I felt overwhelmed.
During the early years of the homeschooling movement, in 1983, after our 6-year-old son Matt came down with pneumonia twice in six months, we started homeschooling to give him a break to recover. After that it seemed natural to let our two older children join our homeschool day whenever they got sick and had to stay home from school, I just included them into our homeschool day. They started begging to be homeschooled, too, so I wound up teaching all three, while helping to start El Paso’s first homeschool support group and spending hours on the phone talking to parents wanting information about homeschooling their kids.
I also started writing a weekly parenting column for the El Paso Times, sharing the tons of stuff I was learning while running a household, parenting and teaching three kids first grade through high school.
“Overwhelmed” became my middle name.
I’ll bet you feel the same sometimes, like you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, or life has too many moving pieces.
I’d like to share with you one my most important parenting/homeschooling lessons for those times when I started feeling Utterly Overwhelmed. It was this: I’d better stop for an uninterrupted (as if that’s going to happen…) Morning of Prayer.
So, I’d pick a morning when nothing was scheduled and tell the two older kids that they could have a day off from school if they kept their little brother happy, answered the phone and made lunch. And they were not to interrupt me unless someone was bleeding.
I learned that to begin, I first needed to prepare my heart to think about what I was doing and to Whom I was praying. Otherwise, I would just rush into God’s presence, tell him what I thought He should do, and rush out again, without even waiting to hear what He might want to say about it.
With experience and a couple good teachers, I came to realize that I couldn’t just assume that the way I saw things was the way God saw them.
He knows how I am made, He knows how the world is made, and He knows far more about my situation than I do.
So, I need to prepare my heart and mind to approach Him appropriately and listen for anything He might want to say.
A good way to prepare my heart was praying the Lord’s Prayer thoughtfully:
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…”
Who am I coming to? Since Jesus taught us to call Almighty God our Father, that tells me that God will listen to me as any good father would do. So, I can thank Him for being my father, for being completely on my side and for listening to me.
“Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
God’s kingdom and God’s will are the Big Picture. My situation is a small part of that Big Picture. So…am I ready to pray for God’s kingdom to come into my situation? And for His will (not necessarily mine) to be done in this situation…just as it would be done in heaven? If not, I need to confess sin and get my heart right. This has to be done before I can ask for my daily needs:
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
Are there sins – debts – I need to confess now, before I go any further? And am I “up” on forgiveness? Or do I need to pray about going through the process of forgiving – or at least being willing to let God help me forgive – someone?
And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one.
I acknowledge that God’s enemy is opposed to His kingdom, and that I want to further God’s kingdom, not the enemy’s. So, I ask God’s protection from the evil one as I pray.
For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
This is another reminder to Whom I make my prayers.
After preparing my heart this way, I’d write this verse at the top of a page in my journal:
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Phil 4:6-7).
“Be anxious for nothing…” St. Paul said. But I WAS anxious. In fact, I was obsessed.
Do you ever become so totally wrapped up in your worries, that praying is no longer really prayer? It’s worrying in the name of prayer? I began to realize that though I would begin: “Dear Jesus,” as if this was prayer, really I was just anxiously going over and over and over my worries, then ending with “Amen.” And that was not really prayer.
So, I’d make an Anxiety List
I’d draw a line down the center of the page and on the left side I’d list whatever I was worried about, leaving a fair amount of space between each item. Then, since St. Paul said to pray with thanksgiving, I’d go back to the top of the list and thank God for anything I could think of about the first item. Then I’d write my request, still on the left side.
I’d try to be quiet and if any thoughts or any scripture came to me, I’d jot that down. Then I’d move on to the second item, and so on down the list.
Over time, I learned two crucial things from this practice.
First: God answered my prayers in surprising – sometimes astonishing – ways. After a month or so, I’d go back to my left-hand list and then, on the blank right side of the page, I’d write down the answers to my petitions along with my thanks.
Wow, that was a faith builder!
Except.
Except that I also came to see that by the time I came back to write down those answers to my prayers, I often hadn’t noticed God’s answers when they came. And that was because I’d become so focused on a next new set of worries.
And it also prodded me into greater awareness and gratitude for what God did for me at the time He was doing it.
The second big pattern I began to notice was that the day after setting aside a prayer time like this, I always felt horrible. I’d think, I had all these things to do, and I wasted a morning praying, so I got nothing done, and now I still have all this Stuff to deal with.
But… over time… because I was coming back to my notes and seeing both the answers to prayer AND the depression that came the following day, I began to recognize the depression as a spiritual assault. I realized that when I prayed – beyond my sight in the world invisible – God began moving. And that made God’s adversaries angry. They could see what I could not.
So, I was suffering a spite attack.
As I learned to refuse these bouts of depression, they lifted over time. I would say, “Lord, I refuse to believe that that was wasted time. Someday I’ll see it was time well spent, so now I thank You in advance for Your answers to my prayers.”
Then I thanked Him again when the answers came.
©2022 Becky Cerling Powers
Reprint with attribution only www.beckypowers.com
Becky Cerling Powers is the author of Laura’s Children: the hidden story of a Chinese orphanage as well as Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive. She blogs at www.beckypowers.com “Anxiety List Prayer” is part of a collection of stories describing and explaining the use of the spiritual weapons that the apostle Paul listed in Ephesians 6:10-20. This story describes using all-occasion prayer. To find other stories in the blog series, enter “reflections on spiritual warfare” into the Search Bar.
My husband, Dennis, and I began our married life in southern Germany, where he was stationed by the Army. At first I was excited to be living in a foreign country.
But it was also unfamiliar and even scary. I was afraid to go anywhere all by myself. What if I got lost? There were no cell phones then. If I wanted to phone my husband for help, I had to use a public pay phone. But the instructions for using the pay phone were in German and I didn’t know enough German to understand them.
It was lonely, too, being so far away from my family and friends. While my husband worked long hours, I was isolated in a German neighborhood where I couldn’t speak to my neighbors. Where I didn’t understand the customs, like bringing a basket to the grocery store instead of expecting the store to give me a plastic sack.
Culture shock hit hard.
Marriage shock hit hard, too. I was used to being independent, living and working where I chose, managing my own schedule, paying bills with money I earned myself. Suddenly every aspect of my life depended on the work schedule, salary, and choices of somebody else.
I didn’t want to tell Dennis that I missed my independence. He’d be hurt. So I felt guilty and disloyal and tried not to think about it.
Actually, in marrying Dennis and moving to Germany, my gains far outweighed my losses. My transition to married life and our cross-cultural adventure would have been easier if I’d known enough to admit the value of what I had lost, so I could move on. Running away from admitting and grieving my losses just kept me confused longer.
Like most people, I thought of grieving as something people only do when someone they love dies. Now I know that life is full of other kinds of losses that also must be faced, acknowledged, mourned, and worked through. Our children shed their childhood and leave home for college and faraway jobs. Our parents age and lose their health. Dear friends get left behind when we move or start a new job.
So instead of rushing on as if nothing important has changed, I need to admit the reality that something valuable has ended. Then I need to grieve the loss – express it, put words to it, cry, or vent my feelings in other healthy ways. I need to tell myself the truth about it.
God has emotions. When He created us in His image, He created us with emotions. And those feelings give us important signals about the state of our souls – about what is going on in our innermost self.
Feelings can be confusing. The week our daughter moved into a college dorm at age 16, I felt very proud of her. But I was a real grouch with the rest of the family. Finally, one day after I blew up at my husband when he asked me to run an errand, he asked, “Is this really about me asking you to run an errand on a busy day, or is it something deeper?”
After a bit of resistance, I realized he was right. I wasn’t upset about errands or schedules. I missed my daughter!
Crying over my husband’s request was unhelpful. Shedding tears over Jessica’s move, though, helped me begin to accept the new situation. Crying helped, but only when my tears were directed at the true source of my grief.
