What homeschooling looks like when you are in therapy

I was in the middle of writing my first WHLL (what homeschooling looks like) when I realized I had a therapy session in seven minutes.

The best part of using Skype for therapy is never having to leave the house.  The second best part is not having to brush my teeth, put on deodorant, or even get dressed.  I can also nurse.  I sit in front of my laptop in a nursing cami with a sleeping baby in my lap.  The kids are told not to bother me for the next hour.  They know that I've had some trouble fully recovering from having SweetPea and that I get scared a lot.  They also know that Miss Elizabeth helps me feel better.  Dimples met her the first time we were introduced.  She says she's a really nice lady.


Here are a few things that I've been learning and working on while getting help for postpartum anxiety:

 - Name my anxiety.
 - Accept and be with my anxiety.
 - I don't have to be perfect. I am doing good enough.
 - Visualize good things.
 - Take care of myself.  Get rest, eat well, exercise.


I work on all of these things several times a day.  A lot of what I need to practice is also good for teaching the kids.  I've mentioned before that Dimples has a lot of worries.  I am able to help her find her way back to the moment so that she can tell her fears to go away.  We talk about the senses.  What can we see?  What do we smell?  What can we hear?  What do we taste?  What can we feel?  Those are the things that matter and the only things that are actually real.  The worry is not real and we can tell it to go away.

I'm also trying to be more accepting of my own mistakes so that when I say that making mistakes is how we learn - I will actually believe it.  I'm hardest on myself, so it's not surprising that the kids don't like making mistakes either.

Learning how to visualize positive experiences is a new thing I'm starting.  The reason I had to add this is because I dread taking the kids to the pool.  In my head I see only visions of injuries and drowning.  Elizabeth suggested I start thinking about all of the fun things that happen at the pool and tell myself that I am allowed to enjoy taking them.  I know it sounds crazy, but I had forgotten that it was o.k. to have fun at the pool.

Lastly, I'm learning and teaching the kids more about being healthy.  Learning about how different foods affect our bodies and how sleep and exercise make things better.  Exercise has been the hardest part so far.  We are a very techie family and having a new baby and some health issues has pushed it to the back burner.  I know I'm going to have to make the time though.

What homeschooling looks like when you have a stomach virus

I had an idea to (hopefully) get me writing more.   Lots of bloggers do day in the life posts.  This is sort of like that.  I was partially inspired by this recent post:  Often homeschooling means doing nothing.  And it really hit me when I was thinking about Geshtro's being sick all weekend (our weekend starts Wednesday evening) and the disruptions that it made in our family.  I thought about posting it to Facebook, but it seemed silly to write such a long update.  So the blog popped into my mind and here I am.

It all started on Wednesday.  Geshtro woke up feeling ill.  He was running a fever and by the afternoon his temperature was spiking to over 104.  We were able to bring his fever down with a bath, tag teaming meds, and plenty of liquids.  It was pretty hairy for a few hours, but by Thursday it was only a low grade fever and the other symptoms of a stomach virus were getting better.

So far no one else has gotten sick, so I'm hoping we dodged a bullet. (Update Saturday night:  It looks like Funny Girl might have gotten it.  It's only a matter of time before Dimples is sick too.)  It might also help that I put the rest of us on probiotics as soon as he got sick.  The other thing we did was have him stay in his room.  This is huge in our family.  None of the kids like to be separated from the rest of the family.  It's like the worst punishment ever.   Once we got his temperature down though, all he wanted to do was sleep.

Thursday was another issue.  He was still running that slight fever, but feeling much better.  Still we wanted him to keep away from the girls, so he was stuck in his room.  We also have a rule that computers and devices that access the Internet are only allowed in common areas.  That meant he had no access to his favorite things in the world:  YouTube and GarageBand.  B and I decided we'd make an exception.  We let him have his iPod Touch and moved the computer down into his room.  He was thrilled!  At least for a little while.

Turns out, he told me, that as much as he thought he'd love having a computer in his room he really missed being upstairs.  He thought he wanted to get away from his sisters, but he missed them sitting beside him.  By Friday he was ready to come back upstairs.  We had offered to let him stay down in his room just one more day while he continued to rest, but he didn't want to be there anymore.  Of course the honeymoon only lasted a few hours.  It wasn't long before he was irritated by the noise and constant interruptions of the house.  At least all was back to normal.

As with everything else in our life, this experience is another way to learn.  We talked about the way germs spread, washing hands, and the way probiotics work.  Other frequent topics included the importance of staying hydrated, eating healthy (and fiber rich) foods, and getting proper rest.  It was a good opportunity to talk to Dimples about her worries around getting sick and dying too.  I'm sure there were many other things we could have learned more about, but there will be other opportunities I'm sure!

