Q:

Hey, Kathy – a departure from our recent topic. My baby isn’t enjoying blanket time, and he spends about 50% of the time crying and sobbing and trying to crawl off.  Today was especially traumatic; I think he played about 8 minutes (out of 20) and spent the rest hysterical, sopping with tears and sobbing for me constantly. He didn’t respond if I tried to show him his toys or get him interested in playing.

This is unusual because he rarely cries at all, except in those cases of exceptional hunger or the occasional sleep problems. But the last time we had blanket time he did the same thing. He was fine before this (and last time was fine when I took him off the blanket).  Blanket time is so helpful because the rest of every waking moment he wants me to hold his hands and walk, walk, walk forever!  He doesn’t care about toys anymore, just about walking…

Help! He’s still crying now.

A:

• Are you doing blanket time at the same time every day?  I recommend either that or at the same point in the routine every day, such as right after breakfast or something.

• You can also try going where he can’t see you while he gets used to it.

• Micah used to sob like that , too!!!!  Now the others aren’t so bad.  It’s okay.  He needs to realize that he can’t have you every second.

• It’s also okay to tell him sometimes, hey, I can’t walk with you right now, and I can’t pick you up, and you are going to survive!  :O)  All babies forget about toys once they learn about walking, etc.  I think.

• You can also try to teach him to cruise, which means walk while holding on to furniture…

God bless you, and remember that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world!  Maybe he will lead many to Christ someday, find cures for diseases, comfort many wounded hearts.  Your efforts are WORTH IT!!

Question:  This little rounder doesn’t want to sleep!  Any advice?

I learned a lot from a book called Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems by Dr. Richard Ferber, who is a sleep doctor and a pediatrician.

