I think my kids are incredibly clever. My boys are twenty-eight months old and they can count almost to twenty, recite the alphabet in order, name about twenty colors, around thirty animals, and just have excellent memory in general. We've started working on their full names and addresses. They remember, almost verbatim, sentences from books we haven't read in weeks. But I've never-- not once-- told either boy that he is smart (okay, so I've slipped once or twice, heh).

I'm not pushing them so hard to excel that I resist praising them. In fact, Adam and I decided before they were born that we weren't going to make a habit of displaying them-- I don't prompt them to say the alphabet for people and the only time I've recorded them counting, they had no idea I was recording. Even now they sing the alphabet to their toys and rarely to us directly.

But before I had kids, I read about this book, NurtureShock. I read some blog posts and articles about it and some summaries of the first chapter. And one of my favorite podcasters recently interviewed one of the co-authors, Ashley Merryman. It's the podcast Raising Playful Tots and you can find that specific podcast here.

Basically, the concept discussed in the first chapter of NutureShock is that we're harming our kids by constantly praising them and telling them how smart they are. There have been short-term studies that show that kids who are told they are smart begin to choose easier and easier projects and develop a crippling fear of failure. Kids who are told that they worked hard get excited about challenges and will start choosing more difficult projects and have a better attitude about their own effort or work.

I don't think that not telling my kids they're smart will mean they never struggle. On the contrary, I know they will struggle-- and I want to make sure I'm equipping them to handle that. I know from experience (mom: I love you. I know it was stuff everyone thought was good at the time) that hearing how smart I was constantly as a kid warped my expectations. I began to think that if I didn't understand something right away, I was a fraud. I spent a lot of childhood bouncing from one "hobby" to another trying to find something I'd immediately be "smart" at (I wanted a kind of "instant protegé" experience).

One of the studies mentioned in that chapter of NurtureShock is a study involving two groups of students (either third graders or middle schoolers- I can't remember) and math lessons. One group was given a thirty minute (that's all!) presentation on the brain and the other group was not. The presentation talked about the brain being a muscle-- the more you work it, the stronger it gets. Just from that thirty minute lesson, the first group did consistently better in the math lessons.

They've found that kids who are regularly told how "bright" or "smart" or "clever" they are tend to swing wildly between two reactions to challenge-- they avoid it because of a fear of failure or they are groundlessly optimistic about success (usually too much of the latter leads to a child eventually ending up with the first response). Kids who are told how hard they worked, how much effort they put into something, tend to seek out challenge and learn more.

I'm not saying you're a bad parent for calling your child smart. I would be doing the same if I hadn't read some of this book and heard these podcasts and read studies about it before having my own kids and while they're still little. I'm not even telling you that you should stop-- maybe your kid has a personality that copes with that particular kind of praise really well. But this is what our family is doing and why. If you have a child that you know is bright and recently seems to be avoiding challenge or collapsing under failure, take a step back and think about how you're praising them. Kids need praise and encouragement-- but I think we should be careful to praise them for real effort, so that praise stands out to them and makes them focus on what they can control about their learning environment.

You can't control smart, so a lot of kids end up hitting high school and being overwhelmed by a fear that they "lost" it-- that they peaked as a toddler and are now just "average" and that parents will be disappointed. That's a lot of weight for a teen. But muscles? Muscles are something you can work on.

What do you think? Aside from this, are there any other decisions you've made as a parent about being more intentional in how you speak to or interact with your kids?

A few weeks ago, I finished reading through the book of Luke in the Bible and started reading the book of John. I've been working through the Gospels after reading several epistles, just working through one chapter (or half-chapter in some cases) a day. It's been the reading plan that's been working the best for me recently and I've been learning a lot.

Except that day a few weeks ago, when I started reading John, I got a few verses into a very, very familiar opening and had the thought: What is this nonsense?

I struggled in my heart for several minutes with it. It felt like I was reading about a cult-leader. It was all mixed up and crazy-sounding and seriously out there. I almost immediately had the thought following: I've been spending too much time with the wrong influences.

