Juggle Homeschooling and Small Children with This One Business Strategy

Superman could not have conquered all that a woman with young children has to overcome in a day.

So why do we set superwoman expectations for ourselves?

If you have a child under the age of two, and you're reading this, take it from someone who's been there. My exact thoughts after my first month of being a new mother were, "This is a short cut to insanity!"

You will never be able to accomplish as much as you did before you had your baby, and sometimes you may even find it difficult to take a shower or brush your teeth.

Unless you learn how to come to terms with and manage this situation, you’re in for a lot of frustration and resentment ahead.

There's a simple reason for your new lack of productivity, too: you are no longer a free agent. You are now a servant to your baby, and servants are too busy serving to think about anything else.

If you look at it from this perspective, instead of feeling frustrated and disappointed with yourself for not getting more done, it becomes easier because you realize it's temporary. Freedom will come again, but it will take a couple of years.

Freedom Lies Ahead

As your baby moves past the two-year mark and is capable of becoming more independent, your job is to make sure he does become independent. You train him to do more for himself, while you do less for him, and you slowly gain your freedom back.

Now, if you're a homeschooling mother, this servant problem, as temporary as it may be, is still a problem. You not only have to keep your older children clothed, fed, and exercised, but you also need to educate them.

There's no maternity leave, and there's no sabbatical when you’re a homeschooling mother.

What do you do? You can't get organized enough to get dinner on the table at a reasonable hour, so how are you going to teach your children?

There is a little hope, so don’t despair yet. Things will still be chaotic for a while, but the chaos should subside to a more tolerable level. 

There's a strategy I use in business that works in the home, too, because, after all, running a home well requires good management skills. If you implement my strategy, you’ll keep overwhelm at bay most of the time.

The Plan

Yes, the Plan. A realistic plan, not a superwoman plan. Get a plan in place that's based on what you can actually do, not on what superwoman can do. Your first step is to get realistic about what this is. 

Realism #1

1. Get some paper and a pen and make a list of every single thing you expect to do in any given day and week. 

2. Rate your list according to what has to be done, what should be done, and what can wait six months. To rate your list, put an A, B, or C by each item on your list.

3. Rewrite your list according to your new categories. 

4. Take a new sheet of paper and make a list of only the A items. These are the items you must and can realistically perform in any given day.

Realism #2

1. Take your A list items and one by one, write down the tasks you need to complete before you can do each A list item.  For example, if you need to homeschool by 9:00 a.m. then you need to get your children up, dressed, and fed first.

2. For each task on your list, work backward to determine the steps that you need to take to reach your goal, so you can determine the amount of time it'll take to complete each task.

3. Schedule the "A" list items into your daily planner 

(A planner is your therapist when you have too much to do. It will help you remain sane.)

What About Missed Deadlines?

Will you be able to do your tasks on schedule? Not always, you’ll miss many deadlines which is okay because it isn't the point. The point is to know what needs to be done and approximate how long each task will take so you can be ready to homeschool at or around 9:00 a.m. 

Clearing the Obstacles to Your Success

Another thing that's important to the success of your plan is to understand the obstacles that may be draining your time and energy.

Is there anything in your day that takes more time than what's necessary? Once you've determined that there is, then you want to rid yourself of the obstacle. 

A typical obstacle is the Picky Eater syndrome. Somehow, being a picky eater has become the norm, but it shouldn't be. A child should eat what he's served, no whining about it.

If you are raising your children to be picky eaters, you are going to spend a lot of unnecessary time in the kitchen.

Unless there are diagnosable food allergies, children should be taught to eat what's served to them. A "family" meal is a meal that's everyone shares. When everyone has a special meal prepared for them, it's no longer a family meal. 

You can learn more about the Picky Eater syndrome, but for now, if this is a habit you've adopted, then break it. You will save a lot of time for yourself every single morning by as much as one hour.  

And time is more precious than gold when you have young children.

You will feel less frazzled, and your children will behave better because they now know what you expect of them, at least at breakfast time. 

Don't worry. Your child will not starve if he skips a meal, but he will become spoiled and unappreciative if you indulge him with special meals.

Once you've tackled the obstacles that are slowing you down, acknowledge your success, and recognize that it can get easier.

One by one, go through the same steps listed above with each item on your list until you can remove all obstacles and get your "A" items successfully handled in a day with an hour or two in the evening to relax, baby's needs permitting.

Your “B” Items

Once you've got your "A" items handled, you can then tackle your "B" items. By now, though, you may have realized that your "B" items need to go to the "C" list because you only have so much time and energy in a day.

A warning though: you don't want more than three items on your "A" list in any given day, or you'll feel overwhelmed, and this is what we're trying to conquer. Keep your list short and realistic, always. 

Revisit your plan every few months. As your baby gets older, life will become less hectic. Once he hits the age of two, you can start slowly transitioning him into a relatively independent existence. By the time your youngest is six, you should be sailing along.

If you use this strategy to get a little more organized and a little less overwhelmed, you'll be able to get more homeschooling done. There are other strategies you can implement, but this is one that will undoubtedly help.

It's crucial to your family's well-being that you do your best to keep your stress levels under control because if you don't, you will always feel frustrated and exhausted, and you'll frequently grow short with those you love most. 

We've all been there, and it doesn't feel good. 

“Better do a little well, than a great deal badly. ”

— Socrates

How to Raise a More Intelligent Child and an Excellent Reader, free guide and book list with over 80+ carefully chosen titles.

Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy to learn how to give your child an elite education at home.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 17 years experience working in children’s education. She has two successfully homeschooled children in college.

10 Books Every Concerned Parent Should Read

The world is a little topsy-turvy right now especially when it comes to raising and educating our children.

The following books were carefully chosen as a guide to help you navigate some of the issues you will face as a parent living in the West.