1. If your baby has the same basic daily schedule routine  (or “order of service” so to speak!) every day, he might be tired around the same times or at certain parts of the daily routine.  For instance, we eat, then we take a walk, then we nap or play, etc.
2. Have the same soothing bedtime routine with him before each nap.  Sometimes my routine with Gracie is long, and sometimes it is short.  But I always sing her a song.  Sometimes we rock, sometimes I sing for a long time, sometimes I hold her and sort of sway.  I lay her down, fix her blankets, tell her I love her, and usually tussle her hair and give her a kiss on the cheek and say, “Night night, I love you!”
3. If he is used to going down at a certain time, and he does but he just doesn’t fall asleep, that is fine.  He can play, sing, talk …   Some days it takes much longer than other days for Grace to fall asleep.  That’s fine with me. Anyway, if she doesn’t fall asleep  in there and I hear her talking, singing, etc., in her bed, I don’t go in there.  In fact, lately she hasn’t been sleeping during her morning nap time.  But she often gets cranky around 11am, and after that hour to herself she is much more cheerful!  I think it is good for kids to have some “down time” when they can relax a little.  She doesn’t cry about naps and hasn’t for a long time.
4. Often it takes a while for her to fall asleep for her afternoon nap.  This throws her off because when it’s time to wake up and eat dinner at five, she’s sound asleep.  So I open her door at five or whenever supper’s ready, and I let her gradually hear the sounds of our house.  If that doesn’t work, I turn on her light.  If that doesn’t work, I might play music to wake her up.  Or sing a song to her or rub her back or whatever.  She’s always cranky when I wake her up, so I try to be really quiet, hold her as long as she wants if possible, require very little from her, etc…
5. Sometimes when he’s been around a lot of noise, people, toys and he feels overstimulated you might think about putting him down early.
6. Is his room dark/quiet?
7. Is he swaddled?  My babies all loved to be swaddled.
8. You can try to do training for sleeping. Put your baby in their crib for 1 min., let them cry, then come in, pat them on the back, say you love them, and leave for 2 min.  Increase to 3, 4, etc. If he doesn’t sleep after an hour, try his nap an hour later.
9. The next “sleep alone” training session, start with 2 min.  The session after that, start with 3 min.
10. My babies are always so happy because they feed as soon as they wake up, and they are always well-rested!
11. Did you put him down with a pacifier?  That could be why he’s waking up.  A pacifier is a sleep prop (I certainly used them, too, though, at times!), and it will eventually fall out.  It’s like if someone stole your pillow in the middle of the night, you would wake up.  You might even wake up kind of mad, huh?!  :O)
12. If you put him down with no sleep props, his room is dark/quiet, he went to sleep, he’s swaddled, etc., and he wakes up and cries a tiny bit quietly, I would not go in there.  He is just going through a sleep cycle, and he should go back to sleep soon on his own.
13. Many times when I put Grace down for a nap she doesn’t go to sleep for a couple of hours!  She just talks to herself happily.  Again I just think it is good for babies to have down time. He is learning when he is in there in his bed.  He is looking around, and he is processing everything he learned in the other parts of the house before he went down for a nap.  People who are exhausted can’t learn as well, so this is a great chance for him to think and put two and two together.
14. I know it is hard to leave him in there because everyone says you need to stimulate your baby, etc.   That is true!  We definitely need to stimulate our babies with toys, songs, etc.  But they also need time to process the information.  I feel sorry for babies who can’t have enough peace and quiet.
15. I always tried to be sensitive to company if the crying bothered them — it bothers most people, so I learned to let the schedule go crazy if the company was uncomfortable, esp. grandparents!
16. A fan might be good, even if you don’t point it at him — for air circulation, cooling down if necessary, and for blocking out noise, especially in a small apartment.  For wintertime you can buy a noise machine, although you may need to take it on trips with you!  We try to steer clear of essentials for naptime such as vital blankies or “gotta have ” stuffed animals, noise machines, etc., so that trips are easier.  But again in a small apartment I think the extra noise would be worth it.
17. My babies also went through a stage when they’re strong enough to get their arms free from swaddling.  It is a hinderance to sleep because when they are swaddled they sleep so much better.  The reason my babies wanted their arms free was so they wouldn’t go to sleep.  (My kids were champion sleep fighters)
18. Be careful, though, about a sheet too big because he could wrap it around his neck.
19. I always shut the door when I put my babies down for naps.  I can hear them with the baby monitor.
20. Also you can play soothing music to help the atmosphere of your home.
21. A lot of my babies weren’t on a set time for naps but a schedule depending on when they woke up that day.  For him, each nap schedule could start over every time he eats.
22. The BEST option is to put him down for a nap BEFORE he gets cranky or at the very first peep of crankiness.
23. If “quiet” is impossible because your apartment is small and you can’t shut a door, you can resort to soothing music to block the sounds of you cooking, etc.  But it’s best for him to be able to sleep without the music so he can sleep at in-laws’ house, etc.
24. I think the key is TO PUT HIM DOWN EARLIER, BEFORE HE GETS SO TIRED AND CRANKY.  WHEN WE ARE OVERTIRED EVERYBODY HAS TROUBLE GOING TO SLEEP.
25. I think every new mom has a hard time knowing what to do.   I remember how hard it is!  You really CAN train him to sleep and be happy.
26. Expect problems when he gets off schedule.  On the way home from something you can tell him that when you get home he’s going to go night night.  Tell him it’s going to feel so good in his wonderful soft bed!  Then expect him to have a hard time going to sleep if he missed naps and was out late.  Turn on some nice music, share the burden if your husband is home, rock him, and do what you need to do.  That may not be the time for sleep training!  When we have babies we try to stay home if possible, but you can’t be a hermit! So you live your life and expect that he may not go to sleep well when you get home.
27. He may be getting to the age where he doesn’t sleep when you’re out, even with the pacifier.
28. My babies all slept way longer than charts that said how long babies sleep at that age.  What I did was try to read their cues and put them down after the first peep.  As he gets older, the first peep will take longer to happen after a feeding.
29. Also I am learning that the hardships God sends are character building lessons for me.  It has taken me so long to figure out for instance why God would allow my kids to act up and distract me from something like a sermon.  I think He wants me to flesh out my faith in real life, not just make it ivory tower.  He wants me to really live for the least of these, give up my ugly pride, and give my rights to the Lord.  Hang in there!  It’s worth it!

We have been studying lately about lies we believe as Christians.  Almost the only thing the devil can do is lie to us, and he works overtime at it !  All we have to do when he lies is NOT believe him!!!!!  Woo hoo!  Use the shield of faith.  The truth will set us free!

Lies we believe (I think these came from The Institute in Basic Life Principles) :
I am ugly.
I don’t have anything worthwhile to say.
I am dumb.
I am a failure.
I have to be perfect or else I am failing.
I’m not normal.
I don’t belong.
My past will always be my identifying mark.

The truth:
We are chosen!
We are adopted!
We are children of the King!
Heirs of life!
God made us in His beautiful image!
Everyone has something valuable to say that will minister.
We are all beautifully different and valuable!
We are the branches, tenderly and completely attached to the perfect loving Vine!
God makes us a new creation and makes Himself forget the past!  New things have come!

