This post is difficult to write.  The negatives of homeschooling are rarely discussed among homeschoolers.  There are so many attacks from so many angles without homeschool moms giving opponents fodder.  Those of you who would crow triumphantly “See!  I told you!”, this post is not for you.  Homeschool mamas wondering why your school day isn’t as peaceful, organized, or wonderful as other blogging moms, this post is for you.

Two weeks ago I expelled my oldest from school.

Oh, it had been a long time coming.  Attitude problems.  Refusing to do his work.  Taking hours and hours for a single assignment.  Just after Christmas he informed archly that “he doesn’t read”, such a plebian pastime being beneath him.  After that, silent reading became a battle, too.

Mr R began requiring more supervision.  Eventually other subjects were crowded out.  No time for art this week – I had to browbeat Mr R into writing his spelling words.  No time for art when the math hasn’t been done.  Prima Latina sat unopened on my desk.  We just couldn’t get to it.

Most of February was spent with everyone just doing the very basics.

His attitude was contagious.  Mr P began procrastinating even starting his work until after lunch, and I was too busy trying to keep Mr R focused and working to demand that he follow a better schedule.  Mr P still finished his homework before the neighborhood kids came over to play, since all of our extras were being pushed aside.  Mr S, the second grader, decided that he didn’t need to practice reading either.  More and more of my day was spent disciplining or dealing with consequences.

Mr R wasn’t content with just putting off his schoolwork.  While Mama was busy teaching borrowing to the second grader, Mr R would be gobbling chocolate chips in the kitchen or annoying his little sisters or fighting with the third grader.  His relationship with his sister, Miss E, has never been ideal and it simply got worse.  Our school got loud, then got louder.

We spent days on end fighting.  I was always mad, even if I didn’t show it.  Why couldn’t he just get his math book, without all the drama?  I could never enjoy the creative stories he tried to tell me because I kept interrupting him to insist that he write his spelling words.  I was constantly annoyed with him because I knew his grammar lesson lurked, blank and unfinished, on the shelf.

He wanted to help me with dinner, but how could I let him when he hadn’t done his basics and when I suspected he was using it as a ploy to get out of schoolwork?  He wanted to wander the creek looking for snakes, but I couldn’t let him out of the yard because he’d only done two math problems.

There were tears.  Books were thrown.  Privileges revoked.  He didn’t get to play with friends for weeks on end.  Soon, every interaction we had was negative.  Our whole lives were consumed with threatening punishment or doling them out, trying to be consistent.  Nothing was working.

Mr R, if you remember, is my unique little boy with mood stability problems, bipolar disorder, and learning disabilities.   He does not react the same way most children do.  Things most children shrug off can be a major crisis; drastic punishments can just roll off his back.

Last year was a wonderful year in our school, and he advanced two grade levels in math.  This year, he barely progressed at all.  He declared that he was unable to do minuses – even though he’s been subtracting for two years, and this declaration held the force of law for him.  He would get upset if such a problem dared to surface on his drill sheets or math lesson.  (And by “upset”, I mean a total meltdown lasting half an hour or more.)

This is not what I wanted.  Mr R has struggled often.  I spent a year begging God to give me a heart for him, and to know how to help him.  I want his mind to soar.  I want him to thrive.  I want him to multiply fractions and not cry.

Husband dear would take the boys to aikido twice a week, and on other nights I would take off to do errands as soon as dinner was served.  I needed a break after hours and hours of conflict.  The grocery shopping had to be done, after all, and I relished the extra few minutes browsing the aisles in relative peace. Sometimes the grocery shopping just had to be done twice a week.

My plan was to give him a solid foundation on which to build his dreams of being an inventor and naturalist.  The reality was that even his natural bent towards nature and creating contraptions was being squashed in an effort to just get the gall-darn basics done, and at the same time my relationship with him was faltering.

Inevitably, things came to a head.  I expelled him.  He could no longer participate in our school.

He smirked.  He didn’t care.

