A Teacher’s View of the Book: The Strong-Willed Child

Strong-willed children grow into strong-willed adults who can either create beauty and lead others to greatness or let their strong spirit hurt and squash those around them. The beginning of the road to greatness or ruin lies with the choices the parents make in teaching the child how to use that strong will.

My parents had to stand up to me many times because I’m one of those strong-willed people. I’ve gotten a taste of what they went through during my years as a teacher, especially a year and a half ago. I had one especially strong-willed student who was leading the whole class toward being rebellious. With God’s help and courage, I took him on, and he eventually left the school. I couldn’t change that student, but I could let him receive the consequences for his behavior.

The New Strong-Willed Child

Receiving appropriate consequences for behavior is how strong-willed children learn, according to Dr. James Dobson in The New Strong-Willed Child. From my personal experience (I hadn’t learned how to submit well to female authority (I was fine with male, but always wanted to buck females) until I got fired a few years back, so I had to learn the hard way) and from teaching tough, inner-city students, I see that it takes persistence and a ferocious will to keep standing up to a child who just wants what he or she wants and always is pushing for that.

Reading The New Strong-Willed Child gave me so much encouragement about how I handled my classroom: I stood up to those children because they wanted to see if I would let them get away with disrespect, cheating, and laziness. Dr. Dobson tells many stories of children who want to see if they can get around what their parents were asking them to do, and I was surprised by how much ENCOURAGMENT came through the book.

Dr. Dobson draws from being a classroom teacher, a child psychologist, and a parent of a strong-willed child himself to share solutions and advice mixed with much care. He does not want to see parents bewildered by their children, and he knows that parents CAN parent strong-willed children well.

A strong-willed child makes the parents (or teacher) look bad by not being able to control the child. If the parent had a compliant child, the parents would look normal and like great parents. The strong-willed child gives parents a test of their leadership, their authority, and has so much energy to keep on doing it. These children like to take on the authority figure to see if they can break the adult and get what they want. Dr. Dobson encourages parents to just keep on standing up to these children, molding them, teaching them to listen to authority. It takes so much energy to stand up to a little one who is pushing the limits every day, but the child will learn if the parent is consistent.

Reading The New Strong-Willed Childmade me thankful that I held strong when teaching and that my parents held strong with me. It is exhausting, but worth it—the children learn that they must listen to you. And strong-willed children become amazing strong-willed adults who change the world.

This book is worth reading. Check it out: 🙂

The New Strong-Willed Child

Peace!

~Mary Hope

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Thank you again, and peace to you and your family!

~Mary Hope

Four Books that are Helping Me Learn How to be a Mother

Pregnant with your first baby or just want to know of some knowledgeable books to have on hand while parenting? Four that I have been dipping into recently include one on breastfeeding (that I read before the baby arrived and now have been looking up different sections for reassurance about different topics), a step-by-step developmental guidebook, a book about sleeping (that I read while my baby was just a couple of months old) and a book about eating.

Sweet Times with My Dad

My Dad will be 81 on June 4^th, and I’m pondering my favorite memories of him…here are a few:

Let’s start with some food memories (since Dad and I both love our food!) We had a huge hickory tree next to our driveway, and each fall it would drop thousands of nuts—at first they we insulated in 1/2inch thick covering, that would fall off in quarters as they dried, then leaving the small (about the size of a blackberry) nut that also had 1/8-inch of shell. My dad made me a “Hickory nut cracker” –a strong contraption that would break through that heavy shell. Once when I was around 10, I took the time to crack a lot of hickory nuts and then I baked them into cookies. They had a strong, pecan-like flavor. I took some out to Dad working in his shop, and he liked them.

Celebrating 40 Years of Marriage

On January 14th my parents celebrated 40 years of marriage! My Dad didn’t talk much, but he knew who we were, and he ate a chocolate eclair to celebrate and shared it with Mom. Then he fell asleep.

Bittersweet Shift

The word to describe yesterday would be bittersweet: In the morning, the reality of my Dad possibly passing away soon hit home. I’m thankful for tears and the release they bring. Then I switched gears to party preparations for a party for my fiancé passing a huge test that advances his career. I went over to his house, turned on a funny movie and got chopping: white chili, finished the red chili, fruit salsa…

Hope’s Swirls

My family is going through a hard time with my Father’s health, and yesterday making this lemon pie calmed me down. Dad had wanted a piece the day before, so I took it to him. He was not up for eating any, but I’m glad I did it. Our family could use your prayers right now. Growing old is a hard transition, especially if a person hopes they will just be fine until they die.
Here’s a few more things that have been life-giving these days:

Mustard against the Sky

This looks like a mustard plant…so that’s what I’m calling it. 😉
Blue and green just combine so beautifully!

