The Secret Ingredient of Gratitude→

Thanksgiving is a holiday of gratitude, and it's a day that serves as a reminder to count our blessings.

What is astounding about blessings is that once we start naming them, where do we stop? Blessings are infinite, and we all have plenty of them.

That doesn't mean that life is always easy, but no matter how difficult our lives can seem at times, there is always plenty to be grateful for. 

“It’s rigged — everything, in your favor.
So there is nothing to worry about.”

— Rumi

Coming from America, a country that's considered wealthy on an international scale, one thing I learned from the people in poor countries is that gratitude has nothing to do with what we "have," but it has everything to do with who we are. 

I learned this in Casablanca from a woman who was a student in a French class I was taking. One day, after we'd been studying together for a few months, she invited me to her home for lunch. 

Was I in for a shock.

I found myself walking to her house through tiny passageways that led into a part of town I didn't even know existed. It was the ‘poorer-than-poor’ section. 

As the streets grew narrower and narrower, my level of surprise by the extreme poverty climbed higher and higher. And that was when I found #52, my friend's house. The entire home consisted of  two tiny rooms about the total size of my bedroom. I was told that 10 family members lived there.

We had a plate of rice for lunch. 

“Be grateful for your life, every detail of it, and your face will come to shine like a sun, and everyone who sees it will be made glad and peaceful.”

— Rumi

At first, I found it slightly odd that someone would invite me to lunch when they didn't have any food other than rice to eat.

In the very next instant, I saw how incredibly generous it was that someone had invited me to lunch when all they had to eat was rice! 

Their generosity overwhelmed me.

It's a memory that has always stayed with me because it was the event in my life where I learned the meaning of real gratitude.

It’s not just about counting our blessings, though it’s helpful to reflect on them, and we definitely want to help our children learn to ponder the wonderment of their blessings.

But true gratitude comes from the joy of being alive, even if you only have a plate of rice to eat.

Because life, in and of itself, is the crown of all blessings.

“I know there is a gold mine in you, when you find it
the wonderment of the earth’s gifts
you will lay aside
as naturally as does
a child a
doll.”

— Rumi

There will come a moment when we will still have all of the stuff, but we will have lost our lives.

So when Rumi tells us to be grateful for every detail, he really means every detail.

Don’t miss your free download:

10 Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Get a copy of Liz’s “could not homeschool without” book, Education’s Not the Point: How Schools Fail to Train Children’s Minds and Nurture Their Characters with Essays by John Taylor Gatto and Dorothy Sayers.

About Elizabeth Y. Hanson

Liz Hanson helps parents raise and educate whole children by bridging timeless wisdom with modern research.

As an educator, writer, and Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 23 years of experience, Liz specializes in guiding families through the transformative early years and the homeschooling journey. After successfully homeschooling her own children, she now devotes her expertise to helping other parents get it right from the start.

Liz is a homeschooling thought-leader, as well as the creator of three unique online courses:

• Raise Your Child Well

• Smart Homeschooler Academy

• How to Raise a Child Who Loves to Read

Whether you're navigating early childhood, considering homeschooling, or wanting to nurture a genuine love of learning in your child, Liz offers practical guidance rooted in proven principles.

One-on-one consultations available.

"I know Elizabeth Hanson as a remarkably intelligent, highly sensitive woman with a moral nature and deep insight into differences between schooling and education. Elizabeth's mastery of current educational difficulties is a testimony to her comprehensive understanding of the competing worlds of schooling and education. She has a good heart and a good head. What more can I say?”

—John Taylor Gatto Distinguished educator, public speaker, and best-selling author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. For a copy of The Short Angry History of Compulsory Schooling, click here.

Raising Children Who Will Be in Demand Later→

Today, I came upon a reference book on Amazon that I wanted to buy. But I didn't buy it because it was a paperback book selling for $35.00, even for a used copy.

Why?

It was overpriced because it had sold out only a few years after being published. "How strange," thought I, that a book on the subject of creativity would be in such demand—or was it strange?

Raising children in the 21st century of massive technology and a dumbed-down education is a perfect recipe for raising dull children. 

THE IRONY

Twenty-first-century parents make decisions around technology and education for their children, and then they buy books, such as the one mentioned above, to correct the problems their decisions produce.

Why not prevent the problems in the first place? 

If you want to train a racehorse, you don't raise him to be out of shape and then try to fix the problem later—by then, it's too late. No, you train him from the beginning to become the best racehorse he can possibly be.

It's the same thing with our children. Creativity is innate to each of us, and it is a large part of what makes our lives rewarding and interesting. Creativity is one of the key qualities that will aid our children in becoming their very best. 

And children who are raised to function at their optimal levels—to become their very best—will be the children who are in demand later.

The formula is pretty simple: if you want to raise a creative, independent-thinking innovative child, do the opposite of what everyone else is doing.

EARLY YEAR’S HABITS

Don't coddle your children, but raise them instead to be independent of you. After all, your job is to teach them how to function as an adult so they can live a rewarding life.

For example, as early as two years, lay snacks out on their kid-size table and teach them that when they want a snack, they can get it themselves. Teach them how to get a cup of water when they are thirsty, which you also set up on the kid-size table, spill-proof, of course. 

You can teach them how to put their toys away. If you give them more than one or two toys to play with at a time, they'll struggle to put them all away. Instead, give them one or two toys to play with, and when they are finished, exchange them for two more.

Start them in the habit of picking up after themselves when they are tiny, so they don't think about not picking up after themselves when they are not tiny.

Give them plenty of childproof space to roam in. A child raised competently can occupy himself for up to an hour at a time by the time they are 3 - 3 ½. This should be your aim. You do not need to be your child's 24/7 playmate—that's exhausting! 

