Something to celebrate

So, we've been working with Rachel on her speech, both structure and pronunciation. Yesterday, I realized in doing her pronunciation work that she has moved from one level (isolated sound) to another (syllables with sound).

This is only one sound ("K") and there are many, many more we'll be working on in the future, but still it shows progress.

As a side note, she has been asking "why" a LOT more often than before. Usually it appears when she's asked me to do something and I either say, "No," or "In a minute." And she stays and listens to the answers. :)

Goal for this week: work on eye contact. It will really help her pronunciation.

a scripture discussion last night

Every night we read a little from the scriptures. Because we're Mormon, we have four canonical works, but the ones we focus on mostly with our kids are the Bible and the Book of Mormon. For the Bible, I use simple readers for now but I've found that with the Book of Mormon it's best to just read the scripture itself and explain the passages as best I can.

Last night, while I was talking about a guy named Ammon (a missionary) and the servants of the king Ammon has chosen to serve and how they had to protect the king's flocks from some bad men who wanted to scatter them, Sarah asked a question.

First off, it's the first time she's asked a question during scripture reading... at least, as far as I can remember.

Second, it was a "why" question. "Why did the bad men want to scatter the flocks?"

After I got over my brief moment of shock that Sarah was asking a question, let alone a question regarding motivation, I gave her the best answer I could think of ("I think they wanted to steal them. Let's keep reading and find out."). I'm just thrilled. Between this and the "what if" question the other day, I'm really excited to see what happens next.

I'm definitely putting that Floortime book on my list of things to get for the school year.

Another breakthrough

Sarah and I have been working on "what if" questions for the past month or two. I ask her a question, sometimes answer it myself, sometimes prompt her to answer it.

For the first time yesterday, she asked me "What if we didn't eat dinner?"

No prompting, and she was actually interested in the answer. :) Her first "what if" question. Too awesome.

Homeschooling in California and Update

First, the update... yesterday, for the first time ever, Rachel gave one of her sisters a piggyback ride. In fact, she gave several. :) I'm thinking it's an herbal formula we've been using the past two months called (this is just something we've found works for us and may not work for others) Complete Bone and Tissue Formula (syrup form). It's from the Christophers. We've liked it so much that we're thinking of using another product of theirs called Kid-e-Trac. That, combined with the nutritional supplements we've been using for years now (we use Dr. Schulze's Superfood recipe and cayenne now and then) should really help Rachel.

(BTW, we believe that herbs should only be taken until the body has healed itself. That means a clear focus on foods and general wellness instead of popping herbs like they're a cure-all.)

Sarah has been having some behavioral issues lately. Mostly talking back and hitting. I think it's the white flour. We don't have her on the GF/CF diet anymore since we found that as long as we kept dairy out, she seems to do better. However, I'm now convinced that white flour is a big no-no. Each time she has it, even in a small quantity, her behavior the next day gets worse. Whole wheat flour doesn't seem to have the same effect. She also seems to do better when we limit the amount of bread (whole wheat soaked and cooked seems to do her the best so far).

As for babysitters, no luck so far. Will widen my advertising this week.

Now, for homeschooling and California's recent ruling.

It's pretty disheartening. In countries like Germany, homeschooling has been banned entirely. And now, in California, the most recent ruling indicates that only a parent with teaching credentials can teach their child at home.

I'm no lawyer, but I do have some thoughts on the scope of this ruling. If only parents with valid teaching credentials can teach their child at home, what about parents of special needs children? It's conceivable that a state could also demand a specialization in teaching special needs children if you want to teach them at home yourself. This is a pretty big, panicky, slippery slope because I'm taking one ruling in one state and applying it to the nation. Actually, I'm taking more than one ruling in the state of California (I'll have to look for it since it was by the Ninth Circuit and had to do with parental rights v. the state) as well as the Nate ruling the other day. It's just I live in one of the best states to homeschool, law-wise, and I don't want anything to change.

It doesn't hurt that I'm a confirmed cynic.

I'm also glad that the CA superintendent has issued a statement (see the first relevant article linked above... fifth para.) that seems to say he won't enforce this ruling because the current system works well.

Update: found this article with this beautiful quote:

But Croskey, without hearing arguments from the school, opined that the situation was a "ruse of enrolling [children] in a private school and then letting them stay home and be taught by a non-credentialed parent."

I was taught from K-6th grade through a correspondence course. Looking back after my time spent in two public school systems (one in Texas and one in CA), I realize I learned far more than others my age and didn't suffer in the slightest when it came to friendships and socialization. Or, I should say, no more than any average pre-teen does. ;) And the primary teaching was by... my parents! It's just the way things work out with a correspondence course when kids are young.

So, yes, this ruling does seem to not only affect homeschooling parents but also those who use distance learning and correspondence courses sponsored by private schools, public charter schools, and universities.

This is bigger than I thought.

Another Update: this article from Albert Mohler found through another site adds yet another gem of a quote. This time, the article quotes the actual text of the ruling (found here in pdf format if you want to look at the original). This is the text from the original... not Mohler's thoughts.

The trial court's reason for declining to order public or private schooling for the

children was its belief that parents have a constitutional right to school their children in their own home. However, California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children. Thus, while the petition for extraordinary writ asserts that the trial court's refusal to order attendance in a public or private school was an abuse of discretion, we find the refusal was actually an error of law. [emphasis cavamil's]

I haven't finished reading the ruling, and I'm not a lawyer, so I can't bring any expertise on this matter, but it sounds like this is the way things have been in California for a long time. It's just that a "truce" of sorts has been in place between the homeschoolers and the public school system there. However, what disturbs me the most is that bolded phrase in the above quote. This, of course, goes back to the argument of who takes care of the child and I've run out of blogging time for the day. More tomorrow if I can.

Great Breakthrough!

So, this past Saturday was not the most fun. I've been dealing with very little sleep (teething infant) and trying to get my "interview" planned out so that as soon as I get a list of doctors I'll know what to ask them (heard some interesting stuff on that score that makes me wonder if I should go with a D.O.) and a birthday party planned and... it was a long day.

The point? I wasn't doing as well with my informal eye contact attempts with Rachel and Sarah this past weekend.

Here's the fun part. :)

Rachel came up to talk to me. Not a big thing. She asked if anything was wrong. I was busy with something and didn't look at her, told her nothing was wrong I was just busy.

She then said, "Mom?"

Still focusing on something else I said, "Yeah?"

"Over here."

I looked up at Rachel who gave me full eye contact, smiled broadly, then walked away.

:)