God has not given us a spirit of fear but of POWER, LOVE, AND OF A SOUND MIND!!!!  Ask God to fill you with His Spirit every day and with His way of thinking, just flowing His thoughts through you as a vessel.  It works, and you CAN be free!!

Several cheap, healthy veggies start with “C”, and 3 of the 4 are so easy to cut into sticks and dip in ranch dressing:

• carrots
• celery
• cucumbers
• cabbage

Other cheap healthy foods:

• raw spinach  (Buy it in a bag, and your salad is almost made!)
• oatmeal
• apples
• oranges
• bananas
• sometimes pears
• potatoes
• eggs
• zucchini
• dried beans (cooked of course!)
• easy homemade oil and vinegar dressing

Raw foods are super healthy!  (But not that I know anything :O).  Talk to your health care provider before you listen to me!

If you have trouble digesting raw veggies, try taking a couple of hydrochloric acid capsules beforehand.  That worked for me, maybe because I had yeast growing in my gut.  Yuck!  I need to lay off the dessert!  :O)

Q:
I’m still confused about Micah’s schooling… maybe it will clear things up after we check out the College Plus link? I remember you said he was in his last year of college but then you wrote that he is just entering a school now? Maybe I misunderstood something…

A: (Please see below for bullets on WHY to let kids be above grade level, even in the teen years)

Yes, this is confusing at first!

My wonderful friend Julie who has researched all this said to not enroll at the college until you have over 100 hours of testing credit.  The reason is that once you enroll in Thomas Edison State College, you have to start paying the college a large enrollment fee, even if you’re only taking CLEP tests and no TESC classes.

The tests are universal for many colleges.  So once you apply to the college, you have reports sent to the school about all you’ve done.  Kind of like sending your transcripts.

The college also has online courses, and most of the degrees require them.  Micah started out as an English major, but they changed the requirements to require online classes, so he changed his major.  It is just much more expensive and time consuming to add classes.  Also he is so young, and I don’t know what kind of ungodly professor there might be emailing him all the time.  His computer is very restricted, and he can only get emails from certain people.  He can only go to certain websites, etc.

This link explains some of the idea behind CLEP testing:

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/clep/about.html

Did I mention that when I went to college I took a couple of CLEP tests?  You have to check before you choose a college if your college accepts the tests you want to take and what scores your college wants.

Hannah is 13, and she is now studying for her first CLEP test, which will be College Algebra.  That test covers high school Algebra I and Algebra II.  She spent over a year in Algebra I study, working problem after problem.  It was okay to take over a year to complete the course because she had started so early with it.  For Algebra II, she is just using a DIVE cd.  It worked for Micah, so she is having a go at it!  It is really hard, but she is persevering.

Josh is 12, and he is doing ACE Algebra I.  He knows that once he finishes all 12 booklets he might be able to start his college tests.  He is excited to start as soon as possible, so he is working really hard on it!

We want our kids to be above grade level if they are able.  Why?

• This takes pressure off of the already pressured homeschool mom.
• So much of the work we all did in public schools was time-wasting busy work.
• As Christians we must value every minute!  Why do pages of addition problems if the child already understands the concepts?  Skipping ahead gives more time for Kingdom work.  (Please remember that skipping ahead is completely different than pressuring kids to get tons of schoolwork done in order to move ahead.  Our kids only school in the morning!  We require them to learn all the math concepts and are flexible with the other subjects.  Don’t pressure your kids to grow up too fast!)
• If they need extra time on a subject, no problem because they started ahead of schedule in the beginning of it.
• Finishing college early means that they hopefully will not be trying to do college while they are married.  In many cases, this saves them from financial heartaches.
• Finishing college early means that when kids marry, they are already ready to give the area of childbearing to the Lord.
• Finishing college early means that our sons could even get master’s/seminary degrees before marriage.
• College is often just a repeat of high school anyway, so why worry about high school?
• Recording all of my kids’ high school credits is much harder than what I am doing with my older students.  They basically study on their own!  No crazy recording systems to make a transcript.
• If the government asks to validate what a homeschool family is doing, they will be impressed that the children are above grade level.  Educators (I was a public school teacher) do not generally worry about the grades or materials that were skipped if the children are able to complete high level assignments already.
• The kids get excited about school if they know they are above where they should be in their work!
• Excited students retain more information than bored students.
• Skipping ahead saves time.
• Testing out of college classes saves time.
• College at home saves TONS of money.
• College at home means my children are not living in an ungodly atmosphere with no accountability.
• College at home means that my children are not sitting under ungodly professors.
• An alarming number of Christian students are lost to the world after age 18.  Is it 90%?  If I sent my children away I would be gambling with all the precious years I have poured into their lives.
• The Bible indicates that children leave their “home, and the two shall become one flesh” when they get married.  In other words, that is the day they leave their home — to have the accountability of their loving spouses!

