Arguing, Punishments and Chores...(not what you might think)

   Life is complicated isn't it?   This week we had a talk with one of the kids and their significant other about how to fight appropriately.  Appropriately you ask?  Yes, Ed and I learned on our Engaged Encounter how to fight with rules and we have tried to stick to those rules all these years.

   It's so interesting to me how similar we all are when in conflict. One of the "rules" we try to stick to is beginning our sentences with "I" and not "you".  "I am so hurt by your comments" is very different than "You hurt my feelings".  "I feel like you don't care" is totally different than "You don't care".   There is a challenge posed when a sentence begins with "you" during conflict. It instantly puts the other combatant (smile) in a defensive position even if they didn't feel that way to begin with !  From there the argument usually deteriorates because both sides are using words to accuse and defend as opposed to letting the other know how they feel and why.

   We try to use this with the kids too. We have found over the last 27 years and 8 children that the response of any child is dictated by how something is communicated to them not what.  We rarely have conflict when asking them to do something or clean something up and I believe it's how we ask.  I have always believed the kids need to understand they have to help because I need their help and I believe they can get the job done well.  Chores around our house each morning are never a source of argument or whining or disobedience.  Either I am very, very blessed with perfect children ( uhhh don't think so) or it's because they understand we all work in a family not only to get a job done but because, as I said, I need their help.  In addition, each person's work affects others in a chain reaction and understanding this is key to learning to work well.  I always thank them and I make sure to praise those efforts in front of them to others.

   The other HUGE reason I believe we have compliance is WE NEVER USE CHORES AS A PUNISHMENT.  I think this is super important.  Why would I think they would want to do something cheerfully that I make them do as a punishment?  That is silly to me.  My Mom never did this and I was usually happy to help her because I knew she needed my help....daily. I was doing a service, not just working because I was a slave.  She always thanked me for my efforts and bragged that I was good about helping her. I am so thankful for that example....especially with 8 children !! 

   In fact I was rarely "punished" as I can remember and I have never been yelled at....ever. I would get a reeeeaaalllly loooong talk if my behaviour was, shall we say, inadequate. I used to wish I would get a nice beating instead of having to sit through the loooong moral lesson (insert eye roll) she was trying to teach me.  However, I always came away with an understanding that she wanted me to be a good person and that giving my best effort was part of that. It was the higher road. That she worked hard every day (and many times into the night with the book keeping she frequently brought home), was reason enough for me to help her do her job well by doing mine. Example. Example. Example. Thanks Mom.

   This makes me ponder our new entitled society.  What went wrong? It cannot simply be political as many say.  My pitiful little opinion is it may have begun in the 50's with the "I want my children to have bigger and better everything than I had".  During this time, education began being held in unusually high esteem, higher than work in the family.  This concept grew and by the time I was in school in the 70's many of my friends never had chores yet were given much time for homework because grades were of the utmost importance.

    This became humorously apparent to me when my first children went to college. They were in disbelief at the general lack of knowledge about how to work a washing machine! We all laughed when they described students making cookies in the dorm. Oh boy, with no experience at all or bothering to read instructions, when the cookies (you know that fake dough stuff in those long rolls?) weren't baking fast enough for their "right now" mentality, the students turned them up to 500 degrees !!! Really??? It made a huge impression on my first two and they were quite proud that not only could they do laundry with no resulting pink underwear, but they could bake, cook and clean. I wonder if they ever thought they would be proud of this?

   The basics. The basics are so important to teach our children. Any brilliant kid can get a degree and make a lovely salary (well, maybe not in this economy) but guess what?  They have to have clean underwear, eat and have some sort of organizational skills.  Perfect grades can't get any of that done.  When they were busy studying to be the head of the class our kids were learning not only to get their schoolwork done, but chores, as well as cooking and child care.  These things are second nature to large families or any family whose parents took the very valuable time to teach The Basics. Everyone has to master The Basics to be happy I believe.  How happy are you when..... you can't find clean clothes,  can't have friends over because the apartment is so filthy or you are starving but you never grocery shopped? How about lost keys, being able to find only one of your best shoes or not having a clean towel after your shower? Basics. The lack of them causes anger, stress and anxiety.

