to say that no I haven’t fallen off the earth. We were sick this week and now that we are all on the mend it is time to start getting ready to go away on Tuesday. And in between all of that we are ripping up carpet in preparation for our annual Christmas party, but I have a whole post planned for that adventure.
Hope everyone is having a great week.
Heather
So I have been wanting to write a post about this for some time. I wanted to finish the book first however. This is a topic that is very important to me. Both my husband and I are very big on natural consequences, and letting kids be kids. A few weeks ago, after I was telling my mom that my neighbor didn’t like that I let my kids play out in the fenced in back yard without me, she bought me this book. I love it.
In a nutshell, the book is saying that we as a culture have been overprotecting our kids at our kids expense. Kids are no longer allowed to be kids. The author goes on to explain that kids these days are just as safe as we were as kids and are missing out on some pretty valuable experiences. One of the big ones is being able to go outside and just play. I remember as a kid being kicked out of the house and told I had to be home by the time the street lights came on. I wasn’t restricted to the back yard, heck I wasn’t even restricted to the front yard. In my neighborhood growing up there were 4 houses in a row with children all around my age. There were 6 of us who ran all over the neighborhood playing all sorts of games. We played out in the rain, hot scorching sun, and pleasant spring days, and nobody thought any thing of it. Our parents were not worried that we would be abducted. Why, because we lived in a safe neighborhood and most of the neighbors knew us and would make sure our parents knew if we were doing something we shouldn’t.
Basically Lenore Skenazy (the author of the book) gives 14 commandments on having Free Range kids and goes over many of the most common worries that parents face today. I highly recommend the book for anyone who is in contact with children. I think we need to give our kids more freedom, the same freedom that we had as kids. It is good for them. There is also a blog to check out.
Today I am thankful for fellow bloggers who don’t mind when I rant instead of writing an actual post with a point.
Not exactly sure where that phrase comes from, probably the Bible somewhere. But that has been running through my head all weekend and early this week. I mentioned in my last post that Thursday was a pretty stressful day. The reason is because of judging people.
My oldest son Alex has been taking a karate class at the Little Gym. We love it, he is really learning to focus and is doing much better both in and out of school. The class is a late afternoon class, so there is a mixed age range, and a mixed parent group. Stay at home, working, work at home, etc.. There are these two women who are very snobby and you average “I’m better than you because…” type of women. Well I must have a target on my back that says “FREAK” because man are they judgmental, especially towards me, and especially once they found out that I am a homeschooling stay at home mom, who uses cloth diapers. Immediately they assumed that I must not be as good as them because of all those things say to them that I don’t have as much money as they do. (By the way, I am not assuming this, they have pretty much come right out and said this) Anyway, their boys have been bullying Alex. The first few times I let it go under the premise that boys are boys and they play a little rough. The third time this happened I became upset. I said something to the teacher, and then at the urging of both my awesome husband and the karate teacher I said something to the mother. I got a snotty, irrational response. Basically why should I have to discipline my children because of yours type thing. That may not have been what she was thinking at the time, but that is how it came off to me.
So this happens last Thursday, then today I have been engaging in and following a debate about covering up while breastfeeding in public. And the amount of judging going on over there is outrageous. To think that people assume that you want people to look at you while you are trying to feed your child, or that you are trying to arouse men, is just laughable.
My point is, why does everybody need to judge everybody else. You don’t know their specific situation, and unless you are very close to that person you may never know the whole situation. In the case of the women at the karate class. She had no idea that I grew up in the area that she thinks of as prestigious, and that if I wanted to work or send my kids to school I could, and if I wanted to use disposable diapers I would. Basically instead of assuming the best about the people around us we are so busy assuming the worst. What drives me even more insane is the people who do the most judging get insanely angry when they are judged by others. Has nobody ever heard of “Treat others the way you want to be treated”
Okay, so I guess I didn’t have a specific point to this post, it is more of a rant. I needed to get some things off my chest.
Today I am very thankful that I have a wonderful, awesome husband who is willing to take time from his busy schedule to go to said karate class with me this week to face down the nasty ladies.