Until the consequences of being expelled were explained.  He started aikido lessons in February, and he promised to stick with it for two months if we bought him a gi.  Since aikido was part of his curriculum, his PE class, I told him he would no longer be allowed to attend.  And since he quit his class before his two month commitment, the cost of the gi would have to come out of his allowance.

Since he was no longer a student at St. Joseph Academy for Wayward children, he was no longer allowed to fraternize with the students during school hours (his siblings).  He would have to spend school time in his room, alone, playing until I was able to enroll him in a different school.  I promised to call him down at lunch time.  He could not go outside, because he was not enrolled in any school and what would he tell the truancy officer if he happened to drive by?

And since he wasn’t a student, he couldn’t participate in Fun Fridays, where we watch National Geographic DVDs or create architecture with popsicle sticks.  The garden outside was tended as part of our science curriculum.  He was stuck.

After a day of this, and an emotional meeting between us, with his father mediating, promises were made (as they always are.)  I allowed him back into the school, on the condition that he complete his work quickly and promptly, without argument.

And on the following Monday, he arrived at our school a changed man.

~ to be continued ~

I have run BlogHer ads on my sidebar for a while now.  I really like that I can choose what ads not to run, and I enjoy the featured posts that are listed – I’ve stumbled on some great blogs that way.  I like that it’s not just ads but a community as well.

I am also very prolife.  I participate somewhat in the boycotts, and yes, I’ve been on the side of the road with signs.  I have volunteered with pregnancy centers and engage regularly in online discussions defending the right of babies to be born.

My view can be boiled down to the fact a new, unique human being is created at conception and it is absolutely wrong to end a human life.

As part of my interest in defending life, I subscribe to many blogs as well as LifeNews.  Imagine my shock when a recent article on Kathleen Sebelius included this line:

But in an interview on December 21 with Morra Aarons-Mele of the pro-abortion web site BlogHer, Sebelius praised the Senate language that funds abortions and talked about how everyone would be forced to pay for them.

Er, what?  WHAT???  BlogHer is a pro-abortion site?  I’d never seen anything to indicate such a thing.  I tweeted the prolife and prochoice community to see if anyone had any ideas why this would be published:

“Morra Aarons-Mele of the pro-abortion web site BlogHer” does anyone know why Lifesite wrote this? #prolife#prochoice #blogher #tcot

(Please note, I mistweeted.  It was not LifeSite, but LifeNews that ran the article.)

BlogHer co-founder Elisa Camahort replied:

@Milehimama Because they didn’t do their fact-checking about BlogHer being an omni-partisan site with posts from both sides of the aisle?

I went to the BlogHer site and did a search; it seems that both sides are represented.  It’s run rather like an op-ed page, with writers contributing their views and making an argument for their side of the issue.  Yes, there are pro-abortion articles.  But there are articles such as Abortion is Barbaric, too.

I wrote to the editor of LifeNews, and the article’s writer replied to me with a clarification.  Steven Ertelt wrote back:

The interviewer representing the web site was glad that the health care bill funded abortions

So it seems that it was interviewer, Morra Aarons-Mele, that Mr. Ertelt intended to call pro-abortion, not the entire BlogHer website and all of the contributors.  Morra Aarons-Mele writes for several sites, including Huffington Post, BlogHer, and the Guardian and specializes in women and politics.

Mr. Ertelt replied to another of my emails informing me that they are changing the story since I pointed out the error.

I know many of my readers also subscribe to LifeNews, and may have seen the article in question.  I want to assure them that I would never, never knowingly post anything on my site that promoted abortion or partner with pro-abortion groups.  It seems that BlogHer is not a pro-abortion website, although they do allow the issue to be discussed on their site from many angles.

Here’s an archived post from February 2009 that appeared on the old site.

We are having special visitors this weekend and my parents are coming the week after, so I’m busy with spring cleaning.  Starting with the laundry room – our washer gasped its last breath this weekend.  When the wet clothes inside the washing machine are smoking, it’s time for a new one!

Enjoy!

Slowly we’re clearing out the clutter.

