Holt Associates - (If you have kids.... you must read this....)

HOMESCHOOLING AND JOHN HOLT'S VISION

by Pat Farenga, Holt Associates

John Holt was born into his fairly affluent family in 1923. He was sent to some of the "better" private schools and eventually graduated from college with a degree in Industrial Administration ("Whatever that means" John would always add after saying that). In his later life John didn't like to reveal his alma maters because

I have come to believe that a person's schooling is as much a part of his private business as his politics or religion, and that no one should be required to answer questions about it. May I say instead that most of what I know I did not learn in school and indeed was not even "taught?"

Upon graduation John found the United States Navy needed his services to help fight World War Two. John was a lieutenant on the USS Barbero, a submarine that fought in the Pacific; he served a three-year tour of duty. After the war John felt nuclear bombs made war suicidal for mankind and he joined the United World Federalists, an organization that seeks to bring peace to our planet by establishing one World Government. John lectured for six years on their behalf and became the Executive Director for the New York branch of World Federalists. Dissatisfied with what he perceived as their increasing ineffectiveness, John left the organization in 1952, spent the next year bicycling around Europe, then went to visit his family in Colorado. It was there his sister Jane suggested John try teaching, urging him to visit the Colorado Rocky Mountain School, which had just opened. John went there to visit one day and liked it so much that he began teaching. The school was unusual for its time because it was co-educational and both students and faculty did almost all the manual work of the school.

John taught in Colorado for four years and decided to move to Boston to experience city life again. He got a fifth grade teaching position in Cambridge and met faculty member Bill Hull, who became a colleague with John and shared his interest in children. They decided to observe each other's classes, one sitting back while the other taught. John's memos from his on-going observations form the core of his first two books. Eleven years of teaching provided John with the notes and journals that finally got published, after several rejection notices, as HOW CHILDREN FAIL. Today this book and the one that followed, HOW CHILDREN LEARN, have combined sales that exceed a million and a half copies, a remarkable feat for any books about education.

What is it that John expresses that so inflames discussions about school? There are two versions of the reason, a short one and a long one. The short version is two words: Trust Children. The other version is contained in all of John's books. Let me supply you with something in-between.

As they worked together John and Bill eventually decided to frame their work in the classroom with the question, "Where are we trying to get and is this thing we are doing helping us get there?" Clearly they wanted their students to be better learners and they tried all sorts of things to help them get there. John writes about ingenious ways he invented of using Cusinaire rods for math, playing twenty questions to develop reasoning skills, using a balance beam for weights and measurements, all sorts of approaches to problems he thought his students were facing. But the endless cycle he noted from his first days as a teacher repeated itself once again: He taught but they didn't learn. Sure, some of them passed his tests but that didn't mean anything if they couldn't, and most couldn't, at least remember a week from now what was on the test.

First John and Bill thought the reason so many children in their classes learned so little was that they used such bad thinking and problem-solving strategies. Eventually John saw it differently. If we, and not the child, choose the task, then they think about us instead of the task. John meticulously details in HOW CHILDREN FAIL, how it is their position as teachers, which is to say givers of orders, judges, graders, that is the source of the children's strategies. If the children can somehow get the answer the teacher wants, be in a class situation or on a test, once they've provided an answer, they are out of danger. The tension is past. The teacher no longer threatens, fear of not having an answer, or of having the wrong answer, or of being ridiculed before classmates, goes by. Teachers, not math, not reading, or spelling, or history are the problem that the children design their strategies to cope with. Why does this happen? Because of fear.

Fear in the classroom. Most adults scoff at the idea, "What's a kid got to be scared of? You don't see other kids crying about going to school, do you? What are you, a wimp?" But we forget what it is like to be a child. We find it hard to remember life as it looks four feet off the ground. "There are very few children who do not feel, during most of the time they are in school, an amount of fear, anxiety and tension that most adults would find intolerable; it is no coincidence at all that in many of their worst nightmares adults find themselves back in school."

John decided the prime reason children act stupidly, don't learn, or misbehave is because of fear, usually the ever-present fear of failure. Ask any sports figure, actor or politician what makes them choke in front of a group and the answer is fear. Studies show that anxiety and fear can actually create perceptual disturbances such as blurring of vision and loss of hearing. Can this be the root of our recent discovery of "learning disabilities?"

Fear dominates the classroom environment in thousands of subtle ways, most of them disguised as helpful "motivation," some of them not disguised at all, and all of them coercive. John felt the error of "progressive educators" is that they thought there were bad ways (harsh, cruel) and good ways (gentle, persuasive, subtle, kindly) to coerce children. However there is a great difference between setting a goal for oneself and doing difficult and demanding things to achieve it, and doing something, in the case of school usually something uninteresting to the student, simply because someone tells you you'll be punished if you don't. In this book, John forcefully shows us how whether children resist such demands or yield to them, it is bad for them; and that the idea of painless, nonthreatening coercion is a illusion. John writes, "Fear is the inseparable companion to coercion and its inseparable consequence.