There I said it,
I am so tired of people going on and on and on about how horrible Halloween is. I can’t tell you the number of times today I have heard people, basically yelling at other people, about how horrible Halloween is and how they are going to permanently damage their children if they even acknowledge the holiday, let alone celebrate it.
(If you are one of those people who feel this way, than stop reading now, don’t send me any comments telling me how horrible I am, or why you don’t celebrate Halloween, I have heard them all, it is not going to change my opinion. This is my blog, I can write what I want and I am entitled to my own opinion, if you don’t like it, stop reading now.)
Yes we let our children get dressed up and go trick-or-treating. Yes we have pumpkins on our front porch. Granted they are plastic and store bought, but that is because I don’t really like the mess that comes with carving a pumpkin. When the kids really start asking to carve pumpkins, we will. No I don’t decorate for Halloween, other than the before mentioned pumpkins that don’t come out till the week before Halloween. Yes I decorate my front porch for Fall, It goes up in September and goes down right after Thanksgiving, when I put up my Christmas decorations. And yes I am a Christian, I believe in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Participating in the Halloween festivities doesn’t change what I believe.
Okay now that I got that off my chest, let me explain. I don’t see the harm in letting little kids be kids. I don’t dress my children up as devils, witches, monsters, etc.. If they wanted to wear something like that I would say NO!!! Celebrating Halloween by dressing up in innocent Disney or Superhero Costumes is not Pagan Devil Worship. I REPEAT, DRESSING UP AS CINDERELLA OR WOODY DOES NOT MEAN MY CHILDREN WORSHIP THE DEVIL OR PRACTICE PAGAN WORSHIP. If that were the case, millions of children around the world would be in trouble. Little kids play dress up everyday, I know my daughter does. I am sorry if I seam a little harsh about this. I have been hearing more and more about how horrible people are who celebrate Halloween. Yes I believe that the devil exists, and that worshiping him is just asking for trouble. But what harm is there in dressing up and begging your neighbors for candy. 
If you look long enough and hard enough you can find Pagan roots to all of the major holidays that we celebrate. Does that mean we need to stop celebrating? I know some people would say yes, yes, yes. My thinking is than, how do you explain to you kids why they can’t do something as innocent and childlike as begging for candy (which lets face it, is what trick-or-treating boils down to) when that is what all their friends are doing. And before you give me the, if your friends were jumping off a bridge speech, No I don’t think we should just automatically conform to what the world thinks. What I do think is that we need to use some common sense and know and understand that our kids are going to ask these sorts of questions. Children are not dumb, even though they often act that way when you ask them to do something. If you don’t have a good solid answer then they are going to keep asking, until they get a good answer. I believe there are ways to let your kids celebrate, and still keep Jesus front and center. I know plenty of people who use the pumpkin as a way to explain how Jesus saves us. He cleans out our insides and fills us with his light. We don’t do that, but mostly because of my aversion to the mess carving a pumpkin makes. You want to get the Good News out there during this season, go ahead and do just that.
Instead of turning off all your lights, and locking your door and pretending that you don’t hear the constant ringing of your doorbell on Halloween, be The Light to your neighbors. One thing I have done in the past is hand out scripture candy, and special Halloween cards with scripture on them. Jesus tells us to get out there and spread The Word, how can we do that if we stay locked up safe and sound in our homes and churches.
Here are a few other things you can use to spread The Word.
S.H.I.N.E. Reflective Slap Bracelet
S.H.I.N.E. Squeeze Light with Carabiner
Let’s Shine Jesus’ Light on Halloween Board Book
Have a happy and safe Halloween.