Then I could also recognize and truly give thanks for all the positive aspects of the new situation. We made it! She graduated from homeschool early and could go to college on a scholarship!
When I learned to grieve and give thanks at the same time, it brought me into balance.
Then it became conceivable to recognize and acknowledge the potential in my life for new possibilities as a result of the change. My schedule freed up. My writing stretched in new directions. My daughter and I let go of our adult to child relationship and moved into an adult to adult relationship. In this way, I could move forward with gratitude.
© 2019 Becky Cerling Powers, updated 2022
Reprint with attribution only - https://beckypowers.com/
Becky Cerling Powers is the author of Laura’s Children: the hidden story of a Chinese orphanage and My Roots Go Back to Loving and other stories from Year of the Family in the Bookstore. She blogs at www.beckypowers.com “New Bride Confusion” is part of a collection of stories explaining and describing the use of the spiritual weapons that the apostle Paul listed in Ephesians 6:10-20. This story describes using the belt of truth.
To read the introductory story, enter its title “Family Conflict, Family Struggles” into the Search Bar. To find other stories in the series enter “reflections on spiritual warfare” into the Search Bar.
On Sundays…it’s helpful to paste or print out a picture of each person in your family and write a scripture-based blessing or prayer on the picture to pray throughout the year. The book of Psalms is a good place to find prayers and blessings. For example, Psalm 37:4, “May (Name) find delight in You, O Lord, and may You give her the desires of her heart.”
On Mondays…it’s important to understand that the key to children’s sense of security and intellectual development is a warmly responsive adult. Nothing stimulates children’s minds or builds good social behavior like a consistently affectionate parent, grandparent, or other committed adult who responds to kids’ daily needs, encourages creative efforts, sets healthy limits, provides calm order and is readily available for conversation.
On Tuesdays… it helps to be aware that reading at home is the simplest way to enhance children’s academic performance and encourage their intellectual development. Bedtime is a good time to include reading aloud in the family routine even if kids can read well themselves. Parents can talk about the stories and relate them to things that happen at home.
On Wednesdays…it’s important (but countercultural) to recognize that children learn social skills best by observing and imitating people who are more socially mature than they are. Preschoolers learn sharing and social tasks best when they have only one or two other children to relate to at a time, and when the group is supervised by an adult who is a good model.
On Thursdays… it makes a huge difference when you purposely develop the habit of savoring and appreciating what you have at the moment. When you feed discontentment by focusing on what you don’t have, you discourage everyone in the family, including yourself. It’s best to look for your blessings, thank God for your blessings, and let your children hear you thank Him.
On Fridays… since games, and craft and project books stimulate creativity, it’s important to try to keep them handy, where children can easily find and use them. Parents’ encouragement helps children try new activities, discover new interests and develop their natural talents.
On Saturdays…it’s good to remind yourself that family annoyances and problems are natural – to be expected. And that when they come along, the big temptation adults need to avoid is doing what’s most convenient for themselves instead of what’s best for the children.
© Becky Cerling Powers 2021 All Rights Reserved – print with attribution only
Becky Cerling Powers is a veteran homeschool grandma and the author of Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive and Laura’s Children: the hidden story of a Chinese orphanage. She blogs at www.beckypowers.com
On Sundays… Remember that if you don’t get rid of garbage from your past, it’s going to stink up your present. So seek God’s help for resolving resentment, hurt, and anger over past experiences. Insight isn’t enough. Negative feelings and attitudes don’t disappear just by realizing they are damaging. It takes God’s help to get rid of garbage: to face it, feel it, forgive it and allow God to fill the emptied space with love, joy, peace…all His spiritual fruit..
On Mondays…keep in mind that consistency is the toughest part of parenting. Everyone has to work at it. If you can be very consistent with a new routine for six weeks, however, it usually becomes set enough to survive inevitable slack periods.
On Tuesdays… try to calm down the family atmosphere by reducing stress from background noise. When the family is in the car, turn off the radio and talk. At home, turn off the TV and talk.
On Wednesdays…remember that children will do better in school if you train them to develop good work habits at home. So limit screen time, teach children to do regular chores, and set a regular routine for schoolwork, meals and bedtime.
On Thursdays… save yourself laundry by making sure children have enough space to put away their clothes. If clothes are left on top of a drawer in a stack, they fall on the floor, get trampled on, and wind up back in the dirty clothes hamper during pick up time, all without ever being worn.
On Fridays…ask yourself if your children have lots of informal (nonprofessional) contact with good adult role models. Positive social development depends more on adult contact and less on contact with other children than previously thought. Children learn social skills through imitation. So spend time with your children and encourage them to develop friendships with good adult role models through family, church, and neighborhood connections. Children develop maturity by being around mature people.
On Saturdays… work on developing the art of recognizing teachable moments. For example, if your child makes a remark about a field of cows as you drive by, stop the car. Take time to observe, to count, to sketch. Whenever you can, grab the teachable moments to keep children’s love of learning alive.
© Becky Cerling Powers 2021 Reprint with attribution only
Becky Cerling Powers is a veteran homeschool grandma and the author of Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive and Laura’s Children: the hidden story of a Chinese orphanage. She also compiled and edited the faith based stories in My Roots Go Back to Loving and other stories from Year of the Family. She blogs at www.beckypowers.com You can find her books on her website and at Amazon.
A few years ago, after our own kids were grown and gone, we drove to another city with friends to see a youth musical performance. We arrived at the church early and decided to wait outside in the parking lot because our friend’s very active 5-year-old Jacob was feeling restless from being cooped up in the car for 45 minutes. He needed to stretch and run before having to endure a long bout of sitting still and behaving himself during the performance.
The church yard had just been flooded for irrigation
So a big pool of water stretched along the back edge of the church parking lot, and Jacob said he wanted to throw rocks into the pool.
We had no objections, but I thought he needed more activity than that to stretch his muscles from the long ride and tire him out sufficiently to make him want to sit for a while. So I invented a variation on the all-important game for vacation trips and making other long drives with children….
Tire ‘Em Out.
I made up a rule: You Can’t Throw a Rock into the Pool Until You Run to the Fence and Tag It and Then Run Back for Me to Give You the Rock.
It was an excellent exercise game. Jacob ran all the way across the parking lot to the fence, tagged it, and then ran all the way back to me (his exercise), while I bent over and picked up a nice fat rock (my exercise).
I also cheered him on and told him what a fast runner he was...
and what a big splash he created...and now he was probably too tired—right? -- to try it again.…
He grinned and puffed and threw rocks and insisted he wasn’t too tired and galloped off again to tag the fence until he had managed four or five round trips from the fence to the pool. And then it was time to go into the church, and he was content to sit still for a while.
Why do children cooperate with such adult scheming?
I don’t know. All I know is, Jacob was happy, and my children used to be happy, too, with this sort of game—as long as they had my full attention, as long as I cheered them on as they ran, and as long as their muscles required a good stretch after a long drive.
The Tire ‘Em Out principle works for more than long car trips.
It works for homeschool lessons and pandemic lockdown school lessons, too. For young kids, being active is a reward in itself, so playing a variation of Tire ‘Em Out adds activity to lessons like math and reading drills and makes them fun.
For example, you can start a math drill sitting at the bottom of a big flight of stairs with your student standing at the top. You show the math or reading flashcard and call out the problem. Each time your student gives the correct answer, she gets to hop down one step.
Can she make it all the way to the bottom before you run out of cards?
Later, when she knows her facts better and needs more challenge, you can speed up drills by tossing a ball. You call out the problem, count three, toss the ball, and see if she can say the answer before she catches it.
There are a thousand variations.
Use your imagination.
Have fun.
© Becky Cerling Powers 2021
Reprint with attribution only
You can find more parenting insights from Becky Cerling Powers on her website (www.beckypowers.com) and in her book Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive
On Sundays… When we see our kids getting hurt unfairly, we need to teach them the art of forgiveness, keeping in mind that forgiveness is a spiritual issue – as is hatred and revenge. So, we can’t nag or preach children into forgiving. Or reason them into letting go of an offense. We can only practice forgiveness ourselves, then present it as a solution to our youngsters’ pain and prayerfully guide them through the process.
