Things That Have Been Bothering Me

You know how sometimes there are things that weigh on your mind and drag you down until you let go of them and entrust them to the Lord?  I've had a few of those on my mind lately.

• First of all, Kiana has been experiencing some struggles with learning to read.  She was doing great until we hit some sounds that she doesn't pronounce correctly, so I wondered if I needed to get her some speech therapy.  Long story short, we got her a speech evaluation and they say she is on target developmentally.  They aren't worried about her substitutions, the way she bites her lip to make the 'v' and 'f' sounds, or her lack of 'r' sound.  In fact, they showed me that she is getting the 'r' as she pronounces it at the end of words and they think she will be able to pronounce it at the beginning of words in the next six months.  They aren't worried about her lisp for now, but said if she still has it in a year, she might need some help with it.  So, that was good news!  She is still struggling with adding additional sounds in reading, however, so I have been cramming every spare minute reading about brain integration therapy to see if she might be a right brain learner who needs some training in how to move new material from her short term memory to her long term memory.  I'm sure it will all work out fine, I'm just wishing I had known to educate myself in these areas during the summer before school started.  grin

• Secondly, I recently learned of the upcoming divorce of a couple in my local homeschool group who are parents of 10.  As a child of divorce myself, I know how painful divorce is and the aftershocks that continue through years to come.  My heart just goes out to these children, ranging in age from 22 down to 4.  While I don't know the family or the situation very well, it is pretty obvious that the mother is leaving her husband for another man (who has also broken his family for her).  Doesn't the general decline in the valuing of marriage just depress you?  And frankly, it scares me sometimes as I fear going off my rocker, abandoning everything I've believed and sacrificed for all these years, and ripping my family apart in a selfish pursuit of ME.  I hearby give you permission to knock me up the side of the head, tie me up and throw me into a cave if I take leave of my senses in such a way!

• I've also been irritated by a recent editorial in the Des Moines paper criticizing Iowa's amendment to homeschooling laws.  There is a pretty well-done rebuttal here, and I would love to see if there are any responses in letters to the editor, but I'm reluctant to go buy a Sunday paper today to reward the Register for its inflammatory editorial.  In short, the Register takes a statist view claiming the state is ultimately responsible for our children and that "professionals" know what is best for your children and mine.  They also claim the recent amendments were slipped in secretively and maintain that somehow the state knowing a child is being educated at home will ensure that said child receives an adequate education.  

Simply typing this little blurb increases my blood pressure.  You may recall my irritation while jumping through the hoops mandated by former Iowa law when we first moved here.  It was ridiculous and ineffective.  Parents were required to fill out a form stating their intent to home school at the beginning of each year.  We also had to compile a list of resources we planned to use to educate each child and turn it in to the local school district.  It might seem like it was little enough to have to do, but it stole my time from actually educating my children and did absolutely nothing to improve their education or ensure that I was educating them adequately.  It was just busywork.  Additionally, I moved here from Missouri where the parents' rights were better recognized, so I chafed at the state sticking its nose in our business anyway.

It's even more frustrating to read the comments to the above editorial.  Our government schools have done their job well as they have indoctrinated generations to believe that the state has a greater right to our children than we parents do.  Many commenters believe in the "expert" fallacy as the state obviously loves children more than parents and certainly the state knows best.  Somehow people have the idea that parents are responsible to the state (rather than to God), that parents must ask *permission* of the state, and that parents must be accountable to the state.  (After all, government schools have to be accountable and that's just not fair if government schools have to be held accountable in their use of tax dollars to provide an adequate education to the children of those tax payers while home educators aren't held accountable in the education of their children which they themselves are funding.)  (deep breath)

• Okay, last one, I promise.  The final thing that has been bothering me is people who purport to be helping children but manage to amply pad their pocketbook in the process.  To give a  brief background, some states are changing laws so that parents who are about to have their parental rights terminated by the state (for neglect, abuse, etc) have the option of voluntarily signing consent for adoption.  This is a very good thing.  In addition to saving taxpayers lots of money, it allows parents to make one final loving decision so their child(ren) will be part of a family forever (rather than likely bounced from one foster family to another) and if there are siblings, they are able to be in a family together (rather than in separate foster homes). 

