Ballroom Dancing and Marriage

So, I'm sitting here eating my lunch of tomato soup with entirely too much cheese in it for someone who is supposed to be on a diet.  And I'm browsing the Black Hole Of Time And Productivity, also known as Facebook.  I came across this article talking about how this writer "isn't a feminist and that's okay".

I liked the article, particularly because of how she explained that had she been alive in the early 1900's, she'd have likely been a feminist.  Back then, equal pay for equal jobs, the right to vote, and the right to work without being thought a bastion of evilosity (Kacktionary) were the hallmarks of the original feminist movement.  I'm with you, Ms. Sankey.  (See, I don't know if she's married or not, but I suspect that someone capable of writing that post is probably okay with being called Ms. even if she'd rather be a Miss or is supposed to be a Mrs.)  The original feminist movement was common sense.  Now, though, it has been hijacked to include things that devalue human life, that are illogical, and that are repressive to any woman who doesn't perform obeisance to the current platform of ideas.  (I'll let you decide what those things are.)

But that's not what I came here to get off of my mind.

Today, we finished up a homeschool ballroom class for some area high schoolers.  It was so fun, and some of those kids had to step all the way out of their comfort zone to do what they did.  I was so proud to be able to help them!  I didn't teach it; rather, I was the assistant, the official kitten-herder, and the demonstration lackey.  Perfect for me, and good for the kids because the real teacher has a LOT of experience teaching kids as well as adults.

This has ballroom on my mind at the moment and that combined with the article I read is why I'm wanting to share some thoughts.  See, I'm one of "those" women who takes the Bible's directions for a healthy marriage to heart.  I figure if I'm going to believe some of the Bible, I might as well believe all of it, right?  But, I really don't want to sound all "boy, aren't I just the best woman ever because I don't get my knickers in a twist when I hear the word 'submit'?".  I say all that to say that I agree with the premise that a strong family needs a singular leader in order to maintain order.  That leader needs to be able to have a right-hand (wo)man who can basically take charge and run things in a manner that they both agree is best for said family.

A good marriage is not too different from a really good pairing on the dance floor.

Within a strong dance couple, the man is a strong leader.  He leads the dance based on what he feels is best for the music and best for the partner he has in his arms.  He doesn't try to lead his partner into steps that she hates or doesn't do well, because they will both feel awkward and look ridiculous.  It won't work if he's always waiting around for her to back lead him into something, because back leading never looks as good as proper leading.  The lady, on the other hand, has got to be strong to be able to follow that lead.  If her arms are spaghetti and her mind is elsewhere, she will always have a scared deer look in her eyes and will usually be a step behind what he's trying to do.  They've both got to be strong, focused, and committed to the dance in order for it to both look good and for them to have fun.  And she has GOT to follow his lead.  If she gets it in her head that they are going to do something else other than what he has in mind, they will jumble up and, again, look ridiculous.

Here's the thing.  When a couple has been dancing together for a long time, he knows what she's expecting to do and she knows what he's going to do, and they've probably talked enough about what they like and don't like so that they now can just relax and enjoy the movement and the music.  They can learn new things together and get better and they do it under the same formula - he leads, she follows.

You see where I went with that.  All that I said is perfectly true about a dancing partnership and it's all true about marriage as well.

My marriage isn't perfect.  No marriage is.  While that hardly needs to be said, I feel like I need to include that ubiquitous clarification so that I don't have to make a long statement about how I don't want to come off as some self righteous know-it-all who has all the answers and who is 24/7 peaceful with her husband and kids and whose bookshelves are never dusty.  ::rolling my eyes::  Y'all, I'm a big mess of inconsistency and partial-crazy and I by no means have an unfailing handle on right vs. wrong.  (See, I went ahead and made that long statement anyway.  I just hate the "my marriage isn't perfect either" stuff, because you never can tell if someone is just saying that to try to keep you from feeling bad.)

What I have is some experience with ballroom dancing, and a tiny 14 years experience with marriage, and a mind that likes to overthink things, and a lifetime of Primitive Baptist upbringing.  All that mushed together results in posts just like this one, and now I've been able to share my mush.  :-)

How's It Going - SuuuuperMom!!!

"So, how's homeschooling going?  Are you just a total supermom?  Is that how you get it all done?"

Oh, bless your heart for thinking that about any of us'n moms who have stepped into this arena.  I guess I should just give a genteel smile, and lower my eyes coyly, and say, "aw shucks".  Let you go on believing in my super powers.