Let's talk about bedtimes

First, just a little administrative note.  Back when I was a more regular blogger, I kept up better with the maintenance of the comments.  Now I don't pay much attention and  sometimes this means I miss legitimate comments.  They get stuck in spam or missed entirely.  Way back when, I made it as easy to comment as possible to encourage conversation.  However I just cleared out 1000 spam comments because it's just too easy to for them to do.  So I'm going to make some changes.  I doubt this will make much impact since I'm not even sure who all still follows this blog.  It's mostly for my convenience so I don't have to do as much cleanup when I get around to it.

So bedtimes.  For me, this is the worst part of being a parent.  Well maybe not as bad as cleaning up middle of the night vomit, but that doesn't happen every night.  I'm definitely a night person, but I want this time for myself.  I need to unwind after the day and I need to do it alone.  This time is pretty much essential to my sanity, so putting kids to bed is frustrating because they stall.  The more they stall, the more I get frustrated and it's a not good cycle.  Fortunately, B can take the kids that are currently sleeping with us to bed with him.  This works out fine for me.  Babies can throw a monkey wrench into that, but only for the first year.  After that I'm free of kid duty again.  Only not really.

We read, we brush teeth, we give goodnight hugs and kisses, and then I send them downstairs.  They come back up.  I send them down.  They come back up.  This happens night after night.  There are books about this so I know I'm not alone here.  Why do they come back up?  Questions, concerns, worries, stories, thirst, bugs, art supplies, books.  Everything under the moon.  I try to be patient, but after about the sixth time I just want to scream, "Leave me alone!"

Today I was catching up on other blogs and I came across this one about the ways life got easier when she started homeschooling.  Number seven gets to me.  We've homeschooled for seven years and bedtime has never been easy.  Maybe I don't know what it would have been like if we'd had to put kids to bed for school and how it's easier to not have to do that.  Because other than that, I don't think I have it easy.

Bedtimes here don't mean going to sleep.  They just mean leave mom alone.  Seems simple enough.  Although I have a confession - I do want them to go to sleep.  Lately it seems like they are staying up later and later, way past when I want to be up.  Natural body rhythms are great, but there are things to accomplish during the day.  Sleeping until noon isn't always a good thing.  So I'm sort of stuck here.  I could make some changes, but they require me to change and I simply don't want to do that.  Maybe that's why that blog post got under my skin.  I want my kids to go to bed easily and early, even though I know it's hard for me to do the same.

FunnyGirl and books

FunnyGirl is really getting into reading.  I found out recently that Geshtro was teaching her how to read Hop on Pop.  She's also been interested in reading some of the early reader books we pick up at the library and of course our daily reading together plays a part.  This is the whole of what we've done to "teach" FG to read.  It's very similar to Geshtro except that he didn't have an older sibling to help him.  I truly love that the kids learn to read by immersion.  Lately FG has also gotten into audiobooks.  I downloaded The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the first two Diary of a Wimpy Kid books to her iPod.  She listened to them all in three days.  I already promised she could use my next two Audible credits and I have a couple of other children's books to add for her.  I'm going to have to start looking for free stuff though!  Dimples has also been listening to audiobooks since her big sister is doing it.  She's not quite ready to begin reading, but she'll probably hop on board before the year is out.   

FunnyGirl is still into poetry too.  She hasn't written anything new, but she's going to read her poems in the Girl Scout talent show and take a poetry class in a couple of weeks.  And a random FG fact, she lost her third tooth yesterday!

Unschooling and Minecraft

There are weeks, even months, where I feel like our days are only filled with YouTube and Minecraft.  It's hard to see those days as valuable.  I spend a lot of time worrying in my head about which scientific study is right, the one where screens are the future or the one where they turn brains to mush.  Actually those two statements could both be true, so I suppose it doesn't much matter.  Fortunately, there is plenty of good that comes from these things too.

I just listened to Geshtro making a video for his YouTube channel.  Normally his stuff just sort of mingles with the rest of the background noise and I don't pay much attention.  This time though, I got caught up in his narrative.  I can't actually tell you what he was saying, only how he was saying it.  He wasn't stuttering.  I'm not sure it's a stutter that he has really, but he does this thing at the end of his words where he repeats the last syllable 1-3 times before moving on to the next word.  It's sort of like his mouth is moving faster than his brain and instead of just having silence while he gets out the next word, he draws out the last one.  I can't really describe it properly.  I've noticed that when he thinks about what he wants to say before he says it, it doesn't happen.  I've also noticed he doesn't do it when he's extremely familiar with what he's talking about.  It happens most often when he's unsure of what he's talking about.  While listening to him make this video though, I noticed he kept the flow of the conversation going, quite rapidly actually, without the end stutter even though he was playing in a mod that he had never used before.  I also noticed that all of those hours of watching others' YouTube videos has made an impact on the cadence of his speech and the phrases he uses.  His narrative was seamless and witty, despite being totally off-the-cuff.   It's quite a difference from when he first began making videos several months back.  I may not always see the value in his choice of activities, but clearly he is learning.  

