I'm trying out MarsEdit and this is my first post using it.
I confess, I'm a bit of a large family junkie. Do you parent lots of kids (like eight, ten or more)? If so, I'm totally interested in reading, watching or otherwise hearing about your life. I guess I kind of hope to have a larger family some day. At the moment I seem to be heading in that direction. I have three, and as much as I try, I just can't imagine being done having children. By today's standards, four is definitely in the large family realm.
So in a random search I came across a mom of eight kids and began reading through her blog. As I was reading through I came across a link in one of her comments to a site called Raising Godly Tomatoes. It's funny, I almost didn't click through, but I'm so glad I did. Raising Godly Tomatoes is a treasure trove of parenting advice. I just couldn't stop reading. It was only because I read into the wee hours of the morning that I forced myself to take a break.
Raising Godly Tomatoes offers refreshingly practical advice on parenting and it focuses on small children, which I love. Elizabeth Krueger's advice is not popular, but I believe it is right on point. My oldest is only three and even he is still too young for a lot of the other parenting advice out there. Most of the parenting stuff I come across is about how you can survive the baby/toddler years and then reason with an older child. Elizabeth, a mother of 10 herself, takes a totally different approach. She focuses on those young years as the prime foundation to raise a godly child.
Basically teach your child how to bend his will to his parent's will in those early years (how to honor his father and mother) and he will better know how to bend his will to God's will (honor God) in later years. As someone who never had to bend her will to her parent's as a child, I completely understand how difficult it is to learn this skill as an adult. It is something I constantly struggle with. I want better for my children. I'm not saying I think conforming to the will of God will be something my kids will never struggle with, but like most skills, it is easier if you learn it when you are young.
Another thing that was a total light bulb moment for me was when a child misbehaves Elizabeth advocates that you draw the child closer to you so you can watch him, rather than, as popular wisdom would say, send him to be alone in his room or in time-out. Elizabeth calls this "tomato staking":
Every gardener knows what I mean by "tomato staking". A tomato plant grows fast, big, and wild. If left untended, it soon sprawls out into an unwieldy heap. As the fruit grows, it weighs the plant down to the ground. Propping by this time is too late. Any attempt to retrain and redirect the growth of the branches will result in breakage and substantial loss of the fruit due to rot, disease, and pests.
On the other hand, a tomato plant which has been properly cared for, will produce an abundance of excellent fruit. From the beginning it must be watered, cultivated, pruned, fertilized, examined for pests, and staked up. The branches will grow the way they were propped and trained, and when the fruit is large and ripe the branches will have the strength to hold those beautiful tomatoes up off the wet ground. What a delight!
(Raising Godly Tomatoes by L. Elizabeth Krueger)
I believe she takes Attachment Parenting to its logical conclusion with Tomato Staking. A parent keeps the child close in order to properly train the child. This is where I think Dr. Sears drops the ball. Parent-child closeness is vitally important, but proximity and affection alone will not help your child grow to be a good adult. A parent must also consistently and continually teach the child proper behavior and proper attitudes that he or she should have as an adult. Tomato staking allows the parent to closely watch the child and to then correct and praise as necessary.
One of her more controversial ideas is the notion that "not all emotions, displayed freely, are good." Any emotion that would be abhorrent when displayed in an adult should be equally abhorrent and thus not tolerated in a child. She throws out this idea of "children will be children" and therefore we should let them have whatever behavior and attitude comes to them "by nature" and replaces it with the idea that parents must train their children to exhibit behavior and attitudes of a godly adult. Elizabeth also gives specific examples of how she and others seeking her advice have trained their children in the way they should go.
Elizabeth has recently had all her wise advice published in a book of the same name as the site, Raising Godly Tomatoes. She is giving away a copy of her book on Tiany's blog, Less Of Me~ More of Him, as a part of her two year Blogoversary Party. The book is by no means expensive to begin with, especially when you think of all the wonderful advice you get, but I just love the idea of possibly getting something free!
I know the previous post is totally weird in the context of my blog (or your neighborhood reader), but I've been working on this project with a few other people to connect people from my high school graduating class. I'm not sure why it fascinates me so much. It's not like high school was a particularly rosy time for me, but nevertheless, here I am.
Also, I thought there was a way to just post to a group and not to my blog. If there is that feature I obviously missed it, and any of you are more than welcome to enlighten me on how to do that.
Ten years and then some have come and gone. Where has your life taken you? Far enough removed from high school that you can look back on it without cringing? Or perhaps it has taken you far enough so that youcan look back and cringe. Either way, you're welcome here. I invite you to come share your joys and trials with people who are going through or have gone through the same things. Just add this group to your regular posts. It's a simple way for us to keep up with each other's lives. Who knows, some of us may be able to offer advice, support and commiseration, because even though life has taken us on many different paths, it's funny how we all manage to meet up here and there at the same stops along the way. We're all about the same age, remember. We are all from the Class of 1996.
What was your major or field of study in college? Did you wind up working in that field or using that degree? If not, what field have you wound up in?
Submitted by sneuf.
I have a BSED in Social Science Education. I'm qualified to be a high school social studies teacher. Well, I would be if my certification was up-to-date. I take that back, if I ever completed my certification I would be qualified. After my student teaching experience I did everything to finish my degree, but could no longer even consider completing my certification. I was shell shocked. I just had this overwhelming, panicky feeling that I could not do this. It wasn't the kids. I continued to work with kids at church, camp and in my husband's classroom, but I just couldn't work as an employee in a school environment. Institutionalized was the best word I could think to describe the work environment that I saw over and over again in high schools. It is bureaucracy and power trips gone mad. I just couldn't handle it. My husband, God bless him, manages it fine, but I don't have the sensibilities for it. I thought life is too short for me to go into this line of work hating it.
So, once I graduated I found a job as an office manager for a small graphic design studio / print shop and I ended up making more money than I would have as a first year teacher. That was a fun job. I learned all kinds of neat stuff. I learned a lot about exactly how the printing process works, how to properly setup a design file for printing and ways to do it more cost effectively. I got to see some beautiful design work that really changed my whole aesthetic. I also learned how to use this database program called FileMaker Pro. Now, that is an awesome program. It's kind of funny how it all started. My boss comes up to me one day and shows me this box and says, "I bought this program that's supposed to be great for keeping track of things. I need you to learn how to use it." And that was all I needed to hit the ground running. I built so many things with FMP, from a customer database to a print job tracker. I had it setup to print invoices and contracts at the click of a button. It's amazing all you can do with that program. I also built a print job estimator that did all the figuring for me. I hated estimating jobs before that. I was always the go-to person to figure out how to do something if no one else new how.
I still use the skills I learned doing various volunteer projects and mostly helping my husband's students in his publication classes. That's a lot of fun and really keeps me in practice. The trouble is that most of the projects his classes work on are one color (usually black and white), which in one respect is good because I've gotten really good at seeing design possibilities for one color projects, but my inspiration for full color projects has definitely waned.
I guess if I ever really go back to work, I would like to find a small print shop and be their "Doris in the back on the Mac" (as my former employer used to derogatorily lable the layout person for most print shops).