My friend Eileen Lawyer has written a nice little piece on homeschooling that is here if you would like to check it out. And the blog hosting her article belongs to one of our party-goers (from Mexico City), so it’s possible you have found it in your blog party going. Though Doug and I did not homeschool our own kids (he started Logos School instead), we are certainly friends of homeschooling. In fact we are attending a homeschooling convention next month in Cincinnati where Doug will be speaking. Anyway, Eileen has homeschooled their one child, and she is a great encouragement to many other homeschooling moms. And I’ve noticed from reading your blogs, a whole bunch of y’all are homeschooling moms too. I think I spot a trend in my readers!
Archive for the 'Mothering' Category
Here is an excellent essay that moms in particular will appreciate. This should give you some reinforcement for all the effort you put in to sitting down at the table with your family every day. But everyone can benefit from this perspective on table manners and how they equip us and our children for life out in the big wide world.
One of the things I like to do for my girls is save a lot of little things that could be (or once were) craft supplies and let them periodically dive into it with glue and scissors and big ideas. I try to think of it when I have ends of yarn that I don’t need, egg cartons, oatmeal cartons, little sparkly bits, fake flowers, etc. If you have a box available, you will end up saving things that you otherwise wouldn’t have, and which come in very handy on rainy days! Today was the day we chose to tap into our little stockpile of junk with some tacky glue and soaring spirits. A bit of a mess maybe, but still fun!
One of the common ways that mothers fail their daughters is to load them down with criticism. Here are a few samples:
“You really should lose some weight and you would look a whole lot better.
“Why can’t you keep your room clean like your sister? You are a slob.”
“Your brother got the brains in this family.”
“Your legs are too fat at the ankles to wear a skirt like that.”
“That color brings out your bad complexion. You should go change.”
I know these sound like awful examples, but believe it or not, mothers say rude things to their daughters. And these impolite, ungracious remarks do not bounce off. They are like the arrows that wound, and the cut goes deep. Mothers may feel like “she never listens to Continue reading ‘Approval Ratings’
Paul must have been thinking of the duties of mothers when he wrote these verses:
“….warn those who are unruly, comfort the fainthearted, uphold the weak, be patient with all.”
1 Thessalonians 5:14
Several years ago I was driving through Pennsylvania with some friends and we stopped near the most gorgeous old farmhouse. Inside its large and fabulous yard there were a bunch of hilarious chickens running around. They must have been a variety of heirloom breeds – the colors and hairdos and feather leg warmers were just a little too outrageous for normal chickens if you know what I mean! Anyway, we walked over to see them and they ran to us (presumably thinking we would offer them more than praise). But as soon as they got close, they were no longer the cute stuff. All of them had bald and bleeding spots where they had been picking one another’s feathers out, the nasty little things.
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