   We homeschool so our days are different than a family whose children hop on the school bus.  It has always, always, always been the rule here that family jobs, daily chores come FIRST in our day even before schoolwork.  School doesn't start until the house is in order....ever. This may sound alarming but if the base of our life...our home....is out of control nothing else falls into place well. Peace. There is no peace without order in the home.  This practice bleeds out into everything. If we decide to go to the library and run some errands, we never come home to a dirty house. I would feel behind the 8 ball if I had to come home to a mess, then make lunch, then finish school...AAAHHHHHH!  How about if someone calls to come over?  No problem, the chores are always done first thing in the morning so there is no stress or yelling or panic because we have to rush around cleaning up.  Peace.  For a home of 10 people we have always had Peace.  Quiet?  Oh no......no quiet, but Peace :)

     This is how we get our kitchen floor clean. The CD payer gets cranked up, the kids fill bowls with hot water and soap and they THROW it onto the floor and slip and slide and scrub! They laugh, scream and yell and have a ball....they ask to do this. Then they get towels and "skate" the floors dry! They end up with some friction burns on their knees but they don't care!  We have some awesome videos and memories of the older kids doing this.

~Blessings~

Lisa

  

   

Technology??? What a nightmare.

   So this blog business has already just fried what is left of my brain.  Every time I tried to change, add or delete something everything else changed....grrrrrr.  I emailed my techy son Eddie and he swooped down with his cape and did the Super Techy thing with it.  Then our favorite family priest Fr. Anthony called and he too is in the cape wearing community of Super Techies, so by remote from far away in the woods somewhere,  he took over my computer and fixed/added even more things I found in my blog searches.  It must be nice to be so smart...I am not graced by that particular problem anymore :/

   As many of you found out when you opened your email today, I, the stalker, sent you a bazillion and one emails "inviting" you to come read.....sheesh. I had NO IDEA I was doing that. I thought I was adding approved emails to a list and it wasn't working so of course I did it over and over....duh. It took doing it many times to see the oh-so-obvious box at the top of the page that said INVITING.   Amazing isn't it?  I still didn't know emails were actually going out until Mary opened her email tonight and said,"Mom, there are like, a TON of emails from you on here." So, I am sorry your fingers got numb pushing "delete".

   Today found me out to lunch with a good friend after dropping Mary at college. We went to Macy's to take back a couple things I got talked into. Yeah, stupid.  The gal at the cosmetic counter was so sweet when I pitifully told her I needed a make-over to cope with my obvious lack of hair. She was gorgeous and made me a FREE appointment. Yay FREE.....Yay MAKEOVER !  It isn't gonna do a whole lot of good but perhaps painting the exterior will make folks forget about the roof.  I have saved my birthday money for just such an occasion.

   This weekend, Joe's lovely girlfriend Lilly and I (mostly Lilly!) made one of those cool photo board thingies. It turned out beee-u-tee-ful!  I'm tellin' you it was so stinkin' easy anyone could do it. Making it yourself allows you to pick your own fabric and coordinating ribbon. Here's a pic of our handiwork....

 

    Isn't that just too cute??  We decided on buttons for the intersections of ribbon. I can't wait to fill it up :)

   I want to ask for some prayers for my wonderful friend Linda. She is battling cancer and after a recent difficult surgery begins her second round of chemo tomorrow..."mega chemo". The "mega" doesn't sound so good to me. She was bombarded from the nurse with the awful side affects awaiting her.  She is a lovely gal who gives her life for her family and especially her daughter  Lissy http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/allissarower  who has many of the same diseases/disorders we do. So some prayers for her would be lovely.

   Thanks to my lovely friend Debra (who is driving us up as my van is still in the shop), tomorrow we head up to Children's Hospital for bio-chemical genetics appointments. That should be good for some brain calisthenics.

  

A Crowded Nest is Best

   I decided to start this Blog because much of our life is on our medical site and it really doesn't belong there.  Also because so much of our life is NOT on our medical site. This will be about our family, my adventures as a wife and mother of 8 wonderful homeschooled children, some refelctions and of course our crazy medical circus.  If anyone chooses to read, that will be lovely but it's really therapy for me so I can keep sane and keep going in this very odd life God has given me. Besides, with all the brain stuff I am afflicted with (insert sarcasm) it will be my memory in the years to come.