1. Hold On to Your Kids by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate, M.D.

In trying to understand why children no longer revere their parents in the same way that my parent's generation revered their parents, I turned to Neufeld and Mate's book, Hold On to Your Kids.

Part of the answer lies within the pages of this book and will help you understand why peer pressure is so real, and how you can lose your children to peer pressure. It also contains some suggestions for how to protect the bond between you and your children. 

While their solutions are somewhat naive, if I may be so bold as to say that, the authors delineate a very real situation that every parent should understand.

2. Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy Sayers

This essay is Dorothy Sayer's famous critique of modern education using her great wit and brilliant insight. It's amusing as well as informative.

To raise the standard for your child's education, you need first to understand what level of academic work he's capable of doing. There's no better way to do this than to ignore the standards of modern education, and, instead, look at what school children used to learn. 

3. The Disappearance of Childhood by Neil Postman

Neil Postman was a perceptive social critic who argued that childhood was disappearing. The reason for the disappearance was the blurred lines that technology created by exposing children to the adult world too soon.

With the loss of childhood also came the loss of adulthood, which continues to present a significant problem for our society's ability to remain civil. 

4. Gwynne's Latin by N. M. Gwynne - The Introduction

Mr. Gwynne is an expert on the subject of the Latin language. He tells stories of having studied Latin for 90 minutes a day, five days a week as a schoolboy.

By the time I (and later, you) went to school, they had eliminated Latin from the curriculum. To our detriment, too, because without the study of Latin, you can never fully understand or appreciate the English language. 

People who learn Latin are better educated. It's a simple fact. The reason you should read his introduction to his Latin book is that he will give you an irrefutable argument for why you should have your children learn Latin. You can study it, too, as I do–it's never too late.

5. The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto

Gatto's opus work tells the story of how a sub-standard modern education came to be, and why you must understand it's origins so you can make informed decisions for your children when it comes to deciding how you want to educate them. 

I prefer Gatto's original work over the newly revised work of the same title. Buy a copy of the older book, if you can. His newer version was written during his last years, and intended as a three-volume set, but, sadly, he never finished it. 

6. The Platonic Tradition by Peter Kreeft

You may be wondering why I included this title? It's vital to Western civilization that we understand the ideas upon which our civilization was built so that we can protect them when they're under threat of being undermined as they are today.

We also need to pass this understanding onto our children, so they are not easily swayed by the high falutin rhetoric that robs us of our civil liberties under the guise of equality. Kreeft's book will correct the errors in understanding that brought us to where we are today.

7. Glow Kids by Nicholas Kardaras, Ph.D.

A ground-breaking book that exposes the technology industry for what it is, and the harm it's inflicting on our children during their most vulnerable years. Protect your child by reading this book and passing it on to your friends to read. We need a no-tech revolution, at least no tech in the lives of children. 

8. How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren

The title seems like an oxymoron, but it's not. The authors acknowledge our ability to read but also our failure to read with deep understanding. We were never taught the skill of reading beyond a rudimentary level, and this is the gap How to Read a Book attempts to fill. 

They will show you how to tackle a book in a way that will make it your own. Especially if you plan on homeschooling, you want to learn this skill so you can teach it to your children when they get older. 

9. Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto

Dumbing Us Down was Gatto's landmark book when he first entered the world of non-schooling education. He writes an easy-to-read book about the problems with modern education and why you should consider alternatives to a "school-like" training for your child.

Whether you do or not, you should understand the system so you can help your child navigate it if you decide to put him or her into school.

10. The Leipzig Connection by Paolo Lionni

How modern psychology removed the soul from the study of psychology and then coupled that soul-less subject with the department of modern education and the subsequent impact it has had on children's education. An important read!

Some of these books are inexpensive, some are more expensive, but they are all worth reading.

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Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy to learn how to give your child an elite education at home.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 17 years experience working in children’s education. She has two successfully homeschooled children in college.

What Do Banana and Honey Sandwiches Have to Do with Literacy?

Neil Postman made an argument in 1982 that childhood was disappearing because multi-media erased the boundary between what adults knew and what children knew.

In the same vein, he warned us, so is adulthood disappearing.

A pathetic statistic is that adult television shows cater to the mentality of a twelve-year-old child, according to Postman, who wrote the prescient book, The Disappearance of Childhood.

Isn’t that mortifying?!

The literate world of adults was the boundary that separated children from adults. With everyone plugged into the same immature television shows, and few people reading today, that boundary is disappearing.

Childhood / adulthood aren’t the only things at risk of becoming obsolete. We call ourselves a literate society, but are we, really?

When we declared ourselves a literate country, there was no television and, if you could read, you read at more sophisticated levels because it was pre-dumbed-down America.

This is no longer true. Writers who write for the average public intentionally use less vocabulary and shorter sentences to meet the demands of a populace of poor readers.

Yet, if we understand the mechanics of reading and writing at a basic level, we’re classified as literate even if we can’t do either well.

Someone who can barely run around the block, however, can hardly be called a runner. Someone who can barely hit the ball over the net can hardly be called a tennis player, someone who knows how to make a hotdog can hardly be called a cook.

We aren’t labeled a runner, a tennis player, or a cook until we can perform at an intermediate level, at least. Until then, we’re learning how to do said skill.

Out of curiosity, I looked up UNESCO's definition of literacy. Not surprisingly, the definition changed around the time institutionalized schooling took root.

UNESCO used to define literacy as an ability to read and write (presumably well) to the following mumbo jumbo:

Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society (UNESCO, 2004; 2017).

“You can teach children to hate reading, to do it poorly, and to hate themselves for not measuring up to the false premises of institutional reading practices–premises which provide the foundation of our multi-billion dollar reading industry.”

