A primary goal of parenting or teaching is to awaken the man within the child. It is to allow the child to grow in his independence. A parent or teacher is to come along the child as a helper, not a server. One who is served does not learn independence but impotence. The mother who feeds her child with a spoon but never allows the child use the spoon himself becomes a hindrance to the child’s natural desires to learn. She hinders the joy the child receives upon learning to do this simple task for himself. But a mother who helps her child creates opportunities for a child to do basic tasks for himself, praising him when done well. In this way the child also partakes in the joy of accomplishment and completes the task with joy.

Traditional discipline is “done well” when the child is rendered mute and motionless as a paralytic, obeying the will of the parent or teacher. The child obeys out of fear. A well disciplined child, on the other hand, though free to do as he likes, chooses actions agreeable to himself and to the community. Obedience comes from a deep respect for his parents, teacher, and for the other children. Discipline, for Maria, is not a fact but a way. There is only one rule to obey, be respectful of everyone and everything. The parent and teacher are to help the child by giving examples of proper social relations. They are to show how to properly interrupt someone who is busy or how to tell someone to move out of their way. To tell a child “no” without instructing how to properly accomplish their goals is to frustrate the child. A child does not inherently know what it means to be kind or respectful, he must be shown.

This just in from Branden:

Hello, Amalie Rose Stone was born May 9 at 6:15pm. She was 7 pounds, 3ounces and 20 inches long. We are all home now and enjoying the new addition to the family.

 Below is a link to some pictures:

http://www.getdropbox.com/gallery/895842/1/Amalie?h=b3d5b2&p=0

Branden.

Antonia is pregnant again!

We’ve known for a while but we heard the heart beat this week and, well, all seems to be going very well. She’s due October 29th.

Minivan?

For nine months, the Tonarelys have been waiting and planning for their new baby. An early ultrasound showed it to be a girl. Well, that baby sister to Atticus finally came around 9:30 this morning. They had a homebirth, one that lasted for nearly 13 hours once true labor began.

I saw the video, and it was pretty cool. I even showed up later and ate some leftover Chinese that was sitting on their table next to dehydrating placenta. And somehow, it didn’t even gross me out. But the true surprise came when Michael and Katie’s newborn daughter came out with a penis.

Welcome to the world, August Harper Tonarely.

Hi All, Jennifer here.  Branden asked me to post.

Respect for the child.  Our children are born with everything they need (God’s a pretty good designer) including their senses with which to gather information about their environment, their personality, their likes and dislikes.  Also, Montessori regards children as the equal to adults.  Obviously they lack knowledge and experience to be granted complete liberty, however, they deserve nothing less than the same respect Branden shows me.  Anyone who affirms the existence of our Triune God must also affirm that equality and submission are not mutually exclusive.  Eva must obey us.  No questions asked.  But I must remember that she is created as much in the image of God as I am, and speak to her accordingly (of course, taking into consideration what she can comprehend).

I also like the theory of the Absorbent Mind, meaning that children learn best when they learn what they are interested in.  This is true of all of us.  I’ll never learn French because I don’t want to.  Some of you may say “but we all have to do things we don’t want to and the earlier children learn that lesson in self-discipline the better.”  Montessori asserts that a child develops self-discipline gradually, much like walking starts with lots of floppy movement. Let them learn to ignore distractions and finish a task that captures their attention first.  Later, after they have developed these skills, require more of them.  One can not know what their child is interested in and thus capitalize on that interest unless they are carefully observing their child.  Observation and following a child’s needs is another key aspect to Montessori and one I very much like and long to be better at implementing.

Branden has already mentioned the importance of the child’s environment.  It’s hardly fair to expect a little child to be happy in a world where they can’t see anything above adult knees.  The lower shelves of our book shelves are dedicated to Eva’s things.  Some think this is ridiculous.  But I like it for two reasons.  Eva is as much a part of this family as I am and therefore has as much claim to the space in this house as I do.  Also, what’s easier?  Fighting over her not touching things I put directly in her line of vision, or allowing her space that logically fits her?  We also like providing beautiful objects for Eva to use.  Glass cups and pitchers are a dime a dozen at the thrift stores and what better way to teach Eva how to handle delicate objects than to give her some and let her see what happens when she’s not gentle with it.  “Broken” means a lot more to a one year old who just watched glass shatter on the floor.  And then she gets to learn the all important lesson of keeping her environment clean.  Now I can’t let her clean up glass alone (or really at all at this point) but she does enjoy sweeping crumbs off the kitchen floor and she cleans up after herself at dinner.  Lately she likes scrubbing the kitchen floor.  All of these tasks take much longer with Eva “helping” but our hope is that soon enough, she really will be a help.  Raising children who care for their environment is a wonderful way to better society.  She’s not used to someone else taking care of her messes and she takes the initiative to fix the problems of disorder on her own.