I kept reading and the doubts kept nagging at me, even as I prayed about them (kinda). Then a few days after that, Adam suggested (wisely) that we start having an evening prayer time together and stick with it. It's also been turning into a time for us to discuss what we're reading in the Word and what's going on with us in our days. I told him about the nagging doubts I'd been having. I assured him, with honesty, that I still truly believed that Jesus was the Son of God and that He had died for me. But I couldn't shake the weirdness of that one encounter with the beginning of John and lingering doubts about my faith. I also told him that I thought part of the problem was that I'd been spending too much time with the wrong things. Evil things? Not necessarily. But I'd been giving them too much time, too much attention.

Adam agreed, but also said that something else was going on. The beginning of the book of John, as familiar as it was, had sounded a bit like nonsense. He reminded me that it is just that-- foolish nonsense-- without the revelation of the Spirit and that for some reason, I'd been allowed to have a glimpse of what that looked like in a way I never had before. There was a weight on my heart when we were talking, a kind of fear or dread that was overwhelming and drove me further into prayer and more aware of both the power of God and the need to be seeking Him and serving Him with my whole heart. Later, I remembered the verse from Proverbs about the fear of the Lord being the beginning of wisdom, but in that moment and right after, I had the thought, This is what the weight of the Lord's glory feels like, just in a small part, and is it not a mercy that I can approach Him so freely?

Then yesterday, I had another even briefer moment where I looked out the window of my car and briefly wondered, "Do I really believe one God created all this?"

The answer is yes, I do. I thank God for a faith that requires me to believe crazy, impossible things and then also cares for me in so many little, practical ways. I cannot comprehend or fathom how much God really manages and yet I know He does. I know this, too: He has worked my salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, His Son, who is also God.

I'm spending more time in prayer and more time in scripture. I cling to the cross. It offends, it is foolish, and it is perfect and true. Sometimes, I just need to remember what the Gospel is and I need to fill my head and heart with that daily.

This is the Gospel:
We are a broken, screwed up, hurting people. We cannot heal or fix ourselves, even for all our good intentions, and time isn't doing us any favors, either. Jesus came to the earth not to condemn but to heal, to mend, to save. He died and carried the punishment of all the terrible things we do to each other and to ourselves and then rose from the grave, because death could not hold him down. And then He offered to save us, too. Not so we could be rich on earth or feel good about ourselves, but because we could never be perfect enough or worthy enough on our own to dwell with a Holy God-- a God who loves us and wanted us to be able to dwell with Him and worship Him. A God who desires, still, to heal our hearts and mend those things within us we cannot escape. Because to live without God is miserable and to be separated from Him forever is hell. And God made a way for us to escape that, even at the price of His own Son's death. This Gospel is joy.

Praise be to God.

The first unit study we've been doing is about trains. My boys love trains. We have some train stuff here, but if they go to my parents house, Sam will do pretty much nothing except play with their Brio train stuff for hours. It seemed like a good place to start.

As I said before, one of my goals was to keep spending to a minimum. Since we're not spending a ton of time on schoolwork each day, I didn't feel like I needed to get an organized curriculum. Initially, I just wanted to read some books and do a few activities. I've since expanded that to include YouTube videos and shows and music. I'll go through what we do and then list all the materials we've used or plan to use.

In the morning, we read the books through at least once. Sometimes the boys will request them later in the day and we'll read them again. I leave some out for them to look at on their own. Sometime in mid-morning or early afternoon we work on an activity-- right now, we've just been doing coloring but I'd like to build up to some activities with scissors, glue, paint, and play dough. Today, we listened to two of the songs over lunch. We've watched a few YouTube clips here and there throughout the week and they've watched the "Train" episode of their favorite show twice this week.

