Too disctracted to write...

There will be no new post today. I think my wife is coming down with something so she's staying in bed while I supervise the torture of the children this morning. Our sadistic regimen includes such horrors as requiring them to get dressed, hard labor in the form of a few household chores, brain-washing by school-work, you get the idea. It's cruel and unusual I know, by that's what you have to do to maintain order under a tyranny.

Thank who...

My wife and I put together an event for the homeschool group a couple of weeks ago. There was girly stuff for the girls and video games for the guys.

Afterward, while we were eating lunch, a young man approached our table. I had just met the boy and didn’t know him at all. He came as the guest of one of our regulars. His question was, “Who do I need to thank for today?” These words coming from the lips of a teenage boy stunned me. When I regained my senses, I accepted his gratitude for my part in the day’s activities.

He went his way and I went mine, but the shock of it clung to me after. The good manners he displayed were so far removed from the coarse behavior I expect from kids his age. I know how I was a teen, how my peers were. A fifteen-year-old going to the trouble to find out whom, specifically, to thank, has something of the feel a fairy tale come to life.

Thanksgiving is a national holiday established for the purpose of gratitude. I can’t convey how really great an idea this is. Thanksgiving begs two questions. What are we thankful for? Most people remember that. The other, though, is whom are we thankful to? This is what that young man surprised me with.

Tomorrow millions of Americans will sit down to a meal with family and friends and begin to express thanks. My family is Christian. Our thanks is directed toward God. We call this ‘counting our blessings’. What about those who do not share my beliefs? Isn’t there a logical gap there that needs filling?

The definitions I read for gratitude made it sound like an emotion, something you could feel without directing it to toward a person. The problem with that is, to be thankful, you must feel like something was done for you. I don’t thank a dog for good behavior and I don’t thank a car for good performance. I do thank my wife or the cashier at Wal-Mart or the traffic cop who writes a warning instead of a ticket. They have done something for me. It is personal. Thanks is personal.

Gratitude for things not done by a person must be directed some place else. A farmer, grateful for a good crop, must express that gratitude toward the one responsible. A mother, just missed by a reckless driver, must thank a providence she cannot see.

Providence’s proper title is God. Be grateful to God for those happy accidents. If not, know that gratitude is foolish since no person really helped you at all. That’s the logical conclusion of denying God’s hand.

What we all need to remember is what the young man at our homeschool group expressed. To whom do we owe our thanks? Consider the source of the good things in life. Whom do you need to thank?

An Unfortunate Impulse...

We were driving up the highway a few days ago when one of the kids asked about sarcasm. I can't remember how the conversation started. Who knows how these things start. The question was put to me. "Dad, what's sarcasm?"

At this point, a wiser man than I would see where this was headed and end things before they got out of hand. Me? I have this delusion that when a child asks a question it is because of a genuine deficiency of knowledge and it is my job to supply it. Oh yes, I think, I can answer that for you my son. Behold, I have the very nugget of understanding you've been seeking. Be comforted by the abundance of my accumulated factoids.
This impulse to awe the masses goes way back. I remember taking rides in the car as a child and trying to bait my sister into asking me questions so I could have the pleasure of answering her.

So, when one of the kids asks a question, there's this impulse that drives me to answer. It's like a force of nature, a pontification instinct. "Sarcasm," I said, "is when you say one thing, but mean another. You use it for emphasis."

Bear in mind, my children are all under ten. According to accepted psychological standards, they are incapable of anything but concrete thought:

"Cognitive development refers to the development of the ability to think and reason. Children (6 to 12 years old) develop the ability to think in concrete ways (concrete operations) such as how to combine (addition), separate (subtract or divide), order (alphabetize and sort), and transform (change things such as 5 pennies = 1 nickel) objects and actions. They are called concrete because they are performed in the presence of the objects and events being thought about."
-- From an article on the Lucile Packard Children's Hopital at Standford

In other words, children under twelve only understand things they can see, touch, hear, taste or feel. They are the ultimate existentialists. This is why they struggle to communicate emotions. They can only explain how being sad or angry makes their body feel. To say one thing and mean another is not difficult to understand, it's impossible.

Children tell lies, but they know they are lying and they mean to convey the exact information they give, even if it is untrue. My children couldn't grasp the idea that you might say a thing that is untrue and mean the thing that is.

So I began to explain. In my defense, my wife helped with this part.

"If I go to the refridgerator and bring mommy back a Diet Pepsi, and she says, 'Thanks, I love Diet Pepsi.' Does she really love Diet Pepsi?" (imagine me investing exaggerated contempt into the phrase)

The children, who know we prefer 'the red can' as they call Coke to all others, answer "No, she doesn't like Diet Pepsi."

"So, why did she say that?"

"Because she doesn't want to hurt your feelings."
"Because she might like it she's never tried it."
"Because it's what you got her and if she doesn't like it she can get her own."

Concrete answers. It never even occurs to them that mommy was insincere in her statement. Never. The rapid fire answers were all based on the firm conclusion that she said exactly what she meant to say.