Play with your child when you feel like it or when you sense they need you, but let them learn how to play by themselves too.  For most of their lives they'll have to figure out how to spend their time, and the sooner they learn how to do this, the easier and more rewarding their lives will be. 

“The habits we form from childhood make no small difference, but rather they make all the difference.”

— Aristotle

INTELLIGENT PRECAUTIONS

Keep your children off of screens. You would not let your child jump out a window because he would hurt his body, and sometimes irreparably. In the same vein, you do not want to allow your child to do things that will damage his developing brain, sometimes irreparably. 

Maybe an hour of screen use a day won't hurt him, but at the end of one year, that's 365 hours that could have been spent learning a skill, such as a foreign language, a musical instrument, or a sport.

It's also an hour a day he could have spent reading hundreds of books over the years that would develop his language skills and expand his mind. 

At the end of 10 years, that  3,650 hours, which would put him at an intermediate or advanced level in any skill he attempted to improve upon. 

And that's only one hour a day!

NO SCREENS IS EASIER!

The reason I am a proponent for no screen time is because an hour a day, or even 10 minutes a day, of screen time will probably not be fatal, but it does open the door for constant discussions and arguments that will develop around screen use.

And it’s the stress of it all that I'm opposed to because it undermines your parent/child relationship. So why bother, especially when screens are so harmful to your children?

By harmful, consider the retardation of neural connectivity in the brain, less knowledge, poor social skills, poor emotional regulation, obesity, eye damage, and other health-related issues, decreased mental health with an increase in depression and anxiety. 

It’s also a bad habit they develop, when they could develop a good habit instead.

“It is impossible, or not easy, to alter by argument what has long been absorbed by habit”

— Aristotle

In addition to no screen time, other than the odd well-selected film now and then—and only after they have developed a reading habit—if you can delay school, or even homeschool until your child is about seven, then you will be well on your way to raising a creative child. 

And children who are creative and can think independently will be the adults who are in demand tomorrow. Because until we bring about a significant change in how we raise children, there will continue to be a dearth of creative, independent-thinking innovators. 

And, as long as the world keeps turning, we will always need creative, independent-thinking innovators. 

Don’t miss your free download:

10 Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Get a copy of Liz’s “could not homeschool without” book, Education’s Not the Point: How Schools Fail to Train Children’s Minds and Nurture Their Characters with Essays by John Taylor Gatto and Dorothy Sayers.

About Elizabeth Y. Hanson

Liz Hanson helps parents raise and educate whole children by bridging timeless wisdom with modern research.

As an educator, writer, and Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 23 years of experience, Liz specializes in guiding families through the transformative early years and the homeschooling journey. After successfully homeschooling her own children, she now devotes her expertise to helping other parents get it right from the start.

Liz is a homeschooling thought-leader, as well as the creator of three unique online courses:

• Raise Your Child Well

• Smart Homeschooler Academy

• How to Raise a Child Who Loves to Read

Whether you're navigating early childhood, considering homeschooling, or wanting to nurture a genuine love of learning in your child, Liz offers practical guidance rooted in proven principles.

One-on-one consultations available.

"I know Elizabeth Hanson as a remarkably intelligent, highly sensitive woman with a moral nature and deep insight into differences between schooling and education. Elizabeth's mastery of current educational difficulties is a testimony to her comprehensive understanding of the competing worlds of schooling and education. She has a good heart and a good head. What more can I say?”

—John Taylor Gatto Distinguished educator, public speaker, and best-selling author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. For a copy of The Short Angry History of Compulsory Schooling, click here.

Some Scary Facts About Public Schools You May Not Know→

During the last few years of his life, John Taylor Gatto and I exchanged a good number of emails, and in one of those emails, for the first time, I believe, he wrote emphatically that it was time to get our children out of government schools. 

Until then, he painted the picture of why we should get our children out of government schools, but he never told the parents what to do.

“School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.”

— John Taylor Gatto

That email exchange happened eight years ago. Things are far worse today than even John could have imagined. 

Here are a few facts about schools to illustrate just how urgent the situation has become: 

PORNOGRAPHY

Sixty-nine percent of male adolescents and 39% of females watch pornography. 

My friend enrolled her son in high school, and he was considered odd because he was the only boy who had never watched pornography. He discovered that it was the latest “in” thing to do.

I’m assuming you’re aware of the increase in pornography use amongst youth and the negative impact pornography can have on your child, but if not, you can check out this FACT SHEET.

EXPOSURE TO SEX

About half (54%) of adolescents age 15-19 have had some type of sexual experience.

Your child might be exposed to early sexual experiences you may not approve of. Check out this article to read the stats about what teens are up to regarding cardinal pleasures. 

TRANSGENDER PHENOMENON

Youth aged 13 to 17 comprise 25.3% of those who identify as transgender (aged 13 and older) compared to 7.7% of the U.S. population.

Why are so many of our youth now claiming to be transgender? 

And please spare us the line that our youth "feel safer to speak out now."

Rubbish.

When I was growing up, no one had trouble understanding their gender. If it was simply a matter of being free to speak out, they would have spoken out by now. 

Here's an interesting article that sheds light on how government schools are a breeding ground for the transgender craze.

ILLITERACY

By the time a child reaches his teens, his chance of reading for enjoyment drops to 12%, yet reading is the key to a good education. 

The US literacy rates are no longer an accurate indicator because the standards no longer reflect true literacy.  When half the population cannot read at or above a sixth grade level, we have a problem.

“Government schooling made people dumber, not brighter; made families weaker; ruined formal religion with its hard-sell exclusion of God; set the class structure in stone by dividing children into classes and setting them against one another; and has been midwife to an alarming concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a fraction of the national community.”

