We all Love our children, but do we enjoy them?

I've been among mothers with their children daily by spending some time in our community swimming pool while the summer days are hot.  It's the week when kids are returning to school.  Some mothers bring them after school to enjoy the water.   It's great to see how much children love water, and adults.  But for some reason children like to take advantage of it's "thereaputic properties" more than adults.   So here are the children having fun with their sibling(s) in the water while Mom sits on the phone.  The children love to show off to Mom, "Mom look at me!"  "Look what I can do!"  "Mom can you come!"  "Mom can you get me that flotie?"  After being ignored or rejected because they're interrupting Mom's phone conversation, they just go away and leave Mom alone.   Then they start bickering at each other and here comes Mom yelling at the top of her lungs, "If you don't stop that, we're leaving right now.  I'm tired of you all day and I have no more patience!!!!!"

What was more startling was the boy's response, "Be quiet!" and swam away and left her yelling.

I concluded by all the examples that the culture (and last generation parents) have raised a generation of selfish parents, who love their kids but don't know how to enjoy them.

What is more sad to me are the children who desperately want their parents to enjoy life with them and to discipline them too.   I've seen enough yelling and no proper discipline.  The fact that  dear mothers lack patience, maybe because they don't spend enough time together with their little ones.  I've found it to be the best training program for me.  God makes me and forms me into His likeness the more time I spend beholding Him through the precious eyes of my children.   Sometimes I feel selfish too because I think I'm getting the best of it.  But I know that they are more happy with a happy Mom too and learn the virtues as well.

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Education "by the way" for young learners

Deuteronomy 6:7 "...and you shall teach them diligently to your children.....when you walk by the way..."

Being gone through schooling all my years of school even through a teaching credetial program for the state of CA, I had been taught and conditioned that education is something to do rather than a way of life.   In my home education, a check list in my "to do list" would be something like "math", "read Bible" at a certain time.  And there is absolutely nothing wrong with schedules or scheduling activities, many times it's the only way you'll get things done.  But the way we approach each task in our schedule has a lot to say about how motivated children will be at learning.

I've experienced that with young learners love to learn new things.  They will be life long learners when we make education a life style rather than a task or chore. 

At first I would say something like, "Lizbeth, it's time for our writing, or Bible reading."  At first she would eagerly engage.  The next day, I would get a response like "uuuugh, I don't want to do it."  Rather than seeing disobedience, she was trying to tell me that it wasn't interesting or exciting. 

Now, she would go through anything on my "to do list", but without knowing it and with a totally different attitude.  First, I know what interests her.  She likes to draw.  So I say something like, "Lizbeth, let's read this story and illustrate it."  Wow! What a different response.  She is then off showing her Bible illustration to everyone.  Then she would be playing about the story. 

Recently she did this with Dad.  They read about those who enter through the wide gate and the narrow gate.  They illustrated it.  She shared it excitedly with everyone in the house.  The next day I found her playing and she told be, "Mommy, look, these people are going through this wide gate and these little girl is going through the narrow gate."

Now reading and writing is done all day long too.   She would read a recipe as we bake something or write our shopping list or do some math with the recipe ingredients.  And there, reading, writing and math was done  on my schedule. 

Lizbeth has just turned six and almost everything she has learned now has been by living life day by day and seizing every opportinity and every question she asks to instruct her in the subject.   This really applies to almost everything to a young mind.  This way the Word of God is  being lived and applied before us all throughout the day.

This is essential for her, as she is developing a heart of wisdom, to view learning as an exciting never ending treasure.   If there is something that I think is of value for her to learn and she is not interested, then it's my job to make it interesting.  It always works.  In our house the word "boring" or "bored" is forbidden.  I tell my children that when your soul is asleep, you're almost always bored.  But awakens our soul so we can use our imagination and be creative in any circumstance.

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Demographic Bomb

"'Demographic Bomb' shows what happens when countries comprising 80% of the world's economy have plummeting numbers of workers, consumers and innovators - leading to falling consumer spending, and too few workers to support the elderly," McLerran disclosed.

Potential crisis situation in most countries (especially the developed ones, Japan being the leader) characterized by an increasing number of older people dependent on pension schemes a direct result of demographic transition. As the dependency ratio rises, the income of the working segment (comprising of a declining number of younger people) of a population comes under increasing pressure to provide support for the non-working (older and growing) segment.

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Demographic Winter

When the great social experiments of the 1960’s were launched, and when concern over a “population bomb” loomed large, we did not have the social science and economic studies we have available to us today.  So the world embarked unknowingly on a self-destructive course.

Demographic Winter: The Decline of the Human Family seeks to reawaken society to the importance of the stable, intact family, and engender a discussion and greater focus in the media, in academia, in the halls of policy makers, in religious circles, in the committees of civil society and in households around the world.  Our hope is that all of these circles will bring to bear on the problems facing the family the tremendous contributions each can uniquely make.  In this way, we hope to avert the storm that is now most surely coming on.

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