Screen Free Time

Screen Free Time is something most people are familiar with.  (and I know I should not end that sentence with a preposition.)  Here in our house SFT usually comes when I just can't take the screens anymore.

Many of you know that we homeschool - if you didn't, now you know - we homeschool.  (Which by the way is one word even though spell check is constantly trying to correct me. click here)  There are so many reasons a family chooses to homeschool, and ours, like many families is a combination of reasons.  I won't go into them right now, but I just wanted to throw that out there.  This post is actually about Screen Free Time.

It seems when we start out the school year I'm usually "super-mom".  I am on top of school.  I am on top of the house.  I am on top of everything.  We follow our schedules.  I prepare things the week before and then the night before, and I feel great!  And then about two weeks in I start to stumble, we let a couple of things slide.  Then three weeks in some more things slide, and by week six - we're in a bad spot.

Well, week six was last week for us and let me tell you, by the end of the week I was about to sign my daughter up for public school.  The problem was not my first grader.  No, she's great!  Doing her assignments, not complaining, enjoying school - the problem was ME!

Our schedule is gone.  My organization is gone.  My house is a mess and climbing back up the ladder of success seems like such a long hard climb.

So, we made a new rule for school days.  All school days are screen free from 8 am - 3 pm unless it is an educational website that has to do with our math, science, or some other assignment.  This eliminates two BIG problems we have - the constant whining and asking to watch a movie or play a computer game and then me losing track of time and letting them watch another movie and play another game... which can wrap into more time than we intended.

Today is our first day screen free.  (I also said that this rule does not apply to me, because much of my other home activities involve some sort of screen) Although, right now this blog writing is just therapy.

Can I be honest though, so far today has been awesome!  I feel like super mom again, even though the house is still a big mess.

Another thing I did today that I'm going to try and keep up with is keeping a bowl of healthy snack food out on the table.  This morning I cut up a melon and left it out with a plastic wrap over it.  Every time the girls whine that they're hungry I send them to the table for a bite of melon.  It has been awesome!  They just go and eat it - and they stop whining.

Today I also mandated that we spend time outside running around.  So we got out the soccer ball and set up some goals and played a rudimentary game of soccer.  And I officially lost.  We ran around and got hot and sweaty and tired for an hour!

After lunch we sat and Amariss read to me while I picked through her hair and then we switched and she picked through mine.  We were pretending we were monkeys looking for bugs.

I know that not all days (infact, most days) will not be like this, but today it feels pretty nice to have a good day and remember that its okay that we had a bad week last week.  It won't be our last one, but it wasn't our first - this is just a part of life.

I'll let you know how we feel at the end of the week.

Any other homeschooling parents have bad weeks?  How do you handle them?

Not what I thought it would be....

PAIL Post

When I first started out on this parenting journey, just like many newbies, I had a lot of grand ideas of how awesome I was going to be (cue laughter)... 

I quickly, and I mean quickly, learned just how little I know about parenting, and even - dare I say - judgemental I had been towards other parents (ouch!). 

I thought Attachment Parenters (AP) were crazy, and I had several friends who used Babywise and I totally disagreed with a lot of it.  So, I didn't know which school of thought to follow. 

What I found out though, was that God equips us exactly as we need to be equiped.  Oh, I make mistakes, a lot of them, daily - but my daughter knows the truth about Jesus, she is full of love, and quick to share, and that strong-will she was blessed with? - its still there, and being shaped for God's purposes. 

Some of the things that make me the craziest about my daughter and parenting, are not wrong at all - they're just different than me.  Where I am introverted, my daughter knows no stranger... (seriously, we have the stranger talk all the time).  Where I am quiet, my daughter is boisterous.  Where I want to fit in, my daughter just wants to be herself.  *If you know my husband, you know where my daughter has inherited all of these, oh so wonderful traits.*

Sometimes, its not a matter of changing those traits in her, its a matter of changing those traits in me.  We've taught her to love, and love she does! 

And parenting?  It is HARD WORK.  This kid is no angel, just like the rest of them.  She tests the boundaries and makes me wonder if I really knew what I was getting into.  No, I didn't. 

I didn't know what it would feel like to get up in the middle of the night, 3 times - because she's thirsty, hungry, or has to pee.  (When they're 4 and you're pregnant, you have a lot less patience for these shenanigans.) 

I didn't know what it would be like to still have to give a consequence to the most adorable little face I've ever seen, that's crying becuase I looked at her sternly. 

I didn't know how much I would love this kid. 

And that love only grows every. single. day.

So parenting philosophy?

I lean more towards Attachment Parenting and I still disagree with Babywise.

But just like anything, I don't follow that perfectly either :)


*On that strong-willed child though - If you have one, I can tell you right now.  One of the BEST books out there is You Can't Make Me, But I Can Be Pursuaded by Cynthia Tobias. 

Go buy it.  now.  for real.  It will change your life and the way you parent.  It made a world of difference in our home and our daughter was just turning 4 when I read it.  I wish I'd read it when she was 2 though!