— John Taylor Gatto

The Price We Pay for a Tax-Dollars’ Education

Putting children into public school is a gamble you take, and you better be prepared to lose, because 75% of parents do lose.

I base that number on a study done in the Christian community where 75% of public school children no longer share the beliefs of their parents by the time they graduate from high school. 

When children are being educated in a system that does not share the family’s values and beliefs, and then they are influenced by peer-pressure, it is no wonder that 75% of them will adopt the values and beliefs encouraged in the system.

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

— E.E. Cummings

A Low-Cost Alternative to School

Homeschooling is the obvious answer, but what if you can't homeschool? Personally, I would sit my kids down in a room full of excellent books and tell them to read anything they want for as long as they want. 

In addition to that, I would give them household chores, put them into volunteer programs, and have them develop a minimum of at least one skill to an advanced level, such as a sport, musical instrument, or foreign language.

Then, I would sit back and watch them bloom. 

Oh, I would teach them a few manners too. "Yes, please," and "no, thank you" will work wonders for their social and emotional development. 

In 10 years, they'll emerge, kinder, wiser, more skilled, and better read than most adults you'll meet, not to mention their schooled peers. 

“Children allowed to take responsibility and given a serious part in the larger world are always superior to those merely permitted to play and be passive.”

— John Taylor Gatto

To raise excellent children, keeping them in a bubble for as long as possible is a good place to start. By the time they witness any of the aforementioned behaviors, their heads will have been screwed on so tightly that they'll see things for what they are.

The last thing they'll ever be confused about is their gender, because they’ll be too wise and self-assured to fall for such craziness.

Don’t miss your free download:

10 Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Get a copy of Liz’s “could not homeschool without” book, Education’s Not the Point: How Schools Fail to Train Children’s Minds and Nurture Their Characters with Essays by John Taylor Gatto and Dorothy Sayers.

About Elizabeth Y. Hanson

Liz Hanson helps parents raise and educate whole children by bridging timeless wisdom with modern research.

As an educator, writer, and Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 23 years of experience, Liz specializes in guiding families through the transformative early years and the homeschooling journey. After successfully homeschooling her own children, she now devotes her expertise to helping other parents get it right from the start.

Liz is a homeschooling thought-leader, as well as the creator of three unique online courses:

• Raise Your Child Well

• Smart Homeschooler Academy

• How to Raise a Child Who Loves to Read

Whether you're navigating early childhood, considering homeschooling, or wanting to nurture a genuine love of learning in your child, Liz offers practical guidance rooted in proven principles.

One-on-one consultations available.

"I know Elizabeth Hanson as a remarkably intelligent, highly sensitive woman with a moral nature and deep insight into differences between schooling and education. Elizabeth's mastery of current educational difficulties is a testimony to her comprehensive understanding of the competing worlds of schooling and education. She has a good heart and a good head. What more can I say?”

—John Taylor Gatto Distinguished educator, public speaker, and best-selling author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. For a copy of The Short Angry History of Compulsory Schooling, click here.

Is My Child Behind or Am I Being Anxious?→

Perhaps, you have chatted with other family members or friends to learn that their schooled children have already met certain milestones, which yours have not.

Or maybe you have a six-year-old who hasn’t begun to read but all of his friends in school are reading.

Whatever the comparison is you have to remember that your children are on a different trajectory than their schooled peers and even their homeschooled peers.

If you find yourself worried that your children are behind, instead of falling into the trap of comparing your children, focus on the unusual things they have done or the particular interests they’ve developed because they are being homeschooled.

Perhaps your eight-year-old son has learned 20 poems by heart or fallen in love with ancient history or memorized his list of prepositions!

Or it’s possible that your son has taken an interest in woodwork and has been building things like the homeschooled boy I knew who had a collection of knives that he’d carved out of wood.

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

— E.E. Cummings

The woodwork may seem irrelevant to you, but it’s not. It’s a pursuit that contained many gems for this child.

1. This boy had developed an interest in and a passion for woodwork. Being interested in things lets kids discover what they are good at, what they enjoy doing, and it makes them grow into more interesting people. Most children today are only interested in their screens, and they will probably grow up to be pretty dull individuals.

2. He had also developed his fine motor skills, because it requires precision to carve wood with a knife, and he must have good control over his fingers. Many children lack fine motor skills and struggle in their penmanship because of it.

3. Not only had he carved one knife from wood, but he had a collection of different kind of knives that he had carved. During this process, he had educated himself about the kind of knives we make.

4. Before he began making his knives, he had to imagine the end product which required a good use of his imagination and further helped to develop it. A strong imagination is necessary for any sort of genius to emerge.

Compare the boy’s above skills and traits to the many useless things children do in schools, such as reading books that aren’t worth reading or spending time studying for standardized test.

Keep Your Blinders On

What I discovered while teaching my children is that when a homeschooled child is about nine or ten, your friends will begin to notice a difference between their children and yours. They might comment on what great readers your kids are or how they seem to love learning or how mature and polite they are.

You’ll start to see your children pass their public-schooled peers up in various subjects, and your children will have a love of learning that their schooled peers have lost. If you are homeschooling using sound methods, your children will also be miles ahead in their vocabulary and reading ability. Plus, they’ll have a love of reading too, which is always key to a good education.

But, until then you’ve got to be patient and keep your blinders on.

Be like a race horse. Some race horses wear blinders to stay focused on getting to the finish line.

Not that you’re in a race, but you do have a finish line. Your finish line is the day your children graduate from high school.

You don't want to be distracted into thinking you're doing a poor job when you're not; you're doing your job your way.

