I Don’t Have to be Everything!

Sometimes I love having lots of kids. Every now and then the thought hits me that I don’t have to be everything for my children, and it fills me with such relief. Algernon was an only child for such a long time, and although I had a big support system, I still felt that it was my sole responsibility to be teacher for her.

Then all the others came along. Every now and then I see one of them spontaneously taking over some responsibility, and the sight is wonderful!

We have been so frustrated that Ebby has been refusing to potty train. We’ve cajoled, encouraged, supported, and bribed him to do it, but no, he still doesn’t feel ready. He’s over 4! When, when, when will he stop wearing diapers?

Yesterday morning Bobo took a hand in it and declared, “Ebby, I’m going to teach you how to go on the potty. You’re a big boy, and big boys don’t wear diapers!”

So off they went into the bathroom to do whatever it is they needed to do.  I sat here, not wanting to disturb whatever motivation Bobo had for taking a hand in this effort.  He can’t have worse luck than we have had in this endeavor.

Update: he wore the undies all day and went in the potty on his own. So YAY for positive peer pressure and big brothers!

Home-Schooling 5 Monkeys

I’m looking over my old text documents of things I’ve written over the year, and I have files that I’ve saved from 1990, but there’s very few mental meanderings about our home-schooling adventure. I’ve been home-schooling since 1998, so I guess that makes me a dinosaur. We have done some pretty weird things in the name of education, and I wished I had written it down.

Now before all 5 of our monkeys are grown and finished with this chapter in their education, I want to at least document some of what we do.  In years to come our activities may be so foreign to the current paradigm or it may be the norm, but unless I jot some of it down, I won't remember a thing.