But, I'm not a-gonna.  'Cause if you were to walk in my house this very second, you'd wonder if we owned a vacuum cleaner.  There are overflowing laundry baskets and a kitchen that has "stuff" all over every counter space.  Pooh.  Most of the flat spaces in general have stuff all over them.  There are scads of unfinished projects here and there, and the yard still bears evidence that there was only one person last summer who could do any work in it.  (And only had time to get grass mowed, cause he was also having to pick up my slack in the house due to the rough pregnancy).

The windows bear handprints and we have a summer to-do list for the house that is a mile long.  I'm not all that sure when "spring cleaning" is going to happen.  I suspect it's not really going to happen.  We'll have spring turns into summer cleaning.  That sounds like a plan.  Sure.

I'm still hanging on to 10 lbs of baby weight from Lollypop, in addition to the 15 from the other two kids, that I can't seem to make time to lose through exercise.  They say 40 is the new 30.  Maybe they'll also say 25 lbs overweight is the new Hot Mama Size!

I don't make supper every night.  And more than often, these days, Jmk and I just get enough done for the kids to eat something decent for them, and he and I crash and do the least we can get away with for ourselves after they go to bed.

I don't have a garden or a weedless flower bed.  I'm very behind in my reading, and I can't seem to pick my knitting back up a'tall.  I don't really know how to sew.  And my kitchen is STILL red, even though Jmk and I really intend for it NOT to be that way anymore.

I tell you what.  If we were in the 1950's, I'd SO be the worst wife/mom EVAH!!!  Like, totally, Good Housekeeping would print my picture with the caption "Yeah - her?  Bad Housekeeping.  Bad!  Look away!"

BUT, dagnabbit, the eldest kid is getting learnt something every morning.  We make it to as many of the homeschool support group activities that we can work into our young-kid schedule.  For the most part, no one runs out of underwear.  (oh, yeah, it totally happens, but not ALL the time).  The kids are used to the question "so what vegetable do you want to go with your lunch/supper" and can actually answer it.  I get most of the emails answered and keep the bills paid.  I'm still nursing the sweet baby and even write a blog post from time to time.  And we, thanks to Jmk planting them a week'ish ago, have three baby blueberry bushes in the backyard!

You know, it's not a lot of stuff in a day.  But the day seems to be so busy anyway.  It has taken me forever just to write this one post, because of all the interruptions that happen around here.  On paper and at first glance, our world may not be up to 1950's standards.  But there's a lot more going on these days than happened in the '50's.  AND, on top of that, I'm learning to do something that at least half the time I don't have the confidence to do in the first place.  (oh, you thought the typical homeschooling parent was absolutely sure about what they were doing, did ya?)

Am I complaining right now?  Heck no.  In fact, in the past week, I've been coming to a slow realization about some things that I'm not ready to flesh out on the blog yet.  But these "things" are making me take a new look at myself, my parenting, my worshipping, my everything.  I'll have to do some talking about all this with my best sounding board, a.k.a. The Hubster, to get it all worked out in my head.  But in the process of this slow realization, I am also seeing all the things I do and don't do.  And I thought, hey, why not make a post about it.  I know that I used to think that homeschooling moms were just the perfect moms, and that's why they did it.

Well, no.  They're not.  And I'm not.  And I'm not GOING TO BE, either.  I'm just me.  I'm not super, and my kids get tired of me and I yell too much some days.  But as Charlotte Mason has said, "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life".  All of those things are things that have to be continually adjusted and tweaked and improved.  They are never "just right" at any given point.  So when you show up at my house unexpectedly on some random Tuesday, and the house happens to be quite disheveled and the kids are outside playing in mismatched clothes (assuming they have on clothes and not their pj's), and I have no idea what's for supper...  I hope you'll just smile and know that we probably had a great day of school that day.
:-)

How's It Going - RRR

How's homeschooling going? What is Poodle actually doing in school?

A lot of times, this is the question people want to know. Does she do what others her age are doing in "regular" school?

(Side Bar: from time to time, you may catch me saying "outside" school, instead of "regular" school. I got that phraseology from my church friend, Karen, who used that with her kids when they were younger. I didn't want to say normal school or regular school to Poodle, because who wants to think that their education is somehow odd or not normal, you know?)

Back to the original question - I can tell you what she's doing, but I can't tell you if it's the same thing as what she would get at ABC Elementary School. I mean, I know she's not doing what she would be doing if she were in the regular school system, because she would have been in Kindergarten this year due to her late birthday. And, obviously, she's doing work that is past the Kindergarten level. But is she doing full on first grade work? That's what I don't really know. Because I don't know what qualifies as first grade work!