Fear is not all. John notes how boredom and resistance cause much activity in school as fear. Many of the tasks given to children in school are busy work in the purest sense of the word. If a child can properly do five division problems, why must he do twenty-five? If we think we must force children to learn, we are grossly mistaken, but this is the primary assumption of our school system. For many people education is not primarily concerned with learning, but with discipline. A school where children learn but appear to be undisciplined is therefore failing in its task, and this is why so many of our finest teachers are fired, as John Holt was. In HOW CHILDREN FAIL John writes:

The idea that children won't learn without rewards and penalties, or in the debased jargon of the behaviorists, "positive and negative reinforcements," usually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we treat children long enough as if that were true, they will come to believe it is true. People say to me, If I weren't made to do things, I wouldn't do anything. This is the creed of a slave. You may believe that of yourselves, but I don't believe it. You didn't feel that way about yourself when you were little. Who taught you to feel that way? To a large degree it is school. Schools teach it because, believing it, they can't help acting as if it were true.

The seminal questions teachers should always be asking is, "What do we do to help or prevent learning?" This is seldom asked because it is assumed that unless there's something wrong with the student, all teaching produces learning, so all we need to think about is what children should be made to learn.

Why do we presume that we can say what anyone must know? How can we say what a child wants to know is less important than what we want him to know? Even if we could all agree on what the curriculum should be, it still wouldn't work, because our knowledge of ourselves and the world is constantly changing, today faster than ever. Who can say what we need to know ten years from now? Our laws, our physics, our astronomy, our science, of ten years ago has changed considerably. Many things once considered textbook facts have to be changed every year due to humankind's curiosity. We don't need fact-splitters for the future, we need able learners, and our schools are failing in their chosen task of educating the masses. This is because schools do not encourage real learning, which happens when children discover what they most want to know, instead of what we think they ought to know. Teachers need to be geared to the student's learning schedule, not the state's learning schedule.

The state's learning schedule and most of the school bureaucracy is enforced by administering tests on a regular basis. The true purpose of tests should be so the one taking the tests can discover deficiencies and move towards improving them. Tests are designed by teachers to show these deficiencies, but instead the school system uses tests for a different end, as measures of intelligence and aptitude skills.

Never losing sight of the right to question what we are told, John maintains there are two real reasons why we test children: the first is to threaten them into doing what we want and the second is to give us the basis for handing out the rewards and penalties on which the educational system - like all coercive systems - must operate. Struggling with the inherent difficulties of a chosen or inescapable task builds character; merely submitting to a superior force destroys it. Do we want to turn out intelligent people or clever test takers? How can we foster a joyous, alert, wholehearted participation in life if we build all our schooling around the holiness of getting "right answers?"

Besides this, why do we presume, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that the vast amount of knowledge and ability in each of us can be reduced to a number or grade? These numbers and grades are indelible marks on our lives that the school system can turn over to anyone, such as the government or prospective employers, and these marks can follow us forever. Many teachers' recommendations are written in secret and never seen by the student, so even the veneer of grades may be undermined by a careless recommendation. The student has little or no rights in this matter. As Edgar Friedenberg says, the student owes the school everything and the school owes the student nothing. This fact was upheld in a recent court case. Discovering that their children, upon graduating from high school, could still not add, subtract or write their own names properly, the parents sued the school. The court ruled against the parents claiming the schools are under no obligation to teach anybody anything and because they were worried that by making too broad a ruling they might encourage a rush of lawsuits that would bankrupt the schools. So learning must be the duty of the student, not the school, despite, as we see, the fact that the schools are designed to prevent real learning for the vast majority of students.

John maintained that the test-examinations-marks business, and it is a multibillion dollar business to many people, is a gigantic racket set up to perpetuate the school bureaucracy, not to serve the students. He often wrote how students, teachers and schools all join together in this masquerade of testing to show how the students know everything they are supposed to know, when in fact they know only a small part of it - if any at all. In his 1983 revision of HOW CHILDREN FAIL John added:

No matter what tests show, very little of what is taught in school is learned, very little of what is learned is remembered and very little of what is remembered is used. The things we learn, remember and use are the things we seek out or meet in the daily, serious, non-school parts of our lives... The true test of intelligence is not how much we know, but how we behave when we don't know what to do.

When John wrote HOW CHILDREN FAIL and HOW CHILDREN LEARN he still had a vision of what school might become. In these books John writes about rehabilitating old school buildings and turning them into resource and activity centers, citizens' clubs, libraries, music rooms, theaters, sports facilities, meeting rooms, open to and used by old and young together.

John still thought that schools could be changed from within and his reputation was well respected by many educators at this time. In 1968 he stopped teaching grade school and became a visiting lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education; he held the same post the next year at U.C. Berkeley. His experiences in the upper echelons of academia spurred him to write THE UNDERACHIEVING SCHOOL. With this book John moves his case out of the classroom and studies the school system itself, which he sees, not surprisingly, as self-serving and demeaning to students. His unabashed sympathy for the plight of college students during campus unrest of the late sixties placed John squarely against the education establishment. I recently came across an unpublished ms. by John from this time, 1969, entitled LIVING FREE AMONG THE SLAVES: A Handbook for the Young. In it he offers sharp reasons and strategies for nonviolent confrontation with one's elders. In the midst of this era of hippies, happenings and Vietnam John wrote:

Older people will say that their anger and hatred has been roused by your appearance and behavior. They may well believe this. It is not true. At best, it is only a small part of the truth. I think the current hatred of large numbers of older people for the young began growing long before there was any movement of student protest and it has been strong for years. For a good many years I have been observing children with adults and particularly of adults with children around them and I have felt more and more strongly, and for some years now, that very large numbers of people have had a generalized dislike of any and all children of almost any age past three or four.

