Why I never Reached My Potential and How to Spare Your Kids the Same Fate→

John Taylor Gatto, a renowned educator and best-selling author, said that "schools were dangerous places for children." 

Having been educated through the public school system, I can say with certainty, as I’m sure you can too, that my best years of learning were wasted.

Not only were they wasted, but as a public-school student, I was exposed to all sorts of immoral behaviors and mediocre influences in my life.

It wasn't a great beginning. 

My Twelve-Year Jail Sentence

In my "twelve-year jail sentence," as Gatto likes to call it, I certainly never learned that a "preposition is a word which governs a noun or pronoun and connects it to anything else in the sentence or clause" (definition according to Mr. Gwynne, author of Gwynne's Grammar).

I memorized not a single piece of poetry, nor did I ever learn my own country’s history with any coherency, let alone other histories of the world.

(I did read a lot of classic books, but not in school. My father supplied me with those, and they were my saving grace.)

It would have been helpful to have learned the above subjects during those 12 wasted years and learned other subjects too, which are essential to living a good life.

For example, learning Aristotelean logic when I was young would have given me the ability to see through the kind of propaganda that flies in our faces every day and deceives us to believe in and do things we would not otherwise believe in or do.

“Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group.”

— Edward Bernays (founder of modern propaganda and nephew of Sigmund Freud)

Having a better understanding of world history would have taught me that history repeats itself. I would have known back then to look to the past to understand where we have been, where we were then, and where we were headed.

The Six Purposes of Schooling

Fast forward many years later to my discovery of the six purposes of government schooling that John Taylor Gatto uncovers for us and guess who was livid?

I wasn’t alone.

Like many of us, I realized that I had been cheated of a real education, and there is nothing more infuriating than discovering that you have lost the best years for training your mind to a dumbed-down, nefarious government school program. 

I should also tell you of something else that happened to me when I was in public school which has been an impediment throughout my life. As a young kindergarten enrollee, I had developed a false belief that I was not very smart!

This may sound strange, but it happens to be fairly common for children who are almost a year younger than the oldest child in the classroom but expected to do the same level of work.

Unfortunately, beliefs we form from childhood experiences become like deep grooves in our minds, and it can take a lifetime to polish them out, which is why we need to consider carefully the way we are raising our children.

“School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.”

— John Taylor Gatto

5 Reasons for Homeschooling

In this brief summary of my unfortunate government school years, did you notice that I just gave you five reasons why concerned parents elect to homeschool their children? If not, let me summarize them for you as it’s important to reflect on them:

1. Concerned parents want to give their children a real education where their children learn, at the very least, how to read well, write well, and speak well.

2. They want to give their children proper training in morality and what it means to be an ethical and civilized human being.

3. They want their children to understand that mediocrity is not good enough; they must learn to strive for excellence.

4. They don't want their children exposed to early sexual influences, drugs, and perverse ideologies.

5. They want their children to have self-confidence and as much self-knowledge as they can acquire during a well-spent youth.

These are the five most common reasons for homeschooling, but there are two more that are gaining momentum. Crime is a big problem in schools today, and many parents are not putting their kids into public school or are taking their children out of public school because of safety issues.

I mentioned this to a group of parents about 15 years ago, and one parent thought I was being extreme. But I wasn't. I was just on top of the statistics earlier than they were; now, I believe it is common knowledge that schools are not safe places for kids. 

We also have health concerns with the government schools now mandating a new drug for children that many parents feel is unsafe, despite the propaganda, because the ten or twelve years it takes to safely test a new drug is still in the future.

We have many new homeschoolers now because of the mandates which I find interesting.

Now I’ve given you seven reasons why concerned parents choose to homeschool. Here’s one more that seldom gets mentioned, but that I believe is the most important because it encompasses all the rest:

Your children were born with a God-given potential that they will realize throughout the course of their lives if, and only if, they’re given a fair chance.

If you want your children to reach their potentials, the best chance you have to help them is to intelligently homeschool your kids. Don’t let them waste their best years of learning in public school.

Educate your children well by doing it yourself or hiring competent tutors to teach your kids. One-on-one instruction is superior to class instruction which is why the aristocracy were always tutored.

What’s vital to remember is that an education tailored to one is the education of people who lead themselves, and may even lead others, as opposed to being led.

Let me conclude by saying this: living in a dumbed-down world is frightening. Dumbed-down people are easy to manipulate, and Americans may be the most manipulated people on this planet today.

Keep your kids out of public school and homeschool them so they can grow up to be leaders who are intelligent, ethical, critically thinking people.

Mediocrity will not do.

*****

To learn about John Taylor Gatto’s Six Purposes of Government Schooling, use this link.

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Live a Triumphant Life.

Become a Smart Homeschooler and give your child a first-rate, screen-free education at home using the Smart Homeschooler Academy Curriculum and teaching methods taught in the program. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course and feel secure knowing that you have what you need to homeschool successfully as well as live ongoing support from Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20 years of experience working in children’s education.

Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with her unique combination of mentors, Elizabeth has developed her own comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.

☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.

5 Reasons Your Family’s Dinnertime Meal Is a Serious Matter→

All happy families share one thing in common: dinnertime is prime time for the family.

They come together to share a meal, but the food is not what's most important; it’s what happens before, during, and after the meal that matters a lot. In fact, the family dinner meal is a serious matter, not to be taken lightly.

As dinnertime is when many things that are key to your family's overall happiness occur, here are five reasons you never want to miss having a dinnertime meal for your family:

“The dinner table is the center for the teaching and practicing not just of table manners but of conversation, consideration, tolerance, family feeling, and just about all the other accomplishments of polite society except the minuet.”

— Judith Martin

1) Family Togetherness Makes Kids Feel Secure

Dinnertime is usually the only meal that dad is present for during the week making it a special event, especially for the children. Dads are gone all day, presumably at work, and when they come home, it is a big excitement for the children.

When everyone is seated at the table, the children feel a sense of security having both parents present and knowing that their family is together. With so much divorce present in our culture, this is even more important now that children feel a strong sense of togetherness in the family, and the dinnertime ritual will provide this.

2) A Time for Sharing

Dinnertime is a time when each family member can share their joys and sorrows of the day and feel the comfort in knowing that there are people who care about how their day went and can share in their day's experiences. It’s a time for pleasant conversation and an important time for children to develop their social skills.