We read a Bible story every day. We read a poem every day. (Currently reading from A.A. Milne's When We Were Very Young). Our history involves reading good living books. We're currently reading Pocahontas by Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire. But I'm beginning to see that history, at this age, needs to really be more of a broad stroke of a subject. I think I've spent too much of this year thinking we needed to be more detailed than we were being. And spent too much time stressing about it, as usual!

Geography is also being handled by a living book. Paddle-To-The-Sea by Holling C. Holling. Science is supposed to be handled by Nature Study right now. Here is where I'm lacking, because I have not been getting her out every week with Nature Study as our focus. The weather and the baby have thrown us for a loop there. While I totally agree with the Charlotte Mason approach to learning about the scientific/natural world through this method when the children are young, I have decided that we also need some actual science books to help jumpstart us (read: jumpstart me). I'm looking into Apologia, but I need to know that they will pass the "living books" test well enough to go along with what we already do.

We do Math every day (here's a pic of the test that she had today, so that gives you an idea of what she's doing for math). She practices handwriting every day. She reads aloud to me every day. (We're currently reading a Junie B. Jones book, but the cutsie, and incorrect, 5-year-old grammar in it is driving me crazy).

Yeah, she actually missed #14. I graded that in a big hurry with a sleepy, fussy baby in my arms. Whoops! She figured out the correct answer quickly once I caught this.

Is she doing first grade work? Again, I have no idea. I think that she's probably average with her spelling and average with her word recognition as she reads aloud, but I genuinely am not sure. I know her comprehension is good, because she narrates to me when I read to her. (Not every time, but we do at least one narration a day so that she gets practice with not just comprehension but also with communicating that comprehension).

There is a very active part of me that wants to KNOW that she is on par with her first grade counterparts. Via some sort of test or evaluation or something-or-other. But, that's one of those hang-ups that I try to not to indulge. I will likely have her take the the Stanford Achievement Test eventually, just to satisfy my and Jmk's curiosity. In a year or two. Maybe. (Nothing like having a solid plan, eh?)

This is genuinely one of the harder things for me about a home education. Except for Math, nothing else can really be "graded" in the traditional sense. Add to that, the general course of curriculum that I use with her tends to not have a lot of worksheet "busy work" that might otherwise give me something concrete to hold in my hands. Plus, again, I don't have someone else telling me how she's doing. I have to trust that I'm doing the right things with her.

It's a pickle. And I know that I've only sort of answered that original question. Hey - if you're a first grade teacher and want to come to my house and reassure me that she's just doing swimmingly, come on ov-ah! :-)

How's It Going - Oh, baby!

"So, how's Homeschooling going?  How are you handling having a new baby?"

Hold on...  I just need to answer this one other question about how long a piece of string is...  one sec....
okay.  Done.

Now, how are handling it with a new baby?  Yeah, you probably see where I'm going with this one.  There are countless blog entries, website suggestions, probably even books with information about how to handle a home education situation when you have a newborn and/or smaller children.  Which goes to show that there is genuinely no one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges.

For example, today, since Lollypop woke up early when the other kids did, she's still playing.  And, within the next 30 minutes or so (from this minute that I'm typing this - it may not get finished and posted for awhile!), she'll likely want to go down for a nap.  That's when Poodle and I will get started on our lessons. Whether or not we get to finish "in peace" depends on:
~~how long Lollypop sleeps
~~how interested Tooter is in being a part of it
~~how quickly I can get Poodle to quit playing Alice in Wonderland and focus
~~whether or not we find ourselves chasing a rabbit trail because of something we read

And that's just today.  Everyone is in a pretty decent mood today.  There are days when one or more of us are tired and/or cranky.  There are days when I'm trying to read to Poodle while Lollypop fidgets on my lap and Tooter crashes his dinosaurs into each other; my brain is so full of distraction and noise that I quite literally feel my blood pressure rising as I sit.  Then there are days where Lollypop will take a brilliant two hour nap and Poodle and I get everything finished while Tooter quietly does his "lessons" at the same time.  (He likes to practice drawing letters on a dry-erase booklet that I found at Walmart.  He is SO not doing real "school stuff").

There are days where I get half-way through with things, realize that Poodle and I are totally at odds with each other, and I just stop.  Just plain stop.

You can see that every day is different and has its own "routine".  That original question up top there gets a different answer every day.