You have not created the hatred of the old. You have perhaps focussed it and given it a clearly visible target....

A publisher could not be found and the book was forgotten, yet it shows how seriously John takes young people's problems.

The next book to be printed was a year later, 1970. John called it WHAT DO I DO MONDAY? because it is essentially a book of practical ideas and suggestions for parents, teachers and anyone who works with children. John writes about specific ways of teaching math, science, history and other subjects with household items or easily found examples so people can approach these subjects in more useful ways.

It was around this time John was invited by Ivan Illich to be a guest at CIDOC in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Illich wrote, among many books, DESCHOOLING SOCIETY, a book John admired. Illich's concept of making people less dependent on institutions, in effect "deschooling" themselves and becoming more self-reliant - life-long learning without credentials - mixes well with John's concepts.

During 1971 -1974, John wrote the books FREEDOM AND BEYOND and ESCAPE FROM CHILDHOOD. Inspired by his visits with Illich, these books show John moving from the classroom and school system to an analysis of children's place in society. He challenges our very notions about childhood and how we have created a sentimental prison, a walled garden that prevents our young from attaining the dignity and responsibilities they want and need until they reach the arbitrary magic age of eighteen. Children's rights are integral to John's ideas, and the way they are treated in our society angered him. In FREEDOM AND BEYOND John writes:

What determines what sort of person a child will be is how they are treated, not what they are told. If children are brought up with strong sense of dignity, competence and work they will extend this to other people one way or the other.

John officially gave up on reforming schools and challenging their assumptions about children and learning in the opening chapter of INSTEAD OF EDUCATION (1976).

Do not waste your time trying to reform these schools. They can not be reformed. It may be possible for a few of you, in a few places, to make a place called school which will be a humane and useful doing (as distinct from educating) place for the young. If so, by all means do it. In most places, not even this will be possible.

INSTEAD OF EDUCATION, like WHAT DO I DO MONDAY? has a lot of practical suggestions for making a part of the world of adults accessible to the young which is as interesting, exciting, meaningful, transparent and emotionally safe as possible. John provides examples and methods for running free schools, learning exchanges, and offers his thoughts on how compulsory schooling is among the most authoritarian and destructive of all the inventions of man.

INSTEAD OF EDUCATION marks a change in John's vision of schools and society. Rather than turning schools into resource centers and teachers into guides, as he envisioned in his first books, John describes a new utopia, the society of learners:

In that society all people could have work to do which is varied and interesting, which challenges and rewards their skill and intelligence, which they can do well and take pride in doing well, over which they can exercise some control and those whose ends and purposes they can understand and respect...Beyond this, all people would feel - as very few people do now - that what they think, want say and do would make a real difference in their lives and the lives of people around them. Their politics, like their work, would be meaningful. Their elected officials would be public servants, not petty kings or officers. They would shape and control the society they lived in, instead of being shaped and controlled by it. In such a society no one would worry about "education". People would be too busy doing interesting things that mattered and they would grow more informed, competent and wise in doing them. They would learn about the world from living in it, working in it, and changing it and from knowing a wide variety of people who were doing the same. But nowhere in the world does such a society exist, nor is there one for the making.

Given his pessimistic view, John provides sympathetic advice and sound tactics for change, including a plan for an underground railroad to get your kids away from authorities if you are serious about taking them out of the school system. It is here the bridge John created toward homeschooling starts to define itself.

People have been teaching children at home instead of sending them to school for quite some time before John became a spokesman for them. When John wrote INSTEAD OF EDUCATION he wasn't aware of such people but they found each other after publication of this book. A year later, on the basis of correspondence he started with some people who successfully taught their children at home, John printed the first issue of GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING and started selling books he thought were important and helpful to learners of all ages.

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING, a bi-monthly newsletter started in 1977, is best described by John. In the first issue of GWS he writes that GWS will provide readers with approaches to learning...

...in which people, young and old, can learn and do things, acquire skills and find interesting and useful work, without having to go through the process of schooling. It is mainly about people who want to take or keep their children out of school and about what they might do instead, what problems come up and how they cope with these... GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING is very interested, as schools and schools of education do not seem to be, in the act and art of teaching, that is, all the ways in which people of all ages, in or out of school, can more effectively share information, ideas and skills.

