Intentional Parents

Get ready for a long post today. Hannah turned ten today, and I want to do a “then and now” comparison of how far she’s come these past six years. So here is one day in her life this week with comparisons and comments inserted.

As I write it, I am filled with gratitude to God for all He has done and a sense of hope for what else He might be pleased to do in Hannah’s life. Enjoy!

Hannah got herself up, got dressed, and played quietly while I took a shower. When I came out of the bathroom, she was sitting in my rocking chair petting our dog, Penny. She turned to me and stated, “Penny has whiskers. Whiskers starts with “w.” W-w-w-whiskers.”

As we got breakfast ready, she put Penny’s food in the dog dish and gave her the commands to sit, shake, lay down, roll over, and stay. Then released her with “OK” to eat her food.
Six years ago: Hannah had quit using and saying words that she had previously known and used. Now she talks quite a lot.

She got her cereal and helped herself to seconds at the table while we all sat chatting.
Six years ago: Hannah looked at her plate during meal times or sat with her arm over her face. Now she participates in meals.

After we finished eating, we did our Scripture Memory time as usual. Hannah does not recite with us, but she listens every morning to the verses we quote. This morning we defined the character trait Generosity: “sharing what I have with a happy spirit” and recited 2 Corinthians 9:7. When the verse ended, she asked, “Is generosity like when I share my toys?”
At the end of our breakfast time, we began to discuss where we might keep Penny when we take a two-week trip later this spring. Hannah sat for a while and then told me, “I want to bring Penny with us.”
Six years ago: Hannah was not “connected” with what was going on around her. Now she listens to conversations around her and contributes to them.

After breakfast she brushed her teeth, combed her hair (something we still need to work on!), and made her bed. Then we did her morning schoolwork.

• Reviewed the value of nickels and pennies and played “store” with some toy kittens to practice counting and combining the coins correctly (still need to work on nickels and the concept of 5s).
• Did an eye-tracking exercise to help her cross the center line visually and mentally, stimulating the sides of her brain to work together.
• Reviewed how to make a lower-case “a” and wrote several words that have “a” in them (still having trouble with “s” facing the right direction). We’re using Handwriting Without Tears.
• Read to her an A. A. Milne poem, “The King’s Breakfast,” with lovely illustrations throughout. Hannah laughed at the end.
  Six years ago: Hannah would not look at a book being read to her; played with her own book or toy instead. Now she loves our read-aloud times and often narrates to me what we read about.

While I helped her sister do schoolwork, Hannah played a computer game (Edmark’s Jungle Chess). She came to tell me that she couldn’t get the sound to work and asked me to help. We discovered that her sister had turned down the sound when she had been playing previously. So we turned the sound back up and Hannah continued playing.

A few minutes later she came back to ask when we were going to eat lunch. I told her that we would eat in a little while. So she got her toy kittens and played with them.
Six years ago: Hannah lined up blocks, books, puzzles, and toys instead of playing with them. Now she plays with toys appropriately.

As she was playing, she noticed that the fax machine was receiving some documents. She got them and handed me the faxes. I told her to give them to Daddy instead. Off she ran to deliver the papers.

When she returned, it was time for lunch. We were having leftovers, so she told me, “I want rice for lunch.”
Six years ago: Hannah would grab our hand and pull us to what she wanted, instead of verbally requesting it. Now she uses her words.

While everyone was getting their leftovers and waiting for the microwave, one sister sang a part of a Jungle Jam song. Hannah immediately chimed in with, “I like the part about . . .” and she described another part of a Jungle Jam tape.
Six years ago: Hannah said nothing just to share experiences; all communication was a request of some kind.

When she finished eating her lunch, Hannah brought a bag of cookies to the table and looked at me as she set them down to see if it was all right to have them for dessert.
Six years ago: Hannah wouldn’t look anyone in the eyes. Now she checks our eyes and faces for approval.