Comparison when your homeschooling can cause you unnecessary stress and doubt. Instead, stay focused on what you’re children have accomplished, not what their public-schooled peers are doing. If you can do this, you’ll eliminate half of the stress many homeschooling parents experience.

Because with homeschooling, there’s no race to the top; there’s only the top.

Don’t miss your free download:

10 Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Get a copy of Liz’s “could not live without” book, Education’s Not the Point: How Schools Fail to Train Children’s Minds and Nurture Their Characters with Essays by John Taylor Gatto and Dorothy Sayers.

About Elizabeth Y. Hanson

Liz Hanson helps parents raise and educate whole children by bridging timeless wisdom with modern research.

As an educator, writer, and Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 23 years of experience, Liz specializes in guiding families through the transformative early years and the homeschooling journey. After successfully homeschooling her own children, she now devotes her expertise to helping other parents get it right from the start.

Liz is a homeschooling thought-leader, as well as the creator of three unique online courses:

• Raise Your Child Well

• Smart Homeschooler Academy

• How to Raise a Child Who Loves to Read

Whether you're navigating early childhood, considering homeschooling, or wanting to nurture a genuine love of learning in your child, Liz offers practical guidance rooted in proven principles.

One-on-one consultations available.

"I know Elizabeth Y. Hanson as a remarkably intelligent, highly sensitive woman with a moral nature and deep insight into differences between schooling and education. Elizabeth's mastery of current educational difficulties is a testimony to her comprehensive understanding of the competing worlds of schooling and education. She has a good heart and a good head. What more can I say?”

—John Taylor Gatto Distinguished educator, public speaker, and best-selling author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. For a copy of The Short Angry History of Compulsory Schooling, click here.

Online Dictionary or a Book Dictionary: Which Makes Kids Smarter?→

Online dictionaries, which I use frequently, and real-book dictionaries offer very different experiences. The question is, does using one versus the other make our children smarter? 

In order to answer this question, let me tell you the story of what led me to ask it. In that story lies the answer.

You see, in my home, I always had a huge copy of The American Heritage Dictionary, so big that it was not always easy to move around the house.

It was the dictionary my kids grew up using when they needed to look up a word. 

(Mine was an earlier edition)

Because I live overseas right now, said dictionary was sadly abandoned to a storage unit, which is why I've grown used to the ease of an online dictionary.

I can take my online dictionary anywhere I go and it weighs under a pound, being housed in my smartphone. 

Tired of looking up Turkish words online (I'm slowly learning Turkish), because it forced me to turn on my phone while I was trying to study, so I had an idea: why not buy a pocket hand-held English/Turkish dictionary? 

And then the other day something strange happened. 

On this particular day, I was looking up how to say "stove top," because my stove top quit working, and I needed to call a repairman.

“If Language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant. If what is said is not what is meant, then what ought to be done, remains undone.”

— Confucious

But, as I was looking up "stove top," I started to read about the words I met on my way to finding "stove top," and what I realized was that I missed reading dictionaries!

My mind started to go back to my youth and how my siblings and I used to have a lot of fun playing dictionary games. 

One of us would pick a word and ask the others what it meant. Whoever knew the meaning and gave the best guess scored a point.

The game was fun, which is why we made it up, but we were also encountering new words and improving our vocabularies.

As children, however, we didn't think about the learning aspect, but that's exactly the point. We were having fun playing with words and, at the same time, developing an appreciation for and a knowledge of them. 

“Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.”

— Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein

We often read the dictionary for fun, too, because when a child develops a love of words, reading a dictionary is fun. 

As I was reading these additional words in my new Turkish dictionary, I started to think about the experience of looking a word up online, and it dawned on me that I never encounter additional words online. 

I look up one word, and that's all I ever see. It's a very limited experience, and while I may learn the definition of one word, my learning ends there. 

Nor is an online dictionary much fun. I suppose it might be for a ten-year-old child, but mind-stunting fun is not what our kids need, especially at such young ages. 

What I realized is that children who grow up using online dictionaries will never experience the joy of a hand-held dictionary, and they'll never invent dictionary games with their siblings. 

But more importantly, never—during a search for one word's meaning—will they ever learn about the other words they encounter along the way.

Because they won't encounter any. 

Which translates into the likelihood of their having smaller vocabularies and, therefore, less ability to think at wider and deeper levels because we need words to think with!

Let me state the obvious: thinking that's limited because of a reduced vocabulary equals a limited mind. 

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

Would it be fair to say that kids who grow up using hand-held dictionaries are smarter? We'll have to wait for a future researcher to tell us the answer, but until then, I'm going to err on the side of they just may be!

Don’t miss your free download:

10 Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read

Get a copy of my “could not live without” book, Education’s Not the Point: How Schools Fail to Train Children’s Minds and Nurture Their Characters with groundbreaking Essays on educating your kids by John Taylor Gatto, Dorothy Sayers, and yours truly.

About Elizabeth Y. Hanson

Developing a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a “whole” child, based on tradition and modern research, Liz devotes her time to helping parents to get it right.

Liz is a homeschooling thought-leader, as well as the creator of three unique online courses, Raise Your Child Well: Preserving Your Child's Natural Genius by Laying a Solid Foundation During the First Seven Years; the Smart Homeschooler Academy, educating children who are brilliant, happy, and well-socialized; and How to Teach Your Child to Read and Raise a Child Who Loves to Read.

As an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach, Liz has 23 years of experience guiding parents through the amazing journey of raising and educating their children.

Liz is available for one-on-one parenting and homeschooling consultations.

