Mom Is Teaching

I’m not sure how much I was influenced as a teenager by peer pressure but I am sure it is much more than I am willing to admit.  Honestly, I do recall a couple of things that seemed to be of poor taste that I totally went with the crowd on.  One of those was the Pollo shirts in all variety of loud colors and tennis shoes.

I had attended a really small school where no one really paid attention to fashion at all up through the 8th grade.  But, when I transferred to the new school in the 9th grade…it was all about the trends and Pollo Shirts, layered at that and Nike Tennis Shoes were all the rage.

So, where does that land me now? 

I am a bit of a conformist I admit.  But, at the same time, I still like to think I am well adjusted and doing my own thing.  I’m not sure how true that is as I can’t think of any good examples to use to plead my case in one direction or another. 

I do know that I was an outsider where my child’s education was concerned.  No one else seemed concerned with the candy treats or the field trips to the zoo in another state that was snatched away and turned into a field trip to…the bowling alley.  But, I as with the group regarding the trip to the Alabama Ballet and the traveling with 1 adult to 15 children.  There was obviously more people unwilling to allow their children to go or they wouldn’t have cancelled.

So…

Just from what you know about me here, what do you thing?  Conformist?  Rebel?

So, it’s a huge debate around the internet world.  Nature or Nurture.  How do you parent?  According to this article, the apple rarely tumbles too far from the tree, it is also true that there are a multitude of things parents can do to safeguard their children.

How do we guard them from the most dangerous elements? 

How do we go about raising healthy and happy children?

I’m going to just give you the tips from the article, you can go read the discussion with each on your own.  I certainly do not want to be accused of copying someone and I want to give credit where credit is due, but these are just too good not to share. 

Unfortunately for you guys, they come with my commentary from the peanut gallery.

1. Let your child know you are excited to see them when they enter the room. (is that not the case with anyone?  I mean, I can see where it is of major importance with children, but in my opinion, it’s just a natural and polite thing to do, but hey, what do I know?)
2. Teach your child it’s okay to be bored (by all means, please….my mother plays 900 games of Go Fish a day.  I have a cast on my foot and right now, she is caring for my kids way more than I really would have ever dreamed I would have allowed, but I’m kind of in between a rock and a hard place – I am in a cast and immobile and have been since January – but anyway, my kids do not know how to be bored and they have to learn AND SOON!)
3. Limit your child’s media.  (by all means please.  I remember watching the news after 911, that’s how I equate this because the way I see it, it was tough really tough on me with all that being shoved at me, and for a child, the same would be the case with a few news stories a week, overwhelming and could be very saddening)
4. Let your child make a few of the rules. (I read the full discussion and all I am going to say on this one is – agreed)
5. Teach your child - don’t assume it’s all happening outside the house.  (This one is the one that I hoped to bring to this blog……homeschooling is ever parents job, regardless of whether thy attend public or private school or they are homeschooled, parents have to learn to take the responsibility for educating their children AGAIN.  I say again because I think it was a big deal many years ago but with the advancement of our society, people quit parenting as much as their parents did.  Why?  I really don’t know but I know that it happened.)
6. Model appropriate behavior. (Yes, please)

Ok, so anyway, I was watching the ABC segment about teenage pregnancy.  And, here I have to insert some more history…

Side Bar – I rarely ever cry anymore.  I don’t mean for this to see like I am pointing fingers but….I simply don’t cry.  And for those of you who don’t read my Mental and Emotional Health blog, I have a therapist, a psychiatrist and I suffer from depression.  At this point, I am apparently severely numbed by life.  Because we don’t let our kids watch grown up tv, we dvr our crime shows and other that The View, that’s about all we watch.  Still no crying.  I couldn’t tell you the last time I cried at a funeral. 

So, with that, tonight I was watching the segment ABC on teenage pregnancy.  The young girls on the show, or one girl in particular, had a set of twins.  She had agreed to give the babies up for adoption.  They showed her in the hospital and holding her babies.  It was painful.  The young girl was crying, holding her babies, talking to the adopting parents.

I burst into tears as she handed one baby to the adopting mother and she handed that baby to the adopting father and then the birth mother handed the adopting mother the other baby.  Oh the tears.  I had one of my kids in my lap scratching his back and the other lying on the sofa beside me an I was…scratching his back as well. 

I realize that I am not a very good parent.  I realized I haven’t really ever understood much about my own parents.  I also realized that those teenagers make a very difficult decision. 

And, so I kept crying.

My computer is giving me fits, I’ve lost several posts lately so cut me some slack if this one is a bit like you are getting shafted.  I don’t mean to be brutal, but…but, when I have to re-write posts, I get short winded…aha imagine that?  Me?  Short on words?  Never!