(By the way, the pictures are from last year, I haven’t taken any pictures of the kids in their costumes yet this year)
So here we are into the second week of September already. It amazes me how quickly the summer went by. It seems like just yesterday I was at the Preschool end of the year program right before Memorial Day. Now here we are and both Alex and Lizzie start school next week. This is Alex’s last year of preschool and his last year of “Traditional Schooling” Next year he starts kindergarten and we start homeschooling. I am really starting to look forward to teaching both the kids. Especially after this summer. We had such a great and relaxing summer. It wasn’t until the very end of the summer when we had a heat wave here in New Jersey that I started to think I needed a break from the kids. This is a huge improvement over last summer, where two weeks into the summer I was ready to ship the kids off to military school. I think a lot of that had to do with the weather and their ages. Both kids are much more independent this year and I was able to send them outside without me so that I could get some things done around the house. And the fact that I could send them outside at all was a huge improvement over last year as well. We had such a cool summer here. It wasn’t until the last two weeks of August that the temperatures were too high for Alex to play outside the entire day. So they both got a lot of outside time, which anybody who has small children knows is essential to keeping Mommy sane. I was also able to do a lot more with them this year, without feeling like I had to take the whole house with me to go anywhere. We went to places like the Please Touch Museum, Free Movies at our local movie theater, our local farm where there is a huge play area and lots of fresh fruits and veggies to pick, and a couple of trips to the zoo. All in all it was a great summer.
Like I said before, both kids are in preschool this year. Well if you can call Lizzie’s class preschool, it is more like an organized play group where I don’t have to be present. They don’t do very much school work, it is a bunch of two year olds after all. I think it is going to be a great year for both of them. Alex has grown up so much over the course of the summer. We are still having some of the same problems that we were having at the end of last year, but they are much less and he is learning how to cope with things much better, plus he is finally potty trained, which is a huge thing for us. I am doing a little bit of homeschooling this year. I am planning a Bible Study with the kids on Tuesday and Thursday the days that we are home. It is a toddler program, but I am adapting it to work with both my toddler and preschooler. It is actually the same program that we are using with the toddlers at church so I am very excited about that. Another big thing that we have started here at home is chores for the kids. Both the kids have always helped with things like taking their dishes to the sink, putting dirty clothes in the hamper, things like that. I decided that it was time to give them a little more responsibility now that they are older.
Here are their chore lists:
Alex
Lizzie
Surprisingly they have been so excited to do their chores every day. I know a lot of it is stuff that we were doing anyway, but I wanted to get them started on things that I knew that they could accomplish. As they get older we will add more chores for them to do, so that they learn to help out around the house. If the do all their chores during the week then on Friday they get to go to either Wendy’s or Chick-Fil-A for lunch. This would not have been my first choice of things to do since I am now officially on a diet, but that is what they wanted to do, so I will have to learn to deal.
I am really looking forward to this new school year and all the fun it will bring.
Heather
As we are getting closer to the Holiday season, Halloween is just a week away, I am reading more and more blogs about the holiday season and how the economy this year is going to impact that. One in particular that I read has posted a no spend challenge for the rest of the year. The idea is that people are spending way too much as it is and then add to that the holidays and the spending goes through the roof. She has said that other than basic necessities, and emergency needs she does not plan to spend any extra money the rest of this year. When I read this my first question was, as I am sure yours is as well, what about Christmas? Before I had a chance to post a comment with my question, somebody else asked the same thing. Her reply surprised me. She said that they do no celebrate Christmas or Easter. That took me back a bit. I know that they are a family that believes in Jesus (she has said so many times on her blog.) Before I comment on her blog I wanted to get some other opinions.
To me celebrating Christmas and Easter is much more than presents and Santa or the Easter Bunny. Much Much more. For me during those two holidays we are celebrating the gift of Jesus. First with the celebration of his birth and second the celebration of his Resurrection. How can you not celebrate those two holidays. I look forward to Christmas and Easter every year, I love celebrating with my family and teaching my children all about the holiday and why we celebrate. I am having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around this idea. It just baffles me to no end. It is not that I think we have to spend a ton of money on either holiday, in fact I agree with the idea that we spend less. In fact I am going to give it a try this year, Spend much less on gifts for friends and family, and try to make many of the gifts that I give this year. I had already planned to help the kids make gifts for each other and family members this year. Santa is a very small part of Christmas for us and the Easter Bunny does not exist in our house at all. I have to believe that you can celebrate the holiday and not be too materialistic and go overboard.
Heather