On Mondays… remember that children need to have their fathers and mothers weave three consistent messages into the fabric of their lives: “To me you are special. No matter what, I love you. You’re part of me; we belong together.’’
On Tuesdays… we weave the messages while keeping in mind that truly loving children includes setting firm limits. When we deal lovingly but firmly with unacceptable behavior, it helps children begin to develop the self-control necessary for future healthy relationships.
On Wednesdays… make sure to take advantage of children’s tendency to get talkative and reflective when you are putting them to bed. You’ll probably be more patient with the process if you set bedtimes early enough to include 15 or 20 minutes of talk time.
On Thursdays… keep in mind, when faced with your child’s messy bedroom, that in order to teach neatness, you need to eliminate as many organizing problems as possible. So sit on the floor and check the room from a child’s eye view. Maybe your child has too many toys to manage, or perhaps the clothes rod is too high for him to hang his clothes easily.
On Fridays… don’t make the mistake of parents who feel so embarrassed or angered by their children’s social blunders that they humiliate their children by pointing out their mistakes in public. This uses bad manners to try to teach good manners. The heart of good manners is consideration for others. So parents need show their children consideration by taking them aside to explain privately how they expect them to act. (If children still misbehave after that, though, they may be testing their parents’ authority to see if they can flout home rules in public. That situation does require firm consequences -- but not adult temper tantrums.)
On Saturdays… remember that no amount of treats, gifts or special favors will ever substitute for a parent’s undivided attention. And no child can feel loved without experiencing that kind of time.
© Becky Cerling Powers 2021 All Rights Reserved www.beckypowers.com
Becky Cerling Powers is a veteran homeschool grandma and the author of Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive and Laura’s Children: the hidden story of a Chinese orphanage. She also compiled and edited the faith based stories in My Roots Go Back to Loving and other stories from Year of the Family.
On Sundays… remember that yours is not the only family with problems. Every family has problems. It isn’t having or not having problems that shows whether a family is healthy or unhealthy. It’s how families respond to problems. A healthy family gives most of its energy to recognizing, facing, and dealing with problems. An unhealthy (dysfunctional) family pours most of its energy into keeping up appearances and ignoring, minimizing, denying, or running away from problems. So here is a prayer for the month: Lord, give us the wisdom to recognize when our family is having a problem, the honesty to admit it, the courage to face it, and the perseverance to deal with it. Amen.
On Mondays… somehow, in the whirlwind, we must love our children with our time. Focused, undivided attention sends children the powerful message that they are special and worth our full consideration and regard.
On Tuesdays… here’s a tip: grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles are children’s best tour guides for a visit to a history museum. They can allow museum exhibits to stimulate their memories of what happened to them in the past. Then they can relate museum exhibits to children’s own family history.
On Wednesdays… try keeping a list of your family’s sizes in your wallet or purse so you can take better advantage of sales. (Better yet, list measurements for each one’s waist, hip, pant length, etc. and tuck a measuring tape into your pocket or purse. Since clothing sizes vary, you will then be able to avoid mistakes by checking the item’s actual measurements.)
On Thursdays… when you are training children to clean their rooms, inspect their work regularly at a stated time. 24-hour-a-day neatness is unrealistic.
On Fridays…keep in mind that when you play games with beginners (whether preschoolers or teens), the object of the game for adults is not winning. It’s doing a good job of teaching the game to a child. Leave competition for the growth stage when your child is as skilled as you are.
On Saturdays… try to give your kids a good balance between play time and chore time. Learning to play games well is valuable but so is learning to clean, cook, launder and do other family chores. All of it is important for developing problem solving skills and for gaining a sense of accomplishment, self-confidence and community building skills.
© Becky Cerling Powers 2021 All Rights Reserved
Becky Cerling Powers is a veteran homeschool grandma and the author of Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive and Laura’s Children: the hidden story of a Chinese orphanage. Both are in the website Bookstore.
My homeschooling friend Jane had a little boy named Kenny who was uninterested in reading. When he turned seven, she grew frustrated and started pushing it every day. “He started to stutter,” she said, “but I didn’t get the message.”
Meantime, I didn’t realize what was going on in Jane’s home. I just remembered that she had told me once that Kenny wasn’t interested in reading. So one day when I was in the neighborhood, I dropped off some material about late-blooming readers.
Jane said she felt like my visit was like a direct rebuke from God saying: QUIT PUSHING.
So she quit the daily reading lessons and let her son play with his Legoes, which was what he liked to do. “He started making the most amazing, creative, intricate inventions,” she said. “He quit stuttering, his self esteem went up dramatically, and he just blossomed.” A year later, she tried reading lessons again, and this time they “took.” Kenny learned to read easily.
Many intelligent children, like Kenny, are not ready to read at age 6.
Some of these late bloomers are not merely intelligent, they are geniuses — like Thomas Edison. Why is this so? If a child is smart, why can’t he read?
It’s plain biology. Each child has his or her own timetable for physical development. The pituitary gland controls the developmental calendar, says child psychologist James Dobson in his tape, “The Late Blooming Child,” and no amount of parental anxiety or social pressure can speed up that timetable.
One aspect of growth that the pituitary controls is myelination.
This is a process that insulates a child’s nerve pathways with a white, fatty substance that makes electrical impulses move quickly and efficiently to other parts of the body. First each nerve pathway (or axon) must grow to a certain diameter. Then a myelin sheath begins to form gradually around that axon, like the layers of an onion.
Until myelin begins insulating the axons of a particular body system, electrical impulses cannot pass consistently through the nerves in that system.
It is then impossible for the child to control that part of his body.
His control develops gradually as myelination develops gradually. The last body system to become fully myelinated (sometimes not until age 8 to 10) is that part of vision that allows reading to occur.
Raymond Moore, former director of the Hewitt Research Foundation, compiled research from neurophysiologists, ophthalmologists, psychologists and research psychiatrists during the 1980’s. He said their results consistently show that children learn to read more easily after their vision, touch, hearing, and muscle coordination become more developed, and after they develop the ability to reason abstractly.
When pushed, children can learn to read before they are fully ready, if the axons are partially myelinated.
Children can do it, but it frustrates them because they are working without the necessary tools. Think of trying to flip pancakes with a piece of aluminum foil instead of a spatula, Moore said. You can do it. But you can’t do it well. If that were the way you had to make pancakes, it would be so frustrating, you might decide to quit making pancakes.
When children are pushed into reading before they are ready, he warned, they become frustrated and discouraged. Then, by age 8 or 10 when they have the neurological ability to pick up the skill easily and run with it, they are burned out and have lost their motivation for schoolwork.
The solution for late bloomers, Moore said, is to let them wait.
Instead of pressuring them to read, respond warmly to them one-to-one. Provide an environment that encourages them to explore, create and think. Encourage them to love learning and enjoy books that you read to them. Work on developing their language and thinking skills.
My husband and I stumbled across Moore’s research reports in 1984, soon after we started home schooling our late blooming first grader. Moore’s studies gave us encouragement to back off and allow our late bloomer to follow his own reading readiness timetable at home. Instead of pushing him to read, we read good books to him. We explored the desert, visited museums, drew maps, created crystal gardens, experimented with art media, and made crafts.
And we talked, talked, talked about all the things we did.
Our son developed a wide vocabulary and a strong sense of good grammar and proper English by listening to good literature and engaging in stimulating conversations. This also taught him to think. When reading finally clicked for him at age 10, he caught up fast.
Our three children all began reading when they were ready to read. Our early bloomers learned to read at the ages of 5 and 6, and our late bloomer learned at age 10. Yet by age 13, all three were reading at a college level.
