The Southern Baptist Academy Blog

The need for attention is a fundamental need. Seldom does anyone grow into a confident and happy personality, who has never felt himself loved and accepted during his growing years. A child feels insecure and unhappy when he feels unwanted end of. Such a feeling can cause serious mental and emotional upheavals. Once mothers were urged to care for the physical needs of their babies, but otherwise to handle them as little as possible. This did not work. Babies who were not handled were fretful, anxious, and early developed feelings of not being wanted or loved. It was discovered that babies in institutions, even where sanitation and regularity of routine were expertly supervised, have a higher mortality rate in the babies brought up in homes where standards of cleanliness and regularity were less ideal, but we’re babies were loved and fondled.

Older children, too, need frequent reminders that they are loved and wanted, even though they shy away from demonstrations of affection, especially in public. They do appreciate and need to know that parents and teachers are interested in their play and plans, and that they are ready to help if needed. They should feel confident that adult friends are glad when they are happy, and sorry when things did not go well.

Some children develop an independent attitude toward outward manifestations of affection. There are a thousand ways of showing love. One of the best ways is to refrain from doing whatever embarrasses, confuses or belittles a child whose independence is genuine. However, there are children who hide a yearning for perfection behind an attitude of. I don’t care. Only cities want to be about. I’ll show them my new city. Such a child may have been deprived of affection when he needed it most. It is not easy to tell the difference between true independence in this taste for outwardly expressed affection and a cover up for the unsatisfied longing for it: the outward symptoms may be identical.

Sometimes, young children resort to infantile ways to win the affection. Often and unhappy child will risk his grace or punishment, if that is the only way he knows to gain attention.

When homeschooling parents remember to give children the consideration and respect, which they give to their older friend, the adult child relationship would be happier. Children can be seen as coworkers, especially when they are carrying out purposes of their own. Children plan and think. They have their own rates of speed in working, and nothing is more disconcerting than to have some adult constantly urging her rehab. “Hurry up!” “The rest are all through.”

Children have their own sets of values, and there is nothing adult about it. A blue glass button is more prized by a three-year-old and a quarter would be. The child is found to read this of glass which had fallen from a bicycle lamp found the quote ruby of great price.” Period. Looking through it changed the world for him in the twinkling of an eye. It was his chief treasure, and he was inconsolable when he lost it. Another child walk up to her daddy, holding out her dress on which the child’s grandmother had just sewed a colorful patch a generous proportions seen, she cried, displaying proudly like an adult would seek to hide. Grandma did it nice!. Nor would she permit her new patch to be covered with a bid at dinnertime. In the back of each child is an endless variety of heredity and environment. Before each one of the same endless possibilities for the development of gifts. The adult should seek to safeguard the rich promise a variety, encouraging each child to be the best that he can be: not like daddy or brother James, or some other model, but to be his own best self. True, we hold for all children, the ideal of Christian character that has been set forth in the Bible, but within that ideal. There is possible infinite richness and variety of personality. To be a Christian is not a cramping experience

Edited by Mimi Rothschild, CEO, Learning By Grace, Inc. the leading provider of online Christian educational programs for PreK-12 Homeschoolers.

The question naturally arises as to whether the child can be permitted to give unbridled expression to all of his feelings. If there are limits as to how far a parent can go in his permissiveness? There certainly is. Just as the child cannot be given complete freedom to express his aggressiveness when it affects others adversely, so he cannot be granted the privilege of seeing exactly what he thinks when he hurts others by doing so.

Often when the child is expressing his negative feelings, asking him why he feels that he does can lead him to examine his attitudes in such a way that it enables him to develop some genuine insights necessary for learning to control his feelings and understand his emotions. Even when the child cannot be a chordate unrestrained liberty in expressing feelings are hurtful to others, we can let him know that we do understand how he feels and why he feels that he does, even though some ways of expressing these emotions are unacceptable.

From what we have been saying, it might sound stupid all the child’s emotions are unhappy and undesirable ones. Of course this is not. He has his joys, his excesses, his moment of the nation, which is just as eager to share with a listening parent. Love that listens at these times is just as necessary is that which listens when a child is frustrated. Whatever the child’s feelings, when they are suppressed because nobody cares enough to listen or because nobody is willing to take the time to listen, the way is being prepared for cutting off those valuable lines of communication between parent and child. Parents will find themselves yearning in later years to reestablish these channels of communication, and the repair work is sometimes hard to a fact, once the damage has been done. Blocking this flow of interchange between parent and child can damn up the sparkling springs of the child’s feelings, which can supply some of the richest joys in life through providing variety and flavor in living.