Disappointed and disillusioned by previous efforts to reform the schools, John writes in GWS #1 about how homeschooling might cause social change:

In starting this newsletter, we are putting into practice a nickel and dime theory about social change, which is, that important and lasting social change always comes slowly and only when people change their lives, not just their political beliefs or parties... I have come to understand, finally, and even to accept, that in almost everything I believe and care about I am a member of a minority in my own country, in most cases a very small minority... This doesn't trouble me any more, as long as those minorities of which I am a member go on growing. My work is to help them grow. If we can describe the effective majority of our society as moving in direction X and ourselves, the small minority, as moving in direction Y, what I want to do is to find ways to help people who want to move in direction Y, to move in that direction, rather than run after the great X-bound army shouting at them, "Hey you guys, stop, turn around, you ought to be heading in direction Y!" In areas they feel are important, people don't change their ideas, much less their lives, because someone comes along with a bunch of arguments to show that they are mistaken, even wicked, to think or do as they do. Once in a while, we may have to argue with the X-bound majority to try to stop them from doing a great and immediate wrong. But most of the time, as a way of making real and deep changes in society, this kind of shouting and arguing seems to me to be a waste of time.

Tired of school but always fascinated by children and their ways of learning. John wrote an unusual book in his canon at this time, NEVER TOO LATE, his musical autobiography. John always loved music, jazz and classical especially, and he himself could play some flute and guitar which he learned as a young man. A few years before he wrote this book, when he was in his early fifties, John learned to play the cello on his own. Besides tracing his life and musical history, the book serves as a reminder for us to try something from the ground up again. As an adult learner John shows that to learn well we must become like a very young child again, dealing with endless false starts and seemingly inpenetrable mysteries. It is a warm autobiography of a true individual and learner.

NEVER TOO LATE was published in 1978, a year after John started GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING. John would have preferred to spend his later life with his cello, but he soon found he was much in demand as an advocate for homeschooling. Families who were homeschooling for years contacted GWS and expressed relief that someone other than themselves practiced homeschooling.

Then, and even now, a family can get pulled into court on truancy charges because they are teaching their children at home but haven't permission from the State or School Board to do so. John frequently wrote and spoke on behalf of such families. This used to happen a lot more frequently than it does now because most school districts, like most people, never knew that people can or would want to keep their kids home rather than send them to school, or that it was a perfectly legal option. John's helpful and wise testimony before several state legislators and various commissions helped smooth the way for homeschooling in some states, and he found subscriptions and letters coming in bigger mail-bags every day.

John's last book, TEACH YOUR OWN, was a direct result of his involvement with GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING. Many educators felt John abandoned them when he wrote this book, but I don't think they read it closely. Its subtitle is: A HOPEFUL PATH FOR EDUCATION. TEACH YOUR OWN 's pages are loaded with letters from parents describing how they manage to let their children learn around them without anyone going crazy. It is full of positive news about children as well as containing the best nuts and bolts descriptions about how to answer questions about homeschooling, how to write a curriculum, how to make your proposal, how to find out what your legal rights are, and just about anything else you need to know about unschooling children. Most importantly for John, homeschooling provides the proof that children can be trusted to learn without being forced to.

Why do people homeschool? John thought there are three reasons:

They think raising their children is their business, not the government's; they enjoy being with their children and watching and helping them learn and don't want to give that up to others; they want to keep them from being hurt, mentally, physically and spiritually.

John emphasized how homeschoolers can allow their children's abilities to develop naturally in an unforced manner. Certainly parents who take their children out of school would be wise to make sure they do all the work they say they would do on their curriculum, but once they get that out of the way, and some families can do a whole semester's required work in about six weeks, then they start their real learning. Everyday homeschoolers prove by their example that learning is a life-long process that can take place anywhere and anytime, not just in a school supervised by experts. Time and a great student to teacher ratio are on the homeschoolers' side, rather than pitting their child's learning against a schedule designed by someone who has never seen their child. They are best able to facilitate a child's learning, especially during their early school years.

Experience being the greatest of all teachers, homeschoolers can make their children part of their everyday adult lives. By being accepted into the continuum of their parents' lives, a child learns by doing, by seeing other people work and do things and wanting to do them themselves. By seeing how one uses numbers to decide what to purchase, seeing their parents read and write to communicate with others, these children are being exposed to the total territory the world of numbers and words encompasses. Math, science and English are no longer facts one memorizes and uses just for tests, disconnected from real life. Homeschooled children can learn math, science and other skills not in little increments of lesson plans, but by actually doing them, by counting, by reading, by taking in the manner they see other people behaving around them.

A child in a homeschool environment is afforded the opportunity to learn as he or she always did, that is, through play and interaction with the people and objects around them, The importance of play during childhood is noted by Piaget and many other child specialists, but most schools rob their students of that. From age six on, forty hours a week or more, the student must be forced to sit still and be instructed at the cost of his or her childhood. During classtime which fills the bulk of any school day, daydreaming and childish behavior, such as playing, are ridiculed and penalized; we chastise the child for being a child. Why are we in such a rush to get them out of childhood? John wrote in HOW CHILDREN FAIL: "Our teaching is too full of words and they come too soon."

Homeschoolers do not take their children out of school to escape from the real world or to make them antisocial. They make their children part of their world, the real world of business, home and family. Where being a citizen means getting out into the community, meeting and being exposed to people from all walks of life and all ages. Boy and girl scouts, 4H, YM- and YWCA's, church and community sponsored events, private lessons, apprenticeships, after-school sports activities - all these and more are ways that children who stay at home are "socialized."

