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‘Parenting’ Category

  1. Contamination Zone

    July 6, 2014 by admin

    high-warning-contamination-area-sign-3079We have a room in our home.  An awful, terrible room.

    The room of one of our children.

    This room is a disgusting mess of clothes, food, dirty dishes and more.  We have tried a variety of techniques to try to get to a space where this doesn’t happen.    We have tried threats and punishments, sweet cajoling, matter of fact conversations, straight up bribery.

    Our record of cleanliness in this part of the house rarely exceeds 36 hours, and has never reached the 72 hour threshold.  This even after the rest of the family has spent a weekend working together to clean this space.

    So we are appealing to you, our friends and readers.  How do we convince a particular twelve year old to keep the room clean?

    What do you do?  Do you just clean it yourself?  Is there some magic trick that works for you?  Mesmerism?

    Do we need to call on Milla Jovovich?  Or Martha Stewart?  Help!

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  2. Inventing Is Contagious

    June 18, 2014 by admin

    A ride for our local squirrels

    A ride for our local squirrels

    Our Bluey will tell anyone he meets that he’s an inventor. He loves to tinker with old appliances and regularly builds new things with his Legos, or any other bits he can get in his hands.

    When he’s with his friends, he tells them all about his inventions. Guess what? Now the friends want to be inventors, too! Often Bluey will lead these friends to one of his invention piles and they’ll all just start building stuff.  It’s delightful and amazing to watch what these kids can create, once they get going.

    You can trigger this same effect with the kiddoes in your life.   If you talk with them often enough about letting go and being creative, and following their bliss, soon your kiddoes will believe they can do it. And once they start feeling it, there will be no stopping them!

    Window Art

    Window Art

    So much about being inventive is believing that you have strength and wonderful uniqueness within yourself. Help your kids foster their creativity and see how it blossoms, and how it inspires others!

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  3. Better Than A Booklist

    May 9, 2014 by admin

    We see them all the time. Someone puts out a list of all the books that kids should read when they are 7. Or when in High school. Or in order to be considered truly literate.

    There are a lot of great books out there, too many for any list.

    For our homeschooled little Bluey, we have a different kind of list.  A list for an explorer.  Parks!IMG_1793

    We love visiting new places and getting the chance to meet new people. So we have embarked on an ambitious plan- to have our young son experience all the parks in our hometown (big and small).

    There are over 200 parks in the city of Madison. That’s a lot of parks, so it’s a big challenge. But that’s not all we are going to do. We also resolved to attempt to visit all 31 parks in our county park system, and all the state parks as well.

    It’s almost 300 parks to visit!

    IMG_0127We know that this is an ambitious idea. But think of how many natural wonders our son will see! Think how many wild animals and plants we will encounter.

    Maybe he’ll never choose to read the top ten greatest non fiction books of 2010, but we know that he will experience amazing things.

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  4. Weather Station Alpha

    April 25, 2014 by admin

    IMG_1727Our Bluey has become highly interested in the weather lately. Most days he wakes up and immediately asks us to check the local forecast on the computer.

    In keeping with our homeschooling philosophy of teaching him what he wants to know when he wants to know it, we have been enmeshed in weather lore lately.

    Our favorite information resources include weather.com, wunderground.com, or one of our local TV stations like WKOW. Frequently, we check more than one site, allowing us a chance to model good research habits. Every website does not offer the same information, nor do they all present it in the same manner.

    Our visits to the weather sites offer a chance to study maps. Expanding the maps, we can see that Iowa and the Dakotas are west of our home- the weather they are having now might be our weather tomorrow. Michigan is to our east. The storm that came through yesterday is in Michigan now, or moving into Ontario. We can even research what weather our relatives are experiencing where they live.

    We’ve also been reading some weather books. It’s a great boost of our science knowledge as we learn about condensation, layers of the atmosphere, and how those cool vapor trails form (from jets in the stratosphere- 30 miles up.)  We did a fun experiment with a flashlight to illustrate why even though the sun shines in most places during the winter, its heat is so diffused that things don’t warm up very much.http://www.astronomy.org/programs/seasons/

    Now Bluey has decided to build his own weather station. It will take a while to finish, but it is underway. We started with a rain gauge- which seemed very important the day after a bunch of thunderstorms rolled through.

    Where else could Bluey’s weather interests take him? Art? Map making? Reading the Wizard of Oz? The sky’s the limit. Help your kiddoes follow their bliss and learn what they want to learn!

     

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  5. Hating Your Kid’s Music

    April 16, 2014 by admin

    “OMG!  If I hear ‘Let It Go’ one more time, I’m going to explode!!!!”

