Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Incognito

As you may have noticed, the frequency of my posting has declined. The truth is, my life has had some extra stress the last few months and I've been unable to come up with anything much to blog about other than the "less than fun stuff" that we have been going through.

In fact "BlogHer" actually pulled my ad account, due to the infrequency of my posts. Not that I blame them, they are running a business. It may end up being a good thing because now without their restrictions, I'm open to take other opportunities and reviews, that I have had to refuse in the past. So you may see some changes here in the future, in order to makeup for the lost income.

As for my life, my son is now nine years old ( 9yrs old! I can hardly breath when I say that) and I have hit some road blocks with him that I am working on. Educating a highly gifted child has many challenges and I am learning that he also has some social behaviors that make working with others challenging. It's appears that he may be what they call "2e" or twice exceptional. Meaning he is gifted but with learning and/or behavioral difficulties as well. I'm in the process of figuring it out and will hopefully share what we are doing on the blog.

At the same time, my younger sister has been very ill with end stage Lymphoma and has spent much of the last six months in the hospital. She is stable at the moment and looking into clinical trials to maybe give her a little more time on this earth.

My pet sitting has been hit and miss, hence the need to bring in more income. I have spent what time I have in-between other things, working on my Etsy shops and trying to boost the sales there.

So that's about it. Just thought I should let you all know what's up and why I've been absent, without dwelling on it. I plan to continue to post about our home education and about my world, as soon as I get a handle on a few things. Thanks for listening, DJ :)

An Evening with Dr. Jim Delisle

I loved this video! It gave me so many insights about my own son, that I thought I would share. Enjoy!

Summer Fun

I have a client (Joey the Boxer) that we walk everyday. His generous owner lets us use their pool.

My son wanted a face mask to keep water out of his nose and eyes.

He thought he looked like a giant water bug. I tend to agree :)

So he gave up on the face mask. He is still learning to swim, hates to get water in his face though so it's been hard to teach him. 

He tried his hand at crawling around the edge of the pool and made it all the way, without getting his head wet (which was his goal).

At least this summer he gets in the water up to his shoulders, which is better than last year!

The Food Police Have Invaded My House!

Apparently the best way to make a lifestyle change and stick to it, is to share your plan with a hyper-focused intense seven year old.  I was telling my son about my plan to eat even more healthy than we already do, by cutting down on over processed food and sticking to whole foods. We already eliminated most simple carbs and we hardly ever eat any refined sugar.

I like the idea of the "Paleo" diets but thought we'd start off slow. Well that was not happening once my son decided he was on board (like he had a choice, lol). After combing through the fridge and cupboards he declared  "It all has to go"!

During our trip to the grocery store it was like shopping with the food police. He took as many things out of the cart, as I put in.  I can't even tell you how many times he told a store worker that they needed to apply more current thinking in their food stocking selections.

I just kept smiling and patting him on the head. Luckily they are used to him at that store. I've been shopping there with him since he was born. He made a name for himself correcting punctuation on in-store signs. Oy!

There's a new book out called "Eat like a Dinosaur" for kids that I was going to get for him. However, I don't think he'll need any more encouragement at the moment. I should have known this would happen after his over-the-top reaction to recycling. I must have three garbage bags full of empty toilet paper rolls in the garage.  :0

Must Be A Boy Thing

I sure don't remember acting like this. As of late my 7yr. old son has turned into a walking, talking cartoon character.  He can't answer a simple question or get through a conversation without making faces or sound effects. It's driving me batty!

Either he's spending too much time playing animated video games or he's rehearsing for his future spot on Saturday Night Live. Is it normal to be this "over the top" with creative expression or is he just trying to make me loose it?

It seems to be worse when he's bored or whenever I'm trying to make a point during lessons. If he was in school, I imagine I'd be getting calls from the principle by now. I'm hoping this will pass but after having my 15 yr old nephew visiting recently, I can see this is a long term issue. The 15 yr old was worse than my son! Making faces at his Aunt DJ was not well received, especially when I needed a direct answer.

I'll never make it until my son is twenty one without medication at this rate! Help!

Cycles Of Learning

Like many home educators, I worry sometimes that my son is not learning enough or that I'm not spending enough time on lessons. I'm not sure I would call us "unschoolers" but we certainly are life learners and relaxed homeschoolers. Also, being that my son has developed many skills asynchronously (reading and math levels 3-4 years ahead of writing) I had to adapt to his learning style and delve much deeper in some subjects while waiting for other fine motor skills to catch up.

Some days it seems as though we don't do any lessons at all and then there are the weeks he gets turned on by something, and I can't find enough for him to do. It seems we go through cycles of learning. When he was four and five, this drove my crazy. I would have all these plans ready for the week and come to find it was an "off" week for him and all he wanted to do was computer learning.

Now that he is six, I have figured out finally, that he is really very self-regulated. When he is going through a period of nothing but learning on his own through the computer, I'm able to relax and let him be. Then sure enough when he has had his fill, he wants to do more hands on work, projects, etc with me. He even goes through a "workbook only" phase every now and then.

