Can you spell “adorable”?

I love my children’s creative spelling! It’s like baby talk, though. As adorable as it is, I feel obligated to reluctantly correct it, for the sake of the child’s literary future.

My seven-year-old knows quite a few sight words, but she usually relies on the rules of phonics when writing her own stories. I was amused to read her review of a new “compyouter” game. Apparently, including the sight word “you” on a recent spelling list made a big impression on her.

I have saved a box of notes addressed, “To Mom, Frum Faith”. Faith is embarrassed when I show them to people. “Mom!” she exclaims indignantly. “I KNOW how to spell ‘from’! I wrote those a LONG time ago!” I guess six months is a long time when you’re seven.

Faithie is a prolific writer. Like her mother, she finds the sight of blank paper exciting! She considers it a great honor to be invited into my office and allowed the use of my special pen. One of Faith’s Time4Learning lessons covered the typical sound of /ing/, citing examples such as “ring”, “sing”, and “bring”. I know my daughter was paying attention, because her next journal entry stated, “I am youzing my moms pin with the pingk ingk.” It broke my heart to have to correct her spelling to read, “I am using my mom’s pen with the pink ink.”

As cute as they are, spelling mistakes do have to be corrected. The whole purpose of writing is communication. We aren’t communicating if our readers can’t understand what we’ve written.

My grown son received (not “recieved”) a letter from a friend when he was a teen. He brought it to me, puzzled by the word “chrie” that appeared throughout. His friend had written, “I am going to chrie for that apartment I looked at and chrie living on my own again. I know I chried before, but I think I can do it this time.”

Eventually, through reading the letter aloud and noticing the context in which the word was used, we began to realize his friend was “chrieing” to spell the word “try”.

Being a do-it-yourself kind of gal, I rarely purchase a spelling curriculum. I find interesting words in the books my children are reading or pull misspelled words from their journals to make customized spelling lists. We’ve been having lots of fun practicing our words at SpellingCity. It’s a free site where I can input our own spelling words or use lists that others have shared. The kids can play online games with the words. It’s much more exciting than the old, “Write your spelling word five times each” method.

I remember being bored to tears over some of the assignments I was given in school, so I put quite a bit of effort into locating fun educational learning resources for my own kids. Online learning games are usually a big hit with my family. As a homeschool mom, I can’t always find a fun way to teach everything my children need to learn, but I really do chrie!

Is This the Part Where They Rise Up and Call Me Blessed?

When you hear the term “multigenerational family” (you DO hear that term, don’t you?), you usually think of a family with grandparents in the home. There doesn’t seem to be a word for those of us whose parenting careers will span several decades. Nothing quite compares to attending college orientation for one child, while nine months pregnant with another. Before my youngest graduates from our homeschool high school, someone will have been calling me “Mom” for over forty years.

There are many advantages to this type of family arrangement. For instance, although I’m growing older, my children are, too. What this means is . . . I have had built-in babysitters for the second half of my family! Never take for granted the ability to run to the store for a box of hair dye without having to pack up a passel of youngsters. The money we’ve saved on babysitters for these last three children has paid for the first three’s dental work.

And, of course, my life has been filled with learning experiences. I have learned that a baby can be left to cry for ten minutes without growing up to be a juvenile delinquent. I have learned that children remain perfectly healthy if they don’t eat their green beans or if they DO eat a worm. I have learned that milk, left in a glass at room temperature, takes two days to sour and four to grow mold.

Given my advancing years, it’s inevitable that my mind has started to go. Middle Daughter was asking for a puppy last week. When I nixed the puppy plan, she wanted to know why. I explained, somewhat accusingly, that when we once tried to add a dog to our family, I was the person who ended up feeding and cleaning up after it. “Mom,” she explained with exaggerated patience, “I wasn’t even BORN then!”

We’ve encountered a similar situation when it comes to vacations. Our standard getaway involves a few days at the beach. “We never go anywhere REALLY fun!” one of my daughters complained recently. When reminded of a family trip to Disneyland, she looked me in the eye and said, “Yeah . . . and you said you couldn’t go on any of the rides, because you were PREGNANT with ME!”

Although, at the time, I didn’t think I could ever forget any of the funny things my older children said and did, many of their antics have faded from my memory. With the younger ones, I stop long enough to email a short note to myself when they do something I want to remember. Those kinds of shortcuts weren’t possible when I first became a parent, because email hadn’t been invented yet. And that’s no joke.

Maybe You Had to Be There

Parenting, especially when you homeschool, is all about dispensing the sage wisdom of your years to a rapt audience. Or maybe not. 