    Let It Go!

    Let It Go!

    We hear this a lot lately.

    It happens that this TR Family loves the film, Frozen, and the awesome soundtrack.  But we understand that the Broadway style music may not suit everyone.

    Explain to us two things:

    1. Why is so much adult energy being spent on this adolescent competition of who likes the coolest music?
    2. Why go out of your way to tell your kids that their opinion is worthless?

     

    This ‘my music is better than your music’ stance is pure BS.  It was stale when we were all high school freshmen, let alone in the here-and-now.  Different music appeals to different people, no matter their age, so just get over it.

    If your kid likes Frozen, or Bieber, or whatever- that doesn’t mean your kid is hopeless.  Your music isn’t better, it’s just different.  Millions of people around the world like Bieber.  Maybe they’re all onto something?

    Or maybe not.

    Even if, on some absolute plane of music judgment you can prove that Let It Go is the worst song ever- where does it get you?  Your kid likes a song.  Just allow him/her the joy of the moment, without being made to feel bad about it.

    Or use this song, or whatever song your kid is obsessed with, to become a bridge to other music you happen to like more.

    Our Plum loves Taylor Swift.  And through her enjoyment of Swift, we’ve been able to introduce her to Miranda Lambert, Kacey Musgraves, Coldplay and Tegan&Sara– to name just a few.

    And it goes both ways.  By opening yourself to the possibilities that there are other types of music out there for you to enjoy, you might learn a few things from your kiddo.  Plum has shown us some cool tunes from Selena Gomez or Sara Bareilles.  Bluey’s love of the Figureheads has us enjoying some fun kid-hop.

    Open your mind and use music as a way of sharing and connecting with your kids, rather than creating another wall between you.

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  6. Nothing But Star Wars

    April 9, 2014 by admin

    IMG_1682Our TR Family is huge into sci-fi.  We have robots and Transformers everywhere in the house.  We have dozens of spaceships and astronauts or aliens to fly them.  We have whole bookshelves devoted to Sci-Fi.  We have dozens of sci-fi comics to read. 

    And naturally, we have lots of Star Wars stuff from the TIE fighter specs hanging in the dining room, to the stormtrooper head mug that holds our garlic.  And then there are the cards, action figures- you name it.

    But we have held off introducing our youngest kiddo to the StarWars movies due to their violent nature.  We don’t allow gunplay in the house, and we review all TV shows and movies for intense violence.  As much fun as StarWars is, we all know it is rife with gunplay, explosions and death scenes.

    We’re not sure our Bluebird is ready for that, just yet.

    We’re beginning him with the Star Wars Radio Drama on tape.  Bluey loves cassette tapes, and the radio show has all the action and drama of Star Wars without the visuals.  We like that he can learn the story first, and see it later.  We like that he can imagine his own visuals to go along with the story he’s hearing.  Bluey’s already well acquainted with the plot of the movie now.  When he sees it for the first time, he’ll have a leg up in dealing with the content.IMG_1648

    Even though we’re very slowly moving towards the actual viewing of Star Wars, we’re greatly enjoying building Bluey’s knowledge of the StarWars universe.  And his love of the story is already enormous!

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  7. The Cooking Plum

    April 2, 2014 by admin

    Of her own volition, our Plum has recently embarked on a mission to cook dinner for the family one night a week.   We love it!

    * It was all her idea. (Yay!)

    * She plans the menu, with just a little help from TRDad. (Yay!)

    * After some angst about whether or not we could afford a special ingredient Plum wanted, she now has her own budget and creates her own    IMG_1096shopping list.

    It’s going pretty well.   Yes, like any beginning chef, she keeps coming back to the same few meals that she thinks she can make well.  But Plum is slowly starting to experiment with finding some new choices.  We know her repertoire of ‘good dishes’ will only expand as time goes on and her confidence grows.

    We love that Plum is embracing this important life skill on her own terms and in her own way.  TRDad is there to back her up and to teach hands-on skills needed to make each dish.  But our Plum is the Chef- there’s no doubt about that!

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  8. Bluey Gets a Gameboy

    March 28, 2014 by admin

    We are huge fans of the unplugged universe.  We love going outdoors, creating art projects, playing board-games, and jigsaw puzzling.  And then there are the endless options of building with legos, tinkertoys, kinex, blocks, playmobile, etc.IMG_1641

    So we have been careful all along to limit the exposure our kids have to TV, computers and video games.  We don’t want our kids to get sucked into a premade world and forget that they can create their own experiences.  We don’t want our kids exposed to images and sounds more shocking and intense than appropriate for their age.  We don’t want them to forget how awesome it is to run around outdoors and see the natural world up close.