Between it all, he has taken in an enormous amount of information and can add his own self-taught knowledge to our discussions and projects. This he loves! Teaching the teacher is one of his favorite things! We still struggle with writing anything of length, but I have no doubt now that something will spark his desire to master that as well and he will catch up quickly.

So if you have a child that loves to keeping going on to higher levels in some subjects but struggles (or avoids) others, I wouldn't worry so much, that is why we homeschool in the first place. We have time (and thanks to the internet, the resources!) to move at their pace, whatever that may be.

Tis the Begging Season (and it won't work)!

My son is almost six. His birthday and Christmas are close together, too close for me to catch a breath in between. I have always tried to get things for him that will not only be fun but also last for more than a week before he's bored. I stay away from most plastic battery operated anything. So far my plan has worked and we have a minimal amount of useless stuff in our home and he is entertained and challenged.

Until now. Since before Halloween this year, he has suddenly developed a case of the serious "Gimmie's". Every single toy or gadget ad he sees, he wants. The crazy part is most of the things he is begging for are toys for babies and toddlers. It's like he's never seen a Fisher Price ad before, or he thinks he missed out on something.

I have tried until I'm blue in the face to explain that he is too old for a walk behind toy, whether it plays music or not! He's also doesn't need a toy laptop that helps him learn to read, when he has his own real desktop computer and he is reading second grade books!

I can't understand what's going on. He has always wanted to do things that are advanced for his age and even when he was a toddler, he was not interested in most toys. I have known from early on that he was learning faster than his years and may be very bright (I don't like the word "gifted", he's just way ahead in many areas) so asking for baby toys has me baffled!

I'm hoping this is some kind of emotional phase he has to work out. Maybe he's feeling insecure about growing up? Or maybe he feels cheated that he never had all that plastic stuff?

I'm certainly not going to waste money on it now, so he's out of luck if he's planning on guilting me into buying any of it.

I do think it's strange how most of the holiday advertising seems to be geared for either children under six or for pre-teen girls. Maybe I just watch the wrong channels on TV, but I sure don't see much offered for 6-10 year old boys. Then again, careful what you wish for, right?

Are You Listening?

It annoys me to no end when adults ask a child a question and then don't wait for an answer.
We were at the pediatrician's office yesterday for a routine checkup and a vaccine discussion.
The visit was fine and my son is as healthy as a horse.

I suppose it's because they are very busy but if you ask my son a question, please have the courtesy to wait for him to answer before you either finish his sentence or ignore him an address me. My child has a brain and an opinion on his world. He would appreciate it if you treated him like a human being, rather than an inanimate object who is in the room to look cute and nod his head.

This is not the first time he has felt like he is being ignored by adults. I realize that some adults don't have experience interacting with children, but the pediatrician's staff should know it's important to acknowledge a child and listen to him.

Every time he tried to answer a question (most of them, silly questions at that), he barely got three words out before they cut him off. It was obvious to him that they were not really interested in his answers.

When we got back in the car, he said he was sorry he didn't speak up loud enough to be heard.
I felt so bad for him, that I apologized for the doctor and nurses being rude.

So please, doctors, dentists, nurses and anyone who works with children, realize that the child wants to speak and be heard. To do this, sometimes you have to wait for the words and listen to that soft voice with more attentive ears. You never know what you might learn or what you might be missing!

Today's Message

Warning: I'm in a bad mood and I went that way!

Message received and duly noted.

What Mommy Doesn't Want for Mother's Day

My son has taken notice of the Mother's Day commercials on TV this week and like most commercials, they have caused him some distress. I try not to have the TV on much, but when I do, I can't get to the remote fast enough to change the channel.

He has nightmares and trouble sleeping every time he sees one of those horrible home alarm system ads, that have a mother and her child screaming because someone kicked their door in. He now thinks any neighbors he doesn't know, are waiting to breakdown our walls and get him in the night.

After seeing several department stores ads about what your "supposed to get your mother for Mother's Day", he came to me and told me in a weak voice "I don't think I can give you a present for Mother's Day because I don't have any money" and he started to cry.

So we had yet another talk about what TV commercials really are and then I told him that all I needed for Mother's Day was a smile and a hug. He was not convinced, so I asked him what he would buy me if he did have money.

He said he would buy me "a fancy dress to wear on special occasions". At first I thought, how sweet, but then I realized that he has never seen me in a dress. It's been years since I wore one.
I suppose he just thinks that fancy dresses and the like, are things that women must want because that's what the TV says. It's no wonder so many adults today are held captive by materialism, if they grew up believing everything they saw in an ad.

I guess I need to do a better job showing him how to live happily without the "stuff" and turn off the TV even more. Maybe then he will quit telling me we need that upside down tomato grower so we can have "over 200 tomatoes". Now what would we do with 200 tomatoes?
Sometime it's feels like I'm living in my own version of "The Truman Show" around here.