As a nation we are causing unnecessary damage, stress, and wasted effort by being impatient with children’s normal development and pressuring teachers to make all their students learn to read by age 6.
As homeschoolers, we are free to refuse to bow to this social pressure
We can devote our efforts instead to providing the kind of stimulating, literature-rich environment that encourages children to love learning and read when they are ready.
A language-rich environment puts in place the tools children need for using what they read when they become able to read. This environment is good for all children. In our home, we found out that the kind of place where late bloomers can thrive is the sort of place where early bloomers thrive, too.
©2021 Updated from the March 31, 1996 originally published in the El Paso Times
Reprint with attribution only (www.beckypowers.com)
You can find more parenting insights from Becky Cerling Powers on her website (www.beckypowers.com) and in her book Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive in the Bookstore or on amazon.com
Dennis and I taught our three children through high school, and they all went on to do well in college and graduate school. A lot of people told us that our homeschool was successful because Dennis and I were exceptional teachers with exceptional children. But we have always disagreed because, although neither of our families were wealthy, both sets of parents raised children who eventually did significantly well in a variety of academic or other specialized fields.
So we look at our own childhoods and see what our own parents did that brought academic results. Dennis and his brother were raised on a South Dakota farm and attended a public one-room schoolhouse.Each went on to obtain a Ph.D. I was the second of six children who all attended public school and who all went on to graduate from college. Half of the kids also obtained a Ph.D.
From our own experience, Dennis and I believe that any parents, whether or not they homeschool, can make a huge difference in their children’s academic progress by simply taking advantage of a few home-style secrets of the learning process, like:
The best teacher is one who loves the child.
Young children are natural learners, full of life and curiosity and wonder. I once watched an emotionally detached first-grade teacher quench her classroom’s zest for learning in six weeks flat by publicly humiliating children for minor discipline problems and for not learning quickly enough.
On the other hand, I have been touched to see the lengths to which parents without a high school education go sometimes to locate resources for their special-needs children and to educate themselves to learn how to help their youngsters develop to their greatest potential.
Somebody who cares about a child will encourage him over the difficulties, go to the trouble to locate resources he needs, and find out how he learns best. So parents need to connect their children with caring teachers.
The quickest, most effective way for children to learn most academic skills is through one-on-one tutoring.
Most of us get our ideas about teaching and learning academic subjects from our own experiences with the public school system. We don’t stop to think that public schools are partly set up for crowd control. Something simple and easy to teach to one child becomes complicated if you have to teach it while managing 20 or 30 wigglers at the same time. At home, for example, you can teach first grade in an hour a day.
Children are most apt to retain their zest for learning when they follow a few simple safety rules and then are given tremendous freedom to explore within the boundaries defined by those rules. (See last week’s post: The Balances of Parenting)
Instead of worrying about children’s lack of interest in school, begin with whatever fascinates them and move onto other subjects from there.
Our daughter Jessica was burned out on formal school when she began home school in fifth grade. She had lost her curiosity. She “hated” math and science. But she loved to read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie” series. So we encouraged her to write her own historical fiction stories, like Wilder.
When she found that project satisfying, we read her Minn of the Mississippi, a fictionalized science book about a mud turtle. Then we encouraged her to model a story of her own on that idea. Soon she was studying science—reading about birds and then writing stories about them. Eventually we gained enough momentum from the motivation she experienced writing in history and science to coax and encourage her past a mental block in math.
If you can’t tutor a subject yourself, find a book, tape, video, computer program, or person (or combination) that can.
Every child needs a good education manager—a facilitator, an encourager, and a resource locator. Although we homeschooled our children, we did not teach them every subject ourselves. We used the services of neighbors, graduate students, and friends; we traded teaching duties with other homeschool parents; we used community resources like classes at the Museum of Art; and we encouraged our older children to teach the younger ones.
We used the library a lot, too. As an eighth-grader, our son Erik knew far more about desert ecology than either of us as his parents. We just let him roam the desert next to the house and drove him to the library every other week to find books on animal tracking and edible desert plants. Then when we took walks with him through the desert, he taught us.
© Becky Cerling Powers 2021
originally published in the El Paso Times in 1992 and updated
Reprint with attribution only
You can find more parenting insights from Becky Cerling Powers on her website (www.beckypowers.com) and in her book Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive in the Bookstore or on amazon.com https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Becky+Cerling+Powers&ref=nb_sb_noss
“Why does the van shake around so much in the wind?” our son Matt asked me one day when he was 7. We got around in two vehicles, a VW van and a small VW truck. “The truck is small and weighs less than the van,” Matt reasoned, “so the truck should blow around more. But it doesn’t. Why is that?”
Children have questions—many, varied and invigorating to any adult who picks up the challenge of a child’s natural curiosity. Children are born with a zest for learning, and it’s a sad day when any child stops trying new skills or stops wondering why.
As homeschooling parents, we learned that if we wanted our children to keep their natural delight in learning, we had to provide an environment with balance in a few important areas:
A balance between safety and freedom
A baby needs to explore—to taste, to touch, to smell, to hear, to see what the world holds. But babies don’t survive unlimited exploration without safety features. Toddlers need to run and play, but they also need naps to avoid collapsing from exhaustion.
So parents must provide their growing children with the balance of freedom within safety limits that is appropriate to their ages and stages of development. They must baby-proof their homes, insist on healthy routines, enforce safety rules, model and teach children appropriate ways to vent anger and grief, and provide secure boundaries of discipline with clear guidelines, clear expectations and consistently enforced consequences.
A balance between feedback and pullback
Children need how-to directions for creative efforts like making crafts or writing stories, but too much direction will stifle a child’s inventiveness. Our daughter, whom we started homeschooling in fifth grade, hated art in grade school because her teacher insisted that everybody’s art project had to look as much like the teacher’s as possible to be “right.”
Children need adult encouragement and assistance, yet they also need opportunities to work independently and figure things out for themselves.
When our Matt first started school at home in first grade, he needed my entire focused attention to help him do his academic work. After his reading and writing skills developed as he turned 10, 11, and 12 though, he needed to learn to work independently.
He was very active, so it was hard for him. If I sat at the kitchen table while he worked, he could stay in his seat for an hour at a time, occasionally asking for help. But if I got bored and started doing housework, he wandered off and disappeared. He couldn’t stay on task unless I just sat there—without hovering.
Crocheting provided the solution. If I sat and crocheted while Matt worked, I could be available to answer questions or provide encouragement when he needed it. At the same time I had useful and satisfying work of my own to prevent impatience. After a while, Matt was able to stick to his work whether I was there or not.
A balance between freedom and responsibility
Children need a good balance between play time and chore time. They gain self esteem and a sense of accomplishment from learning to clean, cook, launder, and do other family chores. In order to develop the ability to have good relationships with others, they must learn to give up some of their own space and privileges to allow others their fair share.
A balance between structured and unstructured time, with appropriate resources.
Children need large doses of unstructured time with good resources in order to discover and pursue their personal interests. But they also need structured time to help them learn ways to use their unstructured time.
When Matt was about 14, he tried to teach himself to play our old guitar. The experience was satisfying at first, but then he got stuck. So we found someone to give him guitar lessons and, with his teacher’s advice, we bought him a better guitar.
Matt discovered his interest in the guitar by having unstructured time and an accessible instrument. After he messed around with the guitar enough to decide he wanted to learn to play it well, he needed our help finding more resources – a guitar teacher and a better guitar. After that, our teen spent hours playing his instrument. It became an important creative and emotional outlet, something he did because he loved it. As his skills improved, it also became a social outlet, helping him make friends with other teen and adult musicians – as well as helping to form his spiritual life as he led and played guitar for worship teams.
© 2020 Becky Cerling Powers, updated
Reprint with attribution only (www.beckypowers.com)
You can find more parenting insights from Becky Cerling Powers in her book Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive
I used to help a single mom homeschool her kindergartner Jacob. Since kindergartners need to understand practical reasons why it’s a good idea to learn math, I tried to include math in our daily routine whenever possible.
