Words of a Prophet

"To you parents, express your love to your children. Pray for them that they may be able to withstand the evils of the world. Pray that they may grow in faith and testimony. Pray that they may pursue lives of goodness and of service to others."

This is from President Monson's final talk at General Conference this April 2009 Sunday afternoon session.

I really like that, because it shows what is the most important goal and desire we should have for our children. First they need to feel and know of our love as parents toward them and that they are special and important and loved. Then we need to pray for them, that they will withstand temptation and evil and learn of God, and be good people willing to help those around them. I love the simplicity of the gospel.

Here is Alma 37:6 :

6 Now ye may suppose that this is ^afoolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by ^bsmall and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.

I am learning that this is so true. It is the simple decisions we make everyday that make the difference in our lives over the long run. I'm learning it with cleaning my house. When I follow Flylady's regimen, even though it may not seem like much to clean the bathroom everyday, it makes a huge difference, and the other little, small simple things do too. Same with raising kids. Teaching them, loving them, reading to them, cooking for them, helping them, may seem simple and unimportant because it is so constant, but those are the little things that turn into big things.

I'm so grateful to have a prophet of God remind us in simple terms of what is most important.

Homeschool Track

The following is what I wrote to some of my homeschool groups and I wanted to post it here to show part of our educational track through high school. We are figuring it all out, and it seems to be coming together. If you want to join the group, then send me and email and I'll invite you!:

I just started this yahoo group because I am looking ahead to what we'll do in the high school years and I'm hoping to find others with the same outlook. We found that there are about 20 different AP tests that they can take, and they are hard and objective and would probably be great for college admissions and for proving that they have mastered the subject matter. As my kids reach that age, it would be wonderful to find others interested in taking the same tests so they could study together, help each other and maybe even teach sections to each other if there is no expert available. I know there are practice tests so they wouldn't be completely on their own.

Also, I definitely want my kids to take the AP Calculus AB test like I did in high school, and would love for them to take the BC test which I did not since I was a senior when I got to Calculus. So to do my track in math, I took Pre-algebra in 7th grade, Algebra 1 in 8th, Geometry in 9th, Algebra 2, Trigonometry in 10th, Pre-Calc. in 11th and Calculus in 12th. I am planning on my kids starting Algebra in 6th or 7th grade depending on their readiness so that they can also take the Calc BC test or Physics since I think they need calculus before they can take physics. I love Singapore Math for the basics up to Algebra. They were number #1 in math in the world using that program.

When I took Calculus, we had AB days, so we would have the teacher explain it to us on the first day and then the next day we had Calc. lab with the teacher and it was open to do our homework. It was great to have friends to work with and to help each other in the lab and get the work done. I would love to be able to do that for my kids for not only calculus but other academic subjects they are interested in and then to have them take the AP test to show they mastered the subject. The AP test to me is kind of like the recital is for a musician.

Another requirement in our homeschool is the study of Latin. We want our kids to take 4-5 years of Latin so that they can master it and take the AP test. With the track we are on, our kids should start Henle's Latin 1 around 7th grade, latin 2 in 8th, latin 3 in 9th and latin 4 in 10th, then the junior year could be spent reviewing and then take the AP test. In order to do Latin 1 in only one year, we are currently studying Koine Greek otherwise they would probably need 2 years to cover year 1. The curriculum we are using is at www.opentexture.com .

This may sound pretty rigorous, but I think it can be done. If we have to slow down we will, but we are shooting for the stars!! We are in the middle of the 2nd year of Greek now and my kids love it. They are learning a ton too. I would love to find others who are interested in this track so we could get together and play review type games and find people to study with especially as the high school years approach.

Sidenote: I am not against sending them to high school. I loved my math teachers and my math experience so when we get to that point, if we are doing the exact same thing at home that they are doing at school, then I will probably send them to school. We'll see what works best when we get to that point. Here is the list of AP Tests!

General Conference

I thoroughly enjoyed general conference today and yesterday, although it can be hard to get everything and hear everything in those 8 hours (10 hours if you're a priesthood holder) over 2 days especially when there are little ones who need attention and it's just a long time to stay focused with everything else going on. But what I heard, I really liked and enjoyed and my cup was filled.

