And so comes the time to look back at the last few months and assess what has worked, what hasn’t worked, what to change and what to keep. I probably wouldn’t be doing this except that we tried to make a monumental change and I’m not sure we’ve managed it well. In my former career, “continuous process improvement” was actually part of one of my job titles. It’s something I fully embrace.
So let’s review… Continue reading The semester in review…
BigGuy is not what most people imagine when they think of someone with Asperger’s. They see my personable and extroverted kid who likes an audience and think I’m out of my mind because “THAT’S not Asperger’s”.
Oh contraire… but it is–I assure you. Not all kids with Asperger’s are the silent, introverted, cannot-look-you-in-the-eye type. Meet my guy… Continue reading How we handle Asperger’s Syndrome
My blog post on allowances was posted to Facebook and someone asked me “what happens when they don’t do their chores?”
Fair question… because that happens. So here is how I handle it at my house… Continue reading How I get my kids to do their chores
So, I get this a lot. Especially since I run in unschooling circles (and please keep in mind that “unschooling” is, at it’s heart, about following the child). Just to be sure we’re all on the same page here: “Neurotypical” refers to a child who develops in a way that is free of disabilities of any kind.
That is not my BigGuy. Continue reading Applying neurotypical logic to kids in the spectrum
And I’m talking full-on, absolutely nothing. At least “nothing” by most of the country’s standards. By the time I got up this morning, slathered my face in green clay and then meditated while that dried… the kids had apparently been fed by Husbeau. I went downstairs and saw that BigGuy’s door was open, but Girly’s was shut and there was music coming from it.
I wish I had a photograph of what I saw when I opened her door. #bloggerparentfail Continue reading Today, we did nothing
Because BigGuy is a 5th grader, it’s his last year of Cub Scouts. There are a contingent of people back home who can’t believe we would involve ourselves with Scouts because of their historically explicit rejection of homosexuals. Policies have changed about the acceptance of Scouts that are homosexual but I have not kept up on whether that trickled into leadership. Continue reading To be or not to be a Boy Scout
Someone actually said that to me today about Girly. I went on to say that she plays in two places and before I could finish the sentence, this other parents said “Oh! You’re working with her outside of practice!” I had to correct her and explain that in fact, we had no idea she could play like this because the other place she plays, she literally “plays” with her friends–lots of hugging and ring around the rosy… some scrimmages. It’s not like this league where they’re getting more formal and aggressive instruction. I don’t care either way, but yeah–we don’t really do anything with her outside of either place. Continue reading “She plays so aggressively!”
I actually speak on this topic and people always find it informative so I thought I’d share it here. Financial education is near and dear to my heart. When I taught high school, I taught business and computer courses. My business courses were Intro to Personal Finance, and Business Management. I loved them both; but it became really clear that the majority of my students knew very little about financial responsibility even though many of them had jobs. I didn’t want that for my kids.
Yeah… I think this is going to work out–not being part of the Young Philosopher’s group that was meeting on Fridays from 11:30am-1pm. I mean, that’s lunchtime. Seriously? And it’s kind of far. And it falls on the day that BigGuy and I are supposed to hold our big Socratic white-elephant-in-my-head discussions… which might be too much heavy conversation for a day.
But Fridays are really, really open now and I think that’s going to work well for us. For one, it’s the day we prepare for the weekend. We do our “weekly home blessing” (thank you, stronghold of The Fly Lady) which is a set of two chores per family member that help get the house cleaned up before the weekend. This started long ago when we hosted “Wine Night” at our house every Friday night for nearly a year before relocating. Taking care of cleaning up the house before the weekend set in meant that we enjoyed a clean house all weekend and company dropping by wasn’t an issue. We could just relax.
Well, we are returning to that. And I think having the review of the week’s work and the Socratic discussions on Friday are going to dovetail nicely into preparing for the weekend. Because we can also have these discussions WHILE we work on stuff.
So each day the kids have all kinds of responsibilities…
At the end of the week, it goes like this (or rather, IT. IS. PLANNED. to go like this):
Honestly, the kids are the only ones being held to this right now and BigGuy bears the brunt of it. So add this to the list of “things mom should really get better at”. To be fair, Girly is WAY more helpful in general than BigGuy so I kind of don’t feel all that horrible about it. At 5, she tap dances rings around him in the helpful category. I love my son and he has his amazing qualities. I’m just saying that being helpful isn’t one of them.
And then there’s the general keeping things in their place crap. Shoes go in the closet, not out and about. Pencils have a place. Library books have a place. Board games have a place. My core sense of self is only at rest when “everything has a place and everything in it’s place”. With this house presumably the final place (until retirement), sh*t’s gotta get put in it’s place and that needs to become a habit.
Friday is also farm share day. So if we can get the rest of the house clean, by the time we get our farm food later in the day, we really don’t have anything standing in our way to deal with the vegetables. We get two shares from a farm in town; but then another farm uses our house as a drop-off point (it’s complicated–they started using us mid-season when we were already midway through a full season share with the other farm. Although to be fair, last year we did 4 shares total–two from each of these farms; and we’re likely to go back to that next year since we will not yet have our own gardens to the point of supporting us. Wait-wait-wait… I digress..
I’m looking forward to Fridays. Especially if they’re sunny. And clean.
Educated Adventures 