 

Middle Daughter: Mommy, Sissy has a wack on her ear.

Me (assuming I didn’t hear right and thinking MY ears must need cleaned): She has a WHAT on her ear?

Middle Daughter (pointing): A wack.

Me (flicking a chunk of crud from my baby’s earlobe): That’s WAX!

Middle Daughter (trying to be patient): Noooo, Mommy, it’s not wacks. It’s a WACK. There’s only ONE!

 

Five-year-old Daughter:  Mama, I’m gonna brush my teeth ALL by myself, and nobody even told me to do it!

Me:  Good, Sweetie! That’s an important habit to get into.

Five-year-old Daughter:  Yep, I can DO stuff like that now, because I’m a BIG girl!

Me:  You ARE getting big!

Five-year-old Daughter:  Yep, I’m a big, BIIIIIIIG girl, REALLY big!  (Pause)  Hey!  Where’s my Tigger toothbrush?

~~”Big girl” indeed!~~

 

SETTING: Our family room a dozen years ago, when most educational computer games seemed to feature an animated Professor:

Three-year-old (headed toward the computer): I wanna play the “rafessor” game!

Four-year-old (impatient but wise): Mom, tell him it’s not the “raFESSor” game! It’s the “raPESSor” game!

~~She’s his “elder”. She should know!~~

 

Finally, there was a time when My Husband and I took our toddler outside as we endeavored to rid our shaded side yard of some icky mushrooms that were growing there.

My Husband (alarmed): Honey! Did the baby just put a mushroom in her mouth?

Me (disgusted, scrubbing at her tongue with my tee-shirt): No. She’s eating DOG POO!

My Husband (relieved): Thank goodness it wasn’t a mushroom!

~~Correct me if I’m wrong, but I didn’t consider the dog poo an improvement.~~

What April Showers Bring

The first time one of my children gave me a dandelion, I was moved to tears. Like most four-year-olds, he had plucked the “flower” from the stem and there it lay, in his sticky little hand, like a yellow coin. I proudly floated the decapitated top in a drinking glass of water. It stayed on the mantlepiece for days, causing my heart to swell each time I passed by.

After six kids and at least sixty lovingly-presented gifts of dandelions, I’m ready to admit the thrill is gone. I appreciate the sentiment behind each offering, but I find myself getting impatient for the petals to wilt, so I have an excuse to toss the grubby thing in the trash. The probability that someone will spill it before adequate wilting has occurred fuels my impatience.

That’s why I was so tickled to see Youngest Daughter slip in the back door this afternoon, clutching a handful of Grape Hyacinths. She’s six years old and very bright. Having spent countless hours in the back yard gardening with her father, here, finally, was a child who knew the difference between a flower and a fuzzy weed. I mustered a bit of enthusiasm for this latest floral offering and rummaged for a real vase, congratulating myself for doing such a fine job of teaching natural science in our homeschool.  

When the flowers were arranged just right, Youngest Daughter had a question. Wanting to maximize the learning experience, as well as for an opportunity to further pat my own homeschool-teaching back, I listened carefully.

“Mom,” she asked with a puzzled expression on her face. “Why are they called GRAY Pyacinths when they’re really PURPLE Pyacinths?”

Stifled laughter turned my face as purple as the “Pyacinths”.

Make a Joyful Noise

I’ve been blessed with half-a-dozen kids. And I do consider them a blessing, despite the extra work, noise, confusion, mess, noise, expense, lack of sleep, occasional heartache, and did I mention “noise”? 

As homeschoolers, the state requires our students to be tested periodically. Looking at the results of Middle Son’s latest test, I commented, “You did very well in everything except Vocabulary. I guess we’d better do a little extra vocabulary work this year.” His response?  “Okay, Mom. But . . . what does “vocabulary” mean?”

And then there was the time five-year-old Youngest Daughter was looking forward to taking part in our homeschool co-op’s annual Christmas program. As she loudly practiced “Away in a Manger” in front of the bathroom mirror, I heard her sing, “The cattle are glowing, the poor baby wakes . . .” I must admit, those glowing cattle would have awakened me, too.

I’m not quite sure what the problem is. When Eldest Son was about eight, he was cast as part of an angry crowd in our church’s Easter pageant. When asked what should be done with Jesus, my son was supposed to shout, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” Imagine my horror when he yelled instead, “Criticize Him! Criticize Him!”

Maybe I should make them all appointments with a hearing specialist.

Can you stand one more? These are my KIDS, remember. Everything they say is utterly fascinating.

But you probably don’t want to read about the fish poop, anyway.