But here is the problem.  Adoption agencies are the ones who have proposed the new policies.  And you guessed it--too often their motives are less than altruistic.  Now, don't get me wrong, I fully believe a laborer is worthy of his hire.  People need to make a living for what they do.  I just think we get greedy.  I was recently made aware of such a situation in which an agency was looking for an adoptive family for a brother and sister who have been in foster care for three years and are currently in separate foster homes.  The agency had a week to gather information, find a family, and prepare the necessary legal documentation. Their fee?  TWENTY SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS!  Do you know anyone who makes $26,000 for a week's worth of work?!  Even intense, time-sensitive work surely doesn't require such exorbitant fees.  

It bothers me that agencies and lawyers who have the ability to help children find loving families make it so cost-prohibitive.  If I didn't have five children I'm trying to homeschool, I think I would have to try to find some way to change the adoption industry (for don't doubt that an industry it is).  Anyone wanna take up the banner for me while I'm in this busy season?

The Peaceable Fruit of Righteousness

I really don't like having to discipline my children.  For the present, it truly is grievous and not joyous.  I would love to just never have to correct them.

But alas, that is just not how real life is.  For example, one Sunday Kiana woke up "on the wrong side of the bed".

While I'm talking about her, I might as well highlight her beautiful head of hair and her latest hairstyle, right?  It's been quite some time since I shared.

First she didn't like the dress that was laid out the night before (to make our Sunday morning routine smoother) and then she wanted to wear her tan tennis shoes instead of the pretty matching shoes. She didn't want to carry her Bible, she walked to the van with a scowling face, and still had crabby eyebrows even after she was told to make a happy face.

I know, I know, I should have corrected her before this point.  But I do understand where the anti-spanking people are coming from.  It's no fun to have to spank your child.  I calmly and consistently won each of the above battles (except for the eyebrows, I guess), but didn't want to engage in the war.  I wanted to be "fun mom".

Isn't this hairstyle, once again created by Briana's friend Kidon, simply beautiful?!

Once we got to services, the attitude continued.  I offered her a notebook and a pencil during the study but she didn't want the black mechanical pencil I offered--she wanted the red (which I had checked and it had no lead). As a consequence, she got nothing to play with.  She then commenced to waller on Briana (who sat on her right side), so I pulled her to my side and sat with my arm around her.  I gently tickled her arm and held her close.  I thought maybe things were getting better.

Then it was time for the collection.  I gave her some money to put in the basket and while I was passing more out to Easton and Tyrell, Briana told Kiana to clasp it the money in her fist instead of flinging it around so she wouldn't drop it.

Kiana defiantly rolled her money between two hands.  Time for the swat.  This unpleasant attitude had finally resulted in a willful act of disobedience.

Kiana then miraculously turned into a sweet girl with a happy, smiling face and shining eyes.  Funny how that works, hmmmm?

Child Catchers

It took me almost three months to finish this book.  It wasn't because it was a particularly hard read, but because it was a very frustrating read.  I don't know when I've ever read a piece of writing with such a blatant anti-Christian bias.  (My brain is simply spinning with thoughts and I'm going to try to process them here because I couldn't find anyone to read and discuss this book with me. :))

In her book The Child Catchers:  Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption, Kathryn Joyce claims to be researching adoption ethics.  I have no problem with that--in fact, I think it's something we need to be aware of.  The more knowledgeable I have become of "the adoption community" in the seven years since we first adopted, the more I have become aware of unethical actions--of downright child stealing--and I have many times experienced that pit-deep-in-the-gut feeling that something isn't right when talking with people about their stories.  We stopped pursuing an adoption of a sibling group of sisters, in fact, when we saw some red flags that made us question the ethics of the people involved.  And it's no secret that there are some for whom adoption is big business--who ruthlessly and unethically use children to pad their bank accounts while professing to be "helping the children". 

No, it isn't the topic that bothers me.  A large part of my problem with this book has to do with the author's approach.  She calls herself a journalist and she calls this book "research".  Now, we're all aware that every journalist has a bias--a worldview--from which he or she approaches a story and I suppose I should be grateful that this author is so obvious in her bias that a reader needn't strain herself trying to discern the direction of the bias, but I sat through too many classes in my pursuit of my Communication-with-an-emphasis-in-journalism degree to consider this a credible piece of research journalism when its pages drip with her bias.  If you want to write a book "exposing" the seamy side of adoption, call it such.  Don't claim to be a journalist relaying research.  Whether you claim to be a journalist or just a person with a publisher and an axe to grind, please make sure you have your facts straight.  Additionally, anytime she interviewed a professing christian (especially those she labeled "fundamentalists"), she just focused on negative aspects (and I suspect twisted stories) to support her view.  I haven't read her other book Quiverfull:  Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, but I've read interviews and reviews which made me suspicious of her premise in the first place, yet I still wanted to read what she had to say about adoption ethics.