— John Taylor Gatto - The Exhausted School

If we redefine literacy to include only those people who were proficient readers, and by proficient reader I mean someone who could read, discuss and write about a piece of work such as The Federalists Papers or The Iliad, we'd have to conclude that we're mostly an illiterate society.

Before you decide my suggestion is literacy ad absurdum, consider this: 

Our standards for literacy are so low that if an adult can read a simple newspaper article and underline what the swimmer ate, we classify him as literate.

Lest you think I'm being facetious, here's a question, taken from a newspaper article, that was on the National Adult Literacy Test: 

Q. Underline the sentence that tells what Ms. Chanin ate during the swim.

A. A spokesman for the swimmer, Roy Brunett, said Chanin had kept up her strength with "banana and honey sandwiches, hot chocolate, lots of water and granola bars."

As long as someone can make out the spelling of banana, which is not difficult to do, he can figure out that this is the correct sentence to underline.

But is this the right approach? Shouldn’t we raise the standards, so we educate our children to become adults who can tackle difficult reading material?

You probably have school-age children whose education you’re concerned about. These are the years when you want to put a lot of effort into training your children's minds.

You can train them to run intellectual circles around the rest of us, or you can train them to underline what a swimmer ate; the choice is yours.

Let me offer you a hand by sharing a few strategies you can use to keep the door of knowledge open for your children:

Make It Easy

With any bad habit we try to break, the first step is to get rid of the obstacles keeping us from adopting the new habit. In this case, we should start with our screens.

A movie on the weekends for older children is plenty, if they ask. Other than that, keep the screens tucked away someplace. 

To take this step requires an understanding that if you want more for your child, if you want him to rise above the less-than-mediocre standards today, then you will need to make some sacrifices. 

Let me ask you a question: do you have a television in your living room so you can watch the news every evening?

For many of us, keeping screens hidden is a burden because they're so much a part of our lives now. We depend upon them for many things such as answers to quick questions, the latest news, and frying our brains.

Speaking of frying our brains, the other day I went to a piano recital where my son was performing. The recitals are usually in a church, and so there's an unspoken understanding that it isn't a place for chitchat or smartphones. But this last recital was in the Steinway piano store.

We got there just before it started, so we had no choice but to sit in the back. It turned out that the back of the room was where all the parenting smartphone addicts sat. My God, the number of mothers glued to their phones was astounding.

The only time they looked up was when their own child performed. 

They have no idea what they missed.

Anyhow books (nor piano recitals) can successfully compete with screen time. It's a known fact which anyone can easily test without leaving home. 

Find Inspiring Friends

Find like-minded families to raise your children with; people who will support your values and your high standards rather than undermine them. (And be that family for someone else.)

Company matters.

If you can't find like-minded families, start talking about your concerns until someone will listen, but don't give up. Someone will eventually listen and be brave enough to do what Neil Postman advises us to do, go against the culture.

“There are parents who are committed to doing all of these things [no screens], who are in effect defying the directives of their cultures. Such parents are not only helping their children to have a childhood but are, at the same time, creating a sort of intellectual elite. ”

— Neil Postman

If our culture is producing mediocrity, then we can't do what everyone else is doing. We have to muster up the courage to go against the grain of society.

To become a truly rebellious spirit, line your walls with good books and start reading everyday to your children. If you aren't a reader yourself, have faith that you can become one.

Many people who weren’t formerly good readers chose to become good readers in adulthood, but it takes determination and perseverance. 

You can do it. I know people who have.

Everything is in a state of flux; you are either flexing the noodle between your ears and making it stronger, or you aren't. 

Create a culture of wonder and learning in your home. Have intelligent discussions with your children about the great ideas, history, science, literature, philosophy, and so forth.

Raising and educating children today takes a lot of work; it always did. We're used to delegating the task to the government with the consequence of getting a child who is not all that he or she could be. 

Mediocre is not the same as excellent or, for that matter, even very good.

The brain is a phenomenal organ, and it grows with the right kind of stimulation. It houses the mind like the body houses the soul.

Let it be a great mind.

How to Raise a More Intelligent Child and an Excellent Reader, free guide and book list with over 80+ carefully chosen titles.

Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy to learn how to give your child an elite education at home.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 17 years experience working in children’s education. She has two successfully homeschooled children in college.

Raise a Smarter Kid with This Simple Practice

The Practice

A strong memory is the foundation of high intelligence. Having young children to memorize rhymes and poetry is an excellent way to develop their memories and their intellects.

Once they are in the formal years of instruction, you can have them memorize wise maxims and worthy passages from different books too. 

Children who are raised with the habit of doing memory work will become accustomed to it, and not shy away from it when they're older. Young children particularly love to memorize anything, so this is the prime time to do memory work with them.

“Let us not then lose even the earliest period of life, and so much the less, as the elements of learning depend on the memory alone, which not only exists in children, but is at that time of life even most tenacious.”

— Marcus Fabius Quintilianus

They won't see it as a difficult task or an impossible task like children do today, but they'll tackle it with determination, and they'll succeed which will have the added effect of building their confidence.

A Declining Skill

A useful skill that memorization teaches us is the ability to focus. In an age of constant distraction, focusing on anything for more than a second is under siege. 

There is no quicker way to lay waste to our memories than by distraction. If we aren't present in our actions and our thoughts, we shall fail to store them in our minds. This is true for our children too.

As mothers, we tend to set a bad example for our children on this point. It happens when we have young children demanding our attention while we're trying to focus on something else.

We get pulled into too many directions, which is why you often hear women complain of a declining memory after they have children. 

(Protecting your memory is another good reason to raise your children to figure things out for themselves, and thereby reduce the number of times you're interrupted during the day.)

We want to protect our children from having weak memories by starting them with memory work even before they begin grade school. Around age four would be a good time to start.

A Happy Spirit

Keep it light and fun though–you never want to put undue pressure on a child’s budding heart.