The so-called social life of schools is probably a major reason why parents want to take their children out of school in the first place in TEACH YOUR OWN, John wrote:

Social life in the classroom is mean-spirited, status-oriented, competitive and snobbish. No one ever says school is kindly, generous, supporting, democratic, friendly, loving or good for children. When I condemn the social life of schools people say, "But that's what the children are going to meet in Real Life." This seems to me to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In his last years, homeschooling provided John with the hope that children may escape the indignities, mind-numbing routines and hypocrisy of school and so become the loving, intelligent people he believed we are all capable of being. Two years before he died, John revised his first two books, HOW CHILDREN FAIL and HOW CHILDREN LEARN. His later additions make the books even more forceful in their arguments, and when looked at as the beginning of John's writing and thinking about schools, they clearly show how John's criticisms and ideas about schools and learning developed in a logically and consistent manner based on his constant observations of people, especially young children, learning. As he says in the revised HOW CHILDREN FAIL:

Nobody starts off stupid. You have to watch babies and infants and think seriously about what all of them learn and do, to see that, except for the grossly retarded, they show a style of life and a desire and ability to learn, that in an older person we might call genius... We adults destroy most of the intellectual and creative capacity of children by the things we do to them or make them do. We destroy this capacity by making them afraid, afraid of not doing what other people want, of not pleasing, of making mistakes, of failing, of being wrong.

We destroy the disinterested (I do not mean uninterested) love of learning in small children, which is so strong when they are small, by encouraging and compelling them to work for petty and contemptible rewards - gold stars or papers marked 100 and tacked to the wall, or A's on report cards or honor rolls or Dean's lists or Phi Beta Kappa keys - in short, for the ignoble satisfaction of feeling that they are better than someone else. We encourage them to feel that the end and aim of all we do in school is nothing more than to get a good mark on a test, or to impress someone with what they seem to know. We kill, not only their curiosity but their feeling that it is a good and admirable thing to be curious, so that at the age of ten most of them will not ask questions and will show a good deal of scorn for those who do.

At one point John wanted to make a bumper sticker with this slogan on it: "Children are born smart. Schools make them dumb," but he thought better of it. It summarizes his thoughts quite neatly, though.

John's work is based on principles of nonviolence and faith in our intellectual abilities to grow. He showed this in his daily life as well in his books. As his ideas about school changed, so did he. He was frustrated by the lack of change in our schools, to be sure, but he kept finding new ways to approach the problem. John's grand vision of a peaceful society of life-long learners and doers was at least partially realized for him during his life through the efforts of homeschooling families, and their happy children are his tribute.

(Please feel free to tell me what you think of this... I am sincerely curious)

:)

the mail came...

Yesterday's mail brought a letter from Corrections Canada.

It is "pleased to advise" me that my application meets their "basic screening criteria".

:)

However, I am not convinced that I will get any farther in Corrections than the last question in the test in the Spring.... but at least I am trying to do something...

There has been a lag in my blogging and I need to get back into it. There simply just isn't enough hours in a day it seems.

Jeff's boys are up visiting him for the week and I am helping him to entertain them until his leg feels better. Today we baked cookies and read some stories. I am hoping to get them to the YMCA for some swimming with my kids tomorrow or Thursday.

Yesterday I saw Dr. Frizzle about some "questional markings" and she is referring me to Dr. Van Boxel who will surgically remove them. Ahhh yes.... more scars....

grrrrr...

Well I have been egnoring my domestic duties and need to jump on my dishes and laundry...

go go go

(yawn)...

nope, that didn't work...

:)

Open Mic Night at the Bridge Street Cafe

Every Thursday night at 8pm the Bridge Street Cafe in Sackville NB has an "Open Mic Night."

Naturally, I was curious and packed up the kids and we went there for oatcakes and fair trade coffee.

Haven danced, Kale socialized, and Drew and Myles played checkers.

I cannot wait to go back. ... ahem.... (minus the kids).

And before you even ask, .... no, i will not be bringing my guitar...

:P

The two gentalmen playing there that night were...um... "seasoned"... and my piddly excuse for guitar playing.... just wouldn't be welcomed...

However i did just acquire a new-to-me drum set...

This spring you will see my drumset set up in the garage under the Christmas lights...

...and the po-po will probably be in my driveway...

(neighbors, you know how it is)

:)

It's always something...

When I say that I learn something "brand new" everyday, it is true...

and yesterday, i was informed that my use of the word "Jew" was socially incorrect.

Wow.

I had never heard this before, so i looked it up... and sure enough...

The term "Jew" is considered derogatory to some people in the Arab world.

When something like this happens, I am always nervous of how much I don't know about the world...

... I believe that i have some research ahead of me...

:)

Pictures From Halifax

Zen Shorts - by Jon J Muth

If you are looking to buy an amazing book, then this should be your next purchase.

I read this book while in a bookstore the other day and it gave me goosebumps and i became flushed.

I immediately bought the book and brought it home to my kids.

It has gorgeious pictures and such moving "morals".... that you cannot help but want to share this book with everyone you know.

Avoiding the dishes....

Here i am at the computer.

My dishes await. As does the upstairs and the overwhelming disaster of clothes that are calling my name.

In other news:

Tomorrow I begin my Cleanse again.

