Every homeschool parent wishes for self-confidence. There is always the time when someone challenges you or your child in public: “How are you learning math?” Or there is the time your child is unhappy and you worry it’s because of your choices. And there are those times when you realize your child hasn’t learned something that you always expected they would know by now. (Confession: Just yesterday I discovered that my ten-year-old son can’t spell his last name.) Read more
This is a guest post from Sarah Faulkner. She is a homeschooling mom in Washington state. She has five kids, ages 13, 11, 9, 5, and 2.
Yesterday my son came into the house, crying. He had been swinging from the tree fort when he fell on his arm. I didn’t think it was broken since he could move his arm. I have had many kids with broken body parts, and he didn’t fit the bill: no swelling, no bruising, no disfigurement. Read more
This is a guest post from Sarah Faulkner. She is a homeschooling mom in Washington state. She has five kids, ages 13, 11, 9, 5, and 2.
When my mother had me, she became the first generation in our family to stop passing abuse on to her kid. And I am the second generation that’s stopped, and by the time my kids have kids, the effects of abuse will not exist. Read more
The name of the course is, Be Your Real Self Without Feeling Frustrated. It includes four days of on-demand video sessions and email-based course materials. Sign up now.
My driver, Carla, is an INFJ. I probably spend more time with her than I do with anyone else, so I focused really hard on being an expert on her type because the best way to get along with someone – an adult or a child – is to understand their type.
INFJs are complicated. They are creative and giving but it takes them awhile to trust someone enough to show themselves. Also, most of an INFJs life happens inside their head, so you have to have patience to let them process that way.
A great example of this is when Carla took care of my garden for a month when I was traveling. She’s an expert at peonies, but she didn’t tell me until later. After she had made the peony bed phenomenal and pointed out that I bought three rare peonies and didn’t even know it. She said she didn’t tell me at first because I wouldn’t have cared. And you know what? She’s right.
That’s another thing: INFJs are always right about people.
I know a lot about INFJs, but I love learning more, so I did some random googling and I read something a teacher said to an INFJ first-grader: “People have been trying to figure out the meaning of life for centuries, so you are not going to figure it out right now. Give yourself a break. Have some fun. You can think about the meaning of life when you’re older.”
The problem with that is thinking of the meaning of life IS fun for the INFJ. And also, they always function older than their years, so they don’t need to “wait til they’re older.”
It feels good to understand something like that. To put one more piece in the puzzle. But then I thought, I want to know more about my own kids. Every little thing I learn about my own kids’ personality type makes me a better parent. So I got sidetracked and googled ESFP. That son’s type is very hard for me.
But more on his type later. (Like when I do a course about why ESFPs get diagnosed with ADD when they just need to be in a dance class.)
My point here is that it is absolutely imperative that parents and spouses understand the personality types in their families. I’m convinced that marriages would stay together if people understood type, because knowing someone’s type makes you less likely to expect something of them they cannot deliver on. And knowing your own type makes you more likely to understand why your spouse can’t be as great at doing what matters to you as you are.
Parenting should be an exercise in being an expert on your kid’s type. It’s like parenting blind vs taking off the blindfold. That’s how dramatic it is to be an expert on type. So, this course is for INFJ types. And other courses are coming. And meanwhile, do a google search. Learning just one more thing about my sons makes me happy.
And, if you’re not sure about your child’s type, you can email me and I’ll help you figure it out. Meanwhile, here’s a link to the INFJ course.
This course includes four days of on-demand video sessions and email-based course materials. The cost is $195. Sign up now.
I always marvel at how much easier homeschooling is than sending my kids to school. For example, the only discipline problems I have are about manners and the boys fighting with each other, since they are in charge of what they do all day. Also, I control our schedule, and I don’t do anything I don’t want to do (like, stupid worksheets that a teacher sent home) so I am free to do what I want with my days as well. Read more
This is a guest post from Kristin Hayles. I met her here, on this blog, and our sons started playing Minecraft together. Kristin and her son came to our house to visit, and I learned so much hearing her talk about her homeschooling decisions that I asked her to write a post. Here it is.
I decided to homeschool my son after third grade when my third child was born, using the excuse of maternity leave to start this new chapter in our life. I had grand plans of doing projects with my son, taking him places, following his interests. I had a math curriculum picked out, a history book purchased, and classes at the science museum scheduled—my head was overflowing with ideas for this poor child. But what I hadn’t realized was the same thing that made him hate school is the same thing that made him hate all my scheduled activities I had planned. Read more
Recently someone sent me this question:
From your research, what makes ENFP mothers happy? What do happy ENFP mothers do? Do they have a part-time job and a messy house? How do they reconcile the need for outside stimulation to fuel their intuition with the need to attend to boring but necessary daily chores? Read more
This is a guest post from Sarah Faulkner. She is a homeschooling mom in Washington state. She has five kids, ages 13, 11, 9, 5, and 2.
I am still feeling rung out from my decision to put my kids into Homelink. It has been such a long week, I feel like a piece of paper that has been wadded up and thrown in a garbage bin. So, I thought I would pick myself up and go visit a friend.
Read more
This is a guest post from Sarah Faulkner. She is a homeschooling mom in Washington state. She has five kids, ages 13, 11, 9, 5, and 2.
Everything is so hard right now. I am tired—I can barely keep my eyes open to feed the kids, and all I can think is how the orthodontist told me the preteens are not brushing their teeth often enough. I am so stinking tired I can’t even manage to tell them to keep their teeth clean. Read more
This is a guest post from Satya Khan. She is one of my favorite writers. She writes memoir in the form of a newsletter. You can subscribe to her emails at Unfolded Note.
I still sleep at the foot of the bed. Each night as their bodies grow quiet, my children reach their limbs over mine, pinning me down in their quest for comfort. When I am here, they can never have enough. Inch by inch as they grow heavier, I slither down toward open space like a weed.
When we are home together — and we’re home together a lot — I don’t get down on the floor like a good parent would. I mostly try to hide in an empty room until they find me, which doesn’t take long. I exist best in silence and stillness, but my son operates on a steady diet of chatter. And his will is stronger than mine.
So I enroll him in kindergarden for the fall, at a school that is barely a school at all. It’s their first year as a charter, and they don’t have a playground, a library, or a nurse. What they have is a giant forest, with a creek running through. And there’s a wooden platform, which is too tall for my son to climb. At the open house, he spends the whole time trying to figure it out. He directs his will toward the challenge, which for once, does not involve me. He decides he likes this school. And I do, too.