’t create this kind of black hole of non-stop activity in the future.

Here’s to a healthy measure of balance.

Being Open-Minded

Education, Health, Parenting

For a long time, I’ve been an advocate for keeping more kids off psychotropic medications. Not because I doubt the existence of childhood mental disorders, but because the long-term effects are unknown and I believe that parents and professionals should proceed with caution. I am not against using medication when it is necessary and beneficial for the child. After all, my own daughter is on steroids for her asthma, and there are well-documented associated risks. But I’ve seen the downside of over-medicating young children, particularly when it comes to diagnosis and treatment of ADHD.

One of the problems with institutionalized learning (and a major reason why we began homeschooling almost four years ago) is the amount of time children have to be kept quiet and sitting at a desk. For some children, this isn’t a problem. But for others, it is absolute torture. It may not have anything to do with the ability to focus or concentrate. Some people are sensation-seekers who thrive on sensory input. Others simply learn better by doing rather than hearing or seeing (kinesthetic learners). For still others, they may exhibit traits similar to ADHD, but do not actually have that particular disorder.

I used to be a school nurse, so I was responsible for passing out Ritalin or similar medications to approximately 40 children on a daily basis. I saw both sides of the coin. Were there kids benefiting from the meds? Absolutely. There were also kids for whom nothing ever seemed to work. Some kids suffered through repeated change in dose, type, and schedule, to no avail. Other kids had behaviors so bothersome that I had teachers either red in the face with anger or near tears, begging me to talk to the family about “doing something” with the child’s medication. And one story stands out in my mind vividly.

We had one student who was put on a medication trial. For those who don’t know what that means, the physician orders two to four weeks of trial period. For half of the trial, the child receives an actual dose of medication. For the other half, a placebo. No one except the pharmacist has any idea which half is which, only that the child is taking some kind of pill. Before and during the trial, the parents and teacher are expected to keep a log of the undesirable behaviors the child has and any changes. The boy in question underwent such a trial about halfway through the year.

When the study began, his teacher approached me and said that she was already seeing a difference in his behavior and attitude. She was thrilled, and certain that the dose he was on was correct. After the first two-week phase of the trial ended, she returned to me to let me know that the boy’s behavior had gone downhill again. She hoped that he would be placed on medication for the remainder of the year.

I suspect you know what’s coming.

And you’re right–the boy had been on the placebo for the first two weeks. Needless to say, the doctor and the parents refused to have anything more to do with medicating the boy. He went on to have successful behavioral counseling.

Now that I’ve said all that, I have to make a confession. We’re now about to embark on a journey with our son. He is a wonderful kid, bright and creative to the extreme, with the soul of an artist. He almost literally dances through life, his body craving near-constant motion. On a good day I wish I had his energy. But the flip side of those good qualities is that he is extraordinarily impulsive. He reacts, rather than thinking. His high-octane personality is not suited for long periods of seat work. And it leads to a lot of negative consequences.

As much as I favor treating children naturally, without brain-altering chemicals, I know I have to keep an open mind. I hope to begin with the simple, some help learning how to control his impulses. I also know that if it comes down to it, I expect that he will be given every possible evaluation and trial before being handed a psychotropic medication. His dad and I are his best advocates. We want what is right for him, not a broken system where a teacher has to be solely responsible for the instruction, behavior, and well-being of 25 or more students. We’re prepared to make some hard choices, including returning him to homeschooling to give him a break from forced seat learning.

It’s going to be a bumpy ride, but we’ll handle it the way we’ve handled everything else with the kids. We love them, we respect the other adults, and we work toward a common goal of helping our son to grow into the person he is meant to become.

Robbing G-d

Giving, KidSpeak

I haven’t written much about my kids lately, so I figure this is as good a time as any. Besides, I’m much too tired at the moment to come up with a witty or piquant article on anything else.

The other day, we were all sitting at the breakfast table. I think this may have been the first time in a while. I’m not much of a morning person, which means that I’m only just barely functional most mornings when my husband is getting ready for work. The kids like to get up early, but not as early as their dad (most of the time), and J doesn’t have to be at the bus stop until 8:45. But for whatever reason, we were all up early enough to enjoy breakfast together.

My husband had his phone out and was checking out a couple of blog posts that had come up in the previous few days. One of them was this gem of a cartoon from Naked Pastor:

Since my husband and I mostly have the same friends on social sites but radically different taste in blogs, we don’t usually share with each other. But my husband really enjoyed that particular cartoon. He leaned across the table to show me. Naturally, the kids were curious and wanted to see it. Seeing no harm, my husband showed them.

As one might expect, they didn’t exactly get it, at least not the way it was intended. My husband, always the teacher, asked what they thought it meant. J said he thought the driver of the car was selfish. But it was S’s reply that struck me. She said, “That man is a robber.”

I believe she thought maybe he had robbed a bank and was in trouble, but I heard layers in her words. I thought about what it meant to be a robber, and how it doesn’t just mean actively holding up a convenience store. We can rob G-d in hundreds of ways. We can withhold our money, certainly, as in the cartoon. But we can also withhold our time and our other resources.