I was so distraught about accidentally eating that first day that i decided to try again. Another fresh start.

If Jack Osborne can do it.... so can I.

:)

So I have everything I need for a 5 day cleanse... Mon to Friday.

I will be taking very detailed notes about my moods and energy levels because I intend on blogging it for my Town Paper.

I am re-motivated and will inform my kids that there will be a cash reward for anyone catching Mommy with food in her mouth.

:)

Day 2 - Master Cleanse is working its magic...

Yesterday:

After Yoga, I weighed myself and I was 140.

I had a Cleansing drink at 9am, noon, and then I walked Geneva (not far and not fast) maybe a little more than 2 km.

I then walked over to Kyle's to get the kids. I had a Cleaning drink at 5pm, and another at 7pm.

I did mess up at one point and had Mind Burp.

I was getting the kids a snack and ending up throwing about 7 Fruitloopy Cherrio-things in my mouth.

:P

Honestly, I find it difficult to do this Cleanse and have to feed the kids.

Alone it was easy to not think about food. But to have to make meals for others.... the will power that is required is almost beyond my capability.

But I push on.

My goal is to get to Saturday morning. If I make it... (and it actually seems possible today) then i will re-evaluate how I am feeling and possibly try and get to Monday.

Today:

I weighed myself this morning and expected to see 139 or 138.... but it was 137.

:)

I am happy about the number, but it still is unnerving to lose that much weight in a day.

But I feel good.

Surprisingly i have no cravings for certain foods or coffee and no headaches. (That might happen today). I have energy and am excited to start exerising as soon as this detox is over.

I have read about some side effects but I haven't had any yet; it is still early on.

There are other "day to day" blogs out there of people that have done the Cleanse and what their experiences where.

I don't have links but they are out there.

I should also metion that I am making my Cleanse drink using filtered and boiled water that has been cooled.

And I must remember to pick up my Cayenne pepper today...

...

enough sitting....

go go go...

The Master Cleanse - Day one

After being unsuccessful at trying to curb my bad eating habits, I have decided to try something new.

The Master Cleanse.

The picture you see here is a glass of water with 2 tbsp of lemon juice (I used freshly squeezed... see the seeds on the bottom if the glass) and 2 tbsp of maple syrup (from a tree, not the corn syrup stuff).

I was supposed to add cayenne pepper , but i don't have any so I will pick some up tomorrow.

So far so good.

:)

This morning was the day.

I could feel it.

I was ready for this adventure.

I woke up and did Yoga. Then I took a Vitamin C and made my first drink and thankfully, it tastes alot better than i expected.

:)

I have researched this cleanse for years.... it is actually the one that prompted me to do the detox that i did 2 summers ago. However, just water and some lemon juice had scared me into a "modified" slushie detox...

But this time, inspired by a book i received for my birthday, i decided that it is now or ...later....

:)

Now.

I have read both sides of this story. I have read that it is a farse and I have read that it does good. So, what better way to find the truth, than to subject myself, "guinea-pig" style, to the process.

Just call me:

Debbie Megeney-pig...

yup, that was the best they could do when i was in school...

And, now I am finally living up to my "nick name"...

:)

Life is made of this...

It all began around 5am.

Kale came into my room and snuck into my bed. He quickly settled back into sleep.

About an hour later, I heard him whisper, "Why did you say spider?".

I started smiling and whispered back, "I didn't say spider."

"Yes you did." was his responce.

Well I started laughing. He then said "What's so funny?"

And i knew that it would take much too much energy to explain to an almost 4 year old how awesome they are.... so i giggled some more and went back to sleep.

All was quiet for about 45 minutes when Kale started talking again.

"Did too, Did not. Did too. Did not."

I laughed quietly to myself and tried to imagine what was going on inside his mind...

Then, as if my monring was not complete, 15 minutes later, Kale started singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Each verse repeated was in a different silly voice...

:)

I couldn't contain myself.... and then, once he tried to use a ladylike voice... I lost it and started laughing so hard i was almost crying...

Kale didn't laugh with me though...

He was angry that i had interuppted his song...

Which made me laugh harder...

:)

Good Morning Life...

When the smoke clears...

... I will have made 23 pancakes this morning.

:)

The air in the kitchen is a bit... cough cough... denser than usual... but thankfully the kids are too busy eating these pancakes to make fun of me... They were chocolate chip pancakes (I always make them from scratch.... but this time i used a Stone Ground Rye Wheat Flour that was suggested in the book B.A.L.A.N.C.E. that i got for Christmas.

The pancakes might not have looked too astheitic... (in my opinion they looked aweful...) but they were much more flavourful than using the plain old flour i normally do...

:)

And yesterday I made another rash decision, and had another sleep over. It was really short otice and Ethan and Emilee were at their grandparents, as was Jonah and Hannah. But Alexei was available.

We have never had Alexei (pronounced Alix- ay) over before.

:)

He was so excited to come over and hang out, that he started to feel a bit queazie... and in the van, (ten feet from the house)... he couldn't hold in his excitement in anymore and he threw up all inside my van.

wow eh?

I pulled into our driveway and told him it would be ok, that I would get some rags...