Read rhymes over and over again, and your children will memorize them without effort. Read age-appropriate poetry to your children and have them learn short stanzas by heart.

When you go to the grocery store, introduce a memory game. Have your children memorize the shopping list. You can learn it, too, and then see who remembers most of the items on the list. 

Children love this game especially since they usually win!

Learn by Heart

Memory work, or learning by heart, as it was once called, was a vital component of the Ancient Greek and Roman education. The Greeks and Romans had sophisticated memory tools to facilitate the learning by heart of epic poems.

For example, every school child in Ancient Greece would learn The Iliad and The Odyssey by heart. 

When children learn things by heart, it also helps to form their characters and their world views, which is precisely why the Greeks had their children learn epic poems about their heroes by heart.

“Learning by heart’, which speaks to the soul, has been replaced by ‘rote-learning’ and ‘learning by rote’, which are disparaging and off-putting terms that have the effect of making memorizing into a matter of using the brain as a piece of machinery.”

— Mr. Gwynne

Today, we don't have children learn anything by heart in school anymore. Not only this, but we use the term “rote” memorization and speak condescendingly of it.

Did you learn anything by heart? I never did. 

The Memory Disadvantage

Yet, the memory is a crucial component of our intelligence. People who have weaker memories are at an intellectual disadvantage over those who have strong memories.

Why would we raise our children to be at a disadvantage when they're natural inclination is to develop their memories? 

It's like preventing a child from learning to walk. Why would we physically handicap them? We wouldn’t, nor should we handicap them intellectually by failing to train their memories.

It's our job as parents and teachers to provide our children with memory work, yet, we overlook this vital element to education because "rote" memorizing is not an effective way to teach.

Rote memory work, as Mr. Gwynne points out, is not the proper term anyway. Learning by heart is a much more humane way to look at an easy method of training your child's mind to do great things. 

In our misguided efforts to spare our children the boredom of memory work, are we not dumbing them down?

Have you got your free copy of How to Raise a More Intelligent Child and an Excellent Reader? It comes with an 80+ book list of carefully chosen books to support your child’s intellectual development.

Join Elizabeth’s signature parenting course: Raise Your Child Well to live a life he loves.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 17 years experience working in children’s education.

A Simple Home Adjustment to Nurture Lifelong Sibling Friendships

We have happiness down to a science now: a fulfilling marriage, a tight-knit family, supportive friends, and meaningful work. 

(A tall order, possibly?) 

There is one element, though, that's more vital than the others; it's the element of a loving family. 

You may not have the most dynamic marriage in the world, you may not have the most fulfilling work, you may not even have a lot of supportive friends, but if you've got a solid family, you have a haven of people you love and who love you and who's company brings you comfort.

“The strength of family isn’t determined by the number of members, but rather by the amount of love given and received.”

— Anonymous

And that’s a lot. 

But what makes for a loving family? Many things do but the vital component we tend to overlook fostering is closeness. The siblings in solid families tend to be close to one another.

One of the ways you can foster closeness amongst siblings is by having them share a bedroom. 

When did this idea that every child needed a separate room creep into our society? We used to build smaller homes and larger yards and have more closely-knit families.

The children shared bedrooms, and they had a lot of space outside for play and exploration.

Now we build bigger homes with miniature yards, and each child is tucked away into his private bedroom. 

6 Advantages to Shared Bedrooms

Sharing a bedroom with a sibling provides a child with many advantages including a closeness you won't get living down the hall from one another. 

1) Sharing a bedroom teaches a child to be considerate. 

Unless he wants to battle constantly with his sibling, a child quickly learns to keep his things where they belong and to respect another persons' space. 

2) Sharing a bedroom fosters the habit of sharing

Children share bedrooms, so sharing is a daily event in their lives. They learn to share a small space, and they figure out how they have to behave to get along with one another in this little space. 

After all, someday they will grow up and either be a co-worker, a roommate, or a spouse, all of which require learning to share close-quarters peacefully.

3) Night time chats build closeness

“We didn’t realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun. ”

— Winnie the Pooh

Kids will stay up at night chatting after the lights are out.

After hours conversations are crucial bonding time when kids discuss things that happened during the day, or maybe they talk about things they'll do tomorrow, or they confidentially share their dreams for the future. 

If you're worried that your children won't get enough sleep, and if you know they are going to chat after hours (while pretending you are unawares), you might consider putting them to bed a half an hour earlier rather than battle with them to be quiet at night. 

4) Negotiating the problems

Sometimes they even fight in their bedroom, and they learn how to resolve their squabbles without parental intervention. Unsupervised disagreements teach them the art of negotiation, which is a vital skill to acquire. Life is a series of negotiations. 

5) Developing independent spirits

 Bedroom time is their private time away from the supervision of the adults where siblings can discuss and do anything they want, within reason. It fosters a sense of independence which is important for a life well lived.

6) The Boogey Man

Some children feel uncomfortable at night and may even wake up in the middle of the night, but having a sibling in the room quiets this discomfort and makes them feel safe.

It's a funny phenomenon that having someone else in the room makes us feel safe even if the person is too young or too old to protect us. It's not any different for a child. 

A Family of Best Friends

Recently, I went to the wedding of a young woman I've known since she was a child. Each of her sisters spoke at her wedding. They each spoke about different things, but there was a common theme.

The theme was one of friendship. Each of the girls referred to her sisters as her "best" friends. 

“Friends come and go, but brothers (sisters) are forever.”

— Anonymous

They were from a low-income family who could only afford a two-bedroom apartment. One room was for the parents, and the other room was for the three girls. 

The girls spoke about how they stayed up after the lights went out chatting about everything from what they would wear the next day to who they would marry when they grew up.

Would they have been as close if they'd grown up in a 4000 Sq ft house, and each girl had a separate bedroom?