Ok so what I was trying to tell you earlier was that tonight, on ABC, there was a segment on teenagers and sex.  And, apparently I was very naive to what the real world looks like for teenagers.  Everyone thought my dad was too lenient but honestly, I gave him no reason to not trust me.  I only know of one person that had a baby in high school.  That’s every person to come through that school in my four years so in my opinion that’s a lot of people, right?

Well, apparently, teenagers are having a lot more sex than I realized.  Yes, teenagers in my circle were having sex.  One of my favorite teachers told me this one time, “the bad girls never get pregnant, they know how to prevent it, it’s the good girls that get pregnant”.

That stuck with me and I wondered where I fit in that puzzle because I was a good girl and I wasn’t pregnant in high school.  My group of friends were considered the good crowd and none of them got pregnant either.  So, that brings me to teenagers and sex. 

Am I delusional?

Anyway, I’m about to make this a 2 part post because…well you had to have the history so, stay tuned…….Part two….tomorrow…

First of all, if you do not believe in the following 2 things, then skip this one otherwise it will probably just enrage you.  So,

1.  It takes a village to raise a child – I am the product of a teacher, I was a teacher and I owned a daycare.  If I see children out of line, as long as I can correct the child in the proper manner (humor works great for example when a kid is about to fall out of buggy in a store and mom has turned her back to get something off a shelf – something like, “you sure are awful cute, you better be careful or you are gonna fall on your noggin”.  That usually gets mom’s attention and I’ve never had anyone get upset with me.  I mean, you know, by telling the kid he/she is cute, how could anyone be mad at you, really?

2.  We use corporal punishment.  I was the product of a father who used corporal punishment about 5 times in my life and would have used it more but I really was a good kid for him.  My mom, she would just get angry and start hitting me with a belt and not stop.  That’s not corporal punishment, that’s abuse.  I am talking a controlled adult using a safe method of spanking a child on the bum.

So, with that, about 2 weeks ago, my 4 year old was being a royal pain.  He has been for sometime and basically I look at it like he hasn’t outgrown the terrible 2’s.  The 6 year old is pretty difficult too.  But, a couple of weeks ago, my mother was angry because the 4 year old did something.  She used a fly flap (which she has already been told that my husband does not consider that appropriate) and was just swiping at his legs, over and over and over.  I yelled at her to stop.

She’s been pissed ever since.

But, she was not punishing my child, she was abusing him and sick or no sick, cast or not cast, I WILL NOT allow this to happen.  She really hasn’t spoken to me much since that time.  I have just dealt with her the best I could.  She has still been taking care of the kids while I have a cast on my foot as well as taking care of my house, but she isn’t speaking to me about it.

So, today, they were on a wild spree and she says, “I can make them mind but it makes you mad” and I said, “No you were out of control when I spoke up and when I make them mind, you go cuddle them afterwards and that’s a problem”

She was crying, leaving me with little left to say.  She said  her nerves were shot, I told her to go home and she refused.  She was already hacked at me about a series of other issues that I couldn’t control.  But, she wouldn’t go home.

Yes, I have had a cast on my leg since January.  When I first broke it, she was on her way home from my aunts anyway, she helped me for a couple of weeks then left and went back to my aunts because, “if I was going to run all over to conferences, what was the point in her being here to help me”. 

At the point where they put me non-mobile and I had to put Mini Me in daycare, she returned home to “take care of me and the boys and help around my house”.  Well, who knew this was going to be a 5 month long affair.  She and I have never got along very well, and for us to be together, in the same house this often is extremely difficult.

She has resorted to saying really evil things, I have restrained until today.  Today, I said what I thought.  One day last week when my husband got home, I was in horrific pain but wouldn’t take pain medicine because my mother was calling me a junkie.  I was less than 2 weeks post-op at that time.  She said I didn’t remember anything that went on because I took so much drugs. 

Let me tell you, I have taken less than 1/3 of what has been given to me for pain over the course of these 5 months.  Yes, less than 1/3.  Does that sound like a junkie to you?

I haven’t been outside of my house in over 2 weeks.  I am non-mobile and to be perfectly honest, I weigh so much that it is hard to get in and out of my house because of all the steps so after surgery I went to my kids baseball games and to the doctor.  Now, you tell me, if you are needing pain medication and taking it, you don’t leave home for over 2 weeks and every day is the same for you, can you imagine how it is easy to lose track of what day it is? 

She goes bizerk if I ask.  I don’t really not know, I simply think out loud. 

Anyway, this was suppose to be about her and my children.  They don’t obey her.  They never had.  She has never made them.  She has never made any of the kids that grew up at her house over the years obey her.  Her house was a free for all and all the kids new it.  And, my kids know it too now.  And, she blames us.

