Last night, I was up until 4:15am and then slept until 8:30am. Because I’m an idiot. Because I didn’t bit off MORE than I can chew (I did finally grow out of that) but I have bitten off ALL that I can chew.
At the moment… I have no idea how I’m going to make it to Sunday…
Continue reading I’m every woman… and we are all tired right now
It’s the hot phrase these days, isn’t it? “Executive function”. What does that even MEAN, right? Literally it means “all of the skills needed to execute tasks to meet goals in life”. And guess what? My BigGuy doesn’t have any. Seriously…
Earlier in the week, I selfishly dictated to my family that I didn’t want any recognition of Mother’s Day. It was an expression of pain that I wasn’t able to keep to myself and I am deeply ashamed and remorseful for it. Especially since my sweet girl has such profound feelings around mommies and such a deep, strange need to have every occasion memorialized. As far as I have come, I still falter. And the miracle of motherhood is that my children love me anyway… Continue reading Love to all of the mothers of the world…
Many families in my generation and the next generation down have turned their backs on the way we were raised–when children were to be seen and not heard. Parenting culture was different. Expectations were different. We began to respect these little people and recognize them as humans rather than property. We gave them more freedom to be children and develop at their own pace. We allowed them to have a voice.
But some of us didn’t do a stellar job at transitioning them into being respectful and compassionate young adults that could do what they were told WHEN they were told to do it and the WAY they were told to do it. We quite accidentally created very entitled kids…
“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
I have a photograph of the ocean at sunrise on my son’s birthday. On the mat around the picture is this Bible passage. It was everything I hoped for him in his life.
My daughter turned 8 last autumn and in my mind, she is still 18 months old. It’s starting to become a problem.
So, these were the words that sparked a longer spewing from Mama today…
BigGuy has, in the last year or so, lamented that nobody in the house pitied him. I definitely took pause at this when he started saying it and he was right: we didn’t comfort him in his upset as quickly as we were willing to comfort Girly. When I realized this, I was briefly overwhelmed with shame over it. I sat and analyzed why that was–why did we treat him differently??
This sounds like such a good word. A magnanimous word. A word people strive for.
It’s a word people feel you should be happy to achieve.
But it hurts. Continue reading Tolerance
“Honoring your children” is a phrase you will hear a LOT in the homeschool community–but especially the unschooling community. I’ve come to see how this phrase is very subjective–with an incredibly broad spectrum of meanings.
Let me tell you what it does (and does not) mean for my family… Continue reading How do you honor your children?
I don’t know what happened… One minute, we were really happy and free and loving. Then we kind of got thrown into learning–driven by BigGuy’s goals and desires as I floundered to figure out to support him. Then I thought I had it, but I was neglecting Girly’s needs. Now, as I plot ahead for the next school year, I am already overwhelmed. And that’s stupid because as unschoolers, there really shouldn’t be a lot for me to do. Seriously. But I’m noticing that our recent realization that BigGuy is high school-eligible has given me temporary brain shift and with it came a wave of crazy expectations…. Continue reading What happens when you are helpless to having expectations
Educated Adventures 