So I gave Jacob the job of setting the table for lunch every day. I put unbreakable dishes and plastic glasses in a lower pull-out cabinet that he could reach, and I let him figure out how many people would be there for lunch so he could set the table with the right number of place settings.
The number changed from day to day. My husband Dennis worked from home but he also traveled. My mother-in-law lived in a trailer on our back lot and usually came over for lunch, but not always. Our son Matt lived at home while attending university that year, and a friend of his stayed with us. Sometimes one or both were home, sometimes not.
I quickly discovered that unless Jacob could physically see each person to count them, he could not figure out how many place settings.
At first I tried to help him by showing him how to count people using my fingers: “You (thumb), me (index finger), Dennis (middle finger), Grandma (ring finger) – one-two-three-four – see?”
His face went completely blank. Obviously, to Jacob, a finger could not represent a person.
So I got out some cards.
On each card we drew a picture of one family member and wrote their name underneath (which helped Jacob’s reading readiness, too). After that, we picked out the cards that corresponded to the people who were home for lunch. Then Jacob counted the cards. Then he knew how many place settings.
Although this was a slow way for getting the table set, it was excellent for teaching math at Jacob’s level of readiness.
In order to lay a proper math foundation for children, author Ruth Beechick points out in The Three R’s, parents and teachers need to understand the way a child’s thinking develops.
Adults use three ways of thinking about math: the manipulative mode, the mental mode, and the abstract mode.
They can switch back and forth, using the abstract mode, for example, to figure using only symbols ($50 - $22.48 = $27.52), or the manipulative mode to do the same problem by counting correct change into a customer’s hand.
Young children are unable to switch modes.
They can think only in the manipulative mode. So preschoolers have to see and touch objects in order to understand math concepts like adding and subtracting. Hands-on math is the foundation on which all other kinds of mathematical understanding is built. Lots of hands-on math experiences prepare children to grow into the next two stages of thinking development.
When children are hurried too quickly through this manipulative thinking stage, they feel anxious and uncertain. “Failure (to teach children in the manipulative mode) is probably the greatest single cause of children’s arithmetic difficulties,” Beechick says. “It is why people grow up with Arithmetic Anxiety.”
Children who are ready to move from the manipulative mode to the mental math mode become impatient with counting and handling objects. They prefer to picture objects mentally in their heads because it is quicker.
Pictures help children make the transition from the manipulative mode to the mental image mode.
The child sees a picture of two dogs in a group and four more dogs in another group. If he is still a manipulative thinker, he will need to touch each dog in the picture as he counts out the problem. If he is in transition between the two modes, he can count the dogs in the picture by sight.
According to Jean Piaget’s research on child development, children develop the ability to think abstractly at about age 12 or 13. “In elementary school arithmetic, the abstract mode of thinking does not play a large role,” Beechick says. “You may often think abstractly yourself, but you must guard against trying to push children into this mode before they are ready. Pushing...only leads to anxiety, frustration, (and) dislike of arithmetic.”
Children can “switch back to use a previously learned mode,” Beechick says, “but they cannot jump ahead to use a mode they have not grown into.”
“When we say that a child doesn’t understand something, we usually mean that he is not able to image it in his head,” Beechick says. “The cure for that is to provide more manipulative experience. Try showing something one way and a second way and a third way...Wait awhile and teach it again next month. After sufficient manipulative experience, the child eventually will image the troublesome process in his head. He will understand it.”
“The only route to good abstract thinking in a child’s later years,” Beechick says, “is through lots of manipulative and mental image thinking in early years.”
© 2021 Becky Cerling Powers
Reprint with attribution only (www.beckypowers.com)
You can find more parenting insights from Becky Cerling Powers in Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive in the Bookstore
Back in the day when our kids were young, I walked into our sons bedroom one day and noticed our 11-year-old firstborn sitting in his bedroom crying. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
He said, “You always tell me when I do things wrong, but when I try to do everything right, you don’t say anything.”
He had made a special effort all week to do his chores promptly and well. I’d been too busy to notice.
Ouch.
It hit me then: when I noticed and scolded my son’s failures, while failing to notice and encourage his accomplishments, I was defeating myself as much as him. I was actually discouraging my son from trying to do the things I wanted him to do.
It was like trying to raise a garden in the desert by diligently chopping out the weeds while failing to give the plants any water.
Because, it turns out, children and gardens do best when those who tend them recognize and encourage first efforts and small beginnings.
I realized then that it isn’t enough just to try to get rid of our kids’ negatives. First, last, and in between, we needed to be feeding the positive.
I remember what a dramatic difference it made when I switched from a negative to a positive approach in teaching our youngest son penmanship.
When I first began homeschooling our younger son Matt, I marked all his penmanship mistakes in red.
After all, that’s the way my teachers had done it – in order to make students notice mistakes and try harder next time. But our son seemed oblivious to his mistakes. Matt disliked penmanship, and our lessons did not improve his attitude.
Then I read some good advice and quit marking mistakes. Instead, I started drawing a big red circle around Matt’s very best work on a page. After that we talked together about why those words and letters were his best.
Matt’s penmanship started improving, and so did his attitude.
He started looking forward to seeing red marks when they meant success instead of failure.
Although Matt disliked having me tell him why his mistakes were so bad, he enjoyed hearing me tell him why his best work was so good.
After a few weeks of the new positive routine, I asked Matt to circle his best work himself. As he began evaluating his own work, he found his mistakes himself, and his penmanship improved across the board.
It was a real eye opener for me…
Because I soon realized that this positive approach not only transformed Matt’s attitude, it transformed mine. Grading penmanship was irritating when I focused on finding what was wrong. When I focused on finding what was right, though, I cheered up and had more patience.
Family therapist Dick Park has some suggestions for people who want to be positive parents.
Tell children what you do want instead of what you don’t want.
“Parents tend to go through a litany of what they don’t want,” family therapist Dick Park said. “If you tell children what you do want, you distract them from the negative to the positive.”
“You get the behavior you pay attention to,” Park warned. “If you pay attention to negative behavior, you’ll get a lot of it.”
Don’t demand perfection before giving praise.
As soon as children do what you just asked them to do, move in immediately with words of approval -- even if they aren’t getting it exactly, totally right. In fact, even if they are barely doing passably well, move in with praise. Warmly support any positive response.
Through the day, try to catch your children doing the right thing.
Then say something positive and specific about it, like “I love it when you kids treat each other kindly and play so well together the way you’re doing.”
Recognize and praise the small steps a child takes on the way to achievement.
When you praise or affirm someone, take out the history.
“When parents say, ‘That’s great! Why didn’t you do that before?’ that gives a hug and a slap,” Park said. “So, take out the history. Just say ‘That’s great! You got it right.’”
“Give a simple stroke for actions well done and leave it alone.”
For some reason, it’s easier to notice and criticize people’s mistakes and failures than it is to notice and praise their daily achievements and honest efforts.
So, becoming a positive parent takes conscious effort.
It means looking at life a new way. It means changing the way you think and respond. It takes practice. But it pays off for everyone.
©Becky Cerling Powers 1997
Originally published in the El Paso Times
You can find more parenting insights from Becky Cerling Powers in Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive in the Bookstore
I once read about a school district that tried a reading experiment with two groups of kindergartners. (This was in the days before No Child Left Behind, when local schools had the freedom to figure out for themselves what and how to teach and when to teach it.) The district gave the first group a lot of formal reading instruction and gave the second group hands-on science.
While the first group memorized the alphabet and sounded out simple words, the second group played with magnets, grew plants, melted ice cubes and learned about animals. Although teachers read to the “science” group and encouraged them to look at books and pictures, they gave these 5-year-olds no formal reading lessons.
By third grade the “science” children’s reading scores were much higher than the “reading” children’s scores. Their vocabularies and thinking skills were more advanced, and they could understand higher-level topics than the first group of children.