And we talk. We talk while we're reading, while we're coloring, while they're playing. I ask them to try new words, to identify or repeat numbers or letters that we see, colors that we use, or talk about things we're listening to. I have in my notes that I wanted to focus on recognizing numbers 1-3 and the first letters of their own names, but we ended up doing all the way through eight or so because there happened to be some numbers on the train pictures they colored. At least once every coloring session, I help them hold a crayon and write their own names once and then the first letters several times, so they've started requesting "T" and "S" when I help them draw other things.

If you have questions about how school is going for us, ask in the comments or email me! I might write occasional updates about that, but for now and probably even more in future posts, I'm just going to focus on what materials we've used because every kid is going to interact with stuff on different level dependent on age, personality, and previous exposure to concepts.

So, materials!

Books
The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper
My Little Train by Satomi Ichikawa
John Henry by Ezra Jack Keats
Freight Train by Donald Crews
The Busy Little Train by Anna Claybourne and Jo Moon
That’s Not My Train by Usborne Books

Songs
John Henry, Harry Belafonte
It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry, Bob Dylan

Clips/Videos
Swiss Steam Trains
"Train" Yo Gabba Gabba! episode
Alphabet Train

Projects
Three Train Coloring Pages-- Starry Engine, Train Car, and Caboose
We still haven't read the John Henry book because I need to pick it up from the library. The coloring pages we did one page a day until we'd done all of them, and then we put them all together:

After months of talking about working on a preschool curriculum and toying around with the idea of getting started, I've finally just started making my own and doing it with the boys. They're only two right now, so it's super-easy PreK stuff. We're just going to be working on things they're interested in for about one to two week stretches, so I guess they're like little units. The first unit we're doing is Trains, and I'm planning on also doing Space and Rockets, Baby Animals, Weather, Family, Construction, and anything else they end up expressing interest in. Just those should keep us going until about the end of April.

I'm making it up as we go, mostly, because right now I'm not too worried about missing crucial learning goals. We're incorporating shapes, colors, numbers, and letters into each unit and just sort of talking about them casually-- no workbooks here unless they seem interested in it (I guess I'm a bit of an unschooler when it comes to PreK?). They're already really familiar with all four of those categories and know most shapes, most colors, numbers up to thirteen, and the whole alphabet, so we're really just working on consistent recognition now. And keeping it fun. Right now, a big goal is keeping things fun-- they need a schedule and some productive activities to give order to their day, but this is by no means You Must Be The Smartest Toddlers Ever drill work.

In fact, a lot of this is really training grounds for other things-- they pay attention really well to books at home if we're sitting on the couch, or coloring if they're in high chairs at the table, but we need some practice with those things out of the familiar context. They need practice sitting in chairs they aren't strapped into or sitting on a rug to listen to a story and not wandering off. It also helps me to be more intentional about how I interact with them during the day instead of just telling them to "go play."

That said, I'm probably going to be sharing some of what we're doing for each unit on this blog and you're welcome to use any of the stuff I've put together. Even if you aren't planning on homeschooling, if you're having a hard time managing time and toddlers it might help to just have a focus for your day. I'm actually just deciding now to post what we've been doing this week as a separate post, since my explanation is already long enough to stand on its own.

I'll always welcome comments and suggestions for materials relevant to our unit topics that you feel like we've missed-- I'm just scouring the internets and my own shelves to try to avoid buying very much right now. We're making a lot of use of the library and might even hit up Goodwill for books and craft supplies soon. God's already blessed us by providing some stuff for free this week!

Next post, Trains, week one!

How many times have I heard that being a mom is a thankless job? At least a couple times, ha. And moms work hard. It melts my heart when one of my boys says, unprompted, "Thank you, mama," (to be honest, I get melty even when I have prompted them, because they're still little enough that it's adorable to hear them say it). And when Adam tells me thank you, it warms me to know that he's noticing and he appreciates.

The problem comes when I start expecting and anticipating that thanks or praise. Don't get me wrong-- I think noticing the things spouses do for each other or kids being respectful are both important. But I notice my attitude turning sour and bitter if I start thinking that I deserve that thanks and praise.

