My mother sent me a simple poncho she handspun the wool for, then hand wove. It is the most beautiful oranges and maroons. It is absolutely beautiful. She has sent me something she has handmade for several years now...and I love them all. Dh gave me a composter for the garden (I asked him for it when he said he didnt know what to get me :) ) and a beautiful buddha statue. He did only buy me my Thermomix a couple of months ago so I said I didnt need anything expensive. Dd15 gave me two beautiful cups and some tea samplers. Ds14 gave me a picture of trees and a waterfall. A few other bits and pieces. In all, not too much cluttery stuff, fortunately.

We only spent afternoon tea with my MIL- my famlly are too far away so I don't see them at Christmas, though I would like to and my kids much prefer them. We had an ok hour or so at my MIL's, along with various relatives who were dining with her and still around. It smelled terrible, MIL wasnt well, and she kept telling Dh his hair looked terrible (he's growing it) and he's overweight (well, he is, but she neednt harp on about it.) I mean, why does she not realise that her criticising and non acceptance of dh is one of the reasons he rarely visits? Oh well. It could be worse and one day she will be gone, so it's not worth grumbling. We minimised visiting family this year and it still wasnt much fun but it wasnt too bad. The rest of the day was fun and peaceful and I would do it again that way in a pinch.

For us, I would say Latin is worth it, and not because we have reached any high levels in it and can read original texts or anything like that, even though we have been plodding along in it for years. For my older, who did Latin first for several years in a small homeschool group with a Latin teacher, it was a joy to be in a class situation, the teacher taught a lot of Classical history and geography along with the Latin, and he gave it all a wonderful context. I used to enjoy the class too and decided to continue with both of my kids once we left the class. It hasnt been easy doing Latin at home alone. For my daughter- I think the most benefit was in those years of discussion and learning in a small group, but she has also learned to think clearly and work out the Latin for herself. For my dyslexic son, who has not progressed very far at all in the 3 years he has been learning Latin, I was almost going to give up recently as I was despairing that his brain just doesn't hold things very well! However, my opinion now is that even a little Latin is better than no Latin. Ds14 struggles with grammar- even though he thinks he is great at it!- and I often find that explaining concepts in terms of his Latin grammar helps him understand and remember his English grammar. If I sit with him, we can do his Latin and feel satisfied- I can egg him on and assist him and I am impressed with his mind- he can really do it- but if I leave him to himself- well, he doesn't do it very well. So, if we are going to do it, we just have to do it together. I let go of my classical ideals long ago, but Latin is still happening here because I see how it makes my kids THINK like nothing else. However, I think my dd15 may be dropping it this next year, in the name of just streamlining and not enough time to do everything I would like. However, I fully intend to continue with my son because of how it makes him think, and how it helps him with his English grammar. But, if I didnt enjoy the challenge of Latin myself, I wouldnt hang in there. I did a year of Latin in school and it was enough to give me a headstart on my kids, and keep me interested, as it all started to make sense. So, my reasons are practical and experiental rather than idealogical nowadays.

Christmas gift suggestions: To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect. -- Oren Arnold Love the giver more than the gift. -- Brigham Young The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart. Wishing you happiness. -- Helen Keller feel free to add your own....

I always find it amazing that we are almost a day ahead of you in the U.S. So, its Christmas morning, Dh and I are up and about and the kids are still asleep. We are going to the beach when they wake up. I bet that sounds strange to those of you in a cold place right now! I hope you all have a wonderful and safe Christmas.

I have done both in the past, but the worm composter has gone on the balcony outside, not actually in the kitchen.I knew peopel who kept theirs in their laundry. I tended to put the finer scraps in there like the juicing leftovers. However it gets very hot here in summer and I have killed my worms a few times over the years and don't have any presently. Nowadays, we have chickens and a rabbit for scraps- and we get eggs in return. And for the kitchen, I bought myself an indoor anaerobic composter like this: http://www.cleanairgardening.com/kitchen.html There is no smell because it is sealed, and you also sprinkle some healthy bacteria impregnated sawdust over it. I bought it because I am juicing again and going through a lot of fruit (its summer here) and we can't give fruit scraps to the chickens because it tends to rot and smell and attract rats. This type of composter doesnt turn the food actually into useable compost- it does break it down somewhat, but then you take it out to the garden and bury it lightly or dig it in, or put it in your outdoor compost heap. I have been putting it in a pile and putting a shovel full of dirt over it- within a few days it is broken down, so it is an effective system. I am however getting an outdoor composting bin for Christmas. Not everyone's joy, but I am excited about it!