I'm one of those people who actually finds database entry a calming thing.  Seriously.  I like predictability and the status quo.  (Maybe not ALL the time, but I do find comfort in the same ole-same ole).  So, having to approach each day with a "here's what we have to do, but I don't have a actual method to complete it, because I don't know exactly what the day will bring" mentality is really hard for me.  Some folks bloom in that environment.  Me - I'm having to learn about flexibility and creativity.  I'm not that great at it, that's for sure!  And, it's probably a cause of stress for me that I don't quickly realize at times.  Eh - who knows.

It's a trade-off.  I'm not having to get kids dressed, fed, and out the door to the school bus by 7:15am.  (I think that's when the elementary kids get picked up around here.  It may be earlier).  That, just like what we do, takes flexibility and creativity also!

Yeah, things are crazy over here most of the time.  How do we handle it with the new baby?  We just go with the crazy flow and try not to drown!

How's It Going - Friends

A couple of months ago, I was asked by an acquaintence, "So, how's homeschooling going?"

Hmmm.

This person meant nothing more than the very question she was asking.  She wasn't trying to express her opinion.  She simply wanted to know how it was going.  How nice!  So what was my answer?

"Good!"  And it was said with a big smile.

Because deep down, I knew she was actually seeking someThing, but I doubt she knew any more than I did what that elusive information was.  Most people who ask me that question these days really would rather say "So, how's homeschooling going?  How are you handling _______?"  And it's that blank line that they actually want filled with a response.  But everyone wants to know something different.

So, because I'm sure you are all spending your very busy days thinking about ME and MY family, I will offer some thoughts on how homeschooling is actually going in certain areas.  Thoughts, feelings, new ideas, etc.  That sort of thing.  I'm not going to promise anything on a regular schedule - just as "things" come to me.

Today's thoughts are trending towards the social aspect of homeschooling.  I was discussing this very thing with the editor of our county newspaper after our Junior Miss program for which I still do Production.  He was plainly confused as to why I, someone who genuinely enjoyed "regular" school when I was in it and who lives in such a good public school district with top-notch teachers from kindergarten all the way through high school, would be homeschooling my kids for now.  He was quite disturbed that HS'd kids would miss out on the necessary social interactions that help them learn how to be people-in-the-world.  I mean, homeschoolers never get out of the house except to go to church.

:-)  I know.  Believe me, I thought the same thing barely 3 years ago.  Since that time, I have had discussions with Jmk about how hard it is to NOT do some of the school activities that are available, because I feel like we ought to do everything.  But it's hard to get lessons done when we're always on the go.  Besides, getting the baby and the 4yo boy out and occupied while the eldest does her thing....  and blah blah blah...  Point being - there's all kinds of "social" going on.  Seriously, you'd be surprised how busy HS support groups are these days!  And, it's a blessing.  It really is.

And, yes, these kids also get "playground politics" time as well.  Poodle even has her very own BFF who I just adore (and whose mom has become a precious friend as well).  But these playground politics are what were on my mind when I was talking with the aforementioned newspaper editor.

We'll set playdates at playgrounds.  And the kids will run amok and do the things that kids do.  They will argue and play and invent and get sad and jump for joy and get hurt feelings and sometimes get mean and often make new friends.  They will learn to navigate the in's and out's of social interaction the same way all children do.  However, the biggest difference is...

...we have to watch most of it happen.

Now, when our dear, precious offspring are playing nicely and being sweet and acting in a way that would make a White Gloves and Party Manners instructor smile in approval, well, we moms go home happy and elated and full of sunshine in our hearts.  But there are Those Days, when the same dear, precious offspring seem to have swallowed a cranky and bossy pill.  And then we get to watch them leave someone out of a "girls meeting" at the top of the climby thing at the far end of the playground.  That makes us go home without that heart-sunshine, to say the very least.  Oh, the disappointment we feel.

Equally bad are the days where we have to watch our little ones BE the ones getting left out or being told that they can't play something-or-other.

But we know that all of these things are a part of social life.  The good and the bad.  We know they are a part of learning empathy and learning about themselves.  It's difficult to watch sometimes, and sometimes it's elevating.  Mountains and valleys.  Just for a playdate.  It's emotionally tough, but that's one of the prices that need to be paid when one chooses to homeschool.

So, if you're wondering how homeschooling is going with regard to the social aspect of the whole thing...
I can honestly say that we're busy.  And the rest of my answer changes from playdate to playdate.  :-)  I'll let you know after our next outing to the playground.