"What if there is no happy in school?"

We're working on looking for the positive in school this year, but so far B's response is: "What if I can't find the happy in school? What if there is no happy in school?" I'm not sure if that's better or worse than his response to the first day of school last year: "Mom, what can you do to get me out of this?" :(

This breaks my mom-heart and makes me question if I am doing the right thing. I've considered home schooling. I've thought and prayed about it for two years. I've visited with friends about it. I have not felt right about doing it. I took a job at my son's school where I'm close to him (that's not why I took it, but I felt like it would be a good perk). I'm confident he has a good teacher and he is in a good school, but as his mom I wonder if that's good enough for him.

Right now we'll keep loving and encouraging him at home and in school. We'll give him opportunities to be exactly who God made him to be, and we'll encourage him to be his best everywhere. And we'll keep praying and parenting as best as we can. Even when the answers don't come easy.

Everything a girl needs

I opened a piece of mail just now that had been laying on the counter. It was really just junk mail, so I'm not sure why I even opened it. It was from a tween magazine my daughter has received in the past through gift subscriptions. It's not a bad company, and she has enjoyed the magazine. This correspondence was an attempt to get me to renew her subscription (sorry, that's the grandparent's job if they choose to do so). One line in the letter jumped out at me as was intended. It was in bold, set apart from the other text, indented, and even used my daughter's name.

It's everything Faith needs to enjoy being a girl...
as you help prepare her for her teen years and beyond.

 Wow. I thought it took love and dedication and hard work. I thought it took teachers and friends and other caring adults. I thought it took guidance and prayer. I thought it took time and more time and even more time invested in her. But I guess all it takes is the right magazine. Thanks, American Girl, you just freed up a lot of my time...

All consuming

2 months ago I was on my way to Africa. I have stories and pictures and blog posts trapped in journals, on hard drives and in my head. I want to get them out and share my amazing experiences, but something else has been consuming me.

There is so much else I feel like I should also be doing this summer but can't quite manage; a garden of intention left to grow weeds (both literally and figuratively).

But instead, I'm learning to parent. Remember those all consuming days after welcoming a newborn into your home? Whether the first or second or beyond, it was a time of getting to know a new person and figuring out who they are and how you fit together as a family. I feel like I'm doing that all over again as we transition into the middle school years. Our daughter is an amazing, creative, passionate person. She is strong and opinionated and moody. (Not unlike me.) We are learning how to fit together as a family again. She is more independent than she's ever been before, she's making more of her own decisions than she has before, and most days she's more moody than she's ever been before. I'm learning to be in charge without being controlling, to lighten up more on things that don't matter, and I think I'm praying more than I ever have before. And at the end of the day I'm completely drained and often emotional and still not sleeping through the night.

The Allure of Teaching

Before I had my own kids, I had classrooms full of kids.  I loved the looks on their faces when something really clicked.  I loved to explore the world with them and often got as excited as they did.  Never will I forget the day we were studying weather and had just talked about hail when a rare hail storm hit the Chicago area.  We ran out into the yard and gathered up platefuls of hail.  The kids looked at me as if I had magically caused the sky to open.  They couldn't stop talking about the circles on the hail stones, and how they were formed by tumbling over and over in the clouds before falling to the earth.  That group of energetic 5-year-olds has now graduated from high school.  Maybe one or two are pursuing a career in meteorology.  Another child that stands out in my mind is a 5-year-old color whiz.  Of course by the time kids are 5, they have usually mastered their colors, and so I always had a unit on secondary colors.  You know, blue + yellow = green, etc.  While the other kids were overlapping color paddles to see the results, this little boy wanted to know what would happen if we mixed a "new" (secondary) color with an "old" (primary) color.  I casually mentioned that you would get a tertiary color, like red + green = brown.  He spent the rest of the year at the easel mixing various colors and reporting his results.  By the end of the year, 11 other 5 year olds knew the word tertiary.  That child has most likely been driving for more than a year now; he is probably also quite an artist or graphic designer.  The excitement of reading a book or singing a song or dancing or digging in the dirt with a completely engaged group of children is without compare.

 photo courtesy jiji

This is part of the reason I chose to say yes to this opportunity to go work at a school in Africa. I have no idea what to expect. I haven't been in the formal role of "teacher" in many years. I'm feeling inadequate. Will I remember all those tricks I used to have up my sleeve? In addition to spending time in the classroom, I will help to train teachers. That makes me feel really inadequate! However, I feel certain that I'm being called to go on this trip. I have some fears and reservations. I'm starting to get very sad about leaving my family for 18 days. However, I hope to come home more excited to spend time with my own kids; more eager to teach them, and read to them, and dance with them. While it will be hard to be gone for so long, I hope a greater appreciation for my own kids is just one of the many lessons I'll discover while I'm gone.