She just doesn't understand

Last week I had a lady who paints murals and borders come to the house to give me an estimate on doing some work in my daughters' room. As she walked in our front door, her eyes were immediately drawn to our dining room on the left. This is where we do much of our homeschooling seatwork, and the table was covered that day -- as it is every day -- with books, papers, drawings, pencils, rulers, art supplies, plastic geometric solids, a puzzle or two, and a globe from the 1960s that I've marked up to reflect contemporary changes to geopolitical information. Oh yeah, I also drew the equator and prime meridian in with black permanent ink so they'd show up better.

Anyway, I quickly hurried her up the stairs to the room I wanted her to paint. As we reached the landing, I cautioned her to steer clear of the toys, dolls, books, train track pieces, and other miscellanea of childhood.

My daughters' room was actually quite tidy that day, but I could tell she wondered about my younger girl's small roll-top desk fairly bursting at the seams with papers, puzzle books, crayon box, paper dolls, sketch pad, and complete Hello Kitty art set in a hot pink plastic case. My older daughter's nightstand piled high with books was also a sight to behold.

After our consultation as to colors, mural theme, etc. we went back downstairs and finished up our visit in the entryway where only a legally blind person could miss the enormous pile of unfolded laundry on a bench nearby. That, and the equally enormous pile of folded laundry that rose up out of a chair in the family room back behind me.

Smiling, the woman said to let her know when we were ready to have her come to work her artistic magic, and as she walked out the front door she remarked, "You know, I have a good friend whose name I'd be happy to give you. She's a professional organizer and I know she could help you dig out from under all this. Is it alright if I give her your phone number?"

I mumbled something about having four children, homeschooling, and being abnormally busy 30 hours a day and then graciously thanked her for her concern. The personal organizer did call a few days later. For a minimum of $200 per three-hour session she could come to my house and make it into a showplace.

If I had that kind of cash to burn, it would be tempting. Tempting, but not likely to happen. Here's what she'd find and I just know she'd want me to re-shelve, discard, donate or hide all of it:

The "tares and the wheat" sculpture my girls made in Sunday School to illustrate the famous parable. It sits on our mantle and competes for visual attention with a colored picture one of my daughters taped up nearby.

The wooden bin near the fireplace that's overflowing with battered but much-loved board books my toddler son likes to "read."

The stack of empty cardboard boxes all four of my children use as cars, boats, planes and other modes of transportation.

The 3-D sculpture my oldest girl made from discarded objects as part of a study on recycling and the environment.

The stacks of books that appear every few days like sprouting mushrooms alongside every toilet in the house, the window seat in the kitchen, the sofa table, the end table near my comfy chair, the kitchen table, the kitchen counter, and on pretty much any flat surface not already occupied by other books. We have shelves, we just don't like the hassle of re-shelving books we know we're going to want to see again in the next 48 to 72 hours. My two oldest read voraciously and they're not picky about where they do it. My two youngest also like to study books and be read to, so we can't skimp on them, either. Since none of the kids ever watch TV or play video games, their books, each other, and the great outdoors ARE their entertainment.

The reams of paper and cardstock for use during art lessons, private drawing sessions, lapbooking, scrapbooking, and diagramming of everything from nuclear fusion to the water cycle. "Here, let's draw a picture so you can see how this works," is a familiar refrain around here.

The boxes of photographs and scrapbooking supplies that I need to chronicle the lives of my four beautiful and immensely entertaining children -- if I ever get enough downtime to actually do this.

The egg-carton "gardens" my girls made in Brownies that sit on the counter over my sink.

The costumes that drape themselves around the house after my younger daughter and her brother have finished playing yet another game of knights and princesses, cowboys and Indians, Pilgrims and Indians, Bible-era characters, or house with them as Mom and Dad and their little brother as the baby.

The train tracks, gears, flashlights, magnets, wires, and other gadgetry that belong to my inquisitive four-year-old son -- they are literally to be found in every room and in every configuration possible.

The magazines -- nature magazines, literature magazines, homeschooling magazines, current affairs magazines, religious magazines. We read 'em. We need 'em. We share 'em, we cut 'em up for notebooks and art projects. We like their portability so we keep stacks of them in the van for long trips.

The video camera I leave out in case one of the kids does some unusually and awesomely film-worthy thing. Or we see a cool bird, or it snows, or the children put on an impromptu dance recital.

The paper lanterns my kids made to celebrate Chinese New Year.

Boxes of completed homeschool workbooks, notebooks, and art projects. I save it all in case the state or anyone else REALLY wants to know what we've done these past three years. That's a lot of stuff to sift through. . .

Boxes of clothes catalogued by size and gender so I can find the next set of hand-me-downs as my kids grow.

Toys that all get played with, maybe not every day but by the end of a given month. Their worn places, scrapes and scratches attest to their regular use. "We love them all and we use them all," my six-year-old proclaims. "We get so busy going from one activity to the next we don't want to take time to put them away," she explains earnestly.

Puzzles for all age ranges -- some with missing pieces, true -- that escape their cabinet for the great outdoors of the family room.

Projects to be done on rainy days or the hot afternoons of upcoming summer -- papermaking kit, crystal growing kit, perler bead kit.

In short, the only way my house will ever make it into the annals of Better Homes and Gardens is if one of two things happens: Either my children all grow up and leave home or we stop homeschooling so we're never home to think, learn and do and, by default, mess things up.

Some days I wonder if the first will really ever happen, knowing we'll be sad when it does. But I never contemplate the second option.

I love my house because everywhere I go I am reminded of four beautiful brilliant minds hard at work on the mysteries of life, and this blesses me more than uber-neatness ever could.