Children want to help and understanding of parents through sharing with them verbally: they want this kind of help even when they appeared not to want it. They want to talk things over, provided they can do the talking. Most children will discuss their problems with their parents if the parent has a listening ear, if he isn’t understanding friend, not an autocratic boss.

Edited by Mimi Rothschild, CEO, Learning By Grace, Inc. the leading provider of online Christian educational programs for PreK-12 Homeschoolers.

When Tyler, both by his silence and his worried demeanor, it is evidence that something is bothering him inside, it’s a good idea for parents to ask, Son is there something bothering you? Is there anything you’d like to talk about? This can be done in a non threatening way that Tyler knows that his parent is expressing the friendly concern rather than engaging in unpardonable meddling with his private affairs. If he takes advantage of this opening to air his feelings, it is imperative for his parents to listen, accept, and understand. It’s a good time for them to offer assurance that most people feel this way at times and such emotions are not wrong, only when we misdirect them or let them control us instead of our learning to handle them.

Helping our children to know and understand the reality of their feelings, day by day is the only way to give their emotions a chance to grow up along with their bodies and their minds. By talking out with the child aggressive tendencies, a parent can often enable a youngster to perceive and understand more calmly the cause of his own emotions. Parents can help their children understand the motives underlying the frustrating behavior of other people. This understanding can alleviate the child’s strong aggressive feelings or, at least, help them adjust to them.

Let’s permit our children to have their feelings, all of them. The only judgment we can make is whether the angry feeling self as a real or an unreal basis. This we cannot know until we hear the child out, but an angry child cannot be permitted to go around kicking other people on their shins or on the other inappropriate violations of other humans write.

Timmy is angry because he has to be pulled himself away from watching television to have dinner with the rest of the family. There is reason for his anger. His father says, come to dinner Timmy, whether you want to or not. Lots of times people have to do things they don’t want to do. I feel the same way you do now. “When I have to leave a job I’m interested in doing here at home. When it’s time for me to go to the office to work, but I do have to go to work every day.”, the father says. Feeling of not liking to do something is Timmy’s personal privilege. He should not be denied these feelings, even though he must leave television to come to dinner. When a child is battling with an intense emotion, a parent can take the empathizing, “I know just how you feel approach to far sometimes. ” But it is important not o give in to the child’s demands because of his feelings. Acknowledge them as they are real and important to him, but do not let those feelins become demands or control you. At such times, the child feels desperately in need of a powerful and resourceful adult upon whom he can lead and to whom he can look for help may get the impression that the parent is helpless to. This is further upsetting to the child since he is seen to his hoped-for source of help crumble before his very eyes.

“I don’t like you anymore!” shouted an enraged seven-year-old Jamie when her mother disciplined her for playing in the busy street which the child knew was a dangerous and forbidden play area. Lots of children don’t like their mothers when their mothers have to spank them for being disobedient. When I was a little girl about your age, “I felt that way sometimes too.” replied the mother. This kind of approach is usually better than I know just how you feel routine which can give the child a feeling that the mother is helplessly dangling at the end of her emotional rope. Just as much as the child is this intensifies the child’s emotional state.

One grandmother tells of having her grandson come to spend the day with her. When the child’s mother had not come for him by early evening, the grandmother telephone to ask when the mother wanted her to bring the child home. Quick as a flash the mother replied, how about when he 16. Maybe by that time he won’t have so many negative feelings. That mother has some basis for her hope she can accept her child’s negative feelings now and let him talk them out with her. A part of a parent’s job is to learn to be a good shock absorber for the child. When this has been done, the child finds it easier, as he grows older, to absorb his own emotional shocks and to redirect them towards constructive ends.

Responding to another person’s peelings is closely related to friendship and constitutes the basis for real interaction. This is as true in parent child relationships as in any other relationships. A parent who demonstrates daily interest in his child’s feelings by listening with appreciation, understanding, and patience to whatever the child wants to say will win the child’s confidence and trust. This warmth of relationship established over the years is that parents best assurance that his child, as a child or in later years, will not stray too far from the biblical path of living. It’s certainly not always easy to keep calm when a son or daughter is expressing ugly feelings, especially if those feelings are directed against the parent. That parents, however it’s helping the child to gain emotional maturity when he can acknowledge the validity of the child’s emoitions and hear him through to the finish.

Mimi Rothschild

Before a child can develop these important qualities, he must have deep within himself the assurance of basic acceptance by those closest to him, usually his parents. The success of adolescent and adult with will be jeopardized if a sense of identity, of belonging, first of all to the family group, has not been firmly established in childhood. Children who are unwanted and rejected, what ever the parental defect or situation. Responsible for it, may suffer serious personality, distortion. Such children tend to be sick clues to, detached, apathetic, and unable to respond to the affection extended to them by others. They may be restless, fearful, and insecure. Sometimes they become aggressive and rebellious, as though they are out to snatch for themselves. The feeling of being wanted, of belonging, of being recognized, which is the basic to the building of a healthy personality.