Why did the kids who weren’t pushed to read early do better long term?
My husband and I have discussed this subject, and Dennis calls his explanation “The Velcro Theory of Learning.”
Velcro fasteners, like the ones on children’s shoes, have two parts. One side is full of teeny hooks, and the other side is full of teeny loops. When the two come together, thousands of hooks grasp thousands of loops, making a strong connection to keep the shoes on.
The contents of a good book are like Velcro loops, and a child’s life experiences produce, inside his mind, something like Velcro hooks. The better the book, the more learning loops it has. The more varied a child’s experience, the more learning hooks his mind develops for grasping those learning loops.
Working with a child’s internal development clock
There is an optimum time when each particular child is ready to learn to read, usually between the ages of 6 to 9. All children, however, are ready to learn about the world around them.
In the school district’s experiment, the “reading” group of children spent their time learning skills that were very hard for them developmentally at that time but that would become fairly easy for them to pick up a few months or years later. The “science” group of children spent that same time developing learning hooks.
Later, when the children’s reading material become demanding at the third-grade level, the “science” group of children had a rich supply of learning hooks to grasp the new material firmly. The “reading” group had missed out.
Seeing the issue for myself
Years after reading about this experiment, I had an opportunity to see for myself the results of pushing children into reading tasks before their optimal readiness time. About 15 years ago, I was working as a teaching artist under a special grant, coming to a public school once a week to teach students in kindergarten through third grade and in special education to compose their own poetry. Using what I’d learned as a homeschool mom, I worked with kids at whatever learning level I found them, and the students all became very excited about making up poetry.
I shared an office with the reading specialist. We often chatted and one day she told me that she and the staff could not figure out why, year after year, the school’s fifth graders seemed to give up on learning to read better.
“I think I know why,” I said. “When I go into the kindergarten classes, the kindergarten teachers are telling me how conflicted they feel because the state teaching requirements make them push the kindergartners into learning skills that they are developmentally too immature to manage. It starts in kindergarten, the state teaching requirements demand more and more, the kids get pushed before most of them are ready year after year, and finally by fifth grade, they are burnt out.”
Here are a few tips for parents who want to nourish their children’s love of learning:
Nurture your children. Love them with your eyes, your touch, your words, your focused attention; provide healthy routines and sound discipline; draw them alongside you in your work and leisure activities; talk to them, listen to them, encourage their special interests.
Provide quality toys that stimulate the imagination and help develop motor skills. Examples: blocks; building sets like Legos and Tinkertoys; sturdy cars, trucks, and trains; dolls and stuffed animals; puppets; puzzles; play dough, modeling clay and other art materials.
Take them on trips. Go to museums, parks, libraries, theaters and concert halls, construction sites, fairs and fiestas, ranches, farms and factories.
Give your children an appreciation for reading. Let them see you reading, and start reading them picture books when they are babies. Keep reading to them even after they can read for themselves.
Limit screen time. Spend the time instead playing, working, talking, listening, creating, reading, thinking or inventing ways to avoid boredom.
©2020 Becky Cerling Powers – reprint with attribution only
Excerpted from Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Becky+Cerling+Powers&ref=nb_sb_noss
More parenting insights posts at www.beckypowers.com
On Sundays… be aware that when parents avoid or put down children’s honest spiritual doubts, the doubts don’t go away. They go underground. Then kids are apt to decide that their parents’ faith can’t stand up to honest questions. So encourage questions, even if that is scary.
On Mondays… if you want your kids to develop good eating habits, make it easy to eat healthy food and hard to eat junk. So avoid buying potato chips and junk munchies, and when you do have them in the house, store them someplace inconvenient. Meantime, keep nuts and washed fruit available in bowls on the counter.
On Tuesdays…remember that although children do need firm, consistent correction when they do something wrong, correction will be most effective (and most loving) when it takes place in a background of praise, appreciation and warm approval.
On Wednesdays…encourage your children’s curiosity by responding warmly to their questions, by slowing down to take time to look at the bugs and other things that catch their attention, and by finding books about their special interests.
On Thursdays… remember that when parents get angry with their children, it’s usually because their kids don’t meet their expectations. And if parents’ expectations are unrealistic, they’ll be angry a lot. So if you are getting angry about the same things over and over, give your expectations a reality check.
On Fridays… remember that laughing and playing together makes family members feel closer, develops creativity, increases physical fitness, reduces stress and helps people manage their problems.
On Saturdays… do what you love to do and include your children to the extent of their interest. Do you like to garden? Cook? Build? Hike? Craft? Sing? Travel? Find ways to share the things you love with your kids.
© Becky Cerling Powers 2021 All Rights Reserved
Becky Cerling Powers is a veteran homeschool grandma and the author of Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive and Laura’s Children: the hidden story of a Chinese orphanage. She also compiled and edited the faith based stories in My Roots Go Back to Loving and other stories from Year of the Family. She blogs at www.beckypowers.com You can find her books on her website and at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Becky+Cerling+Powers&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
On Sundays…as various situations come up, remind yourself all week to look first at what’s best for children, not at what’s most convenient for adults.
On Mondays…remember that children need to hear love expressed in words. So say “I love you” often. Good morning greetings, leave-takings and bedtimes are good times to say it.
On Tuesdays… if children are ravenous during meal preparation, let them snack on the salad you plan to serve, or else put out a big plate of fruit slices or raw vegetables—carrot and celery sticks, broccoli, cauliflower, green pepper, etc. It takes the edge off their appetites with one of the most nutritious parts of the meal.
On Wednesdays… remember that children do better academically when parents provide them with a rich literary and conversational environment at home. So reduce screen time and read stories daily even if kids can read themselves. Play board games and card games together. Help with hobbies, visit the library and explore local parks and museums. Above all, listen and respond warmly to what children say.
On Thursdays… keep in mind that only one in five children is a natural organizer. Parents need to train and motivate their children to maintain a minimal standard of neatness in their bedrooms the same way they train and motivate children to develop other important habits, like brushing their teeth regularly. You’ll be less frustrated if you accept the fact that it can take years instead of weeks to train children to be neat.
On Fridays…remember it is children’s responsibility to do something about their own boredom. It is parents’ responsibility to provide raw materials and an environment that stimulates and encourages creativity instead of stifling it.
On Saturdays…remember that children’s relationships, work habits, and academic work attitudes are all affected by their moral character and spiritual values.
© Becky Cerling Powers 2021 All Rights Reserved
Being a Better Parent…One Week at a Time is a monthly set of tips for parents to post as a daily reminder on the refrigerator, bathroom mirror, or some other handy place. They are designed to help people thoughtfully address their own priorities and their children’s development – physically, emotionally, intellectually, socially, practically, creatively and spiritually. One tip daily to address each area by week’s end, repeated weekly through the month to help integrate that idea into families’ lifestyle.
Becky Cerling Powers is a veteran homeschool grandma and the author of Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive and Laura’s Children: the hidden story of a Chinese orphanage. She also compiled and edited the faith based stories in My Roots Go Back to Loving and other stories from Year of the Family. She blogs at www.beckypowers.com
When we were raising our children back in the early 1980s, we had a neighbor, Mary, who was a good mother to her preschoolers. She fed them balanced meals and established a healthy routine of playtime, nap time, meal time, and bedtime. She kissed their "owies" and dispensed Band Aids with sympathy. She read them stories daily, she limited their TV viewing, she encouraged them to help her dust and cook, and she talked with them throughout the day while she worked, answering their questions and chatting about whatever intrigued them.
Mary taught her children to share their toys with preschool friends who came to visit. She taught her 4-year-old daughter how to cut paper with a pair of blunt scissors and let her 2-year-old son paste, color and paint alongside his sister.
Today Mary would be eligible to send her 4-year-old to Head Start, but back then everyone had to pay for preschool. And although Mary's children seemed to be bright, secure and well behaved, her friends and relatives convinced her she wasn't a good parent because she couldn't afford to send them to preschool.