My favorite talk was from Elder Hales Saturday morning on living within our means and accepting that we can't afford everything we might want. He has a good wife to refuse to allow him to spend their money on her when he really wanted to. What a great example.

I enjoyed all the good examples of righteous living and stories of people choosing the right. The gospel really is so simple and good and straightforward. Something I'm learning is that if a teaching, philosophy or idea claims to have higher knowledge or a new view and better of things, it probably doesn't. There is probably a flaw. If it is hard to grasp or understand, it is probably because it's not right and the presenter has to try to take you down another path in order to accept their strange notion. Anyway, the gospel is not like that. It is simple and true and real and open and easy to understand.

Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. He loves us. He wants us home. He wants us to be happy. He understands our pain and sorrow. Nothing is too much for Him. He loves us so much, He will help us follow His ways and keep His commandments and get and stay on the straight and narrow path. I am so grateful for this gospel. I am so grateful to have the true church on the earth again. I am so grateful for a living prophet and apostles with so much love and wisdom to direct His church with the proper priesthood authority from God. My heart is full of gratitude and love.

You can watch it for yourself at www.lds.org .

Groetens! Tot Ziens!! (til next time, that's Dutch!)

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

This is a great book, autobiography about an escaped slave from the South before the Civil War. I highly recommend it to anyone older than about 16. This along with Uncle Tom's cabin really show how slavery worked. There were evil slaveholders and better slaveholders, but they were slaveholders and the system those slaves endured was awful.

Harriet had a good childhood. Her owners were good to them and allowed her parents a Christian wedding and they all lived together as a family. Her father was a freeman, but her mother and grandmother were slaves. Harriet didn't understand the danger and sorrow of being a slave until her parents died and her good owners died and left their slaves to relations. This was when Harriet learned the sorrow of being a slave. Her new slaveholder made inappropriate advances toward her and would never sell her even when she was able to escape his advances. This led to her sending her true love, a free black man, away and then eventually bearing 2 beautiful children out of wedlock to a kinder white bachelor hoping that would lead to her being sold. The owner still would not sell her and continued to treat her with spite and hatred and continued to try to take her over. Once Harriet realized that the owner would hurt her children to get to her, she ran away. She hid in a tiny compartment under the roof of her grandmother's house for seven years until an opportunity to escape the hounds and people of the South arrived. Once in the North, she was eventually able to free herself of the evil of slavery and give her children what she had been denied.

It is a fascinating read and I don't do it justice here at all. Some of the aspects I found to be quite interesting were that Harriet herself was part white, and many slaves were children of their white slaveholding fathers. These fathers would sell their children without a second thought. It was also sad to read about people she knew who were even worse off than she. Many mothers' children were sold with no way for them to ever reunite, even nursing babies were sold from their mothers. The poor white men who didn't own slaves had as much if not more contempt for the slaves than the slaveholders, and they relished in searching for runaways and loved to search the slaves' houses and take whatever they wanted. There really was no way out for these people. There was also terrible prejudice in the North once the lucky onew got away, and the Southerners still had the law on their side if they could locate a runaway in the North. Also, Northerners were given a rose colored view of slavery when they visited the South, and anybody who tried to help the slaves learn or better themselves at all was run out of town.

There are more interesting aspects. It was a sad story, but also one of triumph of the human spirit. Harriet never gave up. She was a true mother and lived for her children. I hope I always appreciate the blessing I have to live with and raise my children freely in a society where mothers are respected and appreciated. (I also read the Good Earth which I will report on sometime and that story reinforced my gratitude and appreciation.) What a woman, Harriet Jacobs was. She did what she had to do and she perservered and never gave up and in the end she was able to send her children to school in the North and give them what she never had: FREEDOM!!!!!

The Answer to Life's Problems-- Sunday Verse

After all this energy I have expended on Love and Logic, it is nice to know that there is an answer to the evil. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Here are some of the words of King Benjamin:

Mosiah chapter 4:

" 9 Believe in ^aGod; believe that he is, and that he ^bcreated all things, both in heaven and in earth; believe that he has all ^cwisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man doth not ^dcomprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend.