“The dinner hour is a sacred, happy time when everyone should be together and relaxed.”

— Julia Child

3) Practice in Good Manners

Dinnertime is prime time for teaching children table manners. We forget the importance of table manners because good manners are disappearing from our increasingly uncivil society, but good manners are what hold the glue of a family together.

Without practicing common courtesy towards one another, disrespect reigns, and all hell breaks loose. If you want to avoid family quarrels and division, teach your children good manners and practice them yourself. Let them see you and your spouse treat each other courteously, and they will follow in-suit. You never want to tolerate bad manners, ever.

4) Balanced Meals Lead to Good Health

Dinnertime is an essential meal for ensuring your children get proper nourishment which implies that you teach them to eat what you serve them. Well-mannered children do not get special meals because they are "picky" eaters or have an "aversion" to certain kinds of foods.

Unless a child has a legitimate food allergy, teach them to eat what is on their plate without complaint. As long as the child has molars and is old enough to sit at the dinner table, there is no such thing as "baby" food. There is food, full stop.

5) Cooperation and Responsibility

Dinnertime is a time for children to learn cooperation and responsibility. Each child should have chores they perform at mealtimes. Depending upon their age, they can help prepare the food, set the table, serve the food, clear the table, wash the dishes, and clean the kitchen, including emptying the garbage at the end of the day.

Chores teach children responsibility, and they also teach them to cooperate with others in making a helpful contribution towards the care of the family.

“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.”

— Oscar Wilde

If getting meals on the table each day and on time is a struggle for you, then you want to take some time to get better organized and disciplined about the planning, shopping, and preparation of your meals.

Decide on your menu a week in advance, do your shopping in advance, and pick a time for dinner that lets you work backward, so you know at precisely what time you have to start preparing dinner. 

Stick to this time, no matter what else happens that day. If an emergency should arise, always have a quick backup meal available, so you don't miss the dinnertime ritual. If you do miss it once, don't miss it twice.

The more days in a row that you miss, the more likely you will be to fall into old patterns of erratic mealtimes, which translate into missed opportunities for your family to flourish and grow. 

A Time Saver for You

If you need a helping hand, I've prepared a free download for you. It's a shopping check-off list that my friend Jason created. His wife Maureen never misses a family meal, and I believe that Jason's ingenious list has a lot to do with it. 

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Live a Triumphant Life.

Become a Smart Homeschooler and give your child a first-rate, screen-free education at home using the Smart Homeschooler Academy Curriculum and teaching methods taught in the program. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course and feel secure knowing that you have what you need to homeschool successfully as well as live ongoing support from Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20 years of experience working in children’s education.

Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with her unique combination of mentors, Elizabeth has developed her own comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.

☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.

Are You Raising Ethical Children?→

You may be, it can be difficult to tell. Sometimes it requires an honest look into our own behavior. How ethical of a person are we?

“Ethics, also called moral philosophy, the discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad and morally right and wrong.”

— Britannica Encyclopedia

And sometimes, it requires an honest look at how we are raising our children. Are we holding them accountable for their actions? 

Regardless, each of us has an innate moral nature. At very early ages, children will begin to make judgment calls about what is right and what is wrong. Consider how young a child is when he begins to say things like, "But that's not fair!"

As children mature, we want to teach them how to govern their emotions and act with the intention to do the right thing. Conducting ourselves with integrity is a choice.

“Integrity, from the Latin word: integritas meaning purity; morally, uprightness”

— Cassel's Latin Dictionary

Yet, given the state of affairs today, there appears to be a grave breakdown in our sense of right and wrong, making it challenging to model ethical behavior for our children. 

Learning how to determine ethical boundaries begins in the home, but learned behaviors in school also play a role. As Vicky Abeles points out in her iconic film, The Race to Nowhere, 97% of high school students lie and cheat on exams throughout their high school years to be able to graduate at the end of their four-year term.

Now, upon first hearing this, you might think this kind of behavior is restricted to high school, but this isn't the case. 

Children who learn to make exceptions for ethical behavior when the exceptions lead to acquiring something important, such as a high school diploma, are at risk of adopting habits contrary to good character.

“It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good.”

— Aristotle

We can all sympathize with their plight as the demands made on schoolchildren are impossible, but something is wrong when they are part of an educational system that they cannot succeed at unless they lie and cheat. And we have to ask ourselves, "Do we really want to enroll them in such a system?"

Regardless, once bad habits such as these are established, it is unlikely they will be limited to the classroom. On the contrary, a habit is a habit, and to correct a bad one requires an intention to break the habit. But first, a person needs to see that there is a problem. 

It's difficult, however, to see that you have a problem when your problem has become the norm. Between the school environment plus the unclear boundaries in the home, one can expect that the child's ability to accurately distinguish between right and wrong will be blurry, at best. 

And this is what we are dealing with today. Lying and cheating are the norms to such a degree that even people who think they are ethical are not. 

However, each individual is responsible for his own actions. We cannot shift the responsibility of our behavior to anyone or anything else. Science is good at blaming our behavior on mythical chemical imbalances or brain configurations that deviate from the norm.

We are very good at blaming our parents or anything we can reasonably point our fingers at, but the reality is that the only direction we can honestly point our fingers is at ourselves.

We all have the ability to choose and evading responsibility for our choices will get us nowhere. While the blame game may make us feel better momentarily, it will not make us a better person, and it will not help us raise better children. 

Before we can assume responsibility for our actions, we have first to understand what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior. Once we can make this distinction, we must choose to correct our less-than-admirable behavior, so we act in harmony with our values. 

It is of paramount importance that we teach this kind of mindfulness to our children. We must avoid putting them in situations that will undermine this teaching, and we must set a good example for them with our own behavior. 

The latter means that we have to be honest with ourselves about the state of our characters. We learn to understand our character by diligently questioning our intentions and actions and correcting them when we find them not aligning with our values.

We all have a conscience and know in our heart of hearts when we are doing something wrong. As my father once said, "The road to Hell is a long series of negotiations with the devil." In other words, it isn't one big thing we do that determines who we are, but the little things we do over and over again that will eventually decide the state of our characters. 

The majority of us often compromise our integrity in mindless ways. Sometimes we compromise it in simple acts like withholding information from a friend to produce an outcome that benefits us or maybe the grocery checker forgot to check something in our basket and we walked off without telling her.