  This first post is one of thankful awe. There are 3 reasons...

 1) for Fall 

2) for surviving the last week  and

3) for my Family. 

Outside it is so beautiful with all the trees changing and the wind blowing leaves around.  This is absolutely my favorite time of year by far. Everything smells good with folks beginning to use their woodstoves and fireplaces. The kids are all here for Sunday dinner and of course I decide to start on some hare brained idea of a blog...go figure.  But when the spirit moves you...the spirit moves you !

   Every Sunday we have a family dinner. After Mass, the few that are out on their own come home for the day along with significant others and Ed helps whoever needs assistance with car repairs or loans or math or any  number of things.  It's my happy-go-lucky day of the week when I do not have to make dinner...yay me!  I make a huge breakfast in the morning before church, then I am OFF the rest of the day!  The kids and Ed BBQ for the good weather months of the year, the other half they decide what's for dinner and prepare it.  I don't have to do a bloomin' thing.

   After a couple hairy weeks of hospitalizations for me, broken appliances and other home disasters, sick kids, etc. we are finally getting organized.  In 10 days time I was in the hospital twice for brain shunt malfunctions and the day I got home from the second one, the dryer broke and in a family our size that is a true disaster!  The fridge decided to freeze everything and a few days later the septic started backing up into the tubs....yeah....yuk. So my wonderful mailman husband rushed home from the P.O. and dug up the darn thing in the rain. In his uniform he was on the ground unclogging it with the twins helping.  He conquered it but it then needed to be pumped for a lovely 395.00 !  A new roof is scheduled for next week and of course it starts to rain this week :/ Then we find out one of the trusses is broken so Ed gets in the attic thinking he can repair it with Eddie (son #1) but no luck....it has to be done by the roofers...more money. Blah.  Last but not least the new (new to us) van we just bought (and I LOVE) started leaking water into the interior from under the dash...grrrrrr.

   Factor into all that homeschooling and you have a real mess.  Thankfully the boys are self motivated and get most of their work done without me.  I now have mounds of correcting to do. So why am I blogging if I have mounds of school to correct?  THAT is always the million dollar question. 

    We have been studying Lewis and Clark and thankfully that included a very long documentary over mutliple days with discussions that didn't require paperwork! Love easy homeschooling! Love this subject! We had great discussions about the indians that Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery dealt with. They seemed to sense from this excellent documentary that the indians were respected by the Corps. After the expedition ended, William Clark became Governor of the Missouri Territory and was the agent of Indian Affairs where according to letters, he was frequently upset over the treatment of the native peoples he and Lewis had come to know. The boys could see how the movement west affected these people, yet, how that was what exploration was about.  I explained how people now want to say how terrible the "whites" were to the native peoples and this is true in many ways, but conquering new or already conqured land was what was going on all over the world white or not.  It was the way things were.  The boys did see though, that the westerns they love to watch are inaccurate when they show the native indians to be so cruel as if they had no reason to be so.  Hard stuff.  I have native American Indian in my family, Eastern Cherokee. My Grandpa looked very much like an Indian. I am proud of this.

   My other favorite thing about this subject is that when they arrived on the west coast, Lewis and Clark decided to let everyone vote about where they would stay for the winter. This included York, the slave Clark had brought along and Sacagawea who of course was a woman...an Indian woman. I find this quite emotional for some reason. So American.  They were all equal in the vote. (Though, of course,  the circumstances of York and Sacagawea were not opitmal by present day standards.)

   On the medical front, my brain shunt is not functioning well and I am trying to hold off another brain surgery as long as possible. It may not be long.  My hair now looks seriously like the back end of a raccoon......a wild raccoon :(   Mary seems to have Strep. so we will see the doctor tomorrow as she is immune suppressed and can get in trouble easily.  We did not give her the Methotrexate shot this weekend so her bones are not going to feel so hot this week.

   I don't know how this blog business goes. I don't know how I will arrange my thoughts or the subjects here so I'm sure it will evolve. Be patient... I am seriously lame. It will be an act of charity on your part to be kind to a poor girl afflicted with lame-ness :)

~Blessings~

Lisa