Invisible clutter. Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it takes up no effort in your life or costs nothing.

First, we returned our Sam’s Club membership. They have a full refund policy at any time if you cancel your membership. The Texas Sam’s Clubs don’t carry a lot of the products I used to buy in South Carolina, including bulk cornstarch, whole wheat pasta, or certain spices. Their milk was more expensive than the grocery stores, as was their produce. I used to buy whole wheat bread there for cheap, but I make my own now. They don’t carry bread flour. Over, and over again I would head to Sam’s Club with a long list, and leave with butter and chickens. Then, a local grocery store started carrying butter for the same price.

$35 back in our pockets!

We paid off our van in December, and switched the coverage from Full to Liability Only. Our van is maybe worth $1800.

$35 a month, back in our pockets!

Husband changed his cell plan. He did have a supernifty one with unlimited nationwide roaming. When he realized that his company wasn’t sending him to any outlying oil platforms any time soon, he changed plans.

$15 a month, back in our pockets! We can always change to the upgraded plan at any time, if we need to go out of town.

I changed our cable service yesterday. This was tricky, because we have a package deal (phone, internet, and cable.) I work from home watching TV, and I had to have certain channels for my job. The best package I could get cost $160 after taxes (including taxes, fees, and DVR.)

In January, our cable company sent us a notice that prices would be going up by $5. But, they also added several new packages and bundles. We went to a different phone plan, eliminating long distance (husband gets it for free on his cell, anyway), went to a slower internet, and lost a bunch of channels.

Truthfully, even though we “lost” about 100 channels, the only ones we’ll miss are The Science Channel, Noggin, HBO, and EWTN.

Savings? $50 a month!
(Note: this is an old post.  We’ve saved even more money by eliminating cable tv altogether and watching TV shows for free!)

How much can you save by eliminating invisible clutter, options you don’t use, and avoiding miscellaneous charges?

1.

All week the children kept telling me about their onions that had yellow flowers. We do have some stragglers of green onions still in the garden, and they keep bringing me fistfuls of yellow weeds, so I thought that’s what they were talking about.

Nope. My daffodils (planted last year and forgotten) are blooming! And despite being transplanted about 8 times (current home: inside a broken globe), they aren’t dead yet, either. Daffodil bulbs do look like onions!

2.

My baby loves bluegrass.  It happened to come on PBS the other day and she was instantly captivated.  I’ve been playing it for her on YouTube – she dances, claps, then tries to climb inside the screen to kiss Alison Krauss.  So funny!

3.

Best prolife video I’ve seen:

H/T Erin at And Sometimes Tea

4.

Another child has died at the hands of parents following the methods of Michael and Debi Pearl.  When will the Christian and homeschool community hold them accountable?  Tulipgirl has links; Mommylife’s following the story, too.

If you do business with Pearl supporters (i.e., The Old School House magazine) won’t you please contact them and ask them to drop them?  Michael Pearl’s latest response is that he is LAUGHING at all the people criticizing his “God’s method of child training.”  No, Michael, hitting 4 month olds, shoving toddlers into ponds, and beating 4 year olds all night long is not God’s training method.

5.

I love these 10 Rules for Writing Fiction lists.

My particular favorites are:

You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. – Margaret Atwood

The first 12 years are the worst. – Anne Enright

6.

Another food recall: Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein.  It’s in dips and dressings and probably everything else at the grocery store, too.  List of recalled HVP products, including organic dressing.

7.

The Texas primary is over, and Rick Perry is going to be the Republican candidate.  There are worse people who could have gotten, I suppose, though I’m not a die-hard Perry fan.  He beat Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.  Hutchison ran some really, really lame ads at the end of the campaign – basically criticizing Perry for living in the governor’s mansion (at taxpayer expense!)  Wonder where she planned to live, had she won?

I used to write about television shows for one of my clients.  We had cable, then upgraded to a DVR, and I got a tax write off.  Oh my goodness, I would never have cable without a DVR again.  It’s fabulous and should be standard equipment.