But sometimes, we compromise our integrity in more significant ways. 

“Virtue lies in our power, and similarly so does vice; because where it is in our power to act, it is also in our power not to act...”

— Aristotle

We might do egregious things like damage someone's bumper and drive off without leaving a note. Maybe we plant the seeds of doubt about another person's character to mutual friends because we are envious of them? Maybe we charge for a high-quality service that we aren't competent to provide.

To correct these kind of behaviors, we have to stop and ask ourselves this question: for how much am I willing to compromise my integrity?

Will I compromise it for the 50 cents I didn't have to pay because the teller missed the apple in my cart? Will I compromise it for the 100 dollars I saved because I didn't fix the bumper that I damaged? Will I compromise it for the benefit I received for withholding information from my friend or lessening people's opinion of someone? Will I compromise my integrity for the extra money I earned for fraudulently advertising something I couldn't fully provide? 

When we reflect on especially the minor injustices we commit, we realize for how little we will compromise our own integrity.

If you can understand that the little things add up to the big things, and the big things make up your character, somehow saving the cost of an apple or a bumper repair hardly seem worth it.

“What a piece of work is a man! How Noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In Action, how like an Angel in apprehension, how like a God!
The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—”

— Shakespeare

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Live a Triumphant Life.

Become a Smart Homeschooler, literally, and give your child a first-rate, screen-free education at home and enjoy doing it. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20 years of experience working in children’s education.

Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with her unique combination of mentors, Elizabeth has developed her own comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.

☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.

How Much Does a Father Matter?→

We recently celebrated our annual day of dedication to fathers, but the truth is that if you have a man in the home, who also happens to be the father of your children, please count your blessings every single day of the year!

Tragically, too many children are growing up without fathers today, which is a detriment to their well-being and society’s well-being, because a father in the home does matter very, very much.

According to the 2020 U. S. Census report, 20% of children now have an absentee father in the home. These numbers have doubled since 1968, so one has to assume they will continue to increase.

The sad part is that we fail to recognize the terrible effect not growing up with a father has on children.

If we understood this better, if there were more public awareness about just how hard divorce is on children, maybe we would change our attitude and be more prone to make things work for the sake of our children and our society. 

Sure, there are times when divorce is preferred because the home has become oppressive for whatever reasons, but, as Dr. Phil says, if you have more than one child together, make it work. I believe he gave us sound advice.

According to the most recent statistics published by the U. S. Census, children who grow up without fathers are:

• 4X greater risk of poverty

• More likely to have behavioral problems

• 2X greater risk of infant mortality

• More likely to go to prison

• More likely to commit a crime

• 7X more likely to become pregnant as a teen

• More likely to experience abuse or neglect

• More likely to abuse drugs and alcohol

• 2X more likely to suffer obesity

• 2X more likely to drop out of high school

Looking at this list, does your heart not sink? I know mine does.

All of the ills mentioned above have behavioral issues at their root, so one could say that absentee fathers lead to behavioral problems in children, which then lead to these other ills. What do we mean by behavioral issues? 

Definition of behavior problem according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

• symptomatic expression of emotional or interpersonal maladjustment, especially in children (as by nail-biting, enuresis, negativism, or by overt hostile or antisocial acts)

• an individual evidencing maladjustment by indulging in behavior problems

• especially a child indulging in such problems

According to the Psychology Dictionary, it means:

n. a pattern of behavior which is perceived to be hostile, aggressive, or disruptive. As a pattern which may have gone on for 6 months, it is one which can be considered repetitive and persistent. Even as it impairs normal individual function, in can further reach the point that actions already violate societal norms.

One can debate the various definitions for "behavior disorders," but the bottom line is that children very much need their fathers despite the tendency to think that fathers are redundant.

Any society that does not support the value of fatherhood is a society that does not have its head screwed on straight.

Fathers have a vital role to play and play it, they must, or we will all suffer, especially our children. 

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Live a Triumphant Life.

Become a Smart Homeschooler, literally, and give your child a first-rate, screen-free education at home and enjoy doing it. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20 years of experience working in children’s education.

Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with her unique combination of mentors, Elizabeth has developed her own comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.

☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.

Why You Shouldn't Focus on Your Child's Happiness

I believe it was Isocrates who said that the healthy child wants to become an adult. In raising our children well, we must teach them how to act and think like mature people.

Yet, the phrase we hear most often repeated is this: 

"I just want him to be happy." 

But if you think about it, it isn't what you most want. What you most want is that he grows up to be a decent, hard-working, mature adult. If you raise him to become these things, then happiness will follow.

As the ancients understood and current research now proves, happiness is found in living a virtuous life. The modern pursuit of pleasure and good times, it turns out, is just a myth being thrust upon us by very sophisticated and manipulative marketing techniques.

Contrary to this empty rhetoric, a good life does not come from the pursuit and acquisition of pleasure, in whatever form you desire, but it comes from being a virtuous person. As the concept of "virtue" seems to be an idea that’s gone out of fashion, let me share with you some of the qualities that a virtuous person might possess:

Humility, courage, mercy, patience, tolerance, diligence, and generosity. These are some of the qualities a truly “happy” person might embody.

To inculcate these kind of qualities in your child, you must begin when he is very young.

You must train him in the way of good habits, and then, and only then, will you be able to raise a happy child who later becomes a happy adult. One state naturally follows the other. 

What is the key to raising a child with good habits?

Raise a child who is obedient and does the right thing, not from fear of you, but from a deep love and respect for you. 

We don't need behavioral studies to prove this; we need to pay attention. A child who is always complaining and throwing tantrums and always asking for this and that is not a happy child, is he? Nor is the child who is always doing what he is told not to do. 

However, the kind of training that protects from these unhappy states must start when your child is very young. You should begin training your child in the ways of good behavior as soon as he or she turns two years of age.

If you wait until much later to begin, the training process becomes increasingly more difficult. Waiting too long means you will need to correct bad habits first and then work on instilling the good habits in your child.

It’s a much more tedious and frustrating experience to correct bad habits than it is to avoid them from forming in the first place.

“Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.”

— Aristotle

If you fail to raise your child well, then he will be destined to spend the rest of his life working to correct deeply ingrained negative traits (a lifetime pursuit and not for the easily discouraged). Even worse, he will perpetuate and suffer the ills in life (as will everyone he encounters) that arise from not being a good person.