Its is just the thinking of institutionalised people, that thinks that people should not be trusted with their own children's education or lives, because of rare cases like these. Our society is so conditioned to look up to external human authority, whether its government, the school teacher, any official, rather than within. Obviously it's a community issue, and nothing to do with homeschooling, and there will always be cases like this as long as our society has poverty and neglect in it. It's like all these laws that get passed to protect everyone from themselves, that in the end just imprison everyone. The answer to neglect and abuse in the community is probably complicated but banning homeschooling sure isnt going to solve it.

Ive picked up a fair bit of sari silk in the last few months so I intend to maybe knit a throw or shawl with it. Now I am going back through the thread to get inspired !

The rest of the Ringing Cedars series. Finish Cupid's Poisoned Arrow by Marnia Robinson. Cloudstreet by Tim Winton. To Kill a Mockingbird. Possibly Pride and Prejudice.

What amyable said. Its more about being conditioned to fit into institutions from a nice young age, before they can think for themselves. Because if you wait too late, who would want to live like that? They might rebel. Get them while they're young. Then they even believe it's good for them.

In our home, the parents are not modest at all- happy to walk around naked sometimes, happy to be chatted to in the shower- I'm still lucky if I can pee privately. I was brought up like that- nudity no issue at all. Dh became that way as an adult. However, my kids have swung the other way and became modest by about 11 or 12 I guess. They still have no problem walking in on me in the shower, but will lock the door for themselves :) I have a boy and a girl and there is no gender discrimination about it. I agree with Peek that you can set the boundaries in your own home, with what you feel comfortable with. I dont think there is any ultimate right and wrong on this one- it depends on your culture and family background as well as your own conscious attitude as an adult. I honestly don't see any moral issues either. I do think repression too far about nudity and making too much of a big deal about it is more likely to create secrecy and possible wierdness than openness and making it not a big deal...but that's just my opinion and I cant back it up with statistics :)

We have always done some outside courses, however we dont hand over the reins entirely to anyone else, no coop, no charter school etc. I wanted to say that we are in Australia (big time difference) and my dd15 has been using home2teach.com successfully for some writing units. She doesn't attend the online weekly class (with permission, due to the time difference) and it honestly doesn't seem to matter- the feedback between the teacher and her seems to be enough- I believe the class is only to clarify things. It is affordable to us to do these 6 week courses- not a huge committment but quite dense in terms of content.

I dunno 'cause I only last a few pages into a terrible book! There are too many books I really want to read, to get far into ones that don't grab me. I enjoyed all of our read alouds except that I didn't enjoy Sophie's World as much as I thought I would, and I wanted to stop it half way through, but the kids insisted I keep reading to the very end. I hope they don't find out there is a sequel :)

Joanne sounds spot on to me, but I just wanted to say that I have a kid who is not generous or considerate by nature it seems, and he has just taken a lot of patience and unconditional love to parent and no matter the outcome, he is loved and cherished and hopefully one day that will blossom in his heart. Because I dont think a kid chooses to be like that- it's his journey, and of course you have to deal with it- but I don't think kids deliberately choose to be like that. They need very, very patient and caring parents who can walk the road with them.