10 And again, believe that ye must ^arepent of your sins and forsake them, and humble yourselves before God; and ask in ^bsincerity of heart that he would ^cforgive you; and now, if you ^dbelieve all these things see that ye ^edo them.

11 And again I say unto you as I have said before, that as ye have come to the knowledge of the glory of God, or if ye have known of his goodness and have ^atasted of his love, and have received a ^bremission of your sins, which causeth such exceedingly great joy in your souls, even so I would that ye should remember, and always retain in remembrance, the greatness of God, and your own ^cnothingness, and his ^dgoodness and long-suffering towards you, unworthy creatures, and humble yourselves even in the depths of ^ehumility, ^fcalling on the name of the Lord daily, and standing ^gsteadfastly in the faith of that which is to come, which was spoken by the mouth of the angel.

12 And behold, I say unto you that if ye do this ye shall always rejoice, and be filled with the ^alove of God, and always ^bretain a remission of your sins; and ye shall grow in the ^cknowledge of the glory of him that created you, or in the knowledge of that which is just and true."

He continues with how we should act:

"13 And ye will not have a ^amind to injure one another, but to live ^bpeaceably, and to render to every man according to that which is his due."

Here's how we should raise our children and teach them, notice he uses the word teach, not inspire, not make them figure it out and suffer consequences -- TEACH them:

"14 And ye will not suffer your ^achildren that they go hungry, or naked; neither will ye ^bsuffer that they transgress the laws of God, and fight and ^cquarrel one with another, and serve the devil, who is the master of sin, or who is the ^devil spirit which hath been spoken of by our fathers, he being an enemy to all righteousness.

15 But ye will ^ateach them to ^bwalk in the ways of truth and ^csoberness; ye will teach them to ^dlove one another, and to serve one another."

In light of Love and Logic and other strange educational philosophies I have been dealing with, this scripture came to mind:

"29 And finally, I cannot tell you all the things whereby ye may commit sin; for there are divers ways and means, even so many that I cannot number them."

We have to be more careful and more discerning about things we think are good. If it is not simple and strait and narrow, then it is probably not good. If it is not meek and humble and easy, and something that everyone could do if they wanted, then it is probably not good. The gospel is simple. It is the way to happiness. We don't need to know the mysteries to be happy. Enjoy your children, your husbands and wives. Be happy. Stop trying to find hidden meanings and deeper understanding. There are several scriptures that say this:

1. Matt. 7: 13-14
   13 ¶ Enter ye in at the ^astrait ^bgate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to ^cdestruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
   14 Because ^astrait is the ^bgate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto ^clife, and few there be that find it.
2. 3 Ne. 14: 13-14
   13 Enter ye in at the ^astrait gate; for wide is the gate, and ^bbroad is the way, which leadeth to destruction, and many there be who go in thereat;
   14 Because strait is the ^agate, and ^bnarrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and ^cfew there be that find it.

I wish there were more than a few who could find it, because it really is simple and easy and good and happy. Why do we make things so difficult for ourselves?

Taking a Stand

It's hard to stand up for something the first time one is exposed to something evil like Love and Logic, because first of all that person may be so appalled that they are speechless and second of all they may wonder if they are really right or not. And we definitely don't want to infringe on others' agency. But once one knows if something is right or wrong, by thinking about it, researching it, etc. then it is their duty to stand up and call it for what it is, evil.

Evil gets a foothold and spreads when good people stay out of the way and let it go. It is hard to do sometimes, especially when it involves people I care about, but protecting children and standing up for what's right is more important than people's delicate feelings. Maybe I won't be able to convince those who are already doing it, but maybe they'll remember what I said at some point, and it will help them. Also, maybe I can put people on guard before they are exposed to this philosophy so that they can give themselves permission to not accept it right off the bat.

