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.

GAG Challenge -

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.

Okay ladies and gentlemen, I need your help,

As I am sure some of you already know, starting next fall we will be homeschooling. Alex will be starting kindergarten and we decided that what was the best course of action for him was to keep him home with me. I am actually very excited about doing this. Which shows what a long way God has brought me since this time last year. Last year I was terrified and trying to ignore what God was telling me. However how I got from there to here is a story for another time. What I am focusing on today is the beginning of my preparations.

Part of getting ready to turn my dining room into a part time classroom was getting my own computer. A few months ago I switched from using a laptop of my own to sharing a desktop computer with the kids. I did this for several reasons, on of which was because I was spending entirely too much time, just playing on the computer instead of spending that time with my wonderful husband and kids. Let alone getting the household chores done. Those few months off have done me a world of good. I was starting to remember however why I was using the laptop in the first place rather than a desktop. I also knew that once we started school, Alex would be using the computer more and more since I plan to make the computer a part of our curriculum. I knew that I would be needing my own computer again. Well when Jason decided that he wanted to upgrade to a newer computer for himself I took the opportunity to get his old laptop.

Now that I had a computer again I really needed to start getting organized. This is where my problem comes in. I have some ideas, but really no clue as to how to implement them. This is where your help comes in. I am going to show you how the areas I want to work on are now, and explain what I want to do with them. Then I welcome any and all suggestion on how best to accomplish this with minimal expense and effort.

Area 1 – Mom’s Command Center

This is an area in our kitchen. As you can see I don’t use the area to cook or prep. it is in a spot in the kitchen that makes it hard for that. It has become a catch all for everything I don’t know what to do with. I would like to be able to use the counter top and the cabinets as my area. Kinda like my desk, only I can’t sit at it, because I keep my pots and pans in the lower cabinet. The upper cabinets though could be completely cleaned out and everything that is in there can be housed elsewhere in the house. So that leaves a blank slate for all my stuff. The counter top can also be completely cleaned off to make room for my laptop, and anything else I want to keep there, like my pencil and mail holder, which you can see  in the pictures below. I would also love to have something on the wall underneath the cabinet for putting up important papers, and notices, like calendars, etc..

Area 2: The kids desk and work space.

This is the kids desk, and mine at the moment. You can see my pile of stuff that will be moved to the other area in the kitchen. Next to the desk we will be getting a new shelving unit to house all our homeschooling supplies. I will probably put our quiet time toys in that shelving unit as well. (the legos you see in the above pictures along with some things we have in the playroom) We love the Besta shelving units from Ikea. We have several that we use in our living room for our entertainment center (you can see them a little bit in the first picture of the kids space, they are dark brown.)  They hold a ton and you can completely customize them for your individual needs.

That is what I’ve got. Any suggestions would be great.

In typical fashion last week went flying by. It really got away from me, and what a week it has been. First things first, my GAG weigh in. I used my first free pass this week. It was not a great week, I was stressed and very down. I tend to forget what I am doing when I am feeling like that and snack a lot. It was better than it could have been since I don’t keep high calorie snacks in the house. I was also PMSing this week, so that didn’t help at all. In the end when I finally did get on the scale, I hadn’t lost weight, but I hadn’t gained any either, which is a good thing.

You are probably now asking, why was last week a rough week? It is the same answer it usually is, school. I am so glad that we have chosen to home school starting next year. In the meantime though we have to get through this year. If you didn’t already know, Alex is a very active little boy. He does have some trouble sitting still and sharing with other kids, nothing that really has me concerned though. School is a different matter. He is in the oldest class in his preschool this year, the 4 year old class. Well I thought that he was doing okay. At least that is what the teachers told me after his first week. Well last week, his second week, I found out that he wasn’t really doing all that well. He wasn’t sitting when he was supposed to and was having a lot of trouble getting along with the other kids. This of course has me stressed out because I know what a sweet, happy, well behaved little boy he can be, and is when he is not in school. All his problems center around school. I know he is not perfect and yes he does have problems at home, but nothing more than any other 4 year old with a younger, sometimes annoying little sister. I was at a loss as what to do with him, since nothing my husband and I were saying to him seemed to be registering.We talked about his behavior all weekend, we took away his dinner out on Friday because of his behavior, nothing seemed to work. Monday he went to school and had an even worse day, and I was completely strung out and frustrated. I hate to sound like the parent who is saying that their child can do no wrong, and is perfect all the time. However, that being said, I do think the school needs to take some ownership here. I believe that a big part of the problem is that he is bored at school. He is way above about half of the class, if not more. Last year when they tested him at the end of the year, he was in the top five in a group of 24. That is both classes in the school that are his age. At home we are working on reading and counting to 70, while at school they are still just introducing the letter and numbers to 10. This is stuff he has been doing for years.