I go shopping with my teen daughter and take our time trying on clothes, and having her tell me what looks good on me etc, and vice versa. We have a lot of fun doing that. Also, whenever she needs to buy presents for girlfriends or a hair cut or whatever, and I need to drive her to the shopping centre, I try and make it fun with her by buying her a treat and just kind of regressing to the happy teenagerhood I never had :) My dd also LOVES to play board games. I cant stand it, but sometimes I just do anyway and its never too bad. I didnt want her to remember her mum never played games with her! Sometimes she brings out all her nail colours for me and helps me do my nails. Watching movies together. Painting together. Having a silly sense of humour together. Dd has an ipod and in the car she plugs it in and tries to find songs on her ipod that she thinks I would like. Thats fun. She teaches me the lyrics too. Make up, earrings, stuff like that- I never did much of that as a teen so I love playing with it with her. We go to garage sales and find wonderful stuff. I do agree with Rosie though- it helps to ahve fun when you are well rested and tkaing good care of yourself. Its hard to have fun when you are always busy and stressed.

Someone else replied with some studies, but I never really had any doubt that breastfeeding topped my kids' nutrition when they were pickily eating those first few years. It's just common sense, isnt it, that breastmilk will continue to add nutrition to a child's diet as long as they consume it? And nowadays, what child has a perfect diet? I was particularly concerned about allergies with my two kids, and so I was very careful what foods to introduce, and how much and when, and one of my motivations to extend bf as long as the kids wanted, was to boost their immune systems. They ended up with no allergies although their father has plenty. They rarely got sick (still rarely get sick). Its all anecdotal but I dont have any doubt that it helped them get a good start.

Like with most things, my dh was not happy at first that I tandem bf my two until they are 3 and 5, as he felt it was too much of a drain on me. However, when he realised how incredibly important it was to me, to do it this way, he became very supportive. He was like that with homeschooling too.

I have one. Dh loves it. I however would prefer not to have one in the house, because I dont think they are very healthy and I tend to use it when I am tired or in a hurry. I could live without it easily.

Just putting my chime in here for rabbits. We have a mini Rex (all that's left after various tragedies with 3 other rabbits) and he runs wild outside, and runs up to us to be cuddled when we go out there. We have had lops before and they were gorgeous and the previous owners supposedly housetrained them, but we didnt find it an acceptable level of housetraining! The pros of rabbits are they can be amazingly friendly and sociable. I never had them as a kid and was really suprised how friendly ours were, and how they would come up to us. I think I will have a rabbit even after the kids leave home- I really love them as a pet. The negatives are that with small children they can be scratchy and difficult unless they have been well handled and "broken in" by older people. They also poo- a lot. But it doesn't smell too bad and it's easy to clean. I once took one of ours to the vet and it cost an absolute fortune and she died anyway. But most pets cost a fortune to take to the vet, anyway. We dont go unless its serious.

I absolutely loved it. Not so much the story line which was pretty standard, but the visuals, the beauty, and the concept of oneness with nature. Really, a beautiful movie. I also didnt find it too long at all. In fact, my friends and I were suprised it finished so soon- it felt like less time to us. As far as foul language and sexuality- far, far less than in most movies I see nowadays. I would rate it perfeclty acceptable to all but the most sheltered kids- and i dont mean shelterd in a negative way- some families really do manage to protect their kids from virtually any explicit stuff- but it had less language than the Simpsons and less sexuality than your average sitcom. Or, maybe I am just numb to it nowadays. I took my 14yo last night and he loved it. My dd15 went a couple of days ago and told me it was my kind of movie, and she was right.

I like the idea of a Christmas letter, but they seem a bit like blogs to me...I like them when other people do them, but if I ever try, I just feel, why on earth would anyone be interested? It also irks me when people only write the cheery stuff, but it can change. My dad has cancer and his Christmas letter this year was more real than previous years. I did actually groan and twist inside when I saw it arrive in my inbox...not yet another self congratulatory Christmas letter that they directly ask me to print out and put on my mantlepiece along with the ecard they send with it. I mean, if they don't want to pay the postage, please dont ask me to use up my precious ink! At least it wasn't a picture of dad and his wife this year, but a pretty photo dad took of a moonrise and sunset. But...the letter this year was saying how much they realise they need to do what they want to do now and not put it off till later, so it at least touched upon how dad's cancer has affected their lives. Still, its one tiny step forward and I am looking for a reason not to get annoyed with it.