Just as I'm about to launch into another example and attempt to explain this abstract concept, my wife looks at me. She's out. I can tell by the look in her eyes. She's not going any further with this. Why, I think? We can explain this. We're smart. We can break it down for them.

Then the epiphany strikes me as well.

I am teaching my children to be sarcastic. I have a five-second horror show in my head of the sharp-tongued teenagers these kids will grow up to be. They are quite articulate now. Another five or ten years and straight answers will be a thing of the past. WHAT AM I DOING?!?

"Dad...?" they ask. They are waiting for me to re-engage. I stifle the pontification response. I suppress the teaching reaction.

"Let's talk about something else." Mom quickly supplies a new topic and we're off again, swerving away from the verbal doom I had steered us toward. Maybe I've learned my lesson. Maybe. I'm morbidly curious what it will be like when they do grasp this unattractive concept. They could all become brilliant satirists. More likely they will simply lampoon my every attempt to teach them anything after the age of fourteen.

But hey, that's life for a parent, right?

My new favorite book...

     I was wrong. There. I said it. I thought that great English literature would be as difficult to read as other great works I have read. The Count of Monte Cristo was excellent but it was work to read. Well, it was French after all. Dante’s Inferno was hard to follow, well worth it, but I had to go slow and use a dictionary half the time.

     So when my wife recommended Charles Dickens I resisted for a while. Not that I didn’t want to have such an important English writer under my belt, but I was preparing myself mentally to slog through pages of difficult prose and literary imagery.

     I was wrong. I borrowed a copy of A Tale of Two Cities on CD from my sister and I’ve been listening to it the last week and a half. I love it. Let me be clear. This is one of the best books I have ever read. I don’t mean best in the English Major’s sense of the word. I mean it is actually enjoyable.

     From the first sentence, I was hooked. Dickens has it all. The language is beautiful and he wields it so effectively to create images and moods. His settings and characters are perfect. The story has a depth you can get into and swim around in. I’m almost finished with it and I’m already thinking about when I’ll read it again.

     My wife, as I’ve alluded to, has already read a couple of books by Dickens and she’s told me he’s good. I didn’t know. People say books are good all the time. I trust her judgment, but labeling a book a classic can be the death of that book for popular fiction readers. I have no doubt anyone willing to give it a shot will be delighted by what they find in this excellent book.

     Needless to say, I’ll be trying a few other Dickens books in the future. As antagonistic as I’ve been toward French writing, it feels good to be vindicated by one who is a master of my own language. I’m sure this won’t be the final word on this particular book, but for now, enjoy a little hero worship of Dickens and my ringing endorsement of A Tale of Two Cities.

Train in Morality

Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

--Paul of Tarsus in a letter to the Christian Church at Ephesus

Sometimes as a father I feel the burden to prepare my kids for the ‘real world’. Usually this line of reasoning takes me into some moral gray zone where I start trying to justify lying or fighting or some other such thing. The truth is, God has given us righteousness as a breastplate and faith as shield to protect us from whatever may come at us in the ‘real world’.

If a child is trained from birth to know x, y, and z are wrong and that a, b, and c are right, he will remember these rules all his life. Even when he is of a rebellious age, it will be very clear what he is rebelling against and in what direction he must go to defy these rules.

If, instead, a child is given no guidance, if he is told not to talk about certain things like sin and morality because he may offend some people (usually those people who practice sin and prefer immorality for some reason), if he is taught that a thing is sometimes wrong and sometimes right, he will be lost. He will have no touchstone by which to test his choices.

Such a child is not beyond hope by any means. Every man is born with a conscience. But it is harder to find studs in a wall with a stud finder than it is to mark them while the sheetrock is off and they are plain to see.

What happens when you bring the stud finder to a wall so difficult to penetrate that it becomes unreliable? How then do you choose where to drive the nail? Eventually, things descend into a guessing game where nail after nail is driven until finally something solid is struck. This exercise leaves the laborer exhausted and the wall devastated. How much more do we see exhaustion and devastation as the results of thrashing around in moral ambiguity, trying every likely possibility and retrying when those fail.

Contrast that with the man who knows where to find the studs under the plaster. He knows because the one who built the house has shown him exactly where each one is. Such a man will not, if he is wise, waste energy where there is nothing solid to strike. Again, so it is in life. Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain.

We do our children no good service when we fail to mark the boundaries between good and evil. This is the purpose of morality. It is not only to please God, which it does, but to shelter us from the storms of this fallen world. It is to keep us safe, whole and in our right mind until our savior can rescue us.

Father’s do not forget to pass on these lessons along with all the other gifts you give. Do not fail to preserve your own integrity. Keep it. Protect it. It is a sacred trust intended for generations yet unseen. May it pass through our hands unharmed.

By the way, the idea for today's post came from a post by wife. To preserve her ideas my my sticky fingers, she has started her own blog. 4 Ever Learning. Check it out when you get a chance.