He smiled at me and said it was ok.... that he does this all the time... then he opened the door to the can and threw up in my driveway...

:)

can you even imagine?

:)

HE was reassuring ME that he was ok...

OMG, so when the shock of that moment wore off, I got some rags. He came inside and changed into his pajamas and handed me his ahem... clothes... and he asked me to wash them...

what an amazing kid... :)

The rest of the night they either played station, listened to music, or jumped over the staircase railing to a pile of blankets and pillow below...

:)

I think that the next sleepover will be a theme one... with challenges... The kids can plan it Monday morning and make invitations...

Well, i have some laundry and dishes to get to...

and some new drum sticks to buy.... yes... I was finally rockin too hard on the durm set this morning and they caught fire and exploded...

....mwaahahahaha...

>:)

Nothing to report...

I haven't been blogging much because I have been busier than usual.

:)

I have had some mishaps with my house that need my attention, and my patience. My oomph is lacking and the weather isn't helping.

All in all...

I need more fresh air.... I am certain of it....

:)

"corrections" and surgery

I got up this morning and showered, dressed up, and headed to Moncton.

I wanted to be at the Corrections Building downtown by 8am. However, I didn't count on getting behind a school bus in Dieppe...

or the early morning traffic...

but I did still manage to park infront of the bus terminal by 7:55am...

:)

I crossed the street and went inside. I was excited to get the ball rolling on possibly becoming a Corrections Officer. I dropped off my application for "Corrections" and then drove to the Hospital to meet up with Jeff and his Mom before his surgery.

He seemed ready to get the surgery over and done with so he can start to begin to recover. He really is miserable being unable to fend for himself.

I gave him a guitar magazine I had picked up for him to read when he wakes up from surgery.

He might get to go home later today or he might have to stay the night. But either way, he will be heading back to Oromocto for a week or more...

probably more....

:(

After leaving him in the capable hands of the nurses and Dr's at the Moncton City H., I came home and cleaned. I got the kids from Kyle and went grocery shopping.

We all had supper and now are about to watch E.T....

Popcorn at intermission...

:)

my apologies...

In a fit of curiousity, I brought my older blogs over to Mulitply from Yahoo 360...

I was nervous. I wasn't sure what would happen.

Would they be dated chronologically? (Very important to me... I am kinda obsessive that way)....

Thankfully, it worked out well... until i went to my inbox....

if you are attached to me in some way on Mulitply and recieved 200 blog notices... I apologise...

and if, for some strange reason you are curious what i blogged about before I came here....

:)

then click Blog, then scroll to the bottom of the page and you will see numbers 1 to 14...

click 14 and go to the bottom of the page... work your way up...

(it will make more sense to read the blogs in order)

My goodness you'd have to be bored to do this ....

.... but if you are into taking a closer, stalkerish look into the boring ass life of a stay at home homeschooling mom .... fill yer boots...

:)

...it keeps leaving me needing...

I wouldn't say that I am a controlling person but i do have a thing about getting my picture taken.

I dispise it.

Would you believe that I actually managed to be sick or otherwise indisposed from grades 7 through to 12 to avoid getting my school pictures taken. My mother was fit to be tied...

And only when she threatened extreme violence on my person, would I finally subject myself to the torture of sitting infront of a camera. And even then, that only happened 2 times...

:(

I haven't changed.

I do own a webcam... I even asked for it for my birthday 2 years ago (maybe 3?) .... but ... I have many reservations about using it...

It is the overwhelming feeling that i have lost control ... but i cannot explain over what exactly...

I took a poll just now, and 3 of the 4 voices in my head think that i need help...

:)

look what i found...

While going through paperwork, I found an appointment (i had forgotten about) for Drew to go to the IWK on the 22nd to see Dr. Robert LaRoche (ophthalmology). Part of Drew's possible Marfan's condition is that his retina might become detatched.

Marfan's Syndrom:

"The Marfan syndrome is a heritable condition that affects the connective tissue. The primary purpose of connective tissue is to hold the body together and provide a framework for growth and development. In the Marfan syndrome, the connective tissue is defective and does not act as it should. Because connective tissue is found throughout the body, the Marfan syndrome can affect many body systems, including the skeleton, eyes, heart and blood vessels, nervous system, skin and lungs."

I found this about retinal detachment: " A retinal detachment occurs when the retina is pulled away from its normal position in the back of the eye. The retina sends visual images to the brain through the optic nerve. When detachment occurs, vision is blurred. A detached retina is a very serious problem that almost always causes blindness unless it is treated. "

My ex-husband was diagnosed 5 years ago with Marfans and recieved an aortic root and valve replacement during which the Heart Surgeon gave him a mechanical valve.

It is possible that both Drew and Haven have this condition. Drew goes for heart tests every year and more recently had an MRI. Haven is tall and thin and her wingspan is suspicious.

People with Marfans are not supposed to be allowed to play contact sports. So starting this summer, I believe that Drew is going to have his first taste of "golfing"...

My Dad is a fantatsic golfer... i might even try golfing myself...

:)

"Are you really the messiah?" Yes, I am. Believe it.

Nothing is easy. Nothing.

Life is constantly throwing bags of muck at you...

But you know what?