I read a story in Luke the other day that I honestly don't remember ever reading before. Maybe that was one of the reasons it stuck out to me. The other reason was just what I was talking about above. Here's the passage:

“Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”

I've been thinking a lot about expectations for a while now. I've actually started a blog post about this before but never finished it, so I decided to start over.

First off, a follow-up to the last post about exercise. That grand plan didn't last long-- only two and a half trips to the grocery store (the half was when a friend gave me and the kids a ride home after it started raining and because I'd forgotten to use my inhaler before leaving the house). I got frustrated by not being able to get my Moby wrap to work JUST RIGHT so that I could have both hands free to push the stroller and then it was one excuse after another and we just haven't tried again. I need to find some other exercise to do, but I am being more careful about what I eat.

So, expectations. They can serve me or mess me up. When I first started thinking about this, it was in the context of nursing newborns and being a stay-at-home mom and the things that really throw people off in those two efforts. Nursing is a good example of what I've been learning, overall, about expectations-- if I expect my newborn to eat well, sleep for three hours, wake up, eat again, etc. etc., then I could be totally right. Then on the other hand, I could be miserable when that same baby eats for five minutes, then ten, then sleeps for an hour, then eats for fifty minutes, then sleeps for thirty, then eats for ten minutes, then sleeps for three hours...and so on. My attitude and response can vary from "What is wrong with this child I'm not doing this anymore go to sleep go to sleep go to sleep" to "Oh, hey, that was a good hour-long nap."

The only difference between those responses has nothing to do with the baby. It's all to do with my expectations. Newborns sleep weird. They eat for weird amounts of time. They want to eat a lot. That's normal.

Another example: My toddler wakes up at 5:30 am and plays happily for ten minutes, then descends into thirty minutes of being set off by EVERY LITTLE THING. That Duplo guy doesn't fit there-- fall apart and cry. Truck won't stay exactly where I want it-- fall apart and cry. I could go on. So, I can be moaning and whining to the two-year-old, "Stop whining. You know what's wrong? You need to sleep longer in the morning. You get up too early," or I can remember: He ate dinner at 5:30 the night before. I stayed up for another five hours and had a snack, and I can go longer without food. He's probably miserable because he's hungry. Also, despite tiredness, why do I expect the two-year-old to stop whining when I won't?

And finally, I unsubscribed from a bunch of email lists today and deleted some apps that were all about shopping. I signed up for them so that when we do have a little extra money to buy presents or to get things that we need, I'd be aware of sales and have coupons. But really, it was just making me focus too much on material things. My expectation was becoming that "We should have more freedom in our budget right now" instead of "the Lord will provide when we need something." And He has always been faithful to provide.

All this to say that expectations are something I'm working on. I'm not saying I should expect my kids to be terrible and for our budget to always be tight, but I shouldn't expect the opposite of those things either. My expectation and hope should be in the Lord, not in the circumstances of my bank account or my kids' actions. That's so hard sometimes, but it's so important.

What do you expect right now? Where can you see that your expectations for a situation or a child or a spouse or anything are making things seem way worse than they actually are?

Here are some other areas that I find myself frequently having to adjust my expectations:
-when and how I clean my house
-the time I have to write and where to find it
-how my boys handle going to bed at night (right.now. they are sick and overtired and not sleeping)
-how Adam and I handle conversations when we're tired
-how much sleep I need and when to get it
-what uses of my free time I will find fulfilling
-how much free time I have (lol)
-the kind of time I need to spend with God to not be a total grouch to everyone in my family
-how well my infant sleeps during the day
-how long dinner should take to make

Those are in no particular order. I guess I was freewriting a bit. Anyway, expectations. You have them. Are the ones you have right now helping or harming?

I've just started an experiment of sorts. It involves me walking .8 miles to the grocery store and then .8 miles back every day (note the period-- that's 1.6 miles total, NOT 16 miles) with all three kids. The boys ride in the stroller and Lucy rides in the Moby wrap. I ride...on my feet. We pick up some groceries for the day and then head home.