Either way, I do believe that it is perfectly find for the village to raise a child and I believe it is ok only if the village is willing to understand their role.  And, I do believe in corporal punishment but only in a controlled environment with a controlled adult and done appropriately.

So, what’s your thoughts? 

I don’t know how many second place winners there was in the contest but let me tell you, either way, I can tell a bad story.  I am good at adjectives and showing you the way.  I am not really even sure which one of the allergies stories I told on this particular contest because we are a house ridden with allergies.  My husband is allergic to everything except what I am allergic to.  My kids suffer from the normal every day pollens and allergens that affect us in this area.

I heard one time that if you moved, you probably wouldn’t have as many allergies because most people are allergic to the allergens in their area.  And, I found that true.  I left home and moved an entire state and away.  I didn’t have one sinus infection the entire time I was gone.  Hit another state or two and then back home.  And, guess what?  Allergies are back.

For me and my entire family we have a serious issue with mold.  We bought our home out of foreclosure and it had serious issues with mold.  I started a remove the shower campaign not long after we moved into this house, then, we took a trip to my in-laws in Florida.  No one was sniffling and rubbing their eyes.  We weren’t there long enough for it to be a matter of being in a different area.http://www.aller-ease.com/index.php?go=home

When we returned home, within 30 minutes my kids were sniffling little snot-walkers and I looked at my husband and I said, “SEE!”  He agreed to remove the shower.  And, indeed, their was mold behind the walls of the shower, under the shower to the point that the floor had to be replaced. 

It was amazing.

So, now I have this Aller-Ease pillowcase and since I told the story, I get to keep the pillow case.  But, let me tell you, I’d love to have some clothes made out of this stuff.  The feel of the cover is almost like…….yummy…yea it’s that good. 

You really should pay attention and either go buy you won or at the very least wait to see if you can tell a horror story and get one because…I am just about ready to order my husband one.

Right now I think the most fearful think to me but would the very thing that scared back then, no fitting in.  It’d a lot easier to study, to learn and get it all write when you have a pack of people you are running when you speak the same educational lingo that you speak. 

If you are the point where you are are doing is learning to read, you will definitely need to put in a group of people with similar skills.  Most adults are unlike children in that children have to be taught to read from left to write, to hold the book upright instead of upside down.  Adults do that have that advantage over children as they have probably learned that much over the years as they have learned bits and pieces.

One of the best ways to help yourself as an adult as well as your children as they learn is to invoke what you call summer brainwork;  Not school, but bring work.  And, make it about challenging the brain, doing puzzles, word searches, crossword puzzles, hang man kinds of games.  The kind of games that helps the learner to become familiar with the spelling of certain words as well as how letters fit together to make certain sounds.

So, don’t get left out of the brain work and see if Pennington Publishing can help you.  My midst personally like to do work search and even playing card games like matching and go fishing teach the children to recognize numbers, remember where they saw the numbers in a sequence and above all to follow the rules that are put before them.

Ok, so many of you may remember way back, ages ago I mentioned that we were going to see Thomas the Train compliments of Mom Select.  Well, indeed we did.  And, I even asked Mom Select if we could have tickets for some others but it didn’t work out.  It’s ok because I know they tried.

One of the big issues with Thomas the Train is that prior to the good ol’ bloggers of the world, no photos were allowed.  Now, we were allowed to use our camera’s but no flash was allowed and no videos.  So, I give to you, my still photos….

I don’t know if one would refer to me as crazy, insane or just a plain ol’ blog hog…but I have a few blogs and I’m preparing to launch a group blog……anyone have any late night issues…I’m an incurable insomniac. You can always find me on twitter as jareason. As it is, I am attempting to bribe another woman named Jerri Ann into giving me that twitter name but so far, no luck. I’ll let you know if it pans out. And, I am also trying to buy the domain jerriann.com from the person who owns it as it has sat since 2004 with the same photo of “under constructin” type info on it. But, in the meantime…here’s where you can find me….

Jerri Ann Reason - media site
Jerri Ann - my battle wth EASports and the 30 day challenge
Mom~E~Centric - my personal site
TV Boyfriends - my most popular site
Mom is Teaching - where I hope to grow the most
Mental and Emotonal Health- where I hope to lend a helping hand the most often
Media Critiques - where I make fun of people (you maybe)
Parenting Stes 411 - where I try to offer up good parenting links I find
Michelle Obama Watch - watching Michelle Obama become the most popular First Lady ever
Life in Reality - celebrity watch
TBTS The Real Truth - a scam that caught even me

And, stay tuned for an upcoming group blog endeavor. Scarry? Yes, indeed!