"I know Elizabeth Y. Hanson as a remarkably intelligent, highly sensitive woman with a moral nature and deep insight into differences between schooling and education. Elizabeth's mastery of current educational difficulties is a testimony to her comprehensive understanding of the competing worlds of schooling and education. She has a good heart and a good head. What more can I say?”

—John Taylor Gatto Distinguished educator, public speaker, and best-selling author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. For a copy of The Short Angry History of Compulsory Schooling, click here.

6 Homeschool Lessons Out of One Unfortunate Event→

Educational experiences and events in real life are how you turn the world into your classroom. It also makes getting an education fun and engaging for your children. Most importantly, the lessons they learn in the real world, they never forget.

The unfortunate event was that my son did not dry the iron skillet and in the morning I found it completely rusted out.

But as a homeschooling mother, I was delighted. A discovery like this becomes a learning opportunity. The kids pile into the kitchen and a discussion of what’s happened to the pan becomes a day of homeschooling, with all subjects covered.

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”

— Benjamin Franklin

Upon finding the rusty skillet, your conversation might go something like this:

"Hey, kids, come here! I want you to see something interesting."

"What happened to the pan?" they ask.

"Exactly! Does anyone know what this is?" I point to the rust.

"It looks like rust," they reply.

"It is rust, but do you know why the pan is rusty?

"No, how did it get like that?" They are wondering if the pan is now ruined, and one child looks a little guilty.

The Science Lesson

I then send them off to get their science encyclopedias and they look up how rust is formed. They learn that when impure iron (cast iron) meets water and oxygen, the iron gives some of its electrons to the oxygen and the oxidation process begins.

As rust is formed it eats away at the pan, and, if left for a long period of time, will eventually corrode it, which is exactly why we never leave a wet iron skillet to dry by itself. 

And the Learning Continues

We could go on to teach them about the parts of an atom and how molecules are formed and so on.

We could then explain that the study of chemistry is partly about how matter is made up of different atoms and molecular structures and how they react to one another and how they behave in the physical world.

From the rust on the iron skillet, a host of questions will arise and we will go as deep as the children want in helping them to discover the answer to their questions, plus all the additional things they will learn along the way.

“Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.”

— E.M. Forster

This is the kind of learning that engages children, fosters their interest in the world, and keeps them wanting to know more.

The Writing Lesson

The children can write a few lines or a paragraph, depending upon their age, about their understanding of how rust forms and anything else they learned around this discovery. We could also take them to the library to find books that elaborate more about some of the things they are questioning. 

The History Lesson

We could then move on to history and teach them about the Iron Age. We could also give them a little history about how iron skillets and griddles were the mainstay in a woman's kitchen prior to the 20th century, later to be replaced by non-stick pans with plastic coating.

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
― Socrates

The Philosophy Lesson

We could venture even further and discuss man’s tendency to NOT leave well enough alone and create problems where there were none before. Instead of a little scrubbing, we now cook with plastic-coated pans that produce off-gassing toxic enough to kill a small bird. Who knows what it will do to our health over the time? And so we ask, was the invention of the plastic-coated pan really such an improvement?

The Theology Lesson

This conversation could lead into a conversation about living more in-tune with God’s creation, rather than polluting it with man-made goods, especially when those man-made goods stem from greed.

The Moral Lesson

But the biggest lesson to be learned is the lesson of doing things right, which brings us back to why there was rust in the skillet in the first place. When you find your children doing a substandard job, here is a poem they can recite to etch the reminder to “do their best” into their conscience.

Work while you work,

Play while you play,

This is the way, 

To be happy each day.

All that you do,

Do with your might,

Things done by halves

Are never done right.

Anon.

Now you can see how a little rust in a skillet becomes fodder for science, writing, history, and even a philosophy lesson. You could go on to include more subjects but this is just a sample of how to approach the art of homeschooling.

Don’t miss our free download, 10 True Facts About Homeschooled Kids That Will Surprise You.

When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents, Liz will share her 6-step framework for homeschooling brighter, happier, engaged kids who can get into the top 20 colleges and excel in their personal and professional lives.

Teach your child to read before sending him to school! Learn more about Liz's unique course to raise a serious reader, How to Teach Your Child to Read and Raise a Child Who Loves to Read.

For parents of younger children, who are concerned that their children develop well physically, emotionally, neurologically (brain), and intellectually, start with Liz’s original online course, Raise Your Child to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a homeschooling thought-leader and the founder of Smart Homeschooler.

As an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach, she has 23 years of experience working in education.

Developing a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child, based on tradition and modern research, Liz devotes her time to helping parents to get it right.

Liz is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.

"I know Elizabeth Y. Hanson as a remarkably intelligent, highly sensitive woman with a moral nature and deep insight into differences between schooling and education. Elizabeth's mastery of current educational difficulties is a testimony to her comprehensive understanding of the competing worlds of schooling and education. She has a good heart and a good head. What more can I say?”

—John Taylor Gatto Distinguished educator, public speaker, and best-selling author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. For a copy of The Short Angry History of Compulsory Schooling, click here.

Is Thanksgiving a Celebration of Massacre?→

When it comes to the holiday of "Thanks" giving, I hear people spouting rhetoric about how we are celebrating a massacre of innocent people; and I can't help but think we have fallen deeper into the rhetoric of divisiveness generated by political motives that are not in our best interest.

I have celebrated the holiday of "Thanks" giving my entire life, but I have never celebrated the killing of innocent people. 

It was president Lincoln who declared Thanksgiving a national holiday, not to celebrate a massacre but to celebrate a day of gratitude. 

“I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, …to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving...

And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him …,

they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union. ”

— President Lincoln

The divisive rhetoric today pitting this group against the other group is an age-old device going back to Julius Caesar's, "Divide and Conquer."

