Three Books I'm Excited About Right Now...

 I haven't finished reading any of the following books yet, but felt ready to start talking about them anyway.


Born for Love: Why Empathy is Essential - and Endangered, is written by the same team as The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog.
It follows the brain science, interwoven with many personal stories, about how people learn and develop the essential trait of empathy.  Empathy is woven into the very fabric of our being, but basically, we learn empathy by being loved by our parents (and other caregivers) from the time we are tiny infants. This tends to happen naturally, as our responses as parents are also practically automatic. The consequences of not receiving this normal loving care (such as those raised in orphanages in Russia and Romania) are serious, but can be addressed to some extent. (Not only empathy, but also things like IQ, immunity to disease and physical balance are related to the nurturing most babies receive at a very young age.)

One part of the book I particularly enjoyed was about a woman who founded an organization that helps schoolchildren learn empathy. Just hearing about how this woman grew up was fascinating.

If we are all born for love, Roots of Empathy founder Mary Gordon was delivered into some of the most fertile ground imaginable. She grew up in Newfoundland, in a multigenerational  household that included her three brothers and one sister, both of her grandmothers, and an uncle who was intellectually disabled. Her parents also often took in "strays." Unmarried women who'd gotten pregnant would live with them during their pregnancies, men leaving prison would visit nightly for a free meal. Gordon's father eventually served as the Canadian minister of labor,a dn her mother was an artist. The Catholic family was deeply committed to social justice. AT the dinner table, the rule was that the conversation must focus on ideas - literature, policy, religion, philosophy - not gossip or mundane events. But the table rang out with laughter and spirited debate: this didn't produce sullen resentment.

How to Raise an Adult:  Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success by Julie Lythcott Haims has been a wonderful read so far. The author is a former Stanford dean who has also experienced the challenges of today's parenting norms from raising her own children. This has led to a easy-to-read (with lots of laugh-out-loud and ah-ha moments) practical guide to what's wrong with parenting (and related issues such as the "College Admissions Arms Race"), how it's affecting our children and what we can do about it.

Her suggestions seem much more manageable than overwhelming. To give you a sense of it, here is a list of "How to Let Your Kid Play" (though, in the book, each item is detailed with information and suggestions):

• Value free play. 
• Know your kid. 
• Create agreements with other parents. 
• Offer materials and equipment that foster imaginative play. 
• Let your kid decide how and what to play. 
• Work on creating space between you and your kid.
• Develop a capacity to wince but not to pounce.
• Create a culture of free outdoor play. 
• Get inspired. 
• Encourage change in your community. 
• Model play. 

I figured that even reading some of the crazy helicopter-parenting stories aloud to my kids would help ensure that I wouldn't imitate such behavior. ;)

I am also looking forward to reading her suggestions in upcoming chapters (I'm about half-way through) on teaching life skills, teaching them to think, preparing them for hard work, letting them chart their own path and listening to them. Good stuff!


Dear Professor Einstein: Albert Einstein's Letters to and from Children just arrived in the mail yesterday.  Looking forward to having a little downtime for savoring it. (A girl can dream, right?)

Yesterday was a big day!

Ria defending her thesis!

Ria successfully defended her senior thesis on Salvation History as the exemplar cause of every story. Wish I could have been there! Gus obligingly sent this picture. :)

She's Off!

I haven't posted here in an awfully long time. It's been a busy summer (homeschool conference, mission trip, trying to get the house painted, etc. etc.), but mostly we've been focused on getting Ria off to Thomas Aquinas College. She has arrived safely and gets to start moving in and getting oriented today.

She flew out by herself. I would have loved to have driven her out or flown out with her, but it seemed neither necessary, nor reasonable, since we have family right nearby who were able to transport her about, we're completely familiar with the college (John and I are both alums), and we all drove out there in April and had a nice visit.

We all (John and I and the younger five kids) had a great time with all the conspiracies of preparation. I think these projects were quite therapeutic for us! These mostly fell into three categories:

1. Ria had a notebook out at her graduation party last year for people to sign. There was a lot of room left and she came up with the idea a few weeks ago of having all of her friends write notes for her that she could read on the airplane on her way out. Well, the rest of us really ran with this and had a blast getting as many people as possible to sign it (or share a favorite quote, draw a picture, or whatever). At one event at our parish where the notebook wasn't available, Gus and Terri got a bunch of people from this summer's mission trip to write little notes on post it notes, which not only added to the substance of the book, but made a fun and colorful display as well. We also put together a few fun collaborative "features" in the book. The one that worked out the best (and came out to ten pages!) was a conglomeration of "Things We Say", which included things like silly words our family made up for things (like "squeezy cheese" for grated cheddar cheese), funny Freudian slips among family and friends (like "Miller Lite Stadium") and favorite and oft-quoted movie tidbits (like "in the best sense" from Sense and Sensibility).

2. We helped pull off a surprise goodbye party that a number of her friends put together at a friend's house the night before she left. Our job was to get her to the party location without suspecting. Our ruse was that we were all going to meet Daddy for dinner in a town where some dear family friends live. One of the party planners was with us and part of the scheme was that we picked her up for a visit to Old World Wisconsin and that she was going to dinner with us (which was plausible under the circumstances). Pulling it off required some clever and impromptu acting from everyone involved and they played their parts beautifully - including Frank who pulled off an "I have to go to the bathroom" moment (which was true) at just the right time (which was part of the ruse) in order to get a freezer chest with the cake snuck into the back of the van. Such fun!

