Secular Charlotte Mason

Hi

I have a 3.5 yo son and a 2 yo daughter.  I am seriously considering homeschooling them when they reach kindergarten age, but I am thinking I need a little "schooling" myself.  I am not very pleased with my parenting "style".  It consists mainly of telling or asking my children what to do.  Then when that doesn't work, I resort to bribes and threats.  And then when that doesn't work, I start yelling.    Not good, I know and my son is getting good at yelling too which upsets  me.   I know that I have a "low tolerance for frustration" and I know that I am supposed try and use humor, but I don't know how to turn not listening to me into something funny. 

So, does anyone have any recommendations for some good parenting books?  I say this with some trepidation because I found the few baby books rather disheartening.   I thought if I did what the book said to do, then the desired result would occur, but that was not always the case.  And my son is particular is not a "by the book" type of chld.  

I have the Penny Gardener's Secular Guide to CM but I have yet to really read it.  I am sure there is some helpful information in the habits section but I would appreciate any other suggestions.  Thanks.

Erin

A real turning point for me was a recommendation from our pediatritcian to read "Children: The Challenge" by Rudolph Dreikurs.  I skipped the first chapter and got straight to all the practical examples which are abundant in this book.  Everything I tried from that book worked! (when I didn't think it would -- this just shows how far off the mark I was)  

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I also like positive parenting books like "How to behave so your preschooler will too" by Sal Severe.  I don't use the charts.  Or "How to Talk so Kids will listen & Listen so kids will talk" by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish.  These mainly helped me with how I talk to my kids.  I never name-called but it's amazing how many things can be said negatively without meaning to...

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I tend to be a loud and over-react to certain behaviors.  My son was doing things to get a reaction from me...  He was good at it. hmy:  I also realized that my kids weren't doing what I asked until they heard the yell.  Just like they wouldn't do it until I got to "3" with counting.  It's funny because now they will listen without me yelling because they know I will follow through and remove them or the toy/object.  They still wait for the yell with Daddy.  Kids are so smart.

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I would say the first 3 books I mentioned are like a "crash course" to get started and then reading CM volumes is the 4 year degree.  I find that CM is so wise but it takes a while to digest and "live" what she recommends.  I've often thought that "Children: The Challenge" would be acceptable to CM because it's a gentle way to parent that honors the child as a person (described in the first chapter as kids understand democracy and equality and how it changes parenting).  Children: The Challenge isn't faith based.

Hmm, my favorite 'parenting book' isn't a parenting book at all.  When I was pregnant, I came across a book called The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff.  In it, Ms. Liedloff examines the culture of the Orinoco people of South America and how its people, including parents and children, relate.  She makes some deeply significant observations, though in my opinion her conclusions about what the observations mean is a little wierd.  Now, her opinions have been turne into something of an alternative parenting "cult", and that's not what I'm referring to, but taking a step back from our own social assumptions and observing how someone from a very different culture handles parenting was very moving for me and has gone a long way to informa the way I parent Jack, my caboose child.  One thing I realized is that I had inherited a sense of 'child as opponent' from my parents and I was setting up conflict without ever realizing it.  Ms. Liedloff observes that children of the Orinoco people are apprentice adults from the time they're born.  They live life as a part of the group from the very first -- in the beginning, they observe life my the arms of their parents, and as they grow, it is assumed that they will take a more and more active part in the life of the community.  Chikldren play, but their play is their work and tey are practicing skills they will need as an adult.  Children raised that way seem more centered and content than children raised as "other".  I have a sample size of one...but my results are the same as what Ms Liedloff observed.  Jack is by far my most centered, contented child and he;'s far more responsible and confident than his brothers were.  But there is no "how to" in the book -- the closest I know if is that the Continuum Concept inspired what later became Attachment Parenting, but I thing in many ways AP missed the point.

The book I love the most is called Mind Power for Children by John Kehoe.  It's not a 'parenting' book  (it's actually a 'power of attraction' book), but what I love about it, is it gives you examples about how to teach your child to remove negative thoughts (and it works wonders for parent, too!), while giving examples on how to 'boost' your child's self esteem.

Since we have been implementing the ideas, the kids seem more calm and well behaves (and we're frustrated a lot less also.

It's a very easy read - not too 'head-y' at all.

Thank you for your suggestions and ideas.  I will definitely check some of these out.  And Misti, I read your perfection parenting post on your blog and that gave me a lot to think about too.!

Erin, glad it helped.  It helped me a lot when I made that realization and i hoped it would help others, too. 

Heather, Mind Power for Children sounds excellent!  I'm going to add that to my library list to read right after I finish Thomas Jefefrson Education!  Thanks!