I should have just waited and read Jen Hatmaker's series on Examining Adoption Ethics.  Jen makes excellent points about what desperate people will do for money, what greedy people will do for money, what mistaken attitudes prospective adoptive parents might have, and how carefully one must research the adoption industry and she does all this without plagiarizing information from the blogs of adoptive parents (true story--I contacted a fellow blogger whose words I recognized and received validation of my suspicions) while calling herself a journalist.

If you're interested in ethical adoption (and really, why wouldn't you be?), I recommend you read Jen Hatmaker's series and search other credible sources rather than wasting your time wading through The Child Catchers where you'll have to weed through a lot of garbage, bias, and out-right error to discern about 20% which is worthwhile.  I suppose it is good that Joyce wrote this book as she certainly got the conversation started, but I can't recommend it for more reasons than I feel like going into in this post.

Blessed Labor Day Weekend

 It's so hard to keep up with everything, but I just uploaded pictures off my camera from our incredibly fun weekend with friends and I'm enjoying looking at them. 

Briana with a couple of her dear friends and their little sister

We had one set of friends come up from Missouri Thursday night before Labor Day and we spent Friday at the zoo and then the science center with all our kiddos.

 

We all enjoyed the beautiful fun day with friends of all ages.

Getting to pet a baby camel might have been one of the highlights of the day for all of us.

 I also thought the girls were cute "hatching from eggs" with good friends.

 Both the little girls and the big girls!

I'll spare you the many, many pictures I took both at the zoo and the science center by wrapping up with a silly group shot from the science center.  After that full day, we came back home for fun in the pool.

Then Saturday and Sunday we and our friends enjoyed Bible study with a nearby congregation and Sunday evening we had MORE friends come to spend the night!  What a great time was had by all. 

We had 27 people in the house.  It was quite noisy.  And we all had a hard time parting from one another to actually go to bed and get some sleep.

I only snapped one picture of the adults--we were too busy chatting and laughing to get many shots.  I sure am thankful for good friends!

Equipped to Love

We recently finished a book discussion with a group of six other couples (I should have taken a group picture!) of Equipped to Love:  Building Idolatry-Free Relationships by Norm Wakefield.

We had a really great time meeting each week as time allowed at the end of a busy summer.  My favorite part of the study was about the time we spent together, building relationships, sharing our hearts, and being transparent with one another.  As we've lived here less than two years, our relationships are quite new, but this time let us get to know one another in a more meaningful way than just over a game of Dutch Blitz (not to minimize those fun moments that reveal latent competitiveness, grin).  I now feel like we can truly call these couples friends as we've shared struggles with daily life ranging from work struggles to parenting struggles to marriage struggles and other temptations and we've prayed together over them.

I like a lot of what Norm Wakefield says, especially in the areas of men being godly men and improving relationships.  I will insert a disclaimer here that I don't agree with every single thing he says, but much of what he says has been a blessing both in our marriage and our parenting.  I've also heard him speak on two different occasions and he presents himself in a humble and endearing way.  He's the kind of man you wish your children had as a grandfather.

But about this book in specific, he makes the claim that we don't tend to even know what love is.  While true love comes from God, brings glory to Him, and purposes to give to and serve others, we most often "love" those we can use or when others make us happy.  He calls this type of love idolatry as we too often put something else (usually self) on the throne where God alone should be. 

I think he has some good thoughts, although at times I get the feeling he stretched his message a little too much to get the book over 100 pages (it hit 108) and thus at the minimum belabored the point.  Much of the book was spent looking at the characteristics of idolatry from Deuteronomy 5:6-9 and applying those characteristics to how we tend to control and carve on people in our lives to get them to meet our needs and be what we want them to be if we aren't looking to God alone.  The only way we can truly love others is if we are seeking God and letting His love flow through us onto them.  He says when people treat us in ways we don't like, it's an opportunity for us to love as God loves--to be conformed into the image of Christ as we learn to be more forgiving, more patient, etc.

Alan and I both thought it was good to identify times we carve on our children, friends, or one another to get our own way--when we are looking to others to meet our needs instead of looking to God.  In the ironic way life tends to work, we missed one of the meetings recently when Alan had a prolonged bout with bronchitis.  He was sick for a full eight days and felt so horrible he frequently took three naps a day and slept from about 8:30 pm to 7 am each night.  Since he didn't feel well, he wasn't the most cheerful person to be around and he also wasn't his normal team-player self in our home.  It was a good opportunity for me to check my own irritability as I realized I got short-tempered with him because he wasn't doing what I wanted (and was used to) in training our children, reading them books or taking them outside when I wanted to get something done.  The Lord provided me with an opportunity to practice what we had been studying!