She asked, “Two of them?” meaning that she should take two enzymes along with her cookies. I nodded to confirm her thoughts. Then she picked up one of the inner bags, but it was still sealed shut. Her sister said, “That’s the wrong bag. Use the other one.” So she did — no problem. She had a little trouble getting the cookies out of the bag, so I helped her shake them out. Then I twisted the bag shut. She noticed what I was doing, picked up the plastic clip, looked at me, and said, “Here’s the clip.” She clipped it on while I held the bag, then she took it and put it away.
Six years ago: Hannah didn’t reference anyone’s face to gain information and she didn’t regulate her actions to work together in a coordinated fashion. Now she is learning to do both more and more.

While she was eating her cookies, I heard a “Mom, . . . Mom.” Once she had my attention she began telling me about the animal footprints on her Alaska placemat. She made up a scenario about the animals and the footprints and how the dog in the background was being chased by a cat.
Six years ago: Hannah didn’t carry on a conversation or put together her own words to communicate. Now she is making up her own stories to tell us.

We had planned to go to the store after lunch to get a few things. Hannah initially wanted to stay home from the store, but she decided to go when we mentioned that she could pick out a gift for a friend’s birthday party tonight. (Now that she is understanding the concept of receiving gifts, we’re trying to encourage the flip-side and get her excited about giving gifts too.)

She kept up with us in the parking lot and store aisles, and picked out some caramel-filled chocolates for a gift. When we got home, she helped carry in the bags from the store. By then, it was 3:00, so she asked if she could have her snack. With my permission, she got herself some raisins and peanuts — and put them away when she was done.

I then told her that it was time to do her afternoon schoolwork. Usually we do it right after lunch, but she was fine with doing it after snacks today instead. Here’s what she did:

• Worked on vowel sounds, using “hit, hat, hot” (We did them yesterday with magnetic letters; so we did them again today with the whiteboard and magnetic letters. She seems to do better with the magnetic letters than with them written on the whiteboard for some reason.)
• Wrote more words with “a” in them.
• Reviewed various ways to divide ten. She counted out ten colored tiles from a big bag full of them, then divided them into two piles and told me how many was in each pile. I wrote the numbers, and we repeated with about four different equations.
• Drew a picture of Penny’s dog pillow and kennel, complete with Penny laying on the pillow.

After schoolwork, she played a couple of computer games (Jungle Chess and Sky Island Mysteries). In the middle of Jungle Chess she came to find me and explained that her sister had turned down the sound again and would I please help her turn it back up. I did, and she was sure to say, “Thank you.”
Six years ago: Hannah would lay on her bed for hours looking at a toy; not playing with it in the usual sense, just turning it over and over and looking at it. Now she uses her time to explore, play, and interact.

One of her sisters joined her during the computer game. At one point Hannah asked this sister to move her foot since it was on the stool where Hannah had taped the background scenery for her Balto play a couple of days ago. Sister moved her foot and asked, “Is that better?” “Yes,” Hannah replied.
Six years ago: Hannah had no pretend play; she didn’t know how to pretend. Now she’s putting on whole plays from her imagination.

Our friends were due to arrive after supper for the birthday party. Hannah had time to watch Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. When she saw which episode it was, she told her sister about one of the upcoming scenes and proceeded to imitate a character’s voice.
Six years ago: Hannah had one volume and one pitch of voice. We have worked a lot on soft/loud and high/low. Now we’re starting to see some results.

When Mr. Rogers was over, Hannah waited patiently for the birthday friends to arrive.
Six years ago: She didn’t acknowledge people coming or going around her. Now she anticipates the arrival of friends.

The rest of the evening was an opportunity to see just how much Hannah has grown to flex with real life and the changes we all encounter every day. We usually open birthday presents in the living room, but since our guests were having coffee in the dining room, I suggested that Hannah bring the presents to the table. She did so and ended up sitting in her dad’s chair in order to be near the birthday guest. Since she was sitting in Dad’s chair, Dad sat in her chair. He drew her attention to that fact in a good-natured way, and she giggled and said it was all right if he sat in her chair.