Child Led Learning

Even though it's summer here, we never really stopped homeschooling. I think with my son it would be difficult to just stop, since he is the one who initiates most lessons anyway. What has changed is that he seems to want to stick with one subject or project at a time.When I suggest we go on to something else, he gets upset.

I know other homeschoolers will work all subjects around one theme that continues for a period of days or weeks.

Right now my son gets so focused on one subject, I can't break him away. For example, he has been making up his own addition problems on the white board and then solving them. He has been working with double digits and zero's for three days now!

Last week all he wanted to do was play the story telling game. The story telling game is when we each take turns adding a paragraph to a story until one of us thinks we have come to the end and proclaims "and they all lived happily ever after". Then I have him tell the whole story back to me as I write it down to re-read later. It's great for memory and for creative thinking. Eventually I will have him write it down instead of me.

If we decide to learn about geography, we can't just focus on one country. He wants to learn about one and then another, an another. I just let him keep going because he is so excited about it.

While I'm thrilled that he has such focus and attention span, I'm beginning to wonder if this is a real learning technique for him or if he is just being obsessive. Perhaps it is both. He has always been driven and intense with anything he is interested in and I know children learn by repetition. It's the inability to switch gears or environment that bothers me. Not to mention, any attempts at lesson planning by me goes completely out the door.

I know he is ahead for his age (he's four) and that may be all it is. He seems to need to completely absorb and exhaust all sources of a subject before he wants to move on. Thank goodness for the Internet, without it I fear I would run out of material for him to review in no time flat!

Have any other homeschooling families out there done this?

Only one subject a day?

Math on Mondays, reading on Tuesdays, etc. Maybe each subject would be covered more thoroughly like this. Perhaps we are on the road to being unschoolers? I do know that he loves learning and he takes the initiative. I don't want to do anything that interferes with that!

More on Toilet Training an Older Child

Ok moms, here we go, more toilet training questions. My son is almost 4 ½ and although he got a late start, he has been urinating in the toilet for a while now. He even figured out peeing standing up by himself including using the cutout on boys underwear instead of taking them off. However he has not been having bm’s in the toilet. He did it once about a week ago, but only because I caught him mid-poop and we made it to the bathroom. He was very excited to poop and flush, so I thought.. whew, finally we are getting somewhere!

He has not done it since and now is also having urine accidents as well. He’s gone back to not telling me when he has to pee and even though we regularly sit on the toilet to try and poop, he never does. Then later I find him with dirty pants and he doesn’t seem to care. When I ask him what happened, why he didn’t get to the toilet and pee, he says "It was just an accident mom". When I ask him why he is still pooping in his pants he says, "I just wanted to". I can’t get any real answers and I don’t know why we are having a set back. Nothing has changed here at home. I got such terrific feedback from you all in response to my last toilet training post, I figured I’d ask again.

He seems to be somewhat more emotional lately, so I wonder if he’s going through a stage. At this point, he knows exactly what he needs to do and why. He can recite the entire path food (organ by organ) takes to get from his mouth, and how it becomes poop and ends up in the toilet. So I know it’s not a matter of understanding the mechanics. He does not fight me when we sit and try and he is not afraid of the toilet. I’m beginning to wonder if he’s just being lazy?

Should I just ignore this like I did with the urine? It worked then, I simply put the ball in his court and in no time he did it for himself. Your collective insights will be much appreciated by me and any other moms toilet training an older child.

The "K" Word

When did your child learn the "kill" word? I don’t want my son to always think he has to destroy things that threaten him, but sooner or later you just have to explain what it means.

Thanks to an older child who visits us, my son thinks killing bad guys is the ultimate goal in most situations. Even if these supposed bad guys are insects or creatures that have their purpose and are good for the earth. I had to enforce a "no computer games" rule when this boy is here because of this.

I have asked him why they are bad and does he know what killing means and he "they are bad just because and when you kill them they are dead".
The "just because" answer tells me he thinks they are bad because they were portrayed that way to him in a story or by another person. Not a very good reason to use that label. He knows the different between alive and dead because we have discussed it several times. I want him to understand that there is good and bad in all things.

Maybe times have changed but I wasn’t prepared to see this desire to pummel things, in a 4 year old boy. His play has become more and more aggressive. Everything jumps on and flattens something else. Things that are built up, get blown up. There hasn’t been a lot of joy in playing with him lately.

This becomes a conflict of interest you realize how many things we "kill" during the course of a day without realizing the violent choice of words. We kill germs every time we wash our hands. We kill bugs if they get out of hand. So I have started trying to use different terms to express myself. I now try to say "eliminate" or "reduced the population of" instead of "kill".

Some may think this is just "boy" behavior but I refuse to believe that aggression is natural for boys. I saw the change in him almost immediately when he started playing videos games, even though the ones he played seemed innocuous at first. I suppose I would have seen these changes even earlier if he was in pre-school, but mommy has had enough already!