Division is the tactic. Conquer is the goal.

We have fallen into the trap where we point our fingers at one another, while our civil liberties are being eroded and our tax dollars are funding wars of brutality.

Yet, as the saying goes, there are two sides to every coin. Most of life does not take place in the zones of black and white.

Most of it takes place in the grey zone;  the zone that's up for interpretation. And not one of us has absolute knowledge about everything.

“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”

— Chief Seattle, Duwamish

History is rife with people overcoming one another in the most heinous of ways. "White" is only one of the many colors of men who have committed brutalities throughout history and who continue to commit them today. 

As I write, I'm sitting at my desk on the soil where the Persians conquered the kingdoms of the Medes and Lydians. 

I'm sitting at my desk on the soil where the Turks massacred the Greeks, Armenians, and the Kurds. 

And I'm sitting at my desk on the continent where Pol Pot committed genocide against the people of Cambodia. 

“We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.”

— Dakota Tribe

To the North of me, the Russians and the Ukrainians are fighting; to the south of me, the Arabs and the Israelis wage war against one another.

This is man's nature - no skin color has a monopoly on brutality. Nonsense!

All men share the same human nature; we are all made up of the same parts, including arrogance and greed. We also share qualities of mercy and generosity.

We are complex beings and life is full of complexities.

So instead of attacking the character of the "white" man on this day, spend it as President Lincoln intended it to be spent, by giving thanks to the Divine for all that we have. 

No matter what difficulties befall us, as long as we are breathing we have something to be grateful for. And as long as we remember this, we'll raise kids who do the same. 

Along with thanks to the Divine, let's celebrate the Native Americans and their beautiful legacy of wisdom on how to live with reverence and respect for all living things. It's a philosophy that we could all reflect on more. 

“Honor the sacred. Honor the Earth, our Mother. Honor the Elders. Honor all with whom we share the Earth:-Four-leggeds, two-leggeds, winged ones, Swimmers, crawlers, plant and rock people. Walk in balance and beauty.”

— Native American Elder

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Thoughts on Gratitude to Brighten Your Day.

When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents, Liz will share her 6-step framework for homeschooling brighter, happier, engaged kids who can get into the top 20 colleges and excel in their personal and professional lives.

Teach your child to read before sending him to school! Learn more about Liz's unique course to raise a serious reader, How to Teach Your Child to Read and Raise a Child Who Loves to Read.

For parents of younger children, who are concerned that their children develop well physically, emotionally, neurologically (brain), and intellectually, start with Liz’s original online course, Raise Your Child to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a homeschooling thought-leader and the founder of Smart Homeschooler.

As an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach, she has 23 years of experience working in education.

Developing a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child, based on tradition and modern research, Liz devotes her time to helping parents to get it right.

Liz is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.

"I know Elizabeth Y. Hanson as a remarkably intelligent, highly sensitive woman with a moral nature and deep insight into differences between schooling and education. Elizabeth's mastery of current educational difficulties is a testimony to her comprehensive understanding of the competing worlds of schooling and education. She has a good heart and a good head. What more can I say?”

—John Taylor Gatto Distinguished educator, public speaker, and best-selling author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. For a copy of The Short Angry History of Compulsory Schooling, click here.

6 Ways Public Schools Cause More Harm Than Good→

Public school is toxic for a child’s heart and mind. When we understand the agenda behind it, we’ll do everything in our power to protect our kids, just like we do when we put medicine out of their reach.

Below is an excerpt from an essay by John Taylor Gatto which explains why public schools are such unhealthy places for our kids. It’s an essay no parent will want to miss.

The Short, Angry History of Compulsory  Schooling

Theorists from Plato to Rousseau knew well, and explicitly taught, that if children could be kept childish beyond the natural term, if they could be cloistered in a society of children, if they could be stripped of responsibility, if their inner lives could be starved by removing the insights of historians, philosophers, economists, novelists, and religious figures, if the inevitability of suffering and death could be removed from daily consciousness and replaced with the trivializing emotions of greed, envy, jealousy, and fear then young people would grow older but they would never grow up.

In this way a great enduring problem of supervision would be decisively minimized, for who can argue against the truth that childish and childlike people are far easier to manage than accomplished critical thinkers.

With this thought in mind, you're ready to hear the six purposes of modern schooling I found in Dr. Inglis' book. The principles are his, just as he stated them nearly 100 years ago, some of the interpretive material is my own.

1st Function

The first function of schooling is adjustive. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority.

Fixed habits.

Of course this precludes critical judgement completely. If you were to devise a reliable test of whether someone had achieved fixed habits of reaction to authority, notice that requiring obedience to stupid orders would measure this better than requiring obedience to sensible orders ever could.

You can't know whether someone is reflexively obedient until you can make them do foolish things.

2nd  Function

Second is the diagnostic function. School is to determine each student's proper social role, logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records.

3rd Function

Third is the sorting function. Schools sort children by training individuals only so far as their likely destination in the social machine and not one step further. So much for making boys and girls their personal best.

4th Function

The fourth function is conformity. As much as possible, kids are to be made alike. As egalitarian as this sounds, its purpose is to assist market and government research, people who conform are predictable.

5th Function

The fifth function Inglis calls "the hygienic function”. It has nothing to do with bodily health. It concerns what Darwin, Galton, Inglis, and many important names from the past and present would call, "the health of the race."

Hygiene is a polite way of saying that school is expected to accelerate natural selection by tagging the unfit so clearly they will drop from the reproduction sweepstakes.

That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward, and all the posted lists of ranked grades are really about. The unfit will either drop out from anger, despair, or because their likely mates will accept the school's judgement of their inferiority.