When it was time for her bedtime story, Dad volunteered to do the reading while I spent more time with our guests. Hannah agreed and enjoyed her story; then I brushed her teeth and tucked her in with prayer and some praise music playing on a CD.

Whew! That’s a lot of typing, but I wanted to give you a glimpse into our lives at this stage in the journey. We’ve come a long way. To God alone be the glory!

Of course, we still have rough days. I would consider this one to be one of Hannah’s “good” days. But God is faithful. He has provided the perseverance and strength and wisdom that you have prayed over us for these six years, and He will continue to do so for the next six years and more. We are committed to keep on keeping on, holding tightly to His hand.

Happy 10th Birthday, Hannah!

Smooth and easy. Do those two words describe your home life? Would you like them to? Of course, life will always throw us some curve balls, but wouldn’t it be nice to have more smooth and easy days?

You can. But it will take some work first.

Charlotte Mason said, “The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days; while she who lets their habits take care of themselves has a weary life of endless friction with the children.”

That’s the secret to smooth and easy days: take pains now to endow your children with good habits. (Notice that word “endow.” You are making an investment in their lives that will benefit them for years to come.)

More Than Brushing Teeth

We usually think of habits in terms of our children’s brushing their teeth and making their beds. But habits can include so much more. If you think about it, character is really a collection of habits. You can teach your child to have the habit of obedience, truthfulness, or kindness just like you can teach him to have the habit of hanging up his coat. How would your home life be better if your children had the habit of obedience or of attentiveness?

Habit is a matter of doing something so often that you eventually do it almost without thinking about it. All right, here’s your science lesson for today. Your brain has neurons that talk to each other. Every time you repeat an action or repeat a thought process, certain neurons talk to other certain neurons. And every time those neurons talk to those other neurons, they lay down a path between them (to put it in layman’s terms). The more those neurons follow that same path, the more you find yourself thinking that thought or doing that action without making a conscious decision to do so. That’s when it is a habit.

Charlotte likened the process to laying down the rails of a railroad track. You have to intentionally lay down the rails correctly; then the train can roll on those tracks without even “thinking” about them. As parents, it’s our duty to lay down those rails in our children’s lives. Help them form habits that will make their lives run easily in the future, and give us smooth and easy days in the meantime!

How To Lay Down the Rails

1. Pick ONE

   Decide on just one habit to work on and devote yourself to encouraging and cultivating that habit for about six to eight weeks. One at a time will keep you focused and seeing progress without confusion. If it takes two months per habit, you can still add six new habits each year.

2. Work Together

   If your child is old enough, have a short, positive talk with him and explain the benefits of the new habit and how it will make his life easier now and in the future. Seek to come alongside him and work together as a team to lay down this new rail in his life. Pray for and with your child as you both seek to instill this good habit.

3. Motivate

   Motivate your child with living examples of other people (in books or in person) who exhibit that new habit. Also motivate with consequences — both good and bad. Remember Hebrews 10:24 and seek to encourage and spur your child on toward love and good deeds.

4. Don’t nag!

   Nagging doesn’t help form those neuron connections. The only path nagging reinforces is the “do what Mom says” path. The trick is to try to get the child to think about the new action (that you want to make a habit) himself. Make his brain trace that path between the neurons.

5. Repetition

   Seek every opportunity to help your child remember on his own to do the new habit. You can say something like, “I promised that I would help you remember something” or “Remember what we prayed about together?” This is where our vigilance and creativity may be stretched, but it is a crucial step. This is the “takes pains” part of the process (as in “the mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days”). The more times your child thinks of and repeats the action or thought with no relapse, the deeper those rails will be grounded. And don’t forget to thank the Lord for bringing the right thoughts to your child’s mind every time he does remember.