Q:  Hey, Kathy! Wow, that’s really neat about Micah finishing his degree! Can you tell me how he’s doing that? As in, what school/method is he using? How was he able to enter so early? Did he take a GED or something like that to transfer? Sorry for so many questions – I just think it’s great and would like to know how! I’m a little confused, though.

A:  There is a great organization called College Plus that helped us get started.  They have great reasons to do college this way on their website, which is:
collegeplus.org

We did that for a year because we had no idea what we were doing.  But it’s expensive, and we decided to do it on our own after the first year.
To answer your questions, a kid can take a CLEP test at any age I guess.  He didn’t actually enter a school until November when he got his official acceptance to Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey.  Kind of weird, I know!  :O)
He did not take a GED.  I was an admissions counselor for our little Christian college, and I knew the GED carries a stigma with it.  I knew that when we had students apply to the college who already had at least 30 hours of college credits, they didn’t have to give us any information about their high school work — just about their college work.
I also knew that so much of high school and college was just repeat material. I knew that elementary-level homeschooled kids who get interested in exciting history books already knew more than I’d ever learned in high school history, and that goes for many other subjects as well.

Micah was so excited about getting going on the college tests that I figured if there was something we missed by basically skipping high school, it would show up in his college studies as a hole, and we could deal with it then.  But so far we haven’t found any holes at all.

It has been really motivating to my kids that I let them do work above grade level.  They get so excited about studying, like they never have been before!  It has been an exciting journey, and Micah just passed another test yesterday.  That means he has only 3 more to go before college graduation!  If he finishes by his birthday in June, he will have his Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences by age 16.

Q:

I just have another question for you. How do I even start the test?  Do I just go to the course and click ok? And how do I like sign up with my name and address and stuff?

A:
Just go to training.fema.gov and click on “independent study” then on “course list.”  There are a couple of different formats for taking the tests, but usually you write down your answers and then enter them on the website.  You will get an email from them within a couple of hours telling you if you passed or not.  It should ask you for your name and address on the site.

Q:

At our normal checkup for my baby, the nurses said to start my baby on solids.  The only thing is that they told me specifically was to start him on three vegetables. They told me not to start with fruit because then babies only prefer sweet things.  I don’t know about rice cereal. The nurses didn’t recommend it.
I also thought about separating the vegetables in case of allergy.

A:

1. One thing is that I would start him/her out on one food at a time.  I made Beth allergic to potatoes because I didn’t do that with her.  Look for little dots around his mouth after a food, and if he has that, switch to another food.
2. Bethany still has skin problems related to the eczema she had as a baby.  I didn’t take fish oil when I was pregnant, and I was very liberal about which foods I started her with, etc.
3. Possible Schedule (Only an idea):                                                                                                                                                                                                             1st week:  rice cereal  VERY diluted and mixed with formula or Mom’s milk.  (One of my babies had blood in her stool because I mixed it too thick).  You can very gradually get it thicker and thicker.  Mix it like it says on the box for the baby’s first feeding.

• 2nd few days:  squash or carrots.                                                                                                                                                                                 3rd few days:  green beans                                                                                                                                                                                           4th few days:  peas

• Don’t give your baby fruits or meats yet.  Especially don’t give honey, wheat, milk products, and egg!

I have a child who is dyslexic and has ADHD. Two books that have really helped me are:

Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World: Unlocking the Potential of Your Add Child by Jeffrey Freed and Laurie Parsons
and
Overcoming Dyslexia by Dr. Sally Shaywitz
(also for anybody with reading difficulties)

Dr. Shaywitz suggests going back over the more difficult phonics concepts such as prefixes, suffixes, dipthongs, blends... Hmm… I can’t remember.  Then she says to break down long words into syllables and practice reading them.  I did this with my son, making it a game and timing him to see if he could improve his speed with flashcards of (the same) long words.  He had fun with it and gained reading confidence.  I had skipped over some phonics concepts that my other kids just picked up on their own.  But her techniques turned Josh into a bookworm in about 2 weeks!  He still doesn’t have the comprehension skills or speed that his siblings have, but this really helped.