You see, the opposite of the virtuous person would be the wretched one who will never know any real happiness. We've all known wretched people, especially as they get older and nature carves their wretched states into their faces. We certainly don't want this for our children!

In a nutshell, if you focus on the happiness factor when your child is young, you will fail to raise a happy child. Focus on raising a decent child first, and his happiness will follow. 

If you don't know where to begin, do this: throw out all of your parenting books and stop asking your friends for advice (the latter is the equivalent of the blind leading the blind).  Moving forward, begin to think about the consequences of your actions as a parent.

Start asking yourself questions such as, "If I do this, then what is the message I am giving my child?" If I let him do this, then what am I teaching him about his behavior and the journey of life?"

For example, this may surprise you to know that many parents look to their children's desires to decide how they should educate them. I know this for a fact (no studies done, yet) because the parents say things to me like, "I thought about homeschooling, but he wanted to go to school with his neighborhood friends," or "I thought about homeschooling, but he's so social, and I think he'd be happier in school."

How you educate your child is a huge decision that will alter the course of his life, but he is too young to make such a life-changing decision. You are the adult; this is your decision to make for your child. 

It doesn't matter if he prefers to go to school with friends or that you think he would be happier in school because he has friends to socialize with every day. What matters is whether or not a school is the best place for your child or whether another option might be such as homeschooling.

You have to weigh the pros and cons accurately and objectively before you make this kind of a decision.

Base your decision upon your values and what you want for your children. If you want to raise decent children, you have to consider the moral environment of the child.

If you're going to raise highly intelligent children, you have to evaluate the level of academic training a school offers. If you want both, then you have to look for an educational model that provides both,

If you only care about your child's immediate happiness, then you can let him make this decision. 

I used the example of educational decisions because I hear about them a lot, but the truth is that there are many decisions we let our children make every day, such as when they can finish playing; when they need to do their chores; when they need to get ready for bed. 

Instead of training them to understand that these are non-negotiable commands we make of our children, we go to the negotiating table with them and let them argue their case for an extension of time for whatever it is they want to do.

We also exhaust ourselves in the process, which is one reason parents find raising children so challenging today. It's always tiring to have to argue with someone and then give in to them when they should have done what you asked them to do in the first place.

Children need most, and what they don't have enough of are adults who guide them on their way to maturity by concerning themselves less with whether or not their children are happy and more with whether or not the parents are training their children well.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

— Aristotle

The point to childhood is to prepare for adulthood; you should be less concerned about making a child happy and more concerned about raising a child who grows up to be a responsible, honorable, and mature adult.

It's not uncommon today to see grown children well into their 30's, or 40's still living at home because they can't make it on their own. The other day, my 30-something chiropractor told me that half of his friends still live at home.

I know of many situations where the parents still have aging children at home. An offspring well into adulthood and living at home out of necessity was unheard of when I was young.

Literally.

Make your priority for your children less about their happiness and more about behaving well and doing the right thing.

If you do, the chances are strong that you'll be able to enjoy your golden years knowing your kids are doing well and on the way to acquiring the kind of happiness that comes from living a good life.

*****

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Become a Smart Homeschooler, literally, and give your child a first-rate, screen-free education at home and enjoy doing it. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course.

For parents of children under age seven, Raise Your Child Well to Live a Triumphant Life, course will be open again sometime in March, 2021.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler, a lover of the classics, and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 19 years of experience working in children’s education.

Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with the unique mentors she was fortunate to have, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.

☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.

5 Ways to Stimulate Your Child's Love of Learning

The other night a friend showed me a clip of her nine-month-old baby trying to imitate her mother's expressions. I looked into the baby's eyes as I watched the video and the intense alertness that I witnessed, the acute observation of each facial move in her mother's face, was fascinating.

The baby wanted to know how to make the same faces her mother was making, and she was trying to understand how to do this by conducting a scientific investigation.

It's the intense desire to know that all healthy children possess, yet what happens to their curiosity as they grow older? Why do so many children forsake that infinite sense of wonder that is so innate to each of us? 

“No thief, however skillful, can rob one of knowledge, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure to acquire.”

— L. Frank Baum

One of the reasons this happens today is because too many children start school at young ages, and by the time they reach kindergarten, first grade, if they are lucky, the light within them begins to dim.

Consider this: if your child’s desire to explore and understand the world around him is constantly thwarted by a teacher’s dictates, he will begin to give up his investigative work, and his sense of curiosity will eventually wilt.

For example, if a child has a small shovel in his hand, but every time he tries to shovel something a teacher tells him to stop, he will eventually stop picking the shovel up.

When a child cannot follow the lead of his curiosity, or is not in an environment where he can exercise his desire to know, as children who are in daycare and preschools from early ages are, they begin to put their curiosity down. 

If you have a child whose curiosity is waning, or whose curiosity you want to stimulate, here are five things you can do:

1. If you have to put your child into an outside program, look for a daycare or preschool that is play-based and ideally held in the outdoors, such as a Forest School. Make sure they are operated by people who understand what children need at these tender ages. If you aren't sure what the philosophy for the school is, ask them. Please do not be shy about these matters; after all, this is your child, and you want to make sure he is under the best care.

2. Immediately remove all screens from your child's life both inside and outside the home. Under no circumstances should you hand him your cell phone to quiet him because you are busy. Screens are a cause of a dimming curiosity; not only that but they will thwart your child's brain development. 

3. Do not entertain your child! Let him entertain himself. It is not that you don't ever play with your child, but only that you do not become his full-time playmate. Allow him to follow the dictates of his curiosity and figure things out for himself. Children are little scientists; let him conduct his own experiments. 

4. Be curious yourself. Take your child into the outdoors and explore with him. Let him walk barefoot on fallen leaves and dip his feet into spring water to awaken his senses. Bring his attention to the songs of birds and the rustling of the trees as the wind blows through them. Collect a bug or two and read about them when you get home. Notice a particular bird sound (my favorite is the red-winged blackbird!) and look the bird up in a reference book or on the internet when you get home. Try to imitate the bird's song with your child. Ask him questions to stimulate a conversation and discover the answers together, such as how birds fly and what foods they eat. 