I don’t just mean that we don’t spend enough time praying and reading the Bible. I suppose that’s likely to be true, but prayer and Bible reading are emphasized enough at church. I mean that we fail to give our time making a difference. We talk a lot about how we can do small things that take little time, like donating supplies or even writing a check to support a missionary. And those are great things to do. But we limit ourselves when that’s all we expect. I don’t doubt the impact of little things, but the little things should be just the beginning.

My hope is that my kids can grow into the kind of people who give of themselves beyond money, beyond the small stuff. Of course I hope they make a difference with the small things, but I also hope that those tiny impacts lead to a desire to do more. Not out of a sense of obligation, or a belief that they are earning brownie points in heaven (or even heavenly treasure). It should be born out of love for G-d, love for other people, and a desire to see G-d’s will be done here on earth as it is in heaven.

Darn. I guess I couldn’t just stick to a cute story about the kids after all.

Sticks and Stones

Bullying, Parenting, Politics

Yesterday, I was peacefully sitting in Dunkin Donuts, sipping my coffee and doing some writing (working on yesterday’s blog post and fooling around with some character development for a short story) while waiting for my daughter’s dance class to finish. I had the misfortune of having my quiet morning interrupted by two men discussing their political views.

I use the term “discussing” loosely. It was closer to one of the men exploding, while the other sat silently (except for the incessant ringing of his phone). I was mostly able to tune it out, until the one man said, loud enough for all of Dunkin Donuts to hear, “Anyone they put up has a chance to finally get that a**hole out of there.” Having heard the rest of the conversation, I was already aware that the “a**hole” to whom he was referring was President Obama. He followed by offering his opinions on the best candidates, emphasizing that the few women he mentioned were, in some way, either too stupid or too weak for the job.

I found myself, besides just feeling irritated that I had to be in earshot of the conversation, upset by the tone. It’s true, I don’t always agree with whatever those in government say or do. But to resort to name-calling? That doesn’t help anyone.

When we resort to name-calling, we reduce people to no more than the things about them we dislike. We separate ourselves from them by reminding ourselves that we are not those things. It makes it easier to fuel hate and anger when we are able to think about someone else as less. Not only that, we justify ourselves. We tell ourselves that it’s okay to call someone an a**hole if he’s acting like one (or, at least, what we think one acts like). And let’s be clear on this, Christians are no better about this than anyone else. Sometimes, we’re worse.

It’s no wonder that our children call each other names at school. It’s no wonder that our youth are depressed enough to commit violent acts against themselves and others. When we, the adults, cannot set a better example, then what hope have we? We can institute anti-bullying rules, campaign against name-calling, and even blame the victims. None of it does any good if our children are hearing us dehumanize others.

One thing we need to keep in mind is that no matter a person’s behavior, he or she is still a person. That carries with it the necessary understanding that even “a**holes” are created in the image of G-d and loved by the G-d who became flesh and died for us. We can still dislike things a person does; but we must separate that from who the person is and teach our children to do the same.

Fear-Based Education

Bible, Education, Family, LGBTQ+

Although this isn’t making news beyond the evangelical sphere, I thought I’d share. Please take a moment to read the article I’ve linked before you read the rest of this post.

First, in case you’ve never heard of the book in question (I had, but in a different context), you should know that this book is a) not the first of its kind; and b) not as scary as Baptist Press makes it sound. It’s actually a pretty cute story, and it has a sequel in which the two kings add to their family. However, all that is beside the point.

I happen to live in New York, where same-sex marriage is now legal. It has been legal in Massachusetts for some time now. (It’s also legal in Canada, the land where people seem to freak out a lot less about this stuff.) The growing fear among conservative evangelicals is that our children will be “indoctrinated” to believe that same-sex unions are “normal.”

I have news for you: In New York, it now is normal, being legal and all. I have more news: Right now, your children are in class with kids who have two mommies or two daddies. I happen to personally know three such families, all of whom have children in the public school system. It’s not going to happen, it already is.

For other kids, same-sex unions among family and friends are part of their reality. My children have two aunts who love them very much, and a host of other GLBT folks in their lives. For them, this is not strange. Knowing real, flesh-and-blood humans creates an opportunity to talk with our kids (yes, even at ages 6 and 8 ) about these things. And it has come up, not in class, but because they can read for themselves. They read signs, see newspaper headlines in the store, and come across bumper stickers. We have had to explain all sorts of things to our kids, and we always try to take a loving approach to the subject.

This whole thing is parallel to the brouhaha in California over the “gayification” of public education. There is this fear that somehow, all the history books are suddenly going to turn everyone gay. I’m not aware of campaigns to list the Founding Fathers as having had a wild orgy on the night they signed the Declaration of Independence. All that is happening is that the contributions of gay Americans will have a place in the books (for example, Harvey Milk) and that important events in the history of the Gay Rights Movement will be included (such as the Stonewall riots). Historical facts, people, not a lengthy course on Every Gay Person Who Ever Lived and How They Are More Awesome than You.

Public education is not conservative Christian education. Nor should it be. If you would like to teach your child those values, please feel free to do so—in your own home. If your child’s teacher reads a book to which you object, please talk with your child about your family’s beliefs. Or, better yet, send your child to private school or homeschool. If those are not options, then revisit option 1. But don’t expect the everyone to cater to your specific reading of the Bible in a public classroom.

Making Progress

Finding Inspiration and Balance

Being Open-Minded

Robbing G-d

Sticks and Stones

Fear-Based Education

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