    But at the same time, we understand the usefulness of knowing how the plugged-in world works.  We don’t want to raise kids who can’t surf the net, or who can’t deconstruct the real purpose of advertising that flies at them.  We need to teach our kids how to use the wired world as a tool for information, communication, and for fun.

    So we are finally allowing Bluey to explore some electronics and gaming.

    His starting place?  Bluey has inherited his sisters’ old Leapfrog (which he calls his Gameboy), and a small handful of non-violent and/or educational games.

    This system allows him a chance to learn that there should be limits to how much time you spend on video games.  Since the games remember where you are, you don’t need to ‘finish this level’ or whatever.  When time is up, it’s up.  Your game will be there when you get back.

    So far, although Bluey is excited by his video games, they remain a tiny segment of his daily life.  They haven’t taken the place of reading, and creating, and running around outdoors.

    We’ve taken a big step, but we think it’s in the right direction.

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  9. Dare You To Be Who You Will

    March 21, 2014 by admin

    “Darlin’ don’t you go and cut your hair” – Pavement

    Our kids are pretty confident when it comes to experimenting with their style and appearance.  And we do our best to support their exploration.  There are a handful of times that we’ve refused to let Plum or Bluey out of the house due to a “look” they have mashed together.  But that is a very rare occurrence.

    Bluey has a wild mass of untamed curls that spring forth from his head.  Bluey loves Skechers line of Twinkle Toes shoes, and a lot of other things thatIMG_3266 are marketed to girls: Lego Friends, My Little Pony, and the Little House on the Prairie series.  But he also adores Transformers, comics, and Star Wars.  We have NEVER once suggested to Bluey that certain books or products aren’t meant for boys.

    Plum is experimenting with makeup, hairstyle, and clothing.  She bounces from the influences of Punk, to a sort of preppy ballet look, to a schleppy freshman sweats-&-t-shirt style.  She has experimented with hair color (even wigs!) and Plum loves bold lipstick and eyeliner.  There are times when her final results are a bit of a hot mess, but Plum’s beauty always shines through.  And isn’t the mess part of the path to finding out who you are and what you like?

    As our children get older, we find ourselves at a crossroads of parenting.  Do we continue to allow Plum and Bluey to freely express who they are and experiment with what they like?  Will they be bullied and ridiculed?  Is it our job as parents to nudge them into “safer,” more traditional and accepted choices?

    Both Bluey and Plum have already encountered judgmental people.  And not just among their peers.  Adults frequently refer to Bluey as “she” and then cast disparaging looks at us when corrected.  He has had friends tell him that his loved toys are for girls.  Plum has had friends ridicule her choices and try to pressure her to change.  She has had adults discourage her pursuits in reading and science.

    Will we reign in our kids?  Should we?

    No.  TRMom and TRDad rise up like wild animals in defense of their brood.  We will not squash our kids’ spirit.  We will not conform our family to society’s standards.  We may continue to doubt ourselves at times.  But we hold strong.   Our kids are so very proud of themselves, and we are proud of them, too!

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  10. The Cheeseman

    March 16, 2014 by admin

    Bluey goes on a lot of missions for the family.  It’s how he is learning how the world works, and it’s the way he spends a lot of his time.  One mission that never fails to excite him is going grocery shopping.

    Many kids despise going to the grocery store, but Bluey is into it.  We think he loves it because he gets to meet up with his friend, The Cheeseman.

    One of our regular stops for the week is our Thursday trip to Woodman’s Supermarket.  It’s a big store and takes a while to get all the way through, but Bluey doesn’t mind.  He knows one of the early stops will be with Frank, the Cheeseman.

    The Cheeseman offers samples of cheeses each Thursday morning, and he keeps a stash of crackers handy for our Bluey.  Frank quickly realized that Bluey just didn’t enjoy plain cheese as heartily as when it was accompanied with a cracker.  So Frank made a point of keeping a supply of crackers hidden away for our boy, regardless of the cheese out for sampling on any given Thursday.

    The Cheeseman lights up at the sight of our Bluey running through the store to meet him.  Bluey is all smiles while chatting with his friend and munching on crackers.

    These little interactions add up to a rich experience for our Bluey.  He has friends all over town that he looks forward to seeing.  By helping him create these friendships, we help make each adventure one which Bluey is excited about.  And hopefully, our Bluey also adds joy to the days of all of his friends.

     

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