Ready

Well, for those of you who have been following along, we have our homestudy all ready to go.  You may recall that we started the process again after receiving two emails about two young boys who were needing a home.  After receiving the first email, we inquired about them but they were looking for a homestudy ready family and ours needed updated, so we just prayed for them.  After receiving the second email six weeks later, we decided to go ahead and update our home study and kept praying that the Lord would provide the boys with a family.

We contacted the agency yesterday to let them know we are now homestudy ready and to inquire about the boys and they reported that another family has come forward to adopt them and their birthmother has approved the match.

So now we have a homestudy sitting here.  We aren't actively pursuing adoption (as in sending the homestudy out to various agencies or putting our name on a consultant's list) but we're just waiting to see what the Lord does.  If He brings a need to our attention, we are ready.  If not, we are quite richly blessed as we are.

Tucking Away the Joy and Rewards

There are certain moments along this parenting and homeschooling journey that I, like Mary, treasure away in my heart.  Earlier this week, in our discussion of A Tale of Two Cities, I had such a moment with my teens that just made my heart glad and gave me the encouragement and strength to persevere through another year.  I share this on my blog to help me remember it.

The literature guide we are using asked the question:

Sometimes it is very difficult to see beyond a person's outward appearance.  At the end of Chapter 20, Darnay offers his view of Sydney Carton, but Lucie seems to see more clearly into Carton's secret heart.

Read Matthew 7:1-5 and James 4:11,12.  What do these verses teach us about judging others?  Philippians 2:1-4.  According to these verses, how should we regard others?

We had so much fun when we realized we didn't need to open our Bibles to read these passages because by working together we could quote them.  This led us to a discussion of the Jews in concentration camps who reportedly compiled Scriptures they had hidden in their minds and hearts when they had no access to written Scriptures, and then we segued to a discussion of the importance of continuing to memorize Scripture ourselves as we don't know what the future holds in this increasingly anti-Christian world we live in.

Home educating our children is frequently a scary journey, fraught with uncertainty and insecurity about adequately preparing our children.  But in moments like these, I feel the Lord is giving me hope and encouragement not to grow weary as He gives me a peek at the fruit He is growing.

Regardless of whatever else did or did not get accomplished this week (or cleaning up peed pants, monitoring disagreements, compelling children to clean up messes, getting frustrated with a child who simply cannot pronounce the 'r' sound, etc), this moment made the week a success to me.

Tyrell, Back to School

I realize that at age 3 Tyrell isn't really "back to school", but I've done posts on each of the other kids, so I thought he needed one as well. 

For this little boy, learning is constantly in session.  All of my kids have pestered me with the ubiquitous "why", but I'm pretty sure he has questioned me more than all the other kids did combined!  He is curious about every single thing, from the names of every person we meet to the details of pictures in a book to what we're going to have for supper to what we're doing tomorrow to who made each dish on the table to the correct terminology for farming implements to. . .well, you get the idea.  We get such a kick out of him and he is always good for a smile, especially when he turns those sparkling, mischievous eyes on you.

He has had a busy summer running around with friends, playing outside, helping mommy and daddy work in the garden, and swimming.  He has no fear in the pool (which is a little bit scary to mama!) and loves to jump off the ladder into the water then emerge with his face soaking wet, droplets of water hanging from his eyelashes, and grinning from ear to ear. 

The one thing he does NOT like about swimming is when the water is a little too cool, or if there is a breeze that makes him cold in his wet clothes.  It's at these times that he gets out of the pool to lie on the hot sidewalk to warm up.  What a funny boy!

As a preschooler, he is fascinated with cutting and gluing, reading books, and getting into whatever anyone else is doing.   He is markedly better at getting things out than he is at putting things away, and he prefers to play with others rather than by himself.  At the same time, when he plays with others, I constantly have to monitor the situation to teach him not to take things away and for everyone to use their kind words rather than screaming at one another or hitting.  His primary "curriculum" for this year will be reading character books with mommy and learning Bible verses and Bible stories with daddy.

Other than that, his work is his play--the world is his classroom.  I'm sure it will be a fun but busy year because he is a fun but busy boy!