Montessori designed all of her work to be self correcting.  This allows children to become independent and self-reliant.  I demonstrate how to use a particular piece of work and then Eva is free to choose it when she likes and can complete it without mother hovering near by.  She learns to solve problems without help.  I’m here when she needs it, but it’s my job to guide her into solving problems on her own when they’re within her ability to do so.  This is extremely hard for me and most adults who would rather hang up a child’s coat for them than wait around while they fumble for the hood and then fumble for the hook.  But teaching Eva how to hang up her own coat has been great.  We don’t pick up after her, and she reminds us (almost obsessively) to hang up our coats as well.  She has a real and beneficial function in this family.  We also like that the Montessori work is based on the idea that children learn first in concrete reality.  Much like “broken” has more meaning when Eva sees the pieces of glass, “big” and “little” take on more meaning when a child can touch and feel how big or little an object is.  Math is introduced with a series of wooden rods that lengthen according to how many parts they represent, one, two, three, etc.  Before children see 1 + 2 = 3 they have used the long rods to see that a 1 rod with a 2 rod is the same length as a 3 rod.  Montessori focuses on developing all of our senses.  There are fabric swatches and sand paper numbers to develop our sense of touch.  There is tasting work to develop taste.  The silent game helps children learn to focus all those twitching muscles.  There are body movement opportunities to develop gross and fine motor control.  Children learn to match various geometric shapes and then to do so wearing a blind fold.  All of the Montessori early education is based in reality.  No smiley faces on the cows.  Montessori argues that young children are so hungry to learn about their world that we should allow them to do so without confusing them with fantasy.  There is plenty of time for fairy tales once a child is old enough to understand reality from fantasy.

What I don’t yet understand about Montessori is how it functions beyond the preschool and early elementary years.  We have not chosen Montessori over Classical but rather intend to blend the two.  I don’t understand how Classical education functions before a child is able to read.  From what I understand there is a lot of child dictation and adult writing before a child can read and write alone.  Since we plan to have several children running around I don’t know how I could possibly play scribe to a couple of children who can not yet write while keeping smaller children’s hands and minds busy.  Montessori seems like a perfect preschool educational philosophy.  We’ll always maintain the respect for our children and a lot of the underlying philosophy of Montessori.  What that will look like as our children move beyond color matching I don’t know.

Henry Welcomes You

Henry’s Home

Hookah For You

[...]

For those who haven’t heard…

Antonia’s pregnant.

Due in April.

I just thought I would share with everyone that Jennifer is pregnant with number two.  We found out about one week ago.  Due to our history, we have been checking Jennifer’s homrmone levels.  So far nothing has dropped below average which is great.  We are going in on Wednesday to do another blood test.  I wish we didn’t have to mess with the hospital, but there is no where around here that does private blood work that I know of.  Anyway, just thought I would share my news. Oh, and for those of you who do not know, I passed my test, so I will be in Lawrence at least one more year.  If I pass my next one in the Spring, I am golden. 

Here is a nice video that I thought some would be interested in. It is about 30 minutes long. I think she brings up some very interesting points for people wanting to start a community.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=nlMDckgqU30

Sorry, but I could not figure out how to make it play in wordpress.  May Trevor can show me how.

So a friend sent me this article that was quite interesting. Figured I’d see what everyone’s opinion on it was. It’s how some couples are dealing with both parents wanting a career outside of the home but not wanting to give up  kids. So it’s how they’ve worked out trying to split keeping house and rearing children as evenly as possible. It definitely makes some good points in the article and is an interesting one to ponder and mull over. I would also love to have the thoughts of my sister-in-laws and the other women on this board with kids. Seeing as it’s a bit harder for me to imagine things from their perspective. After all us guys are so much easier to understand.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/magazine/15parenting-t.html?ex=1214020800&en=20c1b7ba0515c327&ei=5070&emc=eta1

for more info see this link.

You have probably already seen the news from last week: an uncontacted tribe in South America is “found” by a low-flying government aircraft. A routine flight low over the Amazon jungle allowed officials to “discover” a remote tribe believed to never have had contact with us, the civilized. Later in the day, the plane returned with cameras and took pictures to prove that such peoples do exist, because the locals in Peru and Brazil have come to think of such tribes how we think of Bigfoot — some claim to see him, there are dozens of stories, but the mainstream doesn’t take it seriously.

Well, now that the skeptics are believers, what is the future of these so-called “primitive” folks? Officials say there are approximately 100 such tribes worldwide with most of them existing in South America. At first, I think, Wow, that’s cool there is a hundred. Then my soul casts itself downward as I consider, There is only a hundred.  

Oh, and I forgot to mention something: when the government guys returned with their cameras, they noticed the women and children had fled into the forest, and all the men were now painted head-to-toe in war paint and pointing their bows and arrows at the plane, preparing to defend their thatched communal homes. From what, a terrible dragon? A giant vulturous bird? 

But the point is, I suspect there are people who are excited to get in contact with them. Anthropologists. Missionaries. Fortunately, as it turns out, most anthropologists are typically more sensitive to issues of indigenous cultures. Missionaries, on the other hand, have another set of priorities. Spreading the gospel. Upsetting the traditional way of life of these people, one that has worked for them for centuries, possibly millenia.

And sure enough — and this ought to be interesting to those of us from the Lake area — New Tribes Missions in the past has attempted to contact such tribes in this area. Initiation was hard. They flew over and dropped them gifts, and the pagans eventually warmed up. Then they became dependent upon the white man’s modern technology. And their immune systems weren’t use to what they had to bring: like the flu. They died. A lot of them. The Peruvian government forced the missionaries out in 1991. Thank God.

So now maybe they won’t be allowed back in, but there are always others, those who are willing to destroy these folks’ stories, myths, manners, habits, traditions, and, uh hum, religion. But there are a couple organizations (again let us bless the Lord) fighting to protect these natives. Read about it here: http://www.survival-international.org/news/3340.

We’ll be moving in to this house in two weeks.

Most of you know Mark and Holly Peck (formerly Moyer). Well, tonight Holly gave birth to their daughter, Violet Kathleen. She weighed 7lbs, 9 oz and measured at 20 1/2 inches. She is a pretty girl who has Mark’s cleft chin and Holly’s curly hair. If anyone would like to contact them, they are at St. Johns Hospital here in Springfield.