Closely linked with the need for a sense of belonging is the child’s development of self-confidence and self-reliance. These are important pillars upon which growth toward maturity rests. Self-confidence is the awareness one has that he is in the world for a purpose which he alone can fulfill. That duty requires that he applied himself to the God-given task self-assurance. “I can” are two magic words which are the “open sesame” to life. At the same time, we must remember that, although it is important for a child to be in himself, it is also important for him not to be too easily convinced. We want our children to know that they are not the only people of importance in the world.

Frequently the amount of confidence a child has in itself is not determined so much by his real abilities as by his attitudes towards himself and his abilities. Faith in one’s self begins with the feeling, “I am all right”, “I am a person of worth”. “I do have assets.” “I do have strengths as well as weaknesses.” “I am a person worthy of respect.” Children first learned these attitudes from the parent’s attitudes towards them. The parental attitude is not always expressed in words that may be communicated to the child long before he can understand the meaning of words. A parent smile of approval, the tender way in which he handles the baby, but parents efforts to make the telecom triple, he’s responding to the child needs, his expressions of love for the child, the tone of voice in which he speaks to the child. These are all the ways in which the parent tells his child how he feels about him. These actions, as well as the parent spoken word, provide the primary source from which the child learns his attitudes towards himself.

In a process of growing up, inevitably the small child encounters many failures and mishaps. He spills his drink, he break the glass, he takes his mother’s cherished roses on her most prized Roche rose bush, thinking that he is doing her a favor. In the midst of such happenings, even the most well-meaning child may become discouraged and feel that everything he does is wrong. It’s such accidents as these are minimized, if they are treated as casually as possible by adults who understand that the child has not made these the state to the Britney or with malicious intent, the child will bounce back and will soon recover his self-respect. He will find that his 17-year-old put it, everybody spills his milk sometimes.

No factor is more important in successfully teaching the child’s self-confidence than the example set by parents who have flexibility in self-assurance, who know how to savor the sweet experience success, as well as how to bow to the bitter experience of defeat. Small child who has observed that his parents are not snobbishly dependent upon the favorable opinions of others. And that they know how to admit failure is receiving a first class method in the art of building self-confidence. Children naturally imitate parents ways of dealing with problems. The child who has legitimate reason to believe that his parents attacked their problems enthusiastically and with verve, even though they do not always succeed, has his own self-confidence reinforced. Albert Schweitzer. When asked how he could best pass on to their children the proper attitude toward self-confidence and responsibility, said there are three ways. One example to example and three example.

Some have raised concerns that the founding self-confidence can cause the child to become egotistical and prideful. Experience with children seems to show that this is not usually the case, unless there has been inculcated in the child a false concept of his abilities and of itself. On the other hand, it is the bully, the boastful braggart, was most likely to have feelings of inadequacy. His overbearing manner is simply his way of concealing his belt inapt myths and insecurity. Usually the competent child does not have to wage campaign to convince itself, and others, of his abilities. Of course, all children are given to bragging at times. The times when they’re most likely to post, however, come one errantly self-confident. Listen to your own children. If you hear them say such things as I don’t know whether I can do this or not, but I’m going to try hard: let’s think about it and maybe we can find a way to do it: let’s talk it over with daddy. Maybe he can give us an idea about how we might swing it, you know you are busy growing self-confidence.

em>Mimi Rothschild is the Founder and CEO of Learning By Grace, Inc., the nation’s largest provider of online K-12 Christian homeschooling programs and homeschool Christian curriculum. For more information about how online homeschooling is revolutionizing homeschooling, please go to www.LearningByGrace.org today.

Permission is granted for the duplication of this article if it is reproduced in its entirety including this sentence.

We do a lot of laughing around the Learning By Grace offices. Laughing is the best medicine. Laughing puts the world in a better perspective. Here are a few funny videos from my favorite Christian comedian and homeschooling father of lots of kids, Tim Hawkins.

Tim Hawkins Biscuits and Gravy

Tim Hawkins Frap House

By: Mimi Rothschild

Recently, the California judicial system has directed a two-part assault on Southern Baptist homeschoolers throughout their state. First, they have banned the words “mom and dad” and “husband and wife” from their schools – please read www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58130 – and are forcing teachers to promote a more alternative sexual lifestyle.

The second part of the assault came last week when three judges essentially banned homeschooling, deeming 166,000 children truants – www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25469 – and their parents as criminals.

This absurd ruling needs to be reversed. Please visit: www.ReverseTheRuling.com, and learn more information about this alarming issue, and have your voice heard by signing the petition. Our goal is to gain enough signatures to present this petition to the courts and let them know that America is watching. And we know what happens in California can happen anywhere in the United States!

More so, we know that this ruling has long-term ramifications of indoctrination on our children, diminishing the Christian Values that we’ve worked so diligently to instill in them. This is not a one-off case that only pertains to an isolated incident! No, it is a Ruling that eliminates a freedom that dates back to our forefathers.

Stay informed. Spread the word. Sign the petition.

By: Mimi Rothschild

After reading the academy blog posted last Friday, my son asked me if I ever heard the six foot spoons story of heaven. I hadn’t. So he informed me of it…

A person dies. His name is Mike. Mike is greeted by an angel that tells him that God has decided that the decision of afterlife is Mike’s and will be based on his decisions throughout his life on earth.

Two doors were presented to Mike. The angel told him that he needed to pick one of the two doors and look inside. He could only pick one, but if he didn’t like that door than he had to take whatever was behind the second door. He couldn’t open both and then decide.

Mike opened the first door and saw a table built for a king’s feast. It seated more people than Mike could count in a glance, and upon further investigation he saw the spirit of every person he has ever known and loved that had passed, and spots for all of those yet to be with him. On the table there was enough food for everyone to eat several meals. The finest cuisine, chalices filled with wine and everyone Mike wanted to be with all in the same place; this had to be heaven, he thought.

Before Mike walked inside and deemed this his forever-afterlife, he looked closer into the eyes of his loved ones. Something was hollow. His eyes followed theirs and he saw what they saw – each person was holding a six foot spoon.

Once noticing this, Mike saw the food going everywhere but where his loved-ones wanted. Each person tried feverously to flick food into their own mouth, but instead of enjoying even a morsel, each person was starving to get a single bite.

“No. Never. Give me the fire-pits and horn spikes, I’ll take whatever is behind the second door no matter how painful the punishment,” Mike said as he slammed the door shut. He couldn’t witness his loved-ones being punished, regardless of his desire to be with them all.

The angel looked on and presented the second door to Mike and waited as he reached for the handle. He grabbed the knob, closed his eyes and opened the door.

Much to Mike’s surprise, the room was identical to the first door he had opened. It held the same luxurious table holding the same feast, same spirits around the table sitting in front of the same chalices; but worst of all, each spirit was still holding the same six foot spoon.

Mike looked on with an open mind to try to find something different, a deeper solution, just as he did his entire life on earth. And this time upon further examination, he noticed something was missing from the first door he had opened. The hollowness was gone. These loved-ones weren’t hungry. There was no food flying across the room or anything missing its target by selfishly being flung from a spoon.

Instead, Mike’s friends and family weren’t trying to feed themselves. Instead, they were feeding each other. Each spoon was being used to help the person across from them without the fear of going hungry themselves. Each person thought of his or her neighbor first.

And, to Mike, this was his choice. He lived his life this way and now would spend his eternity sharing with his loved-ones the glorious gifts that the Lord has provided.

This was heaven.

By: Karlie Margaret Houser

As a young girl of only ten years old, my grandfather sat beside me on the backyard swing-set and told me a story that I still hold close to my heart today. The story was about a young man, a Pastor, who moved from his parent’s home to the streets of the big city. The Pastor was homeschooled, raised under a roof of God and was very close to his family. He moved when he was 18 years old to help support his family and “see the world.”

It took him several hours to get to the city with plenty of stops along the way. When he finally stepped off the bus, he realized that he was much farther than merely a bus ride from his hometown.

What he saw scared him. Prostitutes and pimps, drugs and drug addicts, crime and criminals; he stood and stared at everything he saw until a young kid ran up to him and kicked him in the shin. The boy wasn’t more than ten years old or so, but had the city life engrained in his very being.

The Pastor looked down at the boy, dropped to his knee and said, “Aren’t you going to repent?”

“Repent? What’s that?” The boy asked.

“Repent. Save yourself. Say you are sorry,” the Pastor responded.

With that, the boy ran off kicking trashcans down and breaking bottles all along his way until he was out of sight and could only be heard.

Not sure how to respond, the Pastor chased the noises of the boy and screamed at the top of his lungs, “REPENT, REPENT AND SAVE YOURSELF! REPENT, REPENT AND SAVE YOURSELF!”

He never caught the child, but ran for a solid hour up and down the street screaming at the top of his lungs. He did not say anything but those words, and eventually drew the attention of the vagabonds that surrounded him.

The following day he decided to run up and down the same street screaming his message, “REPENT, REPENT AND SAVE YOURSELF! REPENT, REPENT AND SAVE YOURSELF!”

Every day. An hour a day. The Pastor’s screams became known throughout the area as that of a deranged man who lost his marbles. He was the neighborhood joke. Never a hello, merely the subject of their taunts. Those screams lasted twenty years, every day at the same time a day, for an hour a day.

Like clockwork, the Pastor left his quarters and ran to the streets to spread his message. He never took a day off. Never strayed from his path. Never let the sneers of others bother him – and sneers there were, but not just words, he was also the target of rotten fruit, trash, and spit.

One day, about twenty-five years from when he first stepped off of the bus, a man in his early thirties approached the Pastor after he was finishing his hour long running chant. The young man met the Pastor at his front door.

“Why? Why do you continue your rant?” The young man asked.

“Because,” he said with a smile.

“Because you like the abuse? You like the trash? You like the stains of fruit that have piled up for the past twenty-some years? Had I known that, I wouldn’t have kicked you in the shin, I would have handed you an umbrella.” The boy admitted with the look of bewilderment engrained on his face. “Don’t you know that you can’t change this city? These people are who they are. They ain’t changing no matter how loud or long you yell,” the young man said with conviction.

The Pastor smiled at the young man and waited until the two were eye to eye.

“What makes you think I’m trying to change them? As much as I wish and pray, I know that they can’t change until they allow God into their lives and help them change themselves. As for me and why I run, I promised myself many years ago that I will never allow this city to change me.”

By: Mimi Rothschild

The civil war, also known as the War Between the States, is captured in our history books and our stories. Now your homeschoolers can get a little taste of it firsthand! Here’s a recipe that has been shared from generation to generation. It’s also a perfect early cooking lesson for your homeschooler!

Civil War Cookin’: Rumbled Eggs

RUMBLED EGGS
3 eggs
2 oz. butter
1 tsp. cream or milk
Buttered toast

Very convenient for a light dish for supper. Beat up three eggs with two ounces of fresh butter; add a teaspoonful of cream or new milk. Put all in a saucepan and keep stirring it over the fire for nearly five minutes, until it rises up like a soufflé; immediately dish it on some buttered toast and eat!

Adapted from Civil War Recipes: Receipts from the Pages of Godey’s Lady’s Book, Lily May Spaulding and John Spaulding, editors. Recipe from 1866.

By: Mimi Rothschild

Oftentimes, I am asked if homeschooled children fare the same as their Public School counterparts.

“Honestly, the answer is no,” I’ll say, as I wait for the smile of conviction to spread from the person’s face to my eyes.

Then, almost mirroring their glee, I politely explain a few of the facts I’ll encountered over the many years of being involved with homeschooling.

“For instance,” I’ll say. “Homeschooled children consistently score well on standardized achievement tests. The most comprehensive study shows a 20-30% point gap in favor of homeschoolers. For example, if the public school average is the 50th percentile a homeschooler will on average be in the 70th or 80th percentile.”

I’ll then explain that homeschooling is the fastest growing education sector in America, growing at a rate of 7-15 % per year. As of today, there are an estimated two million homeschooled children in the U.S., which is almost 4% of the school age population.

The conversation typically ends with both sides understanding the other, although neither of us quite sees eye to eye on the issue. I’m ok with it now, although it took me several years to accept it. Believe it or not, not everyone shares my beliefs about homeschooling. I know, I know, it’s not shocking to you, me, or the people asking the questions. But it’s true.

I’ll mix up my responses too. Sometimes I’ll say, “Homeschool graduates are typically more involved in community activities than the average public school student.”

Or, “Homeschool graduates are significantly more politically active than the average public school student.”

“Is that so?” I’ll hear.

“Over 74 percent of homeschooled graduates aged 18-24 voted in an election in the past 5 years. Compare this to a token 29% of public schooled graduates who voted during that same time period.”

But, that line of reasoning hasn’t gone that well for me either.

“Well, my little Abigail or Elsie graduated from Public High School last year and she voted.”

“I mean not to offend. I’m sure your daughter is very patriotic,” I’ll say as I backtrack out of the conversation that I was originally baited into.

I’ll finish with, “Ok, did you know that homeschooled students consistently win national geographic and spelling bee contests?”

“That I did hear somewhere.” Politely, we finally can agree.

It seems like everyone knows, and is ok with the fact, that homeschoolers are great spellers.

Feel free to e-mail me at Mimi@LearningbyGrace.org.