An Overlooked Genre

I love books. I love long books and short books, I love scary books and sweet books, I love fiction books and fact books, I love funny books and action books and thoughtful books. This  has been true as long as I've been able to read. As a kid I could wear out a Dr. Seuss book in no time.

For a while, as I grew up, I forgot about children's books. I went on a sci-fi fling followed by a fantasy binge. I took a short break to get married and have kids and now I'm back to heavy reading. But with the advent of children has come a resurgence in my love for childish books.

I don't think I ever stopped liking them, I just stopped reading them. According to a recent article by the New York Times, this is exactly what is happening to kids across the country now. As parents feel the pressure to prepare their kids for rigorous school standards (see that pesky institutional school ruining another good thing?) they are pushing their early elementary kids out of picture books and into chapter books. Never mind that the text is equivalent or below the picture book's level. It doesn't have pictures so it must be bigger. Right?

Wrong. C.S. Lewis said, "A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest." In other words, any book that a child is expected to enjoy should be enjoyable for an adult. I have found this to be true. For one example, I have already shared Axe Cop, the webcomic written by a six-year-old. This work comes directly from a child's mind, yet it is captivating readers of all ages. Also, in my own case, I have found that I pick out the books I like, when I go to the library. The kids have their favorites, but some how one or two of my own favorites end up in the stack.

Or they used to. When I read the article I was cut to the heart because even I have begun to follow this pattern. My oldest is only nine. My youngest is four and it would be perfectly ok for her to be read picture books daily. Yet, as I've gotten more preoccupied with doing a good job homeschooling, I've pushed higher-level books on the kids. Some of it is an impatience to share what I love, but some of it is the stereotype that books with pictures are for babies.

The truth is there are many books released in over sized format with lush illustrations that contain fifth-grade level text or higher. They discuss themes, explain concepts and inform worldviews that adults are still learning about.

But even with all that aside, children's picture books are fun. They are witty and delightful and I have never failed to laugh at a well made one. My favorites include the Pigeon books by Mo Willems, just about anything by Jon Scieszka, and David Shannon. I still enjoy the 'classics' by Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein.

The idea that children's books are beneath anyone is ridiculous. We would be wise to stop trying to outgrow childhood, but rather carry what is good about it with us to keep us joyful and humble. One final quote from C.S. Lewis and I let it go.

"Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us. No reader worth his salt trots along in obedience to a time-table."

A Purple Apology

The weblog has grown stagnant of late. The author apologizes for his neglect. He is a man of good intentions and poor attendance. However, it is his latest good intention to return to the thrice-weekly schedule he has previously maintained. This wielder of words with bring back the power of his prose to stir vivacity back into the idle blog and make it Vivid once again.

What I Love About Homeschooling: The School of Life

You’re walking through the Wal-Mart when it happens. You turn down an aisle and you see kids hanging off a cart. They’re not preschoolers, the oldest could be ten or eleven. It’s not the weekend. Maybe a holiday? But, your own kids or grandkids are in school right now. No holiday or teachers’ in-service.

So what are these kids doing in the middle of the store in the middle of the day in the middle of the week? They homeschool.

Homeschoolers get out. One of the myths about homeschooling is that kids are stuck at home learning in a vacuum where nobody will interact with them. Do some people do this? Yes. Do most people do this? No. Most homeschool families have an itinerant schedule that turns a minivan into a NASCAR contender.

One of the things I love about homeschooling is the places we go. We’ve been schooling for about three years now. In that time we’ve been to:

• the St. Louis Science Center
• the St. Louis Zoo (many times)
• the Cincinnati Museum Center (includes the Natural History, History and Childrens’ Museum)
• the Mt. Vernon Register printing press
• the butterfly round-up at Crab Orchard
• the encampment at Fort Massac
• The Magic House (St. Louis)
• Cahokia Mounds
• Do I need to keep going?
• a pizza parlor
• a dairy farm
• Jefferson County Historical Village
• Franklin County Historical Jail Museum
• Illinois State Police barracks

I’m going to stop. The point is the words ‘field trip’ have lost all meaning. This is just a part of school for us. We don’t just talk about things and look at the pictures. If there’s a place they can go to look and touch, we’ll be scheduling a visit. The local Homeschool Group has been a big help in this. Most places are glad to invite children in and teach them about what they do. A larger group, with parents along to supervise, can make that possible.

The thing is, a lot of these places I had never been to. These kids are going places at six or seven that I’m just now seeing at twenty-eight. You can talk about the world all you want, but there’s no substitute for going out into it.

Our kids often tag along for trips to the grocery store, the hardware store, the bank, and more. A couple of days ago, my youngest son and daughter helped me pick out underwear for their mother on a quick shopping trip. It was only slightly awkward. (look dad this kind says ‘smooth’ and it looks smooth. Yes son those are nice.) This is real life for us, it can be for them too.

Do we do the table work, the worksheets and writing practice? Yes. We are, as a rule, very busy. From the time we get up in the morning to the time we go to bed at night, we are doing something. This is what I love about homeschooling. It is so much more than school at home. It is the school of Life.