I'll have to write a whole other post later about his musical accomplishments.  They are really quite extraordinary as well!

Hats

How many hats do you wear?  My therapist asked me this a few weeks ago.  It's a hard question to answer.  Does each thing that I want to do constitute another hat or do I only wear the hats for things I actually get done.  If I only own actual hats then I suppose I wear six.

Mom - which has so many sub-hats that I could never count them
Chef - both by breast and in the kitchen
Head of Household Staff
Unschool Overseer/Project Manager/Book Reader
Head of Finances
GS Leader

Of course I try to put on some other head apparel here and there like photographer, blogger, and friend, but they usually get lost in among the other hats.  It sucks because those last three are the ones that give me any sort of style.  Maybe they aren't very original, but they are still me.

So I'm in therapy for postpartum anxiety.  I nearly died giving birth to Sweetpea.  Apparently it's hard for my body to come to terms with what happened.  I think the help I am getting is good, but I still have some very hard days.   My overall fear of dying has mostly subsided.  I worried obsessively for the first eight weeks before I could take care of those fears.  They've since been replaced by anxiety for Sweetpea.  The panic attacks are just as hard when they hit, but they come less frequently at least.  It doesn't seem like each day brings me closer to feeling like I can handle my worries, but when I look back at where I was, I can see that they do.  In case you are curious, my therapy is not medicinal because I feel that I am making progress without, however I am open-minded if things change.  Also most of my practice for taking care of the anxiety revolves around mindfulness and gratitude.  Since I've been thinking about these things for a while now it's perhaps easier for me to heal myself.

Are you wondering if a near death experience changed my views on religion?  It did not.  If anything I have found comfort in knowing that if the end comes there are many loving and wonderful people HERE that can help my family.  Also, selfish as it is, it's more difficult for me to imagine being in heaven looking down at everything I love and knowing that I'm not a part of it anymore.  There is comfort in not knowing anything at all.  My worries about dying were not about me.  They were for the people I left behind.  How could they go on without me?  But I can see that they would.  Losing my FIL last year has sort of shown me this as well.  I miss him a lot.  We didn't talk all the time or see each other very often, but many things remind me of him.  B's facial expressions, Sweetpea's middle name, items around the house, and the kids memories of him.  Yet we all go on each day and I know that it would be the same if it was me.

For now, I'm grateful to be here.  I want to live in the moment and not be paralyzed by fear of the unknown future.  I hope to wear many hats, both old and new.

A week with fewer screens

Sweetpea was born on December 5.  It's been a bit of an adjustment, but she's doing great and the kids all love her.  Still, there is some extra stress around here and it finally came to a head this weekend.  There has been a lot of attitude and overall grumpiness.  Lack of sleep and proper nutrition, plus hardly ever leaving the house has made us all a little edgy.

I don't really like taking things away from the kids to get their attention.  I much prefer talking to them and looking for the root of the problem.  However, I made the decision this week to remove access to the iPads, computers, and the Internet on Geshtro's iPod.  The breaking point for me was when I was cleaning up after all three kids in the kitchen while each of them watched YouTube on a difference device.

The next morning I sat down with each of the kids and talked to them about what was bothering me in their actions and attitudes.  The girls were disappointed, but were able to tell me about how they were feeling.  I think we all felt better after having listened to each other.  Geshtro took it pretty badly and was very upset with me.  I think he gets it though because he's been easier to communicate with these last two days.  Even though I don't really want to go this route, I have to say that I am enjoying the result.  The kids aren't moping around, they are choosing to do other things.  The girls are playing outside and with their toys more.  Geshtro is talking about doing a scavenger hunt, playing with his LEGOs again, and was watching Beakman's World.  It's just nice to see them doing something other than staring at screens.  Ideally, I'd like them to have access to screens *and* choose to do other things. I think we've all gotten into some bad habits and we just need a little shake up to get out of our ruts.

Countries of the World Fair

Filling our her passport for travel.

First stop, Japan.

Next up, China.

Ireland

France

The United States, specifically Native Americans.

Romania

South Korea

Russia

Canada

Mom helping out.

Australia

Geshtro's video on the BBC from the U.K.

Cartersville, GA Etowah Indian Mounds

Representation of the village.

From the museum, examples from foraging.

On one mound with another in the background.

View from a mound.

A look down the river.

The river in the other direction.

Watching the river with friends.

Cherokee, NC Oconaluftee Indian Village

Weaving belts

Weaving belts

Fall colors

Beading

Making cups

Overlooking a garden

Weaving baskets

Making weapons

Blow gun arrow

Making canoes

Meeting house

Telling stories

Teaching us about dances

Funny Girl dancing with a British soldier

In the garden house

Happy girls