I am struggling a bit with teens at the moment also, around tv/computer time, going to bed time and other issues. I dont know if we are handling it well but I can share what we are doing. My 14 yo seems to think we have ruined his holidays (we have just started our summer holidays and he seems to have figured he would get all the time he wanted to play computer games and watch tv). We first of all limited electronics to starting at 4pm in the afternoon, because we realised they were just going to get on in the morning and that woudl be it for the whole day. They dont seem to e able to set boundaries for themselves, certinaly not what we would consider healthy ones- so we seem to be having to set lots at the moment. Then we found they wanted to stay up till 11 or 12pm or later, and they werent getting enough sleep because dh and I are morning people, both of us work from home, and it doesnt work to have teens sleep in till lunchtime and not do their chores etc till then. So, we decided to put a curfew on tv/computer at 8pm. It was also because neither kid spends time voluntarily outside, and both have stopped reading. It felt like time to stop the madness aorund electronics while we still can. They are not happy. Dd15 has a bf. We love him and he absolutely adores her. We are ok with the relationship. However, the rule is, they can go into her bedroom IF they keep the door open. But we are also ok with them kissing on the couch and all that, so probably have different boundaries to most. I talk openly about sex and maturity etc and I am ok with how it is unfolding- dd is intelligent. Dd's bf drinks alcohol. But dd is not allowed to go to parties etc where there is alcohol, yet. It's not our ideal, but we would rather he be open about it than that they become secretive. Dd however is not interested. Dh and I dont drink- dh not at all, for me I have a glass of wine maybe twice a year, and yes, teh kids have had a sip sometimes over the years, but its not regular. Its natural for tehm to be curious. By 17, I dont think I will be so strict. 18 is the legal age for drinking here....is it really 21 there? I would prefer my kids not be secretive, so I try to pick my battles rather than push them away. But I seem to be having to be the mean parent, the one they hate, more and more lately. Its a work in progress and I dont claim to have any good answers. I know ideally the kids should be helping set their own boundaries, we shoudl be having discussions etc...but in reality, they seem to need external boundaries more than ever, and they fight against them more than ever.

I have insomnia issues but its not going to sleep thats a problem for me, its waking up after just a few hours of sleep. I had a bad night 2 nights ago and I tried to see what I did differently in terms of my routine, and I realised I was on the computer later than usual. So last night I made sure I got off the computer by 8pm to give myself a decent space between electronic stimulation and sleep time. And it seemed to work- well, sort of. I was so tired by 9pm I had to put my book down and sleep...and then I woke up at 4am. 7 hours isn't too bad for me nowadays. Maybe a hot bath, some warm milk, lots of time in bed to get in the mood for sleep? Is your room absolutely and completely dark at night time? There is a lot of evidence to say we need complete darkness for at least 8 hours a day to produce enough sleep hormones. We live in a culture with a lot of lights on 24 hours a day. Even a red glow from the clock radio next to the bed can be a disturbance. I bought a sleeping mask to help me sleep when I am having a hard time, and it works really well. It has ear muffs and ear plugs, as well as blocking out 100% of the light. If I have an afternoon nap with my mask on, I often sleep 2 hours. Its great for travelling and sleeping on planes too. http://www.hibermate.com/

Yeah, I agree, 15yos can do their own laundry. Mine does. Its been down in our laundry for several days now. Some of it is still on the drying racks, but a fair proportion has fallen onto the floor and is being kicked around the laundry now. I wonder when she will wash the other 2 loads that are in the laundry too, or will they eventually mesh with the one clean load already done, and somehow it will all get clean by osmosis?

If its jsut for a short time coming up to Christmas, I would extend myself more than usual. I really need my space though. My dd15 is going through this right now- her boyfriend wants to be with her all day every day, and she just wants some time to herself and he doesnt understand...if shes not "doing" something, as in, working or doing school or some organised activitiy, she's just free, right? She has my need to blocks of time to just think, do nothing, clean her room, chat to her family, and hang out. Its undervalued but its just as important as "doing" stuff. But this is a crazy time of year and all normal boundaries dont seem to apply.