Besides, $200 will buy a lot of books.

Hair and windowpanes -- math instruction gone awry

Our local public school district has come up with some inventive, nay ridiculously complicated, ways to teach what ought to be fairly plain and simple.

Ever heard of "hairy" math?

Yeah, this was new to me, too, until someone in a neighborhood chat group mentioned it and I had to know more.

I am always interested in what my children's publicly schooled peers are doing because I don't want my kids to grow up saying things like, "Gosh, I don't know this because I had the misfortune of being homeschooled."

Turns out that instead of teaching first and second graders how to count money using the tried and true methods of handling actual money, memorizing the values of various coins based on the ways the coins look, i.e. the copper-colored Lincoln guy is always worth one cent, the students are being asked to draw lines or "hairs" out from pictures of coins to help them count by fives.

In other words, a nickel is worth one hair. A quarter would have five lines emanating from its edges.

A former teacher clued me in as to the asinine reasoning behind this practice.

If you guessed the Almighty Standardized Test At Whose Throne All Texas Students Must Bow you're right.

The ASTAWTATSMB drives the boat when it comes to public education such that not much real education takes place. Instead, it's all about test-taking strategies.

The hairy math is a visual crutch, my teacher friend tells me. It's used so that students who aren't developmentally ready to tackle abstractions like assigning values to coins can still manage to score high on the damned standardized tests.

Never mind that these kids aren't developmentally ready.

The windowpanes are a whole other joke.

These are used to help students organize information in word problems, I'm told. But instead of helping kids actually work the problems, this artsy element wastes their time. Kids who can get the right answer without plugging numbers into empty squares get points off for NOT using the windowpane. A friend of mine whose son had to use this method in elementary school said she and her husband had to attend a special parents' event just so they could be taught what to do to help their children with homework!

She left the school that night dazed and confused, wondering why they didn't just teach kids to look for key phrases that would tell them whether a word problem was calling for addition or subtraction.

I wonder the same thing.

Homeschoolers are often warned to watch out for gimmicky programs that promise to teach our kids geometry in 10 minutes a day or conversational German in just 48 hours.

Looks like parents of kids in public school might benefit from a similar warning.

Gimmicks, smoke and mirrors. No wonder American students STILL lag behind other countries in math and science.

When you're spending all your time splitting hairs and drawing windows, you don't have much left over in which to do actual work.

North Carolina judge demonstrates educational ignorance

By now, most of you who are homeschoolers are familiar with the North Carolina divorce case of Venessa Bell in which her admittedly adulterous husband has acknowledged the successes of the couple's three homeschooled children yet wants them put in public school.

The judge in this case is no less an idiot and has ordered Mrs. Bell to finish out this year with her children at home and then to enroll them in public school in the fall so that they can, in his opinion, receive proper socialization and a well-rounded education.

If the stakes weren't so high, this last part would be funny.

Turns out that Mrs. Bell is a member of a church that is not recognized among mainstream Christian denominations. The judge thinks her young children should be "challenged" in their faith so as not to grow up with horns sticking out of their heads or fangs protruding from their mouths.

Divorce cases are messy and best left to jurists to sort them out.

Children who are thriving in a homeschooling environment in a state where home education is LEGAL ought to be left alone.

It happened in 'O3 and I never even knew it

Here's one for my Cultural Erosion file -- the subtle yet powerful revision of one of the most common words in the English language.

"Marriage".

Did you know that in 2003 some popular dictionaries in the U.S. began including same-sex relationships under the definition of this word?

My advice to any parent who isn't ready to confront the issue of homosexuality with their young and curious learners is to make sure your dictionary was published before '03.

Otherwise, you may be getting the "how can two guys be married to each other" question long before you're ready to answer it.

Teach Your Children NOT to bully

Children with varying degrees of autism -- known as being on the "autistic spectrum" -- are being diagnosed in record numbers. Unfortunately, most of them either attend public school or will someday. Professional educators who actually know what to do with these children are far and few between, from what I've been reading, and this means too many of these kids are falling through the cracks. Special ed. or mainstream? A little autism or a lot? Is it autism at all or just quirky and eccentric behaviors?

Regardless, even with the most accurate diagnosis and the best interventions these children often face a rough road as they struggle with, among other things, learning to read the social cues given by other people. It's called mind blindness, the inability to read faces or body language, and to tell the difference between sarcasm and sincerity. It can also manifest as an inability to control one's own behaviors, tone of voice, and facial expressions.

Failing to do any or all of these things puts children on The Spectrum at an even greater risk of being taken advantage of than their unaffected peers.

Many children with mild autism are extremely bright, some with IQ's far above average. They are not mentally retarded nor are they purposely weird.

Our society goes to such excruciating lengths to teach its children tolerance for those who are of different races, different sexual preferences, and different religions, how about hammering home the message that children with autism are to be tolerated, too.

What does this mean? First, it means explaining to unaffected kids what autism is and that it doesn't manifest the same way in any two people.

Then it means teaching unaffected kids why they ought to not be afraid of their affected peers.

Take that one step further and explain that bullying autistic children is as bad as teasing someone about the color of their skin or the fact that they wear a hijab or have two mommies.

Make the penalties for harassing autistic children -- or any children with disabilities -- as strong as the ones for offending kids who are gay or black or Jewish.

Autism is not something children or their parents ever wish for, it is not a reason for celebration, it is not easy to live with or to accommodate.

But for the families of these amazingly brilliant, beautiful, quirky thinkers the failure of other parents to teach their children well is perhaps the most hurtful of all.

Be grateful if your child does not have autism. Teach your child to be a blessing to one who does.

Many children with autism want to have friends, they just don't quite know how to make them.