I spent all day yesterday and all last night praying about the situation. I am fully prepared to take him out of school and start homeschooling right away. He is more than capable of handling the kindergarten material. This morning I decided that rather than do my usual prayer about school in the car after I drop them off, I would pray with the kids after we parked the car and before we went in to school. Well guess what, both kids had a much better day today. (Lizzie, who is very strong willed, has been raging an all out war on the teachers, in an attempt to show them who is the boss. In her opinion it should be her) Alex was crying when I picked him up, but that was because he had to use the bathroom and somebody was already in there. I am going to continue praying everyday, I really want both the kids to have a great year. Plus the selfish side of me is enjoying going grocery shopping without the kids, and I love having 2 1/2 hours on Friday to do whatever it is I want to do, no kids attached.

Thanks for listening to me vent.

On a side note, please pray for a little girl from our church. I can’t go into details, but she needs all the prayer she can get.

God Bless

Heather.

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

1. Brush Teeth in morning and night
2. Take a bath or shower every day
3. Get lotion on
4. Put clothes in hamper
5. put shoes away
6. put books away
7. make bed
8. put backpack away
9. Set the table at dinner and lunch
10. clean up playroom
11. Help clear table
12. Help put away clean clothes
13. Stay clean and dry all day (potty)
14. Clean up outside toys
15. Try one new food a day

Lizzie

1. Brush teeth in morning and night
2. Take a bath and wash hair everyday
3. put clothes in hamper
4. put shoes away
5. put books away
6. Make my bed
7. put backpack away
8. Set table at lunch and dinner
9. clean up playroom
10. take dishes to the sink
11. clean up outside toys.

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

God Wants Me to be Kind

Bible Verse: Acts 3:6

Monday: Errand Day – Doing one kind thing for somebody else at each store we go to.
Ask Alex what he thinks would be a kind thing to do for other people while we are out.  (Example: holding the door for others)
Tuesday: Bible Story: Acts 3: 1-10
Read the story and discuss: Why did the man ask for money? What did Peter do for the man?
Story Visual: Show what it would be like to not be able to walk. Sit in a circle, offer a treat, but explain that they cannot use their legs to reach the treat. How did this make you feel, happy or sad?
Coloring Page: based on story.
Wednesday: Library: Finding books about being kind. Learning how to ask Liberian for help nicely, and learning how to find books.
Thursday: Craft Day: Be Kind Flower
Friday: Lunch out and Sports Class: Continue to practice being kind to others.

You would think that I know the answer to this question. After all I am a trained special education teacher. That is what I spent four years in school for, so that I could recognize and teach a child with a learning disability. So why is it then that I can’t come to a decision about my own child. I spend 24 hours a day with him, minus the 5 hours a week he is in school. But yet I still am up in the air about getting him evaluated for ADHD. There are a lot of reasons for this.

Number one reason is the fact that we have not made a decision about homeschooling yet. If he is going to be home with me instead of in a traditional school setting then what is the point of getting him evaluated. I know how to handle him, how to work with him without a diagnosis. I worry that getting a diagnosis will just be a label that will follow him the rest of his life. If he is home with me I can work with him in a way that suites his needs and learning style, ADHD or not. I don’t need a diagnosis to teach him.

Another reason is the medication issue. I am very reluctant to put him on medication. He is already on so much for his allergies and he has such a sensitive stomach to begin with. I don’t want to add yet another chemical to his poor little body. In fact we are in the process of trying to get rid of as many chemicals in the house as we can. Why would I pourposly add more. I know we don’t have to put him on medication if we don’t want to, but the schools most often push for it, and I don’t want him to be thought of as the bad child in the class, just because I don’t want him on medication. My fear is that he will get a teacher who can’t see past the words unmedicated and ADHD. If I decide to keep him out of school to avoid this situation then we are right back at point number 1.

As Alex get older I have been noticing that he is showing less and less ADHD tendencies. He is still a very active little boy who rarely sits still for a minute. But that does not mean he has ADHD. The impulsive behavior  has drastically reduced. He still touches a lot of things without thinking before he does it, which often gets him in trouble. But he doesn’t have the more severe impulse control problems. He doesn’t run into the street, he doesn’t hit, and he doesn’t often act first, think later. He does have some temper control problems still, but again he is an active little boy. I also feel that he doesn’t have a large attention problem. When he wants to he can spend hours focusing on one thing. He does still have a tendency to jump from one activity to another during free time, but that is getting less and less as he gets older. I am really starting to feel like he is growing out of many of the ADHD behaviors, and what I really have is an active boy. And is there really anything wrong with that. I don’t think so.

So what is the problem you say. School is the problem. Every Tuesday and Thursday I worry about the report that I get from his teachers. It seems like every day is something else. The biggest one is that he has trouble sharing and trouble getting over problems. I am really starting to wonder if this is more a problem with the teachers than with him. He has the same issues here at home and with friends, but for the most part I have been able to work through those with him. In fact the last play-date we were on, I don’t really remember having a problem with him at all. Other than trying to drag him out of there. So once again that brings us back to the homeschooling.  Is he just one of those kids who does better at home? Am I capable of providing the right learning environment for him? Will we want to strangle each other at the end of each day? At the moment I don’t have answers to any of these questions.

As of today we are still planning on sending him to his last year of preschool, and Lizzie will be starting the 2 year old program in the fall as well. I think we will have to see what the next year brings.