I would bet my life that they would not. 

With the breakdown of family bonds today, you want to do everything you can to ensure your children are close friends. Having them share a bedroom is one way to accomplish this. 

People want bigger and bigger houses today, but smaller homes are where the stronger bonds are built. 

Have you got your free copy of How to Raise a More Intelligent Child and an Excellent Reader? It comes with an 80+ book list of carefully chosen books to support your child’s intellectual development.

Join Elizabeth’s signature parenting course: Raise Your Child Well to live a life he loves.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 17 years experience working in children’s education.

Teach Your Children to Cook!

In each home, around in the world, there is nothing more comforting than the smell of delightful aromas coming from the kitchen.

Yet, so many girls and boys are coming of age and do not know how to cook. What's more, young women seem to see it as a sign of their liberation. 

Being dependent upon other people for food is not a sign of liberation; it's a sign that you don't know how to do something as fundamental as providing a home-cooked meal for yourself, nor for anyone else. 

“If you are a chef, no matter how good a chef you are, it’s not good cooking for yourself; the joy is in cooking for others - it’s the same with music.”

— will.i.am

The irony is that children love to cook. Why are they coming-of-age bereft of this skill? Let's not dwell on the reasons here, but let's work quickly to fix the problem.

7 Easy Steps to Teach Your Child how to Cook

Step 1) Correct the Problem

It begins with you. If you're a mother who is not providing nourishing meals for her family, you must first learn to correct this.

(The variables of family are too numerous today to keep up with, hence, we'll take the less-complicated version: mom cooks and dad brings home the bread.)

YouTube is full of chefs dying to teach you how to cook. By studying two or three of their recipes, you will completely change the environment in your home and be cooking 5-star meals before you know it. 

Now that your children have a role model to emulate, you can begin to teach little John and little Mary how to cook a meal or two.

Step 2) First Teach Them Only What Their Hands Can Do

In the beginning, you'll have them do things like shell peas and tear up lettuce for the salad. Before they are old enough to be responsible with a knife, you'll have them do any task that doesn't involve sharp items.

Step 3) Peeling Progression

Around the age of six, you can show them how to peel potatoes, carrots, cucumbers, and anything else you can think of. Let the peeling of anything become their domain. 

By the way, these are not chores. Helping to prepare the food should be seen as fun time in the kitchen with mom (which means that you should NEVER complain about having to make dinner).

Step 4) Salad’s On

By the age of seven or eight, if not sooner, they should be able to prepare a salad on their own. Give your children the task of making the salad once or twice a week, or more often if you prefer. 

Step 5) Carbs Galore

Next come the preparation and cooking of the rice and potatoes. This next step involves the stovetop, so they have to be old enough to handle a flame. If you have a gas top, the pressing concern here is that they are responsible and focused enough to remember to turn the flame all the way off. 

If not, you should supervise them until they are. In the meantime, show your children how to rinse the rice. Next, show them how to measure the water, bring the rice to a boil, cover and let simmer for 20 minutes. There are tricks to making a perfect bowl of rice, so if you know these tricks (I don't), then be sure to include them. 

Next, they can learn to make mashed potatoes. They peel, wash, and boil the potatoes. Drain the potatoes (you may have to help here, because the pan may be too heavy for them), add butter and milk and mash. If you don't like mashing potatoes, the good news is that children love it. You will never have to mash potatoes again.

Step 6) The Big Fish

Next, show them how to prepare the main dish. I recommend beginning with fish, which is less complicated to prepare. Show John and Jane how to wash the fish, put it in a baking dish, make the sauce, pour it over the fish, and cook it. 

Step 7) Early Graduation

Once they complete all three of these steps successfully, you are now ready to grant your children the privilege of cooking an entire meal. They should be around nine or ten by this time (could be sooner!).

You now get to sit back, enjoy a cup of tea and some conversation with your spouse, and wait for what will soon be a delicious meal.

Moving forward, let your children take over the kitchen at least one night during the week to learn how to master the art of cooking and to give yourself a break. 

“A chef’s palate is born out of his childhood, and one thing all chefs have in common is a mother who can cook.”

— Marco Pierre White

By the time your children are 11 and 13, they should be able to handle an entire Thanksgiving dinner for ten people all by themselves. 

I only know this because when my children were these ages, I was recovering from the flu and not up to cooking our annual Thanksgiving dinner. 

I was lying in bed the day before Thanksgiving, and, while not contagious anymore, I was still exhausted. My intention was to call my guests that morning and let them know that I  wouldn't be able to host the Thanksgiving dinner that year.

My daughter came in quietly and said in a low voice, Mom, do you think I could make the Thanksgiving dinner, so we don't have to cancel our party?"

"Do you think you can handle it?" I ask, quite frankly, incredulously. 

"Yes," I'm sure I can."

"Then I think it's a fabulous idea!"

“Always remember: If you’re alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who’s going to know?”

— Julia Child

Truthfully, and I'm not the kind of mother who exaggerates her children's accomplishments, but it was one of the best Thanksgiving dinners ever. 

The other point to mention is that, at their ages, it would never have occurred to me that they could handle a meal of this magnitude. 

Homeschooled kids, I have found, are like this. Nothing is ever too big to tackle. By the time they reach the teens, if homeschooled well, they will know how to teach themselves just about anything one can learn, within reason. 

One warning, though: while your children are capable of cooking a full meal long before they will be ready to move out, you don't want to give up your place in the kitchen for more than one or two nights a week. 

There will never be anything as comforting as "mom" in the kitchen, whipping up a fabulous meal. No one can fill the shoes of your child's mother, ever. 

They're your shoes to walk in; enjoy the journey.

Don’t miss your copy of:  Top Ten YouTube Cooking Channels. With the download, you’ll also get a link to a great film about a famous chef that’s guaranteed to inspire you.