I stand here, ... covered in sweet, wet, dirt. And I love it.

:)

I drove to Moncton today and went to pick up my application for "Corrections"... I had a lovely conversation with the man working there. He was very encouraging and tried to give me hints as to what to expect. Then he gave me two applications and sent me back down the elevator from whence i came.

:)

Back at home I did the practise test online.

Ug.

I realized that i need to work on my algebra and percentages...

It was probably close to 2 years ago when Karen mentioned that I should give "Corrections" a try. I thought she was joking. But she convinced me she wasn't.

I have been thinking about it ever since.

Forestry isn't really a viable option (been there, did that, hugged the tree). Then there is Firefighting School in Waverly, but it would take too long. But with "Corrections", if I can pass the test, then the role playing, then the interviews... then there is training... only 11 weeks...

so,

one step at a time...

the test...

I need a calculator and an algebra tutor...

in that order...

:)

All- in"

My List...

The truth is that I have always had one.

The "list " has changed very little from year to year. Surprizingly, I have been able to cross some things from it.

Last year, I polar dipped and ran a marathon...

The year before that, i shaved my head bald...

My current list has such things on it as:

see a 3D movie, surfing, go paintballing, learn to do the splits, and take a weeklong canoe trip...

:)

add to that hiking macchu picchu with my kids, and Cairo (pyramids and camels)...

maybe one day...

What is on your list?

A little smile to start your day...

An exasperated mother, whose son was always getting into lischief, finally asked him,

"How do expect to get into Heaven?"

The boy thought it over and said, "Well, I'll run in and out and keep slamming the door until St.Peter says, 'For Heaven's sake, Dylan, come in or stay out!!"

Inspiration for the morning...

"Every Mother of a Son

holds the power to shape

a new society of men

who appreictae women

in the way women want

to be appreciated-

for the value of their minds,

the beauty

of their spirits

and the goodness in their hearts.

Every Mother of a Daughter

holds the power

to teach women

to demand nothing less."

-anon

If there is a harder way....

...I don't know of it...

My uncanny willingness to take, not just "the road less taken", but the one seething with scorpians and bad weather, is something that almost defines me.

So last night, when I was invited out to Jeff's, to watch him and Adam play their guitars, of course I said yes.

:)

It was fantastic to watch! They could almost read each other's minds! They played guitars and sang, I tapped out a beat on the drum sticks, and Daisy lazed around...

Then it happened. The two men were taking a break from the guitars and decided to wrestle in the kitchen, (as men often do?), ... well, Jeff's leg broke.

So there the three of us were, 3am at the Hospital Emergency. Dr. Bob was on and he gave Jeff a quicky cast and told him to come back the next morning for an x-ray and a fiberglass one.

:)

Yup.

As Jeff would say... "Good-times in the Maritimes."

:)

Curse that silver lining...

Here i am.

My life seems to be a colorful collection of trippings and stumblings... and I am, almost compulsively, trying to look for the good in the situation.

And although I find none, I still feel good about the fact that my mindset has me looking for the silver lining at all.

I am not the type to give up on anything. And to just crawl into a hole and say to hell with everything, simply isn't my style. Instead, I am the first one to stand up and say, I am hurt and it stucks, but life goes on and so will I.

With that said,

I have had the worst kind-of week.

Bad. Not good. Nothing good happened as a matter fact. And yet, here i am... looking forward... thinking about tomorrow... trying to tweak what is still possible to tweak...

(sigh)...

rebuilding is hard work...

I need a shower, and then i need to get started on this new year.

The silver lining is there. I know it is. I might not be able to see it just yet... but i am sure that it is under this pile of crap labeled "life sucks"...

I need to pull up my woolies from Mark's Work Wearhouse and get on it.

:)

Today.

What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?
-- Khalil Gibran.

There's Gravity in my Hair...

Ahhh... kids....

:)

The things that they come up with.

Myles asked me if the kids at the bottom of the Earth had hair that stood up all the time. I told him that there was just as much gravity at the bottom of the Earth as there was in the middle...

was i wrong? ug... I'd hate to tell him the wrong thing...

in other news:

It is cold today. There is alot snow on the ground and I hope it stays... I have a snowboard in Wentworth that needs some of my attention...

:)

I am doing everything that I can to try and stay postive this year... and so far so good. There have been a couple of "bumps" lately, but after i took a walk and thought things over I came to the conclusion that I just need to "let go" more.

I am a passionate person and I live my life just as passionately as I can...

But I must also accept things for what they are.

"it is ...what it is."

:)

2008 - living and loving as hard as i can...

2008 - Rebuilding

I have made a number of resolutions over the last couple of days.

But one of the biggest promises to myself is to rebuild my relationships with people that I know.

Everyone I know.

I need to take more time for others. I need to write more letters and call more.

I also need to rebuild my health. I have been too forgiving of what i have been eating,... or not eating. This means: More salads and more water.

I have also decided to write in a journal. My sister bought me a lovely one for Christmas and I intend on using it, starting today.

I love life.

I love everything about it. I love the happy times... but I also appreciate what the painful times give me...

perspective...

(sigh)...

2008 is starting off with my complete dedication to rebuild my life inside and out.

:)