This isn't quite the type of parenting book you requsted but I could not raise my kids without this series.  It was written back when folks seem to have more common sense in raising their children and I think their range of "normal" behaviors is far more realistic than many of the more current parenting books. I refer to them whenever I need some reassurance that my child isn;t acting a particular way just to annoy me but rather they are just going through a normal stage of development. Their explanation of positive and negative stages was extremely helpful. My pediatrician turned me on to them when I was struggling with my son.Here is the amazon link so you can see them. The link does include the title and authors' last names (just in case it doesn't work) <http://www.amazon.com/Your-Three-Year-Old-Louise-Bates-Ames/dp/0440506492/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247071868&sr=1-1>;

Erin,

I haven't had a chance to completely check this resource out yet but it is the only resource I know specifically about CM's concept of habit training.  If I were starting all over with my kids I'd focus on habit training long before anything else.  It's a DVD workshop called Laying Down the Rails and is from Simply Charlotte Mason. You can find a link to their website on the links page. So far everything I've gotten from them has been worth it although I haven't had time to view my copy yet.  It also comes with a thick workbook that looked pretty good (and is currently "lost" in my stack o' books lol).

Also, I'm on the same page with Misti.  Attachment parenting just turned my elder two into brats (seriously this is not an exaggeration) but once I went past the current/modern attachment parenting discussion and focused on where the AP folks were getting their information (ie. more connected cultures, etc.) then I had far more success with my kids. The concept is good but how it is currently interpreted combinbed with our instant gratification American culture was a disaster for my family. I had to go furher back to the basics for it to work for us and I also borrow heavily from my farming background since it taught me to be responsible to and considerate of the world around me.

HTH!

Gina

Hi Gina

Thanks for the recommendations too.  A friend of mine with 4 children once suggested the same series of books but I never got around to checking them out.  That Laying Down the Rails DVD does look really good too.  Has anyone ever tried the CM Scheduler from the same company?  That looks like just the perfectly goofy gizmo that I would get into.   I get the impression that lesson planning is some kind of  huge nightmare/time consuming ogre.  Is that really the case? 

Erin

PS-I like the deer in the woods, I am not really a "frog" person. 

Hi Erin,

Somehow I missed this when you first posted it. I have tried the scheduler from SCM but I didn't really use it. I finally came to the conclusion that I am not a scheduler kind of person. Probably because I do *not* spend loads of time lesson planning. I love lesson planning for classes that I teach but homeschooling is totally different from that for me and I am able to do a lot less writing down of my lesson plans when it comes to my own kids. I do plan things in my head but, unlike for a class, I do not have to have it all written down since many things are just routine by now. The only time I did a lot of lesson planning for homeschooling was when we did unit studies way back in the beginning and then I totally overplanned and burnt out quickly; which is why we no longer do unit studies exclusively.  I am finding that I do have to do a bit more lesson planning for high school than I have done in the past but that is because my son wants everything lined up so that he can work at his own pace and just have me as a "superviser" rather than as a "teacher".  Instead of spending a lot of time lesson planning I spend my time really researching and looking at materials and trying to chose what works best for our family. Once the selections are made we just go through the materials, adapting it on the spot, until we are done with it. I think lesson planning is a very personal thing. Some folks need to do it extensively in order to keep the ball rolling and others are fine just going with the flow.

Scheduling is something I'm thinking about right now. I know I wouldn't stick to a Sonlight type schedule.  The FIAR schedule didn't really work for us either with doing one subject per day. 

For this year I bought Tanglewood's Corebook.  I'll use those worksheets to figure out how many chapters/pages to read per week for our spines.  Then I will put the "go-along" books on a shelf by subject and in the order I want to read them instead of alphabetical order.  I have some shelves downstairs that I will use for the books for school.  All other books and free reads will be upstairs for the boys to look at when they are sent to their rooms. hehe (I don't tell them to do it, they just do and for bedtime reading.  I will also probably read the literature selection at night and keep the book by his bedside.  I won't try to schedule those and just pick up another book when one is finished.

Not 100% sure how well this work but I figure I can easily mark down the chapters we've covered each week.  If we read only 1 instead of 3 then it will take us longer to finish our school year or things might carry over into next year.  We have a TON of books and since this is our first year it's very hard to imagine how many we'll read in one year.

Lately he was showing more interest in phonics and learning to read, (YAY!) so I might have more of that to do with him instead of as many read-alouds.

Cori

Cori,

Looks good. If I had it to do all over again with young kids I think I would really focus on the habit training aspect of CM and let the schedule work itself out. I truly believe that everything would have been easier with our homeschooling if I had known about habit training when my kids were that young. Get them started with good habits and it should be somewhat easier to stick to an actual schedule. Hindsight---it's always 20/20, eh.

That's a good point.  I'm getting the Simply CM Seminar on DVD and the package that comes with Laying Down the Rails.  Can't wait to kick my family out for the day to watch them. lol  However, I have noticed a lot of kids start out optimistic and sweet in early Elem. then a few years later become cynical.  I don't know if this is the public school environment or a developmental thing.  And teenagers, that's a whole 'nother thing. 

I unschooled Ham and read FIAR books, Beatrix Potter, Winnie-the-Pooh, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and other good books to him last school year.  We did science experiments too since he loves them.  He was resistant to doing much more.  I think he'd gotten a bad attitude about learning from preschool (long story).  So we'll see how much we can cover this year.  Even with my long list of books and grand plans, if he's not enjoying it then I'll slow it down a bit.

I appreciate the encouragement.