Join Elizabeth’s signature parenting course: Raise Your Child Well to live a life he loves.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 17 years experience working in children’s education.

I Want to Sing Like the Birds

Happy New Year!

I love the New Year because it’s a time of hope and renewal. It’s also a perfect time to take stock of how we’re showing up in our families and make adjustments where necessary.

We only get one chance to build a functional family. We want to do the best job we can do, so our hard work and efforts bring us joy and satisfaction rather than hardship and disappointment.

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here are four aspects of building a functional family that are helpful to reflect on and see where we might need to improve a little.

Domestic Duties

Is your home chaotic? Do you waste time trying to find things that never seem to be where they belong? Are your kids waking up at odd hours and sleeping at odd hours? Do mealtimes consist of scrambling to find something to cook at the last minute?

Are your kids struggling to get your attention because you’re glued to your phone more times than not?

Parenting Duties

Do days go by when you realize you haven’t had time to stop and read to your children? Are your children demanding and bossy? Are they indoors complaining of boredom too often? Are they glued to the tube? Are you struggling to find time to take them out into nature or even to the park?

Marriage Duties

Do you sometimes feel like life revolves around your children, and there’s no time for anything else? Are you and your spouse growing more distant from one another because everything else screams so much louder for your time and attention?

Self-Care

Do you feel overwhelmed, overworked, and under-appreciated?

Does your life feel like you’re on a treadmill, and you find yourself daydreaming of escaping to some faraway place? No matter how hard you try, does it seem like you never manage to find a moment to take a quiet break?

Whether you said yes or no to any of the above, we all have plenty of room for improvement. This is a good time of the year to take stock of the past year,  refocus, and put a plan in place to create more harmony in your family life for 2020. 

Raising children shouldn’t exhaust you and leave you with little time for anything else. If you have children under three, maybe, but as the children get older, your workload should lighten.

You aren’t trying to have a perfect family, but you do want to have some balance in your life when you’re raising children. There is work involved, and sometimes there are struggles too, but the rewards should outweigh the difficulties.

An old friend of mine once said to me, “Life is difficult, but it should be enjoyed.” 

Amidst all of the difficulties in life, all the things that don’t work out the way we thought they would, all the disappointments that come with being human; there is something sublime, something majestic, something divine about being alive that we want to help our children embrace.

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”

— Confucius

Each day brings new wonder and joy, whether we have the presence of mind to notice or not. 

Today is a great day for us to make some New Year’s resolutions that will help us experience more of the beauty in life and less of the overwhelm. Rumi understood this when he said:

“I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.”

— Rumi

It’s a fact that putting New Year’s resolutions down on paper is a useful exercise to help us live lives that are in harmony with the kind of person we want to be and better reflect the kind of life we want to live.

Some people think it’s silly, but just writing your intention down makes you more likely to reach your goals and aspirations. If you have an accountability friend, that spikes your chances even higher. 

The New Year’s resolution tradition now has some research to back it up and silence the naysayers amongst us, which means that, if you haven’t already, you should grab some paper and start writing.

Happy New Year!

Don’t miss our free download, Do Your Parenting Strategies Need Tweaking?

Join Elizabeth’s signature parenting course: Raise Your Child Well to live a life he loves.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 17 years experience working in children’s education.

My Dad Is a B***head

You may be shocked by this title. Truthfully, it shocks me. The good news is that it isn't mine. The bad news is that it's the title of a book published in 2014. A father wrote the book for his son. 

On the book's dedication page, you find it dedicated to said author's adoring family.

B***head. 

I can think of some lessons I'd like to teach young children, but that their father is a b***head is not one of them. 

“Parent’s should treat their children as neither equals nor fools.”

— John Rosemond

THE MORAL

The moral of this father's story is that no matter how rude your child is to you, no matter how disrespectful he is towards you, he loves you. 

That's the moral as far as I could make out. But truthfully, I'm not even sure there was a moral to the story.

So why am I devoting time to this book?

Unlike some parents, you probably have enough sense not to pick up a copy of such a vulgar book to read to your child. However, you may not be exactly sure about what does constitute a good book. 

It's not your fault, either. Our great books for children have been replaced by silly books that give children the wrong ideas or books that don’t have much substance.

WHAT YOU READ DOES MATTER

While it's vitally important to your child's future education that you read to him when he's young, the quality of the material you read is equally important.

Elevate His Mind

Literature should elevate a child's mind, not debase it. He (she) should encounter heroes and heroines that are worthy of emulation. 

The characters should be intelligent, kind-hearted, brave, and well-mannered. Think of Pollyanna, Anne of Green Gables, and Little Lord Fauntleroy. 

Teach Language Skills

Literature should teach children excellent language skills and develop their vocabulary. As an older child, when he comes across words such as philanthropists, humiliation, valiant, nautical, or grave, he'll already be familiar with them. 

Test your ten-year-old now. Is your child familiar with these words? If not, you may want to reevaluate the kind of literature you're exposing him to.

Respect

Furthermore, of utmost importance is the attitude the story’s characters have towards adults and especially towards their parents. They should possess an attitude of reverence, respect, and obedience. 

Any child's book that features ill-mannered, vulgar children as the hero or heroine should not be allowed. 

(A word of caution though: if your children are reading sub-standard literature, then be clever in how you forbid these sorts of books. Better to let the books secretly disappear as you replace them with quality literature than to make an issue of it.) 

THE UNDERLYING CONCERN

The bigger problem with the B***head story is that it father wrote it for his son. I would guess, from reading the book, that his son is spoiled and ill-mannered.

If the father doesn't have enough common sense to realize that he should not have written this book, he cannot possibly understand what's required of him to raise a decent child. 

“To raise respectful children, you must be a good leader.”