To fend off the social pressure, Mary found a job to pay preschool tuition. She had no education beyond high school, which meant she had to work more hours for less money. Once she began working, she found she had to earn enough money to cover not only preschool fees, but extra expenses of work -- wear and tear on the car, more taxes, a wardrobe for work...(It takes $3 earned to equal $1 not spent -- so she had to earn $600, for example, to make a $200 tuition payment.)
Sadly I watched this young family's stress level soar. And for what? Mary was not getting a job to meet personal emotional needs or to make it possible for her family to survive financially. She was wearing herself out and complicating her family's life in order to fend off social pressure. Then she paid other people to do something she already did well herself. And liked doing.
That was nearly 40 years ago. Soon afterwards our family joined the homeschooling movement, and I learned about many good home school preschool programs available for parents who, like Mary, lack confidence in their own abilities or prefer a structured plan.
Today, during the COVID 19 crisis, preschoolers have to be at home. But what home schoolers have learned about children and education is available to all parents through a rich variety of educational resources, not only for school age children, but for preschoolers as well. Buying a program is unnecessary, though, as long as these basic elements are present:
A warmly responsive, loving parent.
If a parent is unavailable, a grandparent or other adult can provide what is needed, as long as the adult is committed to the child long term and is there every day. This person is key to the child's sense of security and intellectual development. Nothing stimulates a child's intellect or builds good social behavior like a warmly responsive, consistently caring adult who talks to her throughout the day, responds to her needs, encourages creative efforts, sets healthy limits, provides calm order and is available for conversation almost all the time.
Healthy routines in a healthy environment. Preschoolers need reasonably predictable routines to feel secure. Someone must be sure they eat balanced meals, take naps, do their simple chores, go to bed at a set time, and get plenty of fresh air and several hours of physical exercise daily. If there is no safe yard available to run and play, (and playgrounds are off limits during the COVID-19 lockdown) they need someone to go with them on long walks and play “Tire’Em Out” games. (More on that next week.)
Materials and encouragement to create. Preschoolers need lots of materials available for spontaneous construction or dramatic projects -- a sheet to drape over a table for a tent, boxes, rocks, sand, dress up clothes, scrap lumber. When preschoolers are encouraged to use their own ingenuity to produce their activities, any item in the house can become a toy.
As much as possible, preschoolers need ready access to toys and creative materials. Toddlers will “read” more if there are a lot of hard-to-destroy children’s books around, for example. Preschoolers will draw more if the paper and crayons are kept on a shelf they can reach.
Daily reading. One school district made a bumper sticker: CHILDREN WHO READ WERE READ TO. The best way to encourage children to become readers one day is to read to them when they are small and keep on reading books aloud as a special shared activity after they begin reading themselves.
Rest and solitude.
According to child development researcher Raymond Moore, 3- and 4-year-olds who do not take a nap or have at least an hour of rest daily become overtired and then are unable to sleep well at night. They can then become chronically irritable and hard to handle.
Children at this age not only need a regular rest time, Moore says, they also need a period of solitude, playing alone with blocks or making roads in the sandbox. "This seems to provide the opportunity he needs to work out certain problems and fantasies," Moore said.
“Genius has been shown to thrive with a great deal of parental warmth combined with ample opportunity for solitude,” Moore says.
Positive social modeling and guidance. Children learn through observation and imitation. When they are surrounded by a lot of other children (whose social behavior is naturally immature), they imitate them. Preschoolers learn sharing and other social tasks best when they have only one or two other children to relate to at a time, and when the group is supervised by an adult who is a good model.
Involvement in homemaking activities. Preschoolers develop a sense of accomplishment and positive self worth by working alongside a warmly responsive parent in cooking, dusting, sweeping, kitchen cleanup, gardening, sorting laundry, etc.
Field trips and nature experiences. Preschoolers collect a lot of essential information about things they will study formally later on when they plant seeds and watch them grow and discuss what they see and sense on nature hikes and field trips. A nature hike can be as simple as a stroll through a garden, and field trips can be as simple as a trip to the store or a walk down the block to look at a house under construction.
Freedom from academic pressures. Preschoolers need to collect and make sense out of a lot of information before they are ready to begin formal learning. Too much academic pressure at this stage can result in unnecessary learning problems later.
© Becky Cerling Power 2020
Reprint with attribution only
I grew up curious about my mom’s older cousin Laura Richards. Throughout childhood I heard bits and pieces of her story: how she started an orphanage on faith in China in 1929 and saved the lives of over 200 children through famines and wars. And how after Mao Tse Tung took over China, his government forced her to leave the country in 1951 and killed her Chinese husband.
Mom explained that Laura couldn’t tell people her what happened because it was too dangerous – people might be killed or sent to prison if the wrong people heard or read her story. This political background intrigued me.
By the time Laura died in 1981, I had a journalism degree, a husband, and three children. People began giving me little caches of Laura’s old letters and memoir notes. Her stories fascinated and inspired me. I thought My children should know this story because Laura is their relative. But the more I learned, the more I realized that many people would find Laura’s story compelling.
Laura was unusual because gave up the things that people normally rely on. She received no salary from a church or missionary agency, and she did not advertise her orphanage needs. She believed that when she tried to seek God’s kingdom first instead of her own, like Jesus said, then she could trust God to provide what she needed.
She lived her life with the same uncertainty and living conditions as poor Chinese peasants because she wanted them to see for themselves that the message of Jesus wasn’t just religious talk, but that God loved them and would really help them just like He was helping her to take care of the orphans.
It was hard for me to get time to research and write Laura’s story because I was homeschooling three kids and because my husband’s mom needed a lot of help with his dad, who had Alzheimer’s Disease. But I kept on with the writing project because the story was changing me.
For example, Laura trusted God for practical things, like: “We’re out of food. We need breakfast but there’s nothing to eat.” So she would call the children together and they would pray for breakfast. And breakfast would arrive on time. This kind of thing happened over and over.
Laura’s example gave me the courage to agree when my husband wanted to start a full-time home business. I learned to pray for practical things like Laura. Our income was irregular. One month we’d get paid and then if nothing else came in, we had to live for two months on what we’d been paid.
In this situation I lost Dennis’ paycheck. It was all we had to live on for a month or more. I looked and looked but I could not find it. So I stopped and prayed, “Please help me find this paycheck. Open my eyes to see it. What should I do to find the paycheck?”
I had a strong impression that I should clean the house. So I told the children that instead of having home school that morning we would clean house. And I told them to keep their eyes open for Dad’s paycheck while they cleaned.
I went to the closet where I was saving a stack of newspapers for a neighbor who collected them for the Boy Scouts for recycling. I thought, It’s time to take these newspapers up to Mrs. Shockley. So I got a bag and picked up a six- or eight-inch pile of papers from the top of the stack to put in the bag.
And there was the missing check!
The check had become mixed in with the newspapers, and it was laying at the very place where I picked up the paper pile. To me that was a clear answer to prayer. Why else would I pick up those newspapers right at that place?
Worth repeating: “One generation shall praise Your works to another and shall declare Your mighty acts” (Psalm 145:4).
Today’s prayer: Lord, help me to recognize and give thanks for Your works in my life and help me use the opportunities that come up today to tell younger or older generations what You have done. Amen.
If you would like to know more about Laura Richards and the Canaan Home children, go to the Bookstore and order Laura’s Children: the hidden story of a Chinese orphanage by Becky Cerling Powers.
© Becky Cerling Powers 2019
Mastering the Art of Fasting
The first time I tried praying with fasting, I was 22 and love-struck. I was dating a man who was, I thought, in the process of becoming a Christian. But when he proposed, I turned him down. I tried to explain that marrying him wouldn’t be loving. It would be subjecting him to a frustrating future of being tied to someone whose values and goals he could neither share nor understand.