This is from the BBC psychology website:

"Psychologists have discovered that even the most independent- minded of us will conform to social pressure when we are with a group of people. In one classic experiment, people were shown a vertical line and asked to find a line of identical length from a selection of three.

You might think that this is an absurdly easy task, and when people perform it by themselves they do very well.. However, psychologists have discovered that we are very easily swayed by the opinions of other people when we do this task in a group. In one study, a group of three people was set up, where two of the people were confederates of the experimenter. When the confederates deliberately gave wrong answers, people were often swayed to give the wrong answer also. In fact, 75% of people gave at least one wrong answer, with some people conforming to peer pressure on every occasion."

Here is the link to the original study.

We have to be so so careful.

Love and Logic is Evil

I have heard about Love and Logic over the years by different people at different times, but I have never bothered to look into it as I didn't feel like it was something that would be beneficial or useful to me. I finally had the motivation to look into it and it makes me sick.

Parenting With Love and Logic is the most depressing, put down, low book I have ever read. I couldn't even finish it. I just skimmed through the end, and later that night my husband read it and looked into the author's history. It is so sick and disturbing, I'm not sure how much I will write here.

First of all, the author, Foster Cline, begins the book by talking about how these days are so much harder and difficult for our children than it has been in the past, and that the ways we were raised won't work for today's kids. That is a huge red flag!!!!! What??? Are children that much different than their parents when they were kids? I don't think so. Kids are kids. Then he gives the most horrendous examples of bad behaviour of kids I have ever heard-- running all over the grocery store, adding things to the cart, and the mother's attempt to herd them back in and then giving up by buying a treat to keep them under control. The book is full of examples of kids acting terribly and playing on the fear parents have that their child won't turn out unless they follow the misnamed method of Love and Logic.

There is no love in this book. There is no appreciation of children in this book. The parents are not supposed to explain things to the kids because that keeps them from thinking on their own. The parents are supposed to let the kids face the consequences of their decisions by allowing them to sleep in and miss the school bus and then stay in their room all day until they would have come home, by giving away a 7 year old girl's dog because she didn't feed it, by allowing them to not wear their coat when it's cold and then taunt them that you are warm because you wore your coat, to go without dinner because they didn't finish their chores in time. Cline claims that this is teaching your child to think and be responsible because they are facing the consequences. but these are not natural consequences, these are consequences that the parent has complete control over. So the parent is basically manipulating the child.

The devil will tell 10 truths to get you to believe that 1 lie. In this case, Cline is playing on parents' fears that if they don't do what he says, then their child won't become responsible or able to make decisions. He preempts concerns of parents by saying that you don't want to make the same mistakes your parents did towards you, and any concern actually shows you are on the right path. And any parent who disagrees is too protective of their child and is not allowing their child to grow into a responsible adult. He also talks a lot about how parents love their kids too much and keep them facing consequences. So even though it may be hard to follow this method sometimes and taunt your child and watch him suffer, it will be better in the long run, because he'll learn responsibility. So don't listen to that inner voice, just follow the program.

I think the majority of the parents who say they like Love and Logic, like it because they will just take some of the truths out, like follow through on any threat you make, and if you are not willing to follow through, then don't threaten it. They also like the idea of having responsible kids. And hopefully, they do listen to their conscience and don't take the method to the full.

Now it gets worse. It turns out that Foster Cline, M.D. lost his medical license in Colorado because of his Holding therapy and his Rebirth therapy for abused an troubled kids. 5 children suffocated during these treatments, but not with him as the therapist of course, just other therapists whom he trained. There are videos and comments by different people, some of them survivors of these terrible therapies. It is not for the tender hearted. My husband watched some of them and told me not too, which I didn't want to anyway. Now it is 3 a.m. and I couldn't sleep because of it. This relieves me a little that maybe someone can be warned against this ideology. Anything from a man who can stand to watch small children in pain with those awful therapies is evil.

Stay far away from Love and Logic. Warn your friends and neighbors. Go do some research on Foster Cline, read the book. We have got to be more vigilant when it comes to stuff like this. We can't just accept every little thing, or say well it's just not for me. This is terrible for these kids growing up this way. It is not fair.