6th Function

And last is the propaedeutic function. A fancy Greek term meaning that a small fraction of kids will quietly be taught how to take over management of this continuing project, made guardians of a population deliberately dumbed down and rendered childish in order that government and economic life can be managed with a minimum of hassle.”

What Will You Do?

And there you have it, in a nutshell, so how will you educate your children?

There was a time when the government schooling agenda was obscure  but that time has passed.

From the incompetency in key subjects to our severely low literacy rates, we have to face the truth.

Our tumbling literacy rates reflect the dumbed-down minds of our people.

If we want to raise children who are not dumbed-down, children who are not lacking in common decency, then we need to do something about it.

And that something is not school.

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents, Liz will share her 6-step framework for homeschooling brighter, happier, engaged kids who can get into the top 20 colleges and excel in their personal and professional lives.

Teach your child to read before sending him to school! Learn more about Liz's unique course to raise a serious reader, How to Teach Your Child to Read and Raise a Child Who Loves to Read.

For parents of younger children, who are concerned that their children develop well physically, emotionally, neurologically (brain), and intellectually, start with Liz’s original online course, Raise Your Child to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a homeschooling thought-leader and the founder of Smart Homeschooler.

As an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach, she has 23 years of experience working in education.

Developing a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child, based on tradition and modern research, Liz devotes her time to helping parents to get it right.

Liz is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.

"I know Elizabeth Y. Hanson as a remarkably intelligent, highly sensitive woman with a moral nature and deep insight into differences between schooling and education. Elizabeth's mastery of current educational difficulties is a testimony to her comprehensive understanding of the competing worlds of schooling and education. She has a good heart and a good head. What more can I say?”

—John Taylor Gatto Distinguished educator, public speaker, and best-selling author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. For a copy of The Short Angry History of Compulsory Schooling, click here.

5 Ways to Encourage Your Child's Love of Learning→

A friend showed me a clip of her nine-month-old baby trying to imitate her mother's expressions. I looked into the baby's eyes as I watched the video and the intense alertness that I witnessed, the acute observation of each facial move in her mother's face, was fascinating.

The baby wanted to know how to make the same faces her mother was making, and she was trying to understand how to do this by conducting a scientific investigation.

It's the intense desire to know that all healthy children possess, yet what happens to their curiosity as they grow older? Why do so many children forsake that infinite sense of wonder that is so innate to each of us? 

“No thief, however skillful, can rob one of knowledge, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure to acquire.”

— L. Frank Baum

One of the reasons this happens today is because too many children start school at young ages, and by the time they reach kindergarten, first grade, if they are lucky, the light within them begins to dim.

Consider this: if your child’s desire to explore and understand the world around him is constantly thwarted by a teacher’s dictates, he will begin to give up his investigative work, and his sense of curiosity will eventually wilt.

For example, if a child has a small shovel in his hand, but every time he tries to shovel something a teacher tells him to stop, he will eventually stop picking the shovel up.

When a child cannot follow the lead of his curiosity, or is not in an environment where he can exercise his desire to know, as children who are in daycare and preschools from early ages are, they begin to put their curiosity down. 

If you have a child whose curiosity is waning, or whose curiosity you want to stimulate, here are five things you can do:

1. If you have to put your child into an outside program, look for a daycare or preschool that is play-based and ideally held in the outdoors, such as a Forest School. Make sure they are operated by people who understand what children need at these tender ages. If you aren't sure what the philosophy for the school is, ask them. Please do not be shy about these matters; after all, this is your child, and you want to make sure he is under the best care.

2. Immediately remove all screens from your child's life both inside and outside the home. Under no circumstances should you hand him your cell phone to quiet him because you are busy. Screens are a cause of a dimming curiosity; not only that but they will thwart your child's brain development. 

3. Do not entertain your child! Let him entertain himself. It is not that you don't ever play with your child, but only that you do not become his full-time playmate. Allow him to follow the dictates of his curiosity and figure things out for himself. Children are little scientists; let him conduct his own experiments. 

4. Be curious yourself. Take your child into the outdoors and explore with him. Let him walk barefoot on fallen leaves and dip his feet into spring water to awaken his senses. Bring his attention to the songs of birds and the rustling of the trees as the wind blows through them. Collect a bug or two and read about them when you get home. Notice a particular bird sound (my favorite is the red-winged blackbird!) and look the bird up in a reference book or on the internet when you get home. Try to imitate the bird's song with your child. Ask him questions to stimulate a conversation and discover the answers together, such as how birds fly and what foods they eat. 

5. Lastly, if you can, don't put your child into any school programs until he is at least ten years old. Until then, teach him yourself because so many learning problems take root during those early years. The first few grades of elementary school are easy to teach when you know what you are doing. 

Remember that the desire to know is our natural state, but we have this yearning socialized out of us in various ways, the least not being school. Our innate desire to know, however, is still there within us.

“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

— Benjamin Franklin

If your child's desire for knowledge has dimmed, trust that you can help him awaken it; because reaching his full potential in life begins with the desire to know.

Don’t miss our free download, 10 True Facts About Homeschooled Kids That Will Surprise You.

When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents, Liz will share her 6-step framework for homeschooling brighter, happier, engaged kids who can get into the top 20 colleges and excel in their personal and professional lives.

Teach your child to read before sending him to school! Learn more about Liz's unique course to raise a serious reader, How to Teach Your Child to Read and Raise a Child Who Loves to Read.

For parents of younger children, who are concerned that their children develop well physically, emotionally, neurologically (brain), and intellectually please begin with Liz’s original online course, Raise Your Child to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a homeschooling thought-leader and the founder of Smart Homeschooler.