Laying Down the Rails

If you would like more details and practical suggestions for cultivating habits like truthfulness, attentiveness, and obedience, you might enjoy these two resources:

• A series of blog posts on our sister site, Simply Charlotte Mason
• Laying Down the Rails, a 240-page book that is a collection of all the habits Charlotte Mason mentioned along with tips and practical how-to’s

Good habits can be a powerful tool for any intentional parent. Let’s put forth the effort to endow our children with good habits.

I buy three-ring binders in bulk at Sam’s Club. Now, if you’re like me, you grew up with three-ring binders full of hundreds of sheets of notebook paper and several dividers labeled with school subjects like Math, Science, and English. But that’s not what we use these binders for. These binders are for hobby notebooks. These binders are for fun!

When one of my daughters was about eight or ten, she began showing an interest in dogs. She would gravitate toward dog books at the library and check out books about various breeds. If we saw a dog at the park, we would ask her what breed it was, and nine times out of ten she would know. So I encouraged her to start a dog notebook. In it she put magazine pictures of various breeds of dogs, labeled; printed pages from Internet sites about dogs; poems about dogs that she copied in her best handwriting; her own sketches of dogs. Anything that had to do with dogs, she put in a sheet protector (also bought in bulk at Sam’s) and put into her notebook. Soon her dog notebook grew so large that we separated its information into two notebooks: dog breeds and dog training.

Another daughter created a notebook about cats. When her interests changed, she started a new notebook about gardening, flowers, and herbs.

The point is that hobby notebooks are something fun for the children to do in their free time and as their interests dictate. We simply make the notebook materials available and encourage the process.

Benefits of Hobby Notebooks

Just between us parents, hobby notebooks also reinforce these character traits and school skills (but don’t tell the children!):

• Love for Learning

  Learning when you don’t have to is a foreign concept to many children and adults today. So many people have had any love for learning “schooled” out of them. A hobby notebook can cultivate the sense of excitement when you discover something new about your topic, as well as the sense of accomplishment as you see your notebook expand. It can nurture that love for learning that God designed us to have all our lives.

• Personal Initiative

  Hobby notebooks are personal. The notebook’s owner decides what he want it to look like, what goes into it or doesn’t, when he wants to look for more discoveries to add to it. Hobby notebooks can cultivate the skill of self-education. The children (and adults) figure out that they don’t have to wait for or depend on a structured class in order to learn something. They can teach themselves a lot with the proper resources and enough time to soak it in.

• Order

  Notebooks and sheet protectors help the child organize his findings by keeping all that information gathered in one place. If he collects lots of information, he will soon see the benefit of arranging it by subject or forming two notebooks dedicated to related subjects. It can be a great lesson in orderliness.

• Creativity

  Because the notebooks are the children’s own projects, they are allowed complete creative license over those projects. Each child can decorate, embellish, doodle, sketch, paint, cut, shape, and otherwise customize his notebook as he pleases to reflect his own personality.

• Handwriting

  A fun part of notebooking is done by handwriting. Children can copy poems, captions, charts, slogans, or just add personal comments to their pages. And usually, since the notebooks are their personal projects, any information that they write is done in their best handwriting. Great penmanship practice!

• Research Skills

  When a child wants to find more information to add to his notebook, you have a prime opportunity to help him learn research skills: how to use the library, how to use the Internet, how to use a copy machine, how to use a dictionary or encyclopedia (whether in printed form or software). The children will be more eager to learn these skills if they are searching for information on topics that interest them.

• The Topic of the Notebook

  Whether birds, quilts, World War I, or cooking, hobby notebook topics are endless. As your child compiles and creates his own notebook, he will be learning about his topic of choice. Some topics he may only dabble in; others he may latch onto for life. Either way he is experiencing a broad and generous curriculum!

Parental Involvement in Hobby Notebooks

Hobby notebooks should be child initiated! Don’t assign them as a requirement. Once the child has expressed an interest in a hobby, you can casually suggest the idea of creating a notebook, but don’t push.

How much parental involvement you need to give depends on the age of your child. Children who can’t write well will require a lot more help than older children. But your main responsibility is to help and encourage without pushing or having expectations. This is their project, not yours.

From our experience, I’ve been involved in basically three ways. First, I’ve made casual suggestions as appropriate. For example, if I see a little article in a magazine that talks about one of the children’s topics, I’ll mention it to her and say something like, “That might go well in your notebook.” That’s it; end of comment. It’s strictly up to her whether she wants to add the article. Second, if they want to look for information on the Internet, I’ll help and supervise their surfing. Third, I try to keep the binder, sheet protector, and paper supplies well stocked. (Oh, yes, sometimes I’ll buy some stickers that go with the theme of a notebook if I see them on sale or something.)

So I guess we could sum up parental involvement in two words: equip and encourage.

Design-It-Yourself Hobby Notebooks

You can create a fancy notebook that’s more like a scrapbook if you really want to. We started doing hobby notebooks way back before the word “notebook” became a verb. Now there are all kinds of resources available! One of my favorite is Notebooking Pages.

But keep in mind that hobby notebooks don’t have to be expensive or elaborate. A generic white three-ring binder with sheet protectors to hold whatever you want to throw in it works just as well. If you get the kind of binder that has the clear plastic over the cover, the child can create a cover page and slip it into that plastic for a custom hobby notebook. And if your child continues in that same hobby for a long time, he can easily create a new, more sophisticated cover as he grows older.

However you decide to do them, hobby notebooks are not intended to stress out mom or child. They don’t have to be fancy, and they aren’t even mandatory. They’re just a fun idea that has worked well in our family (and has probably been a pretty good deal for Sam’s Club, as well).

The three older girls have been doing a lot of knitting projects lately. Evidently, Hannah has been observing them. Today she entered their room and asked, “When are you going to teach me how to knit?”

January 2008: Learning to knit.

Now, I don’t know how to knit, but it looks pretty complicated to me — especially after I sat with Hannah for months while she worked on a needlepoint project. I had to pretty much point to each square in the mesh and tell her whether to come up or go down. So it was a good thing I wasn’t in the room when she asked, for I might have underestimated her.

Getting more comfortable with knitting.

As it was, she sat for more than two hours and knitted a green scarf for her stuffed dog, Blanket. (The names of her stuffed animals and dolls is a whole other story, believe me!) At first her oldest sister had to coach her through each stitch. But after a while, she could do it on her own with just occasional coaching. We asked her on several occasions if she wanted to take a break, but she would reply emphatically, “No, I want to keep going!”

The finished scarf for her stuffed dog.

It was a great opportunity to practice referencing because she would look at her sister to see whether she was winding the yarn the correct way on the needle. Every once in a while she would hold the scarf to her stuffed dog’s neck to see if it was long enough yet. After an hour or so, she was knitting away, looking around, and chattering like she’d done this for years.

Here is the finished scarf. You can bet we had a celebration!

Welcome to the new Intentional Parents posts! We have a lot of new readers, and we’re eager to get started with the monthly e-mail and post again.

As many of you know, we took a break for a few months to work on our sister site, Simply Charlotte Mason, and to give Intentional Parents an overhaul. With that upgrade, we have been able to add more content and some new features for all of you.

Next month we’ll be back on our regular schedule of monthly topics for our posts:

• Intentional Parents
• The Bible
• Enjoyable Pastimes
• Academics
• Character
• Home Skills

Our format will be a little different, but the emphasis will be the same. In February we’ll start where we left off: ideas and suggestions for teaching Academics.

This month I wanted to mention an article called Lessons from the Valley. It was just published in Homeschooling Today magazine and is posted on our site. It talks about the “giants” that we all face when we find ourselves in a valley in life. Your valley may have a different name than mine, but the giants are eerily similar.

“We always knew that Hannah was a little different from her older sisters, but we are firm believers in letting each child develop at her own pace. It wasn’t until Hannah started to lose her ability to talk that we became concerned. That was the beginning of my valley. . . .” (Continue reading Lessons from the Valley.)

I’d love to hear about your valley and how the Lord is walking through it with you. One great new feature on our upgraded Intentional Parents site is the ability for you to add your own comments to these e-mails. We invite you to share Scripture, encouragement, and your own life experiences so we can all learn from each other. You can post your comments below.

Today, the day before Thanksgiving, Hannah peeked into my office and said, “Mom? I’ve been playing with cushions. Would you like to see what I made?”

November 2007: Playing in the leaves.

She waited and watched for my answer. When I said Yes, she ran off in the direction of the basement. I followed at a slower pace, but when I rounded the top of the stairs, she was at the bottom of the stairs looking for me, to make sure I could see her and catch up.

She pointed to the sofa with its reorganized cushions and said, “It’s a trolley.”

I smiled and pointed out a few things I noticed about it. Then I asked, “Does it have a bell?”

She hesitated a moment, then her eye landed on the tag and she pointed to it with a little grin. “Yes! There’s the bell,” she declared.

Now, that little scenario is huge! When you break it down into RDI-type language, she demonstrated mastery of these social-interaction principles:

• Seeking approval from someone else for something she did
• Referencing where I was and regulating to wait for me to catch up
• Explaining information she knew but I didn’t
• Coordinating with my imaginative suggestion (”Does it have a bell?”)

And if you break it down into regular language: We have a lot to be thankful for!

“Dog K” and “Dog 1″ signs for her pet store.

OK, these foam mats have done it again. Today Hannah used them to build three separate creations in my office. It was a pet store scene with a foam dog cage, dog-catcher vehicle, and a counter. If that wasn’t enough, she went down to the craft room to make signs for the pieces.

She came back with a sign that very closely resembled “Dog 1″ for the cage and one that said “Dog K” for the dog catcher vehicle

This is like NT (neurologically typical) children play, isn’t it!

We’ve been working on the concept of “more” in Hannah’s math lessons. Today when we were doing the lesson, it suddenly dawned on me that she was using pronouns correctly in a game that switched them constantly.

Here’s a sample of the conversation that took place in the game, with the meanings of the pronouns in parentheses.
“I (Mom) have 8. What do you (Hannah) have?”
“I (Hannah) have 4.”
“Who has more?”
“You (Mom) do.”

I remember how confusing pronouns seemed a year or two ago. How could I teach her when to use “I” and when to use “you” when their meanings kept changing? At the time, when I was ready to pull out my hair, I set that skill aside and decided to come back to it later. In the meantime, Hannah has “caught” that element of language!

I’m eager to see what else she will “catch” now that she’s tuning in to conversations around her.

The chairs and table that Hannah built in 3-D.

When our neighbors moved, they gave us a set of interlocking foam mats. Each mat is about 12 inches square, and the girls like to fit them together into various shapes. In the past Hannah has always made a flat creation. She has fastened the mats together to form one large mat. Now, she has pretended that large mat was a lake or a beach, so that’s good. But today was different.

Today she built two 3-D chairs and a table from the mats! Three separate objects at the same time, all in 3-D. She even tried to sit in a chair, which collapsed under her weight. So I got her little plastic chair and tucked it under the 3-D foam one. It fit perfectly, and she sat at her little foam table for a long time.

Pretend play and creativity kicked up a notch! Yes!

It’s been a while since our last Hannah update. I guess in a way that is good, since it means we just continue plugging along. But in another way, it means I haven’t noticed any significant events in several months.

Hannah turned nine years old today. It’s been five years since we diagnosed her autism and started this journey. In some ways the time has flown by; in other ways it’s been a long haul.

But through it all the Lord has faithfully led us each step of the way and given us the strength to persevere.

God is good . . . all the time.