— John Rosemond

This is the plight many parents find themselves in today. We want to raise an exemplary child, but we have no idea how to go about it,  so we write books that are a better fit for the garbage can than our children’s ears.

We need to get a handle on what makes a decent person, of what makes a happy person, of what makes a successful person, and then we need to do our best to provide a suitable environment for our child to become this person.

Reading good literature to your child is a prudent place to start. 

It's simply a matter of choosing the right books to read. 

 Are you wondering what kind of books you should read to your children? Get your free list of Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Don’t miss Elizabeth Y. Hanson’s signature course, The Smart Homeschooler Academy: How to Give Your Child a Better Education at Home.

A veteran homeschooler, she now has two successfully-homeschooled children in college.  

Are You Overlooking This Opportunity to Raise Happier Kids?

A child who hasn’t been given clear boundaries, and who hasn’t learned to respect the adults in his life is not a happy child.

Yet, this is the plight too many American children find themselves in today, because parents have lost a sense of what to expect from their children and of what their children are capable of doing.

In short, parents have misunderstood their foremost role as leader to their children.

Let me ask you this: when was the last time you were a guest in someone’s home? Did the children greet you? Did they help serve the food? Did they help clean up?

Chances are that you said no to all three questions, however, this a prime occasion to teach a child some important lessons all of which make for a happier child. But children are no longer taught the lesson of how to greet a newcomer, and they are no longer taught to help serve the guests, nor do they learn to help clean up afterward.

Instead, the children play, and the adults serve.

“The more parents do for a child, the less the child is ultimately capable of doing for himself.”

— John Rosemond

I’m a huge fan of child’s play, but not all the time. There are times when a child needs to learn how to be courteous and to help. There are times when a child needs to learn how to serve others. There are times when a parent needs to step up to the plate and teach their child these things.

Teach your child to serve others, and you’ll raise an adult who is kind, considerate, and helpful. Teach your child to be waited on and you’ll raise a child who is entitled, unappreciative, and ungrateful, not to mention discontent. 

Inviting guests to your home welcomes an excellent occasion to teach your child a few habits that will serve him well in life.

Here are 5 of these opportunities that you may have overlooked, but, hopefully, will never overlook again:

1) Teach your child to stop what he is doing to greet your guests

I don’t know how many times I’ve entered a home in which the parents had utterly failed to teach their child how to greet a guest. I always find it the oddest thing. Why would someone neglect such a fundamental courtesy as teaching his/her child to acknowledge a fellow human being? 

Each person possesses an inherent dignity that deserves paying homage to whether a child feels like it or not. Impart this to your child when he's young, and it'll be a maxim he lives by when he's older.

2) Teach your child to help you prepare for the guests, and start him at a very young age.

If a child can walk, talk, and make articulate demands of you, he is certainly old enough to take part in the preparation of a dinner party. 

For example, give your four-year-old the task of putting the napkins on the table. If he drops one, no problem, it won’t break. If you have to rearrange them all after he’s done, it’ll be worth the trouble.

He’s learning how to help; this is what counts. A seven-year-old can set the table nicely. A ten-year-old can prepare the salad. As a general rule, give each child at least one task to do before the guests arrive.

Give them whatever task you want to give them, but have them do something. It might even be to look after the younger children, after all, what the child does is irrelevant; that he’s helping is not. 

3) When it comes time to serve the meal, let the older children help.

They can help put dishes on the table or actually help serve the food depending upon how formal or informal your dining is. Let them know beforehand what you want each child to do so they know exactly what’s expected of them.

4)  As soon as all the guests have finished eating, teach your older children to help remove their plates from the table.

Place one very small bowl beside each guest as a landing place for when their eyeballs fall out in disbelief. The irony is that there was a time when it was shocking if a child didn’t help; now it’s shocking when he does!

5) Have the older children do the dishes whether they are a family or a guest.

It doesn’t matter (assuming everyone knows each other well and there’s a certain level of familiarity); all of the older children can help wash up. The truth is, they’ll have fun working together. It makes them feel mature and responsible and it helps them become mature and responsible. 

(Disclaimer: this may not be received well if the children of your guests are not used to doing anything. In this case, you might just have your own children do some of the dishes and let them serve as an example to the others.)

6) They can also help you serve dessert and remember to let them indulge too.

After all, they were great helpers!

When it comes time for the guests to leave, your children should come to the door with you and say goodbye to everyone. 

These are good habits you're instilling in your children, so they don’t think twice about not greeting a guest properly or helping you when they’re older. They’re also not stuck in the wretched mentality of “I don’t feel like it!”

“Someone who fails, as a child, to learn to be obedient will forever travel a rough road.”

— John Rosemond

Sometimes we do things because it’s the right thing to do, and not because we feel like it. Being courteous towards and helping others is one of these times. The fact is that doing the right thing vs. what we feel like doing leads to more happiness, not less. 

It’s not an intellectual understanding; it’s a matter of the heart. Whether we understand it or not, we feel better when we do the right thing. Don't  lecture your child on this topic, though, because he won’t get it. 

But you can train him in the right way so he lives it.

 Are you wondering what kind of books you should read to your children? Get your free list of Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Don’t miss Elizabeth Y. Hanson’s signature course, The Smart Homeschooler Academy: How to Give Your Child a Better Education at Home.

A veteran homeschooler, she now has two successfully-homeschooled children in college.  

When We Were Smarter

The educational system of the Finnish people, arguably one of the best, differs from the US system in some interesting ways.

THE DIFFERENCE

One difference is that their teachers don't just get a teaching credential, but they are also well-educated. Finland requires its teachers to have a master's degree even for teaching kindergarten.

In Finland, the teaching profession is also competitive which implies good pay and job satisfaction.