However, cable and DVRs are expensive, and last fall we cut every expense we could.  I had stopped writing for that client right before Baby A was born, last spring, but the cable had stayed.  It was one of the first things we canceled.

But… you can watch TV online for free!  We downloaded software for $40 and we can watch Hulu on our actual television set.

We can watch hits, such as Lost, Fringe, and Stargate Universe (hmm, not that we’re sci-fi fans or anything.) Free!  Granted, I have to wait until Lost actually airs (Hulu keeps the five most recent episodes of this season’s shows).  I was doing that anyway with the DVR.  We don’t let the kids watch any of those shows and they don’t go to bed until 9 pm.

Even better, Hulu has a full array of old shows, the complete series!  Mr S likes Alf.  Miss E really likes Emergency (from the 70s!).  Miss V has watched every episode of The Littles (remember them?) twice.

Amazon has also recently rolled out Video on Demand.  I haven’t had any luck getting that to play on the actual television, but if you want to try it on your computer, use code AVODGIFT and get $4 free!  (I used this code last month, and didn’t see an expiration date.  I’m not sure if it’s still good – if you try it, will you let me know?)

We also have Netflix and have more TV and movies than we can handle – without the cable bill.  Works for Me!

Don’t forget that WFMW is back at Rocks in My Dryer this week and next, until Kristen’s back from Kenya.

Check me out!

Katie over at Kitchen Stewardship is featuring yours truly  in today’s  installment of Real Food Faceoff!

If you’ve come here from there, please jump into the comments on Pride and Prejudice, Mega Family Style. There’s a great conversation going on!  Also check out my food rules and recipes on the right sidebar  You can read about my food stamp challenge, 40 weeks of grocery lists and menus or check out my money saving tips!

You can read all of Katie’s questions and my answers below, and make sure to click through see my Face Off partner, Make At Home Mom’s responses!

Read the rest

Out of all the things I thought I’d do in my lifetime, coveting a 12 passenger van was not one of them.

This weekend I hit the Target, and ended up parking next to a big white beast of a van, a 12 seater or maybe a 15.  There was a rosary hanging from the rear view mirror of this Moby Dickmobile.  Big van plus rosary usually means big family.  I was just a little excited to see if I could spot the family in the store.

It’s a little known fact that mega-family moms have a special radar for other big families.  I’m low and shallow, so I usually hope the other big family will distract attention from my horde.  Today I was alone, which meant I had big plans to hang out and ogle the linens, then mosey over to the rug section.  I found the perfect rug, BTW.   It’s the color of dirt and made of olefin, and when it gets dirty, you can hose it off.  I can’t wait until they come out with a wall-to-wall version.

And I found them.  A family with seven children, that is.  But, no one was smiling at them.  The children were childish, but not out of control.  They were walking with their parents and not snatching things off the shelf.  Yet, I saw more than one other customer cast a hard glance into their cart or frown in their direction.

This family was Hispanic, and I live in Houston.  We’re not too very far away from the border and there’s quite a bit of vitriol spouted on a regular basis towards immigrants, or those who look like they could be immigrants.  Especially people who look like they could be immigrants and on the public dole.

I perhaps would never have noticed other people’s reactions, except that it was so different from the reactions I typically receive when I’m out and about with the kids.

I take quite a bit of pride in showing off my family.  Too much pride, probaby.  Everyone comments on the red hair, on Mr X’s curls, on Baby A’s chubby legs.  Bystanders count, then count again.  I love to tell people that we have 4 of each, girls and boys.

I love seeing my family all lined up at the table, at the checkout, at the drinking fountain or bathrooms.  (For the record, I don’t love taking them to the bathroom which eats up at least 20 minutes, discussing allowances owed at the checkout and snatching away chocolate bars, or mediating who gets to sit next to the baby at the restaurant.)

But lately I haven’t been bragging so much.  I’ve shared before that our family was receiving food stamps.  Somehow, it seems better to leave how many kids we have out of it when I’m buying bread.  Before, I’d proudly tell the checker that I had eight hungry mouths to feed and, yes, I birthed every one of them.  Now, when I’m using my Lonestar Card, I hope no one asks.