Still, I could not bring myself to break off the relationship. What if I crush the fragile blossoming of his interest in Jesus? I thought. Besides, I really want to marry him – if only he will become a Christian. Putting it that way, though, sounded like spiritual blackmail.
“What should I do?” I prayed over and over.
Then the idea of fasting popped into my head.
Going without eating for a day will be a good way to let God know just how earnestly I want Him to tell me what to do, I decided.
That was my first misconception about fasting – that going without food would capture God’s attention and convince him of my sincerity. I was unaware that my reasoning insulted God’s loving character. All I knew was that Jesus and other people in the Bible fasted.
So, I spent a day without eating, and God graciously gave me the help that I needed – not the breakthrough I expected, but the one I needed. What I expected was a clear yes or no answer to my pressing question: should I break up with Dennis?
Instead, by the end of the day I had a new attitude and a new prayer.
“Lord, you know I love Dennis and want to marry him, but the real issue is not marriage. It is Dennis’ salvation. So it’s okay if we never marry. All I ask is that you help him to understand that he needs Jesus.”
In the months that followed, God began penetrating Dennis’ defenses, and in time he decided to follow Jesus. And we have now been married for 53 years. I hesitate to tell the story, though, because many young Christians hearing it might conclude that fasting is a kind of magic, that it is a way to get God to give you something you want very much.
Nothing is farther from the truth.
The pagan view of fasting is that it’s magic:
Do “this” and you’ll get “that.” Follow this procedure, say these words, and you’ll get the results you want.
A pagan believes he must give an impressive performance to get God or the gods to pay attention to him. In the Bible, however, God says over and over that he is readily available to his people and always listens attentively to them.
As Christians, our problem is never whether or not we can get God’s attention when we pray. Rather, it is understanding what to do with God’s attention when we already have it.
Like pagans, we tend to think of prayer as giving God directions
We tell him what to do, how to do it, what to give and how to give it.
Instead, God has designed prayer as a form of partnership in which we discover what God wants and then work together with him to bring about his will through our requests and obedient actions.
“No matter what we pray for,” wrote the late O. Hallesby in his classic book Prayer, “our prayers should really resolve themselves into a quiet waiting for the Lord in order to hear what it is that the Spirit desires to have us pray for at that particular time.” Hallesby went on to say that when Christians notice that their prayers are hindered, fasting can often help them to align their spirits with God’s Spirit, bringing them to a better understanding of how to pray.
When I set aside eating for a day to focus my spiritual attention on the unseen God, I changed. Fasting was in order at that time, not for God’s sake but for mine. God drew my spirit in line with his Spirit, and then I could truly release Dennis into God’s hands.
When and why did early Christians fast?
Hallesby pointed out four circumstances when Jesus or the early Christians fasted.
First, they used fasting to prepare and strengthen themselves for facing temptations. Jesus fasted 40 days in the wilderness when he was about to be tempted by Satan at the beginning of his ministry (Luke 4:1-13).
Second, Jesus and his followers fasted before making important decisions. Jesus spent a night in prayer (fasting from sleep) before choosing the twelve apostles (Luke 6:12-14), and the early church was fasting as a body when the Holy Spirit told them to set aside Barnabas and Saul as missionaries to the Gentiles (Acts 13:2-3).
Third, fasting helped the early Christians to put themselves completely at the disposal of the Holy Spirit. Jesus often spent long hours alone in prayer fasting from association with people in order to commune with his heavenly Father and hear him speak.
Fourth, fasting brought forth the power needed for certain great and mighty acts. When Jesus returned from the mountain where he was transfigured before Peter, James and John (Mark 9), he found his frustrated disciples lamenting their failure to cast a dumb spirit out of a demon-possessed boy.
The boy’s father brought the child to Jesus, who then cast out the spirit. Later, when the disciples asked Jesus privately why they had failed to cast it out, Jesus told them, “This kind can come out only by prayer and fasting.”
Fasting can maintain the spiritual powerline
Some mighty spiritual acts, such as the deliverance of this boy, seem to require more spiritual power and preparation than others, Hallesby said.
He compared prayer to a conduit or electrical cable through which power from heaven is brought down to earth. The greater the volume of electricity to be transmitted, the larger must be the electrical cable through which it flows from the power station. In the same way, the greater the volume of spiritual power being transmitted, the stronger must be the prayer cable uniting the Christian’s spirit with the Holy Spirit.
This illustration also helps explain why the first breakthrough that often occurs during fasting is confession of sin and repentance.
Sin creates resistance in the prayer cable and will eventually produce a short circuit.
Part of fasting in prayer is to sit quietly before God and allow him to diagnose the difficulty in our power line. Then we must cooperate with him in repairing whatever needs to be made right. Only then can his power flow freely from heaven to earth through our prayers.
An example of this process occurred when our first child hit the teen years.
My life seemed like a sputtering electric motorcar
I was stalling out, unable to progress in our family relationships, my daily work or my walk with God. So I agreed with the Lord to set aside all “choice food” for three weeks, much like Daniel did in Daniel 10:2, in order to allow God to locate my crossed wires and loose connections.
I’d barely begun my fast when I became awash in feelings of anger toward several relatives. The Holy Spirit kept bringing them to my attention as I prayed, but each time he reminded me of them I got mad.
I was hanging onto old hurts and grudges. Before I could progress to other issues in my life, I needed to go through a tough forgiving process. It took weeks, but it was the only way God could show me how I needed to pray for my situation.
This experience also helped me realize I needed to fast more often.
Fasting is not reserved only for emergencies when all of life grinds to a halt. Instead, fasting is an important discipline that keeps our spirits aligned with God’s Spirit. It’s an important step to take whenever our progress is blocked – by a difficult decision, by circumstances or by something mysterious we cannot pinpoint.
I also used to think fasting required large blocks of uninterrupted solitude – something I found in short supply. I had to learn to fast while homeschooling three children and juggling writing deadlines with church, family and community responsibilities. Most days, even my interruptions got interrupted, and whether I ate or not, I still had to prepare meals for the family.
I learned to pray as I prepared.
My hunger pangs reminded me to fasten my gaze on God in the midst of my daily work. Today we are empty nesters at retirement age, so my routine has changed. But in those early days of learning to fast, I tried to get up before the family awoke for an hour of quiet prayer time and often retreated to the bedroom to pray during the day when I could grab a few minutes.
I jotted down any thoughts I had in a notebook I kept handy. All I could do about the inevitable interruptions was to entrust them to God, believing that he would protect enough time for me to be with him.
Hallesby’s broad definition of fasting as abstinence not only from food but also from sleep or from association with people has enabled me to practice this spiritual discipline flexibly. For years I avoided fasting even thought I glimpsed its benefits because I had hypoglycemia and could not skip meals without becoming faint. Today my blood sugar levels are high, and I have to eat regularly and carefully to avoid diabetes.
I learned to tailor my method of fasting.
In my 40’s I learned to go without desserts and snacks over several weeks, sometimes fasting one meal only and sometimes spending some of my normal sleep time in waiting, listening prayer. Other times I went without food for a day or longer. Today I fast in modified ways according to my health requirements. Like: no chocolate (my one treat)
All that matters is that I be freed to think, to pray and to listen to God. Fasting loosens our ties to this earth and frees us to recognize, to agree with and to express the mind of Christ in our lives.
© Becky Cerling Powers 1991, updated 2023
Reprint with attribution only www.beckypowers.com
Becky Cerling Powers is the author of Laura’s Children: the hidden story of a Chinese orphanage as well as Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive. She blogs at www.beckypowers.com
“Figuring Out Fasting” is part of a collection of stories describing and explaining the use of the spiritual weapons that the apostle Paul listed in Ephesians 6:10-20. This story describes the use of all occasion prayer. To read the introductory story, enter its title “Family Conflict, Family Struggles” into the Search Bar. To find other stories in the series enter “reflections on spiritual warfare” into the Search Bar.