Juxtapose this to the American system where teacher's earn a bachelor's degree, and 44% of new teachers quit within the first five years. From ill-mannered children and notoriously low pay to the "teaching to the test" mentality of the public-school system, is it any surprise?

But it wasn't always this way.

WHEN AN EDUCATION WAS AN EDUCATION

Your 17th-century tutor was educated in Europe and could teach algebra, geometry, trigonometry, surveying, navigation, french, Latin, Greek, rhetoric, English, belles lettres, logic, philosophy, and other subjects.

Do you know anyone who can teach all these subjects today?!

Someone with this breadth of knowledge has to love learning for learning's sake.

Teachers who love knowledge inspire their students to do the same. When you have a teacher who is so well learned, your children have a role model for reaching greater intellectual heighths.

Your children have a vision of what's possible for themselves.

THE TEACHER

Who your child's teacher is matters. I would venture to say that your child's teacher matters the most.

What your well-educated teacher knows is this: given the right environment and the right instruction, your child can become well-educated too.

It's not going to happen in public school, though, unless your child gets super lucky, at least not to the standard of earlier times. I got somewhat lucky, but it wasn't until college which was a little late.

In college, I had a professor who inspired me to know more, who inspired me to stretch my intellect.

His name was Barrett Culmbach. He was a messed-up philosopher who happened to be a brilliant teacher. One thing he knew was that the education we’d been fed had little to do with education.

When you think about your child’s education, base your expectations for it on earlier standards when our standards were still high; our literacy rates were in the 90th percentile during the time of our one-room community schools.

Today, According to a study by the U.S. Department of Education, 32 million adults in the U.S. can’t read. Amongst those who can read, reading for leisure is at an all-time low–under 30 percent and even lower. Very Orwellian.

“Pick up a fifth-grade math or rhetoric textbook from 1850, and you’ll see that the texts were pitched then on what would today be considered college level. ”

— John Taylor Gatto

Assume responsibility for your child's education, don't leave it up to the State. And don’t forget the manners, because the State won’t teach those either!

Mediocre and ill-mannered are the new norm. Other than becoming a subversive teacher like John Taylor Gatto, or starting a community school based on the traditional model, the only way to battle Orwell's 1984 is to homeschool.

THE ACTION

Anyone can homeschool for the first few years; it's so easy if you know what to do. If this seems like too much for you, then just teach your child to read before you put him into the public school system.

Teaching him to read first could be the difference between his making it to college or not.

Many children get a rough start in the system by being taught to read too soon. Being expected to keep up with the group is another problem they may face. Not all children learn at the same pace.

Nor are children today raised on good literature that sustains their interest and stimulates their imaginations and intellects. Your choice of reading material for your child is crucial too.

You are the best teacher for your child's early-reading lessons. You love him the most, and you care most about his success.

Teach him to read like mothers used to do in the days when we were smarter.

 Are you wondering what kind of books you should read to your children? Get your free list of Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Don’t miss Elizabeth Y. Hanson’s signature course, The Smart Homeschooler Academy: How to Give Your Child a Better Education at Home.

A veteran homeschooler, she now has two successfully-homeschooled children in college.  

Increase Your Child's Intelligence by Doing This One Thing

The more your child actively uses his mind when he's young, and the more he continues to use his mind as he matures, the smarter he'll become.

We know that the brain is an ever-changing organ. It can weaken from misuse or neglect, and it can also become stronger from the right kind of use.

You want your children to stay into the habit of using their minds as they enter the school years. One of the ways you can help your child strengthen his mind is by providing him with good literature to read when he's older.

“John Taylor Gatto had his sixth-grade class read and discuss Moby Dick by Herman Melville. ”

Parents say things like, "Well, he only reads comic books, but at least he's reading!"

As John Taylor Gatto once said, "Teach your children to grow up to be readers of more than the daily newspaper."

Comic books are fine for comic relief on occasion. Maybe you're on a road trip or flying cross-country; this might be a time to let your child read a comic book or two or three.

It’s probably prudent not to let comic books work their way into your home though.

Comic books will make his mind lazy because the dialogues are simple and they're full of pictures which help tell the story. When it becomes time to read challenging literature, he won't be able to tackle the vocabulary or follow the longer and more complicated sentence patterns.

He'll complain to you that the book is "boring."

It's not boring; he just hasn't learned to read well. Please do not let him blame the book!

Great books expand the mind and help us to understand the complexities of life and ourselves. If we replaced the department of psychology with a department of Shakespeare, we'd be off to a good start in improving our colleges and universities.

The inner workings of the mind and heart are there in his plays.

Once you get used to the language, Shakespeare is no more difficult to read than authors such as Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.

The ability to read great literature is what you want for your children. You want them to be exposed to the great ideas of Western thought that take us all the way back to Ancient Greece.

John Taylor Gatto was very in support of reading great books. It's where he got the seeds for many of his ideas.

I said there was one thing you need to do to increase your child's intelligence, but as I was writing this, another occurred to me, so there are now two things.

The two things are homeschool your children and expose them to great literature. I say homeschool because, sadly, your children won't get the kind of education they need in public school.

And with a lousy education system comes a dumbed-down people.

Let me share one last thing with you; it’s a poem by Emily Dickinson:

There is no frigate like a book

To take us lands away,

Nor any coursers like a page

Of prancing poetry.

This traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress of toll;

How frugal is the chariot

That bears a human soul!

Have your children memorize Emily Dickinson's poem, and supply them with the kind of books that let them travel lands away!

You can join the Smart Homeschooler Academy waiting list to be notified when enrollment opens again for its signature course: How to Give Your Child a Private-School Education at Home.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson combines her training in holistic medicine, “Love and Leadership” parenting coach certificate, plus 17+ years working in education to provide you with a unique approach to raising and educating your children.

A veteran homeschooler herself, she now has two homeschooled children in college.