And on the odd occasion that I have the whole family with me at the grocery store, I have gotten one of those looks.

I don’t want to get the same looks as that other family got.  I don’t want people toting up my groceries in their heads.  I don’t want a lecture on how we shouldn’t have children we can’t afford (and never mind that we had all of these children before the job loss and that we’ve never been on public assistance before; never mind that we’ve paid into the system for over 20 years; never mind that these children will be paying those people’s Social Security in a few short years; never mind that just because an adult is broke doesn’t mean their children should be punished or unwelcome.)

Pride.

It is interesting that we’ve collectively decided, as a society, that no child should go hungry and we put our money where our mouth is, allowing our taxes to buy groceries for hungry children, yet there is an uspoken rule that if one has more than 2.5 children, accepting government assistance is somehow wrong and bad.

If you see a mom – any mom, of any size family – at the store this week, congratulate her on her blessings.  And if you see someone with foodstamps, don’t automatically assume it’s because they’re lazy or irresponsible or selfish.  Give them a smile, too.

1.

Today I take Mr X to the school for his speech evaluation.  He talks in full sentences all the time, but is so terribly hard to understand.  They have to evaluate him before they can tell us what services he’ll qualify for.  Next month is the last one for in-home ECI.

2.

Still waiting on the referral for Mr P.  He’s got to see a neurologist, probably get a new MRI with contrast this time, then get yet another referral for a neurosurgeon.  At the rate things are going – it’ll be summertime.  Unfortunately, his quality of life is degrading, so to speak.  Daily headaches, blurred vision and dizziness (only occasionally, thankfully), and definite personality changes (though, that could just be crankiness from having a headache all the time.)

3.

Positive news, Baby A’s tests were all normal. Though I did have to get her blood taken twice because the first one showed elevated potassium (7.3); it turns out the sample was damaged.  Her potassium is just a teensy bit high but everything else is great.

4.

This girl already stands alone.  She’ll be walking before she’s 9 months old, I’m sure of it.

5.

She is driving me nuts with the biting.  She was biting “for fun” but I cured her of that.  However, when she breastfeeds and gets drowsy, the sleepier she gets the more she clamps down.  It’s not uncommon for her to be asleep, and for me to have teeth marks where noone should ever, ever have teeth marks.  But if I unlatch her, she wakes up, tries to nurse, gets drowsy, clamps down… lather, rinse, repeat.

6.

Went to another furniture store with all the kids.  This saleslady was great, and wasn’t thrown off by my comments, such as:

“Looks like a row of molars”

“No, uggh.  They look like bear paws cradling you before eating their dinner.”

and

“Those throw pillows look like dumpy little pinto beans.”

Sorry, I have strong opinions about furniture design, apparently.  And hold my tongue?  I know not how to do such a thing.

7.

I simply must share this website with you: The Journey. Katie moved to Uganda, and now is mothering 14 orphaned children with grace and humility.  Her story is inspiring and her posts bring tears to my eyes.  You’ll notice her button on my sidebar.

Continuing my real food reading list, I recently finished Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes“Food Matters A Guide to Conscious Eating, by the legendary Mark Bittman.

Bittman writes a popular column at the New York Times (probably the only thing worth reading in that paper) as well as having written a few cookbooks (the How to Cook Everything…series.) I’m most familiar with his column; his recipes are precise and always garner rave reviews. They never feature cream of cr*p soup and often are vegetarian, satisfying main dishes. Love the column!

Food Matters, not so much.

Food Matters is about why food matters as well as being the how-to book for Bittman’s diet plan, which is famously summed up with “Vegetarian until 6. He calls it sane eating in the book. That is, eat vegetarian meals all day and indulge at dinner, if you wish. It’s a diet not of deprivation but of planned luxury.