I have a cousin who can draw extremely well.  And I do mean he can draw some really gorgeous stuff.  And, he can also sit and draw architectural like structures as well.  He did most all of my drawings in high school.  He is good, really good.  And, he is a lefty.  Over the course of my life time, I’ve ran into some very creative people.  And, the first thing out of my mouth, out of habit alone, is “are you left-handed”. 

It just seemed that most every person that I encounter for many years that could draw and/or paint really well were lefties.  And, then naturally, you read research everywhere about right brain, left brain, and which side controls what functions.  So, when I saw this article, Are Leftys More Creative, I was drawn in like a buzzard.

The article starts off with a sentence I certainly could have written myself.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I’m a right.  As a kid, I wished I wished I was a lefty, that group always seemed to be more artistic, independent bunch with stylish handwriting.”

That’s exactly how  felt.  Without a shadow of a doubt, I truly believed this to be true.  But, according to this article, only 10% of people are left-handed, a number that transcends all cultures and believe it or not (fairly easy for me to believe), there are websites dedicated strictly to the leftys. 

And, another fact that  found really cool, 50% of adults use the same hand when stirring with a spoon, but over 80% use a preferred hand when eating with a spoon.  How cool is that?

Yes, I know, you’ve heard me whine incessantly about the school situation.  And, one of my biggest issues has been with reading.  My son does well enough, he can spell, he can write and he is fairly good at reading.  The problem is this, my son is not a phonetic reader.  I have seen so many kids learn to read and phonics have absolutely been the method of  choice.  However, my oldest child, the kindergartener who is well on tract in his learning, simply cannot sound words out very well.

He is simply better at memorizing the words and figuring out a word by the rest of the sentence.  He is a very logical and cause oriented person so for him, if he is going to say the letters like they sound, that’s fine, as long as they spell the word he needs.  But, if he had to blend sounds, then it turns into a mosh posh of words that are absolutely meaningless.  I know that most kids really do learn to read the phonetic way and I had no reason to think that he wouldn’t, but once he tried, he made for some incredibly funny words that he would put together.

He will graduate from kindergarten this upcoming Tuesday and well of course, that’s it for my kindergartener in a nutshell.  Today as he tried on his clothes for graduation, he declared his black dress pants and white button down to be “marrying clothes”.  Ha ha, got that, marrying clothes.

As the year winds down, I try to look back and decide if each of the events that transpired and whether they really were a worth the time and energy that I use in debating them.  And, while doing so, I went through all my son’s papers that have been brought home.  Yes, I kept them all.  At Christmas I went through the big monster stash of papers and kept the stuff that I thought was special and then when no one was looking, I tossed the others in the trash. 

One of the pieces of paper that I did not toss for the entire year was his spelling tests.  What’s the big deal you ask?  Well, the big deal is, he never made below a 100.  The entire school year, not one spelling test under 100.  I asked around and no that is not the norm.  And, my son was quick to point out that Susie made a 90 this week.  Now, I know grades are purely relative in the whole scheme of things, but when you put his grades in line with his classmates (as opposed to just saying, he made 100 – so what if every kid in the room made a 100?) and he has yet to make anything but 100’s.  Coming from someone who built some high expectations and then had to live up to them for the rest of my life.  And, failure is not an option.  I just hope that we can keep our eye on the prize which is…be happy, play hard, have fun and learn a little bit on the way…..

If you have a player with a particular spelling problem, you can find some help on this link that I liked a lot.  Of course I won’t dare allow my children to worry about this stuff right now.  Call me hypocritical…whatever, I want my kids to have fun…..and learn from that, not learn and miss the fun.

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I find myself on this darn computer way too much and my kids are starting to tell it.  They tell me my mom “she’s always on the computer”.  And, we’ve always had a deal, I’d work unless they choose that I play with them instead of working to make money for a possible trip to the zoo, the circus or the beach.  They’ve always preferred to play with each other but lately, they’ve been choosing me.

They sit on me, they wallow on me, the laugh and giggle, I tickle and play and we have a good time together.  We did this a lot when they were younger and the 4-year-old and I haven’t really ever quit but the 6-year-old went through a spell where he was apparently too old for that.  But tonight, he wanted in on the action.  So, we were all 3 in my chair, half-way watching a Mickey Mouse cartoon after all that talk I did about my kids not watching television. 

So, yea, tonight of all nights, they ask for a cartoon.  Go figure!  But, the point to my other post, they weren’t really paying attention to the show, they were mostly messing with mom and not watching or paying attention to the TV in the first place.  So, yea, my kids still don’t watch much TV, that’s my verdict on that one.

But, they sure know how to have a good time with mom!