5. Lastly, if you can, don't put your child into any school programs until he is at least ten years old. Until then, teach him yourself because so many learning problems take root during those early years. The first few grades of elementary school are easy to teach when you know what you are doing. 

Remember that the desire to know is our natural state, but we have this yearning socialized out of us in various ways, the least not being school. Our innate desire to know, however, is still there within us.

“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

— Benjamin Franklin

If your child's desire for knowledge has dimmed for any of the above reasons, understand that you can help him awaken it. It is something you must make the intention to do too because reaching his full potential in life begins with the desire to know.

Why should he become less than he could be when he can be so much more?

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Become a Smart Homeschooler, literally, and give your child a first-rate, screen-free education at home and enjoy doing it. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course.

For parents of children under age seven, Raise Your Child Well to Live a Triumphant Life, course will be open again sometime in March, 2021.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler, a lover of the classics, and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 19 years of experience working in children’s education.

Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with the unique mentors she was fortunate to have, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.

☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.

The Six Purposes of Schooling by John Taylor Gatto

When people have asked me why I homeschooled, I tell them I had no choice. I tell them that if they understood what I understand about public education, they would homeschool too. John Taylor Gatto was the man who opened my eyes to the nefarious agenda behind public school.

What follows is a transcription of the key section from John’s classic speech and opus, The Underground History of American Education. John was a brilliant and well-researched man. I have read what is below in Ingles’ book myself; it is all true.   

Transcription of John’s Talk

“I have something here.  I have the six purposes of schooling [from the book Principles of Secondary Education by Alexander James Inglis] as laid down in 1917 by the man whom Harvard named their Honor Lecture in Education for. 

So far from being a fringe individual, this guy is the reason the Harvard Honor Lecture in Education is named as it is:  The Inglis Lecture.  I would like to read you the six purposes of schooling.  I moved heaven and earth as it took years to find this book [Principles of Secondary Education]--just like trying to find in past years a copy of the Carol Quigley [book] Tragedy and Hope.  

I learned about Inglis from a twenty year President of Harvard [1933-1953], James Bryant Conant, who was a poison gas specialist in World War I--and was in the very inner circle of the Atomic Bomb Project in World War II--was High Commissioner of Occupied Germany after the War. 

So he [James Bryant Conant] wrote--there must be 20 books about the institution of schooling--of which he was completely a proponent.  And he is a very, very bad writer.  I forced myself to read most of these books, and one of them he says that if you really want to know what school is about, you need to pick up the book that I’m referring to Principles of Secondary Education. 

Two years it took me to find a copy of the book [Principles of Secondary Education by Alexander James Inglis]--750 pages, tiny print and as dull as your imagination can be.  And furthermore, it is not till you get to the very middle of the book--in an unlabelled section--that he spills the beans.  Let me spill them for you.  

 There are six purposes, or functions, as he calls them.  The first he [Alexander Inglis] calls the Adjustive Function: Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority.  That’s their main purpose--habits and reactions to authority. 

That is why school authorities don’t tear their hair out when somebody exposes that the Atomic Bomb wasn’t dropped on Korea, as a history book in the 1990s printed by Scott Foresman [did], and why each of these books has hundreds of substantive errors.  Learning isn’t the reason the texts are distributed.  

The Adjustive Function

So, first is the Adjustive Function--fixed habits.  Now here comes the wonderful insight that being able to analyze the detail will give you.  How can you establish whether someone has successfully developed this Automatic Reaction because people have a proclivity when they are given sensible orders to follow. 

That is not what they want to teach.  The only way you can measure this is to give stupid orders and people automatically follow those.  Now you have achieved Function #1.  

The Integrating Function

Have you ever ever wondered why some of the foolish things that schools do or allow to continue?  [Function] #2, he [Inglis] calls it the Integrating Function, but it is easier to understand if you call it the Conformity Function. 

It’s to make children alike as possible--the gifted children and the stupid--alike as possible because market research uses statistical sampling, and it only works if people react generally the same way.  

The Directive Function

The Third Function he calls the Directive Function: School is to diagnose your proper social role and then log the evidence that here is where you are on the Great Pyramid, so that future people won’t allow you to escape that compartment.  

The Differentiating Function

 The Fourth Function is the Differentiating Function.  Because once you have diagnosed the kids in this layer, you do not want them to learn anything that the higher layers are learning.  So you teach just as far as the requirement of that layer.  

The Selective Function

 Number five and six are the creepiest of all!  Number 5 is the Selective Function.  What that means is what Darwin meant by natural selection: You are assessing the breeding quality of each individual kid.  You’re doing it structurally because school teachers don’t know this is happening. 

And you’re trying to use ways to prevent the poor stuff from breeding.  And those ways are hanging labels--humiliating labels--around their neck, encouraging the shallowness of thinking.

 I often wondered, because I came from a very very strict Scotish-Irish culture that never allowed you to leer at a girl.  But when I got to NYC, the boys were pawing the girls openly and there was no redress for the girls at all, except not showing up in the classroom--high absentee rates. 

Well, you are supposed to teach structurally that sexual pleasure is what you withdraw from a relationship and everything else is a waste of time and expensive.  

 So, the Selective Function is what Darwin meant by the favored races.  The idea is to consciously improve the breeding stock.  Schools are meant to tag the unfit with their inferiority by poor grades, remedial placement, and humiliation, so that their peers will accept them as inferior.  And the good breeding stock among the females will reject them as possible partners.  

The Propaedeutic Function

 And the Sixth is the creepiest of all! And I think it is partly what Tragedy and Hope is about--a fancy Roman name, the Propaedeutic Function.  Because as early as Roman bigtime thinkers, it was understood that to continue a social form required that some people be trained that they were the custodians of this.  So, some small fraction of the kids are being ready to take over the project. 

That’s the guy--the honor lecturer [Inglis], and it will not surprise you that his ancestors include the major-general of the siege of the Luknow of India--famous for tying the mutineers’ on the muzzle of the cannons and blowing them apart, or somebody who was forced to flee NYC, a churchman at the beginning of the American Revolution, because he wrote a refutation of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. 

They were going to tar and feather him.  He fled and was rewarded by the British by making him the Bishop of Nova Scotia.  Those are Inglis’ ancestors!  

 So, Al Inglis is certainly--when I learned of this and wrote to Harvard, asking for access to the Inglis Lecture.  Strike me dead, Lord, if I’m exaggerating at all.  I was told “We have no Inglis Lecture--hasn’t been for years, and we have no records. 

It was the same that happened when I discovered that Elwood B. Cubberly, the most influential schoolman of the 20th century and the bionomics genius had been the elementary school editor of Houghton Mifflin, and I wrote Houghton Mifflin--Is there any record? And they said, “We have no record of anyone named Elwood P. Cubberly. 

Now Harvard is telling me, “There is no Inglis Lecture.  A week passed and I got a call from Harvard, from some obscure office at Harvard, saying “What is your interest in the Ingles Lecture?”  I knew that I was on thin ice. 

And I said, “Well, James Conant referred me in his books to the man the Inglis Lecture is named after, and I was just wondering if I could get some background on this fellow, and a list of the lectures.  

 And in due time, I got a list of the lectures and instructions [on] how to access the texts, but not easily. Enough hoops that someone who has to mow the lawn and burp the baby wouldn’t jump through those hoops.  I was able to prove Harper’s [magazine] wouldn’t publish [it in] the cover essay I wrote, which Lew Laflin [?] named Against School, but I had called The Artificial Extension of Childhood because I think that is the key mechanism at work here.  

 So, they wouldn’t print the information about Cubberley because Houghton Mifflin denied it.  It was only months after that I looked through my extensive library of incredibly dull books about schooling, and I opened [one]--and on the facing page said Elwood B. Cubberly, Editor and Chief of Elementary School, publishing arm of Houghton Mifflin. 

By the way, the secondary Editor and Chief was Alexander Ingles.  So you see how this cousinage works.” 

*****

Download your free copy of 10 Surprising Facts About Homeschooled Kids.

*Video transcribed by Roger Copple. To watch the full 12-minute video: The Six Purposes of Schooling [Video]

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Become a Smart Homeschooler, literally, and give your child a first-rate, screen-free education at home and enjoy doing it. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course.

For parents of children under age seven, Raise Your Child Well to Live a Triumphant Life, course will be open again sometime in March, 2021.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler, a lover of the classics, and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 19 years of experience working in children’s education.

Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with the unique mentors she was fortunate to have, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.

☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.

Why Are 21st Century Children Never Satisfied?

"When is enough, enough?" is a typical cry from parents today. No matter how much you give your children they always seem to want more.

Parents are frustrated, not to mention exhausted, and they're little darlings are turning into entitled adults.

Common strategies employed by parents don't seem to work either. The preferred approach for as long as I can remember has been the lecture.

THE LECTURE

I remember my grandmother buying us new clothes and then lecturing us all the way back to her 1000 acre ranch, in her red Buick convertible with the white top down, about how lucky we were compared to the poor children she had seen in Africa.

First of all, we didn't even know where Africa was. Second of all, lecturing us about poverty while we were whizzing through town on a warm summer day with our hair blowing and holding tight to our new bags of clothes did not work.

There was a disconnect between what she was saying and what she was doing and children quickly intuit the inherent madness in this strategy.

It's not that we were ungrateful children either, we weren't. There was no need for her lecture, but somehow she thought it was her duty to provide it.

The problem with said lecture, whether a child deserves it or not, is that children are too young to understand deprivation unless they've experienced it themselves. And if you are concerned about your children being ungrateful, my guess is that they have not experienced it.

THE SERMON

Next in line to my grandmother's sermons were the sermons we were subject to in church. The priest would stand at the pulpit and remind us to be grateful for our daily bread. The Daily Bread lecture had no impact on us either.

We knew that if we ran out of our daily bread, our parents would run to the store and buy some more. This was true for every single person in that congregation. What the priest said really did not make sense to us children.

Some parents think that if they keep preaching, their words of wisdom will sink in eventually somewhere around their child’s 18th year of life. All those lectures will have been worth it because now the entitled child suddenly becomes enlightened and gratitude follows.

But the reality is the 18-year-olds are extremely unenlightened and will not be any more grateful on their eighteenth birthday then they were before it. Poor character traits do not suddenly become admirable ones. They take a lot of work to conquer.

Better not to let them develop in the first place.

“Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.”

— A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

THE REALITY

Dr. Seuss said, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” To solve children’s ingratitude problems, we can start by looking at ourselves. Think of the times when you have felt most grateful. It usually happens during one of two events:

1. Something that makes you extremely happy but seldom happens, happens

2. You reflect upon the reality that at any given moment, the infinite gifts and blessings you have in your life can be taken away. In the blink of an eye, you can lose something you treasure beyond all else.

Think natural disasters, accidents, illness, death, misfortune, betrayal, poor choices, old-age. As you read this, thousands of people around the world are experiencing one or more of the above losses. And suddenly, the things they took for granted are priceless in their eyes, but they're also gone.

“Take full account of what Excellencies you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not.”

— Marcus Aurelius

If we stop to reflect on the many gifts and blessings we have, and if we reflect on the reality that we can lose these gifts and blessings at any moment, we can't help but feel grateful.

As I write, I'm looking out onto a beautiful green field with lots of trees. I've lived in places where I've looked out onto rows and rows of townhouses. Having lived in a complex where my view was endless rows of other townhouses, I never stop feeling grateful for the scenery I have today.

We have to reflect on the gifts in our lives. We have to continually remind ourselves of all that we have because there is always someone else who has much less. And money will never buy the things that truly matter in life: health, love, family, and trustworthy friends.

But children are too young to understand these things. Even most teenagers are too young. The ability to reason yourself into a state of gratitude is a skill which is usually reserved for more mature minds.

If you believe that you can reason your child into a state of gratitude, you can't.

THE SECRET

The secret to teaching your children to appreciate the things you provide for them is to raise them to be minimalists. The less they have, the more appreciative they'll be when you give them more.

The less often you indulge them with their wants, the less they'll come to expect them. When you do give your children a want, they'll be grateful, and they won't forget to say thank you. It’ll come roaring out of them with no prodding needed.

A minimalist philosophy isn't restricted to material goods either. You can apply it to all aspects of your children’s lives by saying “no” to them more than you say “yes.”

John Rosemond calls it Vitamin N. It's not that you want to become a contrarian and rigidly oppose everything your children ask for, but raise them to understand that their wants are not your primary concern in life.

Provide your children with the things they need for emotional, physical, spiritual, and intellectual growth, but raise them to understand that the goal of your life is not to make them happy; it's to raise them well.

This isn't to say that you never accommodate a want of theirs, but don't make it a habit. You aren't responsible for their happiness beyond what you need to provide as a loving, responsible parent; they're responsible for their happiness.

And they'll be much happier if you indulge them less.

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Become a Smart Homeschooler, literally, and give your child a first-rate, screen-free education at home and enjoy doing it. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course.

For parents of children under age seven, Raise Your Child Well to Live a Triumphant Life, course will be open again sometime in March, 2021.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler, a lover of the classics, and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 19 years of experience working in children’s education.

Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with the unique mentors she was fortunate to have, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.

Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.

Goodbye, Mr. Potato Head

Mr. Potato Head is losing his gender, at least on the box he comes in. Moving forward, he will be known only as Potato Head.

It's a little confusing, so let me explain: he's still a Mister in the box but not on the box.

Apparently there were a lot of articles that emerged Friday morning spreading fast the news that the toy company, Hasbro, who created the character of Mr. Potato Head in the 1950s, was going gender-neutral.

But then, the news article I was reading, by CNN, was updated later when Hasbro tweeted that the brand name had changed but not the characters.

I was relieved to learn that. 

When I was young, we had a funny sitcom about a talking horse called Mister Ed. After reading the Potato Head article, I was trying to imagine what would happen if Mister Ed became just Ed, but then that's a man's name.

And that got me thinking, exactly how would the TV producers handle Mister Ed today? Would they have to change his name? And what would they change it to since names from the beginning of time have always been based on gender? 

And what about adults? When I was young, children still addressed grown-ups with titles such as, Mr. Jones or Mrs. Smith. Since we were not allowed to call an adult by their first name, what would we have done if the gender issue had existed then?

Would we have had to drop the Mr. and Mrs. when we spoke to an adult? As calling an adult by their last name was rude, dropping the titles would have put us in another bind.

My daughter told me at gender-neutral Berkeley, on the first day of her classes, the professors ask each student to state their pronoun preference. Some classes have as many as 300-400 students.

This perplexed me because I wondered how the teacher would then keep all of that straight? If the professor has to know what the pronoun preference for each student is, does that mean that every time they need to use someone's pronoun they have to look at their roster, find the person's name, see their pronoun preference, and then speak? 

As I considered this, I couldn't help but think about the cost of tuition and how much class time this must take up?

Anyhow, I continued reading the article and found that Mattel, the maker of Barbie dolls, also wanted to introduce "a multi-dimensional view of beauty and fashion." To accomplish this, they introduced new dolls with disabilities, hair loss, and “vitigilio.”

I'm not sure what vitigilio is but I know that vitiligo is related to a disease affecting the skin pigmentation. 

Either way, it reminded me of a time when I was waiting to get my primary health care license in Chinese medicine. I worked for a company that sold a product for treating hair loss based on Chinese herbs. One day I was in a salon talking about the product to the owner when one of her customers came in. 

The customer, an attractive young woman, was invited into the back room by the owner.  While I didn't understand why she had been invited to join our conversation, she understood. She asked me if she could show me something. I said that she could.

She pulled her hair off and was completely bald. To clarify, her hair was a wig; she had no hair. She suffered from a disease called alopecia which causes all of a person's hair to fall out.

It was a shock to witness this, and I'm sorry, Mattel, but it was not at all beautiful. So when Mattel says they want to promote “beauty and fashion” by making a doll with thinning hair, again, I'm confused. Women and men spend billions of dollars each year to not have thinning and balding hair. 

Does Mattel not know this?

Potato Head aside, what all this confusion indicates to me is that we are beginning to lose a grip on a reality that we have agreed upon since the beginning of time. 

We are not thinking rationally and logically because we have been dumbed down by an educational system being manipulated by the corporate world since the mid-1800's and which now includes tycoons like Bill Gates. 

Gates has far more global power today than any one man should ever have. Where are the checks and balances for such unrestrained greed and lust for power?

And is it a coincidence that he largely funded the development of a national curriculum, and that most schoolchildren are now at home learning online?

It's pretty amazing if it is. 

If I were a young parent today, I would reflect on your child's exposure to the gender conversation very seriously, and I would do several things to protect them from it and anything related to it. 

Understand that this nefarious social conditioning taking place in school and the media is inevitably destined to alter their understanding of what is beautiful, good, and true.  

I want to share my 8 Steps to Protect Your Child's Heart and Mind with you, but before I do I need to make a request. Please resist the inclination to ignore them because you think they are too extreme.

It is precisely extreme measures we must take to win this battle because we are too far out in left field now. 

Personally, I don't care what people do behind closed doors, and I believe that each human being possesses an inherent dignity that is worthy of respect, but I have to draw a line when aggressive marketing campaigns are launched to literally alter our perception of reality in order to satisfy a very small group of people.

If you want to protect your children and are ready to be proactive, here is a downloadable list of 8 things you can do to make sure what's beautiful, good, and true in life remains beautiful, good, and true in your children's eyes too.

Beauty. Goodness. Truth. Now those are ideals worth pondering; those are ideals worth striving for.

On a final note, you can save your money because Potato Head is a toy not worth buying. He occupies your children's time for about five minutes and then they get bored. My kids played far longer with two sticks that cost me nothing than they ever did with Mr. Potato Head.

Still, I don't like to see the Mr. of Potato Head removed from the box.

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Become a Smart Homeschooler, literally, and give your child a first-rate, screen-free education at home and enjoy doing it. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course.

For parents of children under age seven, Raise Your Child Well to Live a Triumphant Life, is where you want to start.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler, a lover of the classics, and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 19 years of experience working in children’s education.

Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with the unique mentors she was fortunate to have, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.

Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.

5 Reasons Why You May Feel Overwhelmed and 30 Ways to Fix It

As mothers, we tend to run ourselves ragged.

We forget that when we are exhausted and overwhelmed, we are less able to be present and in a good state of mind for those we love and who depend on us.

The truth is that we can only do so much as mothers; therefore, we do not want our children's memories of us to be that of a worn-out, exhausted parent because we are trying to do too much. To avoid this from happening, we need to organize our lives to eliminate the things that drain us unnecessarily and do more of the things that replenish us.