3. Since Ria was flying out, we shipped most of her stuff to the college. It didn't seem like unreasonable stuff getting packed, but it was amazing how much stuff it turned out to be in the end (just heard from her - she's mostly unpacked now and it really isn't too much stuff, LOL). Just the bedding is so bulky, but she had won a nice comforter in a raffle a few months ago at our parish (that also came with a Target gift card - woohoo!) and we didn't want her to have to deal with buying EVERYTHING once she got out there. We shipped a couple of large boxes (mostly the bedding), plus two small book boxes (media rate is still a great deal!) and the rest were in those wonderful USPS flat rate Priority Mail boxes that cost $15 to send (including the price of the box). The clerks at the post office love to tell you how much they would have cost without the flat rate box - one of ours would have come out at $37!

One of the great things about boxing up her stuff for her (she had a busy last few weeks with, among other things, a Shakespeare play in our backyard) was that we got to sneak all kinds of goodies in for her. Chocolate, cocoa, tea, a small set of Prismacolors, a deck of Five Crowns and Terri's little Woody action figure (if you've seen Toy Story 3, you'll understand the significance and fun of this!) and some other goodies were squirreled away in the nooks and crannies. Again, being in on the surprises was really great for the kids.

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This is, naturally, a difficult transition for us. We are thrilled and excited to death for her and I think I'm basically at peace with potential worries about her safety or how well she'll do and with the distance and length of time she'll be gone. I've also been overwhelmed in the last few weeks with gratitude for who she is and how God has blessed us through her, but I must admit that it's a challenge to accept that things will never be quite the same again and that that's the way it's supposed to be.

College Stuff

(cross-posted from the Love2learn Blog)

We're starting the college admissions process with my oldest, and there's a lot of good stuff we've been running into of late, so I thought I'd collect some of it here.

Catholic College Month: Homeschool Connections is hosting "Catholic College Month" next month with free webinars hosted by representatives of Catholic Colleges. What a great service! Check out the details at the Homeschool Connections website. I'm really looking forward to these!

Catholic College Guide: The Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College has just been released in its new second edition - and is available in its entirety free online (my alma mater is pictured on the front of the print book with their beautiful new chapel). Take a look at the Newman Guide website. The guide offers lots of helpful information on 21 exceptional Catholic colleges in the U.S. and a handful of overseas and online schools.

Another Excellent College Guide: I stumbled upon the Intercollegiate Studies Institute Guide to Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth About America's Top Schools when I found a copy of their 2008-09 guide at a local thrift store this summer. I am very impressed by the thoroughness and depth of the content. The guide provides helpful and critical information (approximately 7-8 packed pages) on 134 "top" schools in the U.S. You will find the ups and downs of each school's academic quality, political makeup, student culture, safety of campus life and even recommended professors and courses to get a solid liberal arts foundation (and much more). Very honest and very eye-opening! The Intercollegiate Studies Institute is a Catholic-friendly organization dedicated to promoting solid college academics, free of political nonsense. (Their Student's Guides to the Major Disciplines are also highly recommended.) Their College Guide website is also very helpful. There's a lot of free information, including a guide to "Entry Requirements for Homeschool Students", and you can purchase an online version of their college guide for $25.

We've been navigating the waters of standardized testing for college admissions and I thought I'd share a few tidbits here in the hope that they'll be helpful to others.

ACT Test: This is one of the two most common required standardized tests and covers the following subjects: English, mathematics, reading, and science as well as an optional writing segment. I found the website quite easy to navigate and the homeschool options were very clear. Apparently this is the more common admissions test in the Midwest, while the SAT is more common elsewhere. My daughter is taking both.

SAT Test: The SAT Test covers Math, Critical Reading (including Vocabulary) and Writing. We found their website somewhat difficult to navigate. We had a very difficult time finding the "homeschool code" which we finally got from a friend. (The code is 970000). Also, if you sign up for the SAT test first, it won't show you the options for the SAT Subject test on the same day (since you can't take them on the same day), so you should probably schedule your Subject tests first - especially if you're taking a Latin or World History Subject tests which are only made available twice a year (in December and June).

SAT Subject Tests: A few colleges (a very few as I understand it) require these, particularly for homeschoolers, as an objective assessment of subjects not covered, or not covered as thoroughly, by the SAT and ACT tests themselves. SAT Subject Tests are available in five basic subjects: English (Literature), History (U.S. or World), Mathematics (Level 1 or Level 2), Science (Biology, Chemistry or Physics), and Languages (Chinese, French, German, Spanish, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, Japanese, or Korean). You can take up to three Subject tests in one day (though not on the same day as the SAT itself, and taking three on one day is the most cost-effective way to do it).

You also may want to sign up for the free SAT Question of the Day on the SAT website.
Test Preparation: Finally, Ana recommended the Princeton Review Guides for test preparation. We picked up a few of these and I'm very impressed so far. I particularly like how they have you take a test and then explain a little about all the choices (these are multiple choice tests) and why the correct answer made the most sense even if you didn't quite know what it was.

Also see on Love2learn:

Homeschooling High Schoolers Section
Homeschool-Friendly Catholic Colleges