The “right brain” book is also so practical and wonderful, and it has specific techniques on how to teach almost every subject.  It has really helped me to see how Josh thinks!  It’s funny, though, that the author disagrees about phonics for these kids.  But after having seen how phonics worked great for Josh, I have to agree with Mr. Freed about almost everything except his condemnation of phonics.

He says to ask your child if he can picture a cube turning in his head and imagine each facet as it turns.  Josh can do this, but I can’t!  It’s one way to see if your child is right-brained.

Right Brained Children in a Left Brained World encourages parents to actually teach a few things to ADD kids early — can you believe it??  Because of him I introduced my 8-year-old son to negative numbers, squaring numbers, and a tiny bit of algebra.  This is really motivating to them and again, helps their self-confidence, which is usually pretty wounded in these kids.  Anyway Freed’s techniques are like Shaywitz’s.  They have amazing results.  The spelling one is introduced first because it is usually the most dramatic.

We had my son tested, and I believe it wasn’t an ideal testing situation because my son knew the rest of his siblings were playing, and as soon as he finished his test he could play, too.  This made him totally distracted.  Some of the questions that he got wrong, we asked him the next week.  He got them all right then…

Also the diagnostician (a wonderful Christian lady who did all this for free for us!!) doesn’t believe that my son is dyslexic or ADHD because she’s used to dealing with public school kiddos who had Butterfingers/Snickers for breakfast and are way more hyper than my son is and have much worse reading problems.  But I still believe he is.

Another thing that has helped is a book called Sequential Spelling. I try to do a test every school-day and it has really helped him to become better at spelling.  I read that studying spelling also helps with vocabulary and other areas.

Sequential Spelling is a very unusual spelling book because the writer starts with a root word and keeps adding to it until the child can spell very long words.  The student actually does not study for the tests!  It is like a dictation mentality, except they don’t have to write a whole sentence — just a word.

After he writes his word, I write my version in two colors, showing the parts of the word.  You don’t have to write it perfectly — there is no perfect way.  Just divide it how it seems right to you.

If he got it wrong, he erases and corrects his version.  Then he spells it outloud while writing it with his finger. It’s pretty fun, and it has really helped!

Josh also stopped having cereal, milk, or juice for breakfast.  (Is he still??   I need to double-check him on this.)  He does much better on:

• water
• fruit
• 100 percent whole wheat toast.  This idea came from the Homeschool Legal Defense Association webpage.

We do let Josh have a limited amount of dessert later in the day.  But I read that if the first thing in our mouths in the mornings is sugary, it spikes our blood sugar since it is taken on an empty stomach.

Another thing that helped Josh was to get glasses with prisms. He said his eyes get really tired when he reads without them.  Hannah says he is more hyper without them!  He doesn’t have a prescription for his glasses at all except for the prisms.  Thank you, Dr. Morrissey!

• For low energy: I think you should start taking iron even before you’re tested for anemia.  Iron can be constipating though, so drink prune juice or something if that’s a problem.  And be sure the kids can’t get into it — that it has a child proof lid or is way up high.  It is the number one cause of poisoning in kids.  I like to take a natural, herbal iron.  It seems to me that it absorbs better, but I’m not sure about that.
• Do you have good prenatal vitamins? After Grace I was wiped out and needed a nap — no energy at all.  My friend gave me good quality iron and health food store vitamins, and I am a new person!
• Have you thought about if you are pregnant with twins?  I actually thought I had twins with Grace because I felt sick SO early.  But I wasn’t!  The kids were so disappointed!  (I wasn’t!)  Did you know twins are more likely for older moms?
• I would think that if you have pregnancies really close together it’s very likely that you are anemic.  It can take a while to get iron levels back up, and some irons don’t absorb well.
• Be sure to take fish oil, which is a good idea for all pregnant moms or even women who may become pregnant.  I noticed that as I had babies, they were born less and less healthy — mostly that they had eczema.  That is because your first babies use up your omega 3 fatty acids, and your body cannot replace them unless you eat fish or flax or something.  I should probably take a really good quality fish oil that is guaranteed to be mercury-free, but I don’t spend the money on it!  But anyway, Andrew and Grace don’t have any eczema — Praise the Lord!!
• Are your tummy muscles uncomfortable, like they’re having trouble holding the baby up?  I really had that problem with Andrew.  After he was born, I did lots of sit-ups.  And with Grace those muscles were totally fine!  Thank you, God.  :O)