As is the case with similar diet/food ecology and nutrition books, the first part is an exploration of the deplorable state of American nutrition. Bittman has a slightly different angle, often focusing on the ecological aspects of eating meat, including the impact of corn diets and CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations, or meat factories, basically).

Indeed, the book opens with Bittman’s inspiration for changing his eating habits:

Two years ago, a report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture landed on my desk. Called Livestock’s Long Shadow, it revealed a stunning statistic: global livestock production is responsible for about one-fifth of all greenhouse gases- more than transportation.

This part is best left skimmed. The book was published before all of the new information regarding the manipulation of man-made global warming data and the scandal at the CRU; he’s one of the intellectuals who drank the man-made global warming kool-aid in a big way. The message to eat less meat to save the earth runs throughout the book.

The tagline of the book is Lose Weight, Heal the Planet and that’s what you can expect to read about – how if we would just change our eating, all will be right with the world. The birds will sing, the ground will light up when we walk, and nature will finally be able to nurture. Okay, it might not be quite that extreme, but I found myself mentally rolling my eyes more than once.

Bittman only superficially touches on many subjects to drive home the “US Meat Consumption=Bad” message, without exploring the nuances of choices and political realities. For example, on p. 24 he writes:

It’s no exaggeration to say that soy and corn are killers, whether directly (soy oil is used to make trans fat, and high fructose corn syrup is about the most useless form of calories ever created) or indirectly (their cultivation is an environmental nightmare, and as animal feed in factories they’re perpetuating a destructive system.) And their use in these capacities is depriving millions of the food they desperately need. If we simply shifted resources to growing crops that fed people directly, we’d go a long way toward resolving many issues of health, agriculture, and the environment.

I agree with the first part of the paragraph, but found the solution – to simply shift resources – a gross misunderstanding of the issues involved. The truth is, even if we did not make HFCS out of corn, we couldn’t ship it to starving people in Africa. Those countries would literally rather let their people starve than let GMO grain into their countries. If we switched from high yield corn and soybeans, the farmers who have bought into Monsanto’s arms race with ever bigger farms would likely face bankruptcy- leaving American farmland untended. And, if Americans didn’t have access to cheap corn (in the form of cheap processed meals) there would be a political shake up and possibly riots; Americans see cheap, easy, quick food as a right and often consider nutrition a distant priority after convenience, cost, and taste. Feeding the world isn’t as simple as fat Americans eating fewer cows, no matter how easy it is to rely on that stereotype.

Other chapters predictably lament the obesity epidemic, discuss local sustainable farming, critique the current food pyramid, and so on, again, without in-depth analysis or thoughtful consideration. Quite frankly, I had higher expectations for Bittman’s journalism skills, based on his excellent writing in other venues, and I was mightily disappointed.

He does mention that sane eating might take more effort.

You don’t have to cook to eat sanely, but cooking helps, and cooking is what part II of Food Matters is about. (p. 104)

Bittman spends a bit of time discussing the Food Matters kitchen, and this is the most useful part of the book. He discusses how to plan to eat more plants, how to prepare a salad to last the week, how to use the freezer, and how to eat out. Unfortunately, this section is not quite four pages long.

The second half of the book explores Bittman’s diet, and includes menu plans for two weeks and recipes. The recipes don’t seem nearly as tasty as the ones regularly featured in his column, perhaps because there are no luscious photographs to drool over. The format of the book is a poor one to take with you into the kitchen.

Overall, it is the same information found in other books, but with a more preachy style and an attempted eco-guilt trip thrown in. Does eating meat use more natural resources than eating beans? Yes. Do we need to feel like we are personally destroying Mother Nature as we tuck into a steak? No. Bittman admits he is not, and never will be a vegetarian, and his version of sane eating involves eating meat only once a day. A sensible compromise, and about the only useful thing I took away from the book. Actually, I already pretty much did that, but now I can name drop that I eat lunch the Bittman way; the book wasn’t a total loss.

My advice? Skip the book; watch Food, Inc. and read his column, instead

Previous reviews:

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Made From Scratch by Jenna Woginrich

HFCS

CAFO

GMO