As an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach, she has 22+ years of experience working in education.

Developing a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child, based on tradition and modern research, Liz devotes her time to helping parents to get it right.

Liz is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.

"I know Elizabeth Y. Hanson as a remarkably intelligent, highly sensitive woman with a moral nature and deep insight into differences between schooling and education. Elizabeth's mastery of current educational difficulties is a testimony to her comprehensive understanding of the competing worlds of schooling and education. She has a good heart and a good head. What more can I say?”

—John Taylor Gatto Distinguished educator, public speaker, and best-selling author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

4 Strategies to Raise Children of Good Character →

Societal influences can make it easy or difficult to raise a child who is well-mannered, respectful, and resourceful.

In today’s social climate, we face many parenting challenges, but there are strategies you can implement to ensure a better outcome for your family.

When our children are young, we want to train them to do the right thing, so they develop the right habits in childhood and learn to make the right choices.

“Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.”

— Mark Twain

It begins with little things such as learning to pick up after themselves, doing chores before they play, and learning to be considerate of other people's needs.

Role Models

Good role models in a child’s life are essential. If the parents treat each other courteously, are respectful towards family and friends, and honest and helpful with others, the children are more likely to follow suit.

Discipline

As no child is born a civilized human being, there is also a training through discipline that has to occur, too. In fact, raising our children to become civilized human beings is the essence of our work.

Good parents can produce bad children; there are no guarantees that children turn out well.

Discipline is key to developing the qualities that make up good character, as it takes discipline to do what is demanded of us!

Think of how much discipline it takes to pass up a piece of chocolate cake, to put away the screens, to go the gym.

Discipline is a key trait that most of us never develop. It is what sets the above-average, who reach great heights in their endeavors, from those who never will.

Public School

Public school can undo your hard work, though, because rudeness and crudeness are now the norms. Children sent to school for eight hours a day where the teachers are not allowed to discipline them, are at a disadvantage.

However children who spend their days in a homeschooled environment are with adults who are able to put the time and effort into guiding the kids in the right ways.

At home, we do have authority over our children and can discipline them as needed. The right training in childhood is essential to raising a well-mannered, happy child.

Spare the rod, spoil the child, was an old adage that adults used to repeat before the 60's cultural revolution when sound parenting principles were abandoned for unproven theories.

Multi Media

Another disadvantage to raising children today is the decline in quality films and the introduction of screen activities.

The films are vulgar, the music is ribald, childhood games are on screens, and texting replaces real conversation.

On top of that, social media alone is causing a distortion of the way children see themselves and the world, leading to a host of mental health issues.

Negative influences will unravel any good work you've done to raise your children well, which is why we need to be diligent with the environments that influence our children.

The aforementioned should be a strict NO for every concerned!

The Ancient Greeks knew that bad influences in a child's life would affect their characters. It is really just a matter of common sense, something the Ancient Greeks had plenty of.

We’ve buried our head’s in the sand, though, because we believe we can put our children into these environments and all will be fine.

Our children are telling us a different story, and it’s time we start listening to them.

We have a generation of children, raised on technology, who are becoming active in the movement to protect children from the ill-effects of technology, because they can see the damage it has caused to their generation.

A Dishonest Trend

Dishonesty is a serious character defect, but it is common now. Ninety-seven percent of schoolchildren are dishonest according to statistics gathered by Vickie Abeles, who produced the documentary, Race to Nowhere.

Even without the statistics, we know from experience that we are no longer an honest society. Each of us deals with it every single day.

During the Covid days, my son took a statistics exam online, only to receive an email from the teacher announcing that some of the students had cheated on the exam.

I was told the exam was easy, too. College students cheating on an easy exam?

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Cheating is a habit for many children today.

When cheating on exams is pardoned with no serious repercussions, we are tolerating dishonesty and teaching our kids that it is no big deal.

But it is a big deal. Bad character is a big deal because these people cause harm to others, and they cause harm to themselves.

For sure, they don’t sleep well at night.

These students have learned to become dishonest people, because they are raised in a system that doesn't uphold the values of truth, goodness, and beauty.

It’s difficult to believe now that such values were once so honored in the West, but it is true.

In a Nutshell

Protect your children from the negative influences in society for as long as you can. Raise them in a bubble! Allow them the time to develop in healthy ways; physically, morally, and intellectually, because the bubble will burst.

When it does, you want to feel confident that you did your job well, by giving your children the right kind of start in life.

The rest is up to them.

Don’t miss our free download, 7 Steps to Protect Your Child's Mind and Heart from Negative Influences.

Teach your child to read before sending him to school! Learn more about Elizabeth's unique course, How to Teach Your Child to Read and Raise a Child Who Loves to Read.

When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents, Liz will share her 6-step framework, so you can raise children of higher intelligence, critical thinking, and of good character.

As a homeschooler, you will never have to worry about failing your children, because working with Liz, you will feel confident, calm, and motivated; as she guides you to train your children’s minds and nurture their characters.

For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with Elizabeth’s singular online course, Raise Your Child to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a homeschooling thought-leader and the founder of Smart Homeschooler.

As an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach, she has 21+ years of experience working in education.

Developing a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child, based on tradition and modern research, and she devotes her time to helping parents to get it right.

Elizabeth is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.

"I know Elizabeth Y. Hanson as a remarkably intelligent, highly sensitive woman with a moral nature and deep insight into differences between schooling and education. Elizabeth's mastery of current educational difficulties is a testimony to her comprehensive understanding of the competing worlds of schooling and education. She has a good heart and a good head. What more can I say?”

—John Taylor Gatto Distinguished educator, public speaker, and best-selling author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling