Colleen - No problem. I hope your stressful months are resolving themselves for the better, not the worse. xxoo

Ok - I cleared some space. Sorry. I had a bunch of things I wanted to save and I hadn't gotten around to it yet.

Well, I've tried to do that, but it is hard to hit a good balance point between teaching tolerance and respect for other ways of doing things and other points of view, teaching them to think for themselves and not go along with the crowd, teaching them when other people are being stupid, teaching your own point of view and way of doing things, teaching them right from wrong, teaching them to talk to you so you can help guide them, being sympathetic parent, and sharing enough stories from your own growing up that your child knows he's a normal, good human being. Some of those things are mutally exclusive and the only way I've found to do both is to do one one time and the other on another occasion and as someone who is trying to parent in a consistent way, that doesn't seem like a good solution to the problem, either. Ug.

So maybe personality has as much to do with it as being in public school? Now that you mention it, it occurs to me that my sister was always goes along to get along, and I always hide or run. Maybe it is the parenting, not the schooling. Or birth order. My middle one is rather like my sister, who is also a middle child. And my youngest's scorn is rather like my youngest sister's scorn. And my youngest sister seems to do fine in the workplace now. Thank you. So far, I've been shying away from thinking about it because there didn't seem to be much I could do about it, or much I was willing to do about it.

Thank you! I was peacewalking in Switzerland, and now I am trying madly to catch up on the things that I should have been working on while I was away, like gathering the books for next year and applying to homeschool, and trying to coordinate 5 people going 5 different ways during the summer.

Which one in particular? If I have lightened anyone else's day, I am happy. Mine am having a rather miserable one. : (

You're welcome! I'm happy to spread the ideas around. I love your name because when I was three or four, I split open an ash key and baby dragon crawled out. I was carrying him to show him to my mother when he escaped and ran under the violets. I remember him looking exactly like your picture except a bit smaller.

HaHa! Happy Thanksgiving. We had ours today, Friday, because some family members have to go to step-in-laws Thurs. Fortunately, we don't care if we have to move holidays, at least the non-religious ones. Thanks for the funny!

I think this is easier for some children than others. I try to talk to them lots, get them to dream big (if you could learn anything you wanted...), make lots of suggestions, and then when they do show interest in something, I make lots of suggestions about how they could go about learning about it. Some things require time or money or driving beyond what they are capable of doing on their own. Some things need me to make inquiries for them, to get them started. I've tried all the way along to get them to make phone calls asking about things and to look things up on the internet and to ask other people about things. I'll often suggest people to talk to. I'm also very quick to buy supplies - I try to do it right away, even, because teenagers have short attention spans. I try to get my children to volenteer lots of information about themselves when they are talking to other adults. Then the other adults make suggestions, too, or offer help. I try to listen really carefully to what my children really want to do or not do; it is easy to make it so a polite child can't turn down suggestions made by adults, especially parents, making it so they are pursuing an interest that isn't really an interest. I have tried to make sure that my children had a basic competency making things and in art. We taught them to use tools, sew, draw, make music, cook, travel, etc. This means that when they decide to pursue an interest, they don't have to start from absolute zero. We live in a place where it is pretty easy reach stores, museums, the ocean, the woods, the train, even the airport. Our house is overflowing with books about how to do things, materials, and tools, and we have lots of friends who do interesting things, everything from pottery to oyster farming to computer programming. I think the most important thing, though, is to make sure your children have enough energy to do something. That means that they can't be overloaded with stuff other people want them to do. Does that help?

-Nan

Awesome! We need to stick together LOL. Will you let me add the Universalist Rebellion to the alliance?