If you feel overwhelmed and worn out, it's a prudent time to take stock of your life and determine what is draining your energy.

Begin by asking yourself these five questions:

1. Have you taken on too much?

2. Are your extended family or friends draining your energy?

3. Are you and your husband at odd about things?

4. Are your children unruly?

5. Are you not taking the time to pursue your pre-motherhood interests?

What is it that is weighing you down? Sometimes it's a combination of things, but whatever is going on, you want to face it so you can determine how to break the cycle you're in and reclaim your life, restore your energy, and be present for your loved ones. 

While you are raising your family, and even beyond, you want to focus first on your marriage and make sure that it is solid.

Then look to relationships beyond your family and determine which ones require too much of your time and energy. you have difficult or extremely needy people in your life, you will need to reduce or even eliminate the time you spend with these people.

And then look at your children and make sure you have not gotten into negative patterns with them because it can be exhausting to have disobedient and disrespectful children to deal with every day. 

Remember the things you used to love to do before you had children. Maybe you loved to ride bikes or ride horses; maybe you had friends you went out to lunch with regularly; maybe you played a lot of tennis or went to music concerts; maybe you spent time reading or knitting. Whatever it is that you used to love doing, make the intention to bring some of it back into your world.

Just because you have children now doesn't mean your life has to be 100% devoted to them, 100% of the time.

The younger they are, the more they will need you, but as they get older you should be able to weave into your day more and more of the time you need to stay fresh and upbeat.

Also, you don't want your children to see you as someone who has no other interests besides them. Be someone who is interesting to them, so they are interested in you.

Find things to do that replenish energy and good spirit, and you will find you have more of yourself to give. 

Children pick up on our moods, and even though they can't intellectualize them, they do feel them. Engaging yourself in other pursuits a few times a week does not make them feel less loved.

If your child had a choice, he would tell you to go out and do something you enjoy if that means you will be more present and happier when you are together.

As we want our children to be of good cheer, they want the same of us. Our children want to feel secure in knowing that we are happy to be their parent.

For 30 ways to fix your overwhelm, download a free copy of 30 Things a Mother Can Do To Feel Cheerful.

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Become a Smart Homeschooler, literally, and give your child a first-rate, screen-free education at home and enjoy doing it. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course.

For parents of children under age seven, Raise Your Child Well to Live a Triumphant Life, is where you want to start.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler, a lover of the classics, and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 19 years of experience working in children’s education.

Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with the unique mentors she was fortunate to have, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.

Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.

One Method to Raise Courageous Children and Catapult Their Careers

Courage is a great virtue and one every successful person embodies. But it’s an often misunderstood virtue.

Many people think courage is a lack of fear, but courageous people experience fear. The difference is that courageous people will act despite their fear whereas cowards will succumb to their fear and be unable to act. 

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.”

— Mark Twain

Life, to be lived to its fullest, has challenges and obstacles that we must all face and learn to overcome. If we let our fear conquer our minds, we will struggle to live purposeful lives because cowardice is paralyzing.

It will stop us from making decisions or acting in ways that will propel us forward in our life's true purpose.

If you want your child to embrace his life, to live life to its fullest, to realize his life's work and purpose, then you have to allow him to take risks in childhood and learn to overcome the obstacles and challenges that he'll face. There are physical challenges he must overcome as well as challenges of the mind. 

The mental challenges are the more difficult to overcome because man is a master at self-delusion. But we can help our children learn to face them with courage when they are young, to overcome them when they are older.

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”

— William Faulkner

The greatest fear of the mind is the fear of performance, otherwise known as the fear of looking stupid. There are ways your child can confront this fear in youth so it does not immobilize him when he is older.

Give your child a head start developing the confidence to perform by having him perform for audiences during his childhood. There are various situations you can put your child into to give him the practice he needs to overcome this fear. If you can do this for him, he'll be at a great advantage in his life.

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”

— E.E. Cummings

Here are three situations to consider for your child to help him discover the stuff he is made of, his "mettle," as Homer would say.

Music

The first is by having him learn a musical instrument and performing in music recitals. Find a music teacher who provides recitals for the children at least twice a year. If you find a teacher you like, but the teacher does not provide recitals, suggest he or she does and offer to help organize the recitals. If this fails, then continue looking until you find a competent teacher who does provide recitals. 

Music recitals are extremely important for children because they develop the confidence they need to walk out onto a stage and perform under pressure. In the beginning, it will be difficult for them but, when they are very young, they have the advantage of being less self-conscious.

Children also tend to have less of an opinion about things when they are younger, so they'll be more willing to perform when they understand that it's expected of them. 

 As they grow older, with enough practice, they'll get used to performing for others and be able to bring joy to people through their music. While they may feel nervous before they start to play, they will understand that their fear is not a reason to cower down; they will learn to act despite it. 

Poetry

As part of your child's education, have him memorize poetry. Once a month, get together with other families whose children are also engaged in memory work and do a joint recital. Let each child have a turn coming to the stage and reciting by heart the poem he learned.

Afterward, have tea and cookies and let the children enjoy their accomplishments together. The goal is to let it be an event they can look back on with fondness while they are developing confidence in learning to perform. 

Projects

Have a quarterly or bi-annual project night where children speak on some aspect of history or science through a project they made. This is not only a good opportunity for them to learn to ignore their fear and learn to perform well, but it is a great academic learning and teaching opportunity too. 

There are other things you can do to help your child gain confidence in performing when he is young; still, these suggestions are a place for you to begin thinking about the kind of opportunities that will help your child gain confidence in his ability to perform well. 

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

— Winston S. Churchill

If you can do this for him, you will have helped him learn that fear is not a reason for inaction; we act despite our fear when there is something worth doing. The more we act, the more courageous we become.

When your child is young, let me offer you a word of caution: do not let him get into the habit of always being the center of attention. Teaching your child to perform and indulging a child in excessive attention are two very different things.

One leads to courage, and the other leads to self-centeredness. 

Your goal is to raise him to be courageous and to be able to rise to the occasion when life demands it of him. This is the beginning of the journey to living a life of purpose.

The great sage Rumi said that every person was born with a desire for some work in his heart. Raise your child to be courageous so he can discover that work. 

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Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler, and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 19 years of experience working in children’s education.

Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with the unique mentors she was fortunate to have, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.

Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.