Nurturing A Little Tree Hugger

This afternoon my 22-month old nephew and I were hugging the maple tree out back! I just touched the tree, then started hugging it and showed my nephew how, and he did it several times. (He loves hugging his dog, so why not the tree too?!?)

How can we help kids enjoy nature from the time they start walking:

Through High School or to Traditional High School? That is a Homeschooling Gray Question

Homeschooling’s Black, White, and Gray Series 1 Episode 5

Pushing through streams of United States high school students is a cultural experience. In a private school it looks like masses of dark blue uniformed students, arms full of books, trying to get to class on time. The girls are in pleated skirts, trying to get away with having them as short as possible, batting their eyes at the boys as they pass. The boys are trying to keep their football gear on top of the locker, and random students are trying to get their backpack out from behind the lockers. Voices, elbows, and weaving through the people to get to class on time makes up those four minute passing periods. The important social issues (catch up with friends or smile at that cute boy) at school tend to happen then or at lunch. The classes teach students more of the traditional subjects they need to know for life (or at least that is a goal; it’s up to the students if they get it). Does a child need to have this traditional “secondary school” experience to be able to function well in their society?

Of course, one can say the answer is “No,” because a child can learn how society functions through other experiences such as dance classes, sports teams, church groups, and other structured clubs.

The answer may be more gray than that: It depends on the child and what he or she needs in regards to learning styles and in regards to career goals.

Some children do best when surrounded with many other students. They lead the way in making up plays and group games when they are young, and become the student leaders in high school. Extroverted students do better (socially at least) when learning with other students around. If your high school student is more extroverted, considering placing them in a traditional school setting for high school could make them come alive! The people connections and the opportunities to work together will develop them and expand their world in a productive way.

On the other hand, if you have an introverted student on your hands, homeschool high school without a co-op or attending classes at a community college will be a self-paced, self-taught type of education, (depending on the curriculum and the parent’s familiarity with the subject.) Introverts can do better at home, but getting challenged to work in groups is a helpful life experience.
I had an introverted homeschool high school experience, and yes, I have some gaps from areas I wasn’t as interested in, so I didn’t push myself into them deeper, but the education was adequate. If I had known I wanted to be a high school English teacher early in high school, going to public school could have been helpful education.

The decision about going to a traditional high school should be made together with the student because for some careers, traditional high school would be a helpful training ground for going into that field. For example, I have been in the field of education the last five years. I have had some gaps in my knowledge of traditional schools and how students act that I would just know if I had attended traditional school, and knowing the social cues better would have been helpful to have. I’ve learned to fill in those gaps, but it has taken time and more energy than if I had just learned it by growing up through traditional school. (For example: How students are just at their worst for substitute teachers! And I don’t get this idea of trying to get by with the least amount of work possible. Don’t you want to learn?!?) If your homeschool student wants to go into a science field, it might be a good idea to look for a high school that has a more intense science focus or invest in laboratory instruments at your homeschool.

Encourage your student to explore different fields of interest and pick one that she or he loves, and then pick the education method that will help your child succeed the most in that field.

The answer to doing homeschool high school or not is a gray one that homeschool parents will have to think through and decide with their child’s best interest in mind.

By M. H. Campbell Copyright 2014

He Calls Me “Mare-Me”

Getting fired from my job sucked, but so much good has happened since then that I could gratefully say, “Thank you,” to those old bosses if I ever saw them again. Because of the flexibility of job hunting, I visited my brother, sister-in-law, and one year old nephew, Jack, about five times this fall. Since I’ve been around more, Jack recognizes me!

My sister-in-law told me, “He even recognizes you in photos! I showed him photos of family in a picture calendar, and when he saw your photo he said, ‘Mare-me!’ ” I even got to hear him quietly say it (he’s all boy, but sometimes he says his words very gently). This made my heart happy!

Seeing Jack’s smiles after he wakes up from a nap and having snugly time for a while is priceless. Seeing how he started talking and can say, “yes, no, ball, Mama, and Dada” so clearly now is amazing! He has been growing up, and I’ve been able to be around for parts of it. I got to be there during sleep training and going to all milk and no formula.

My sister-in-law is one of my heros–by how she delights in her job as a Mom, even though she is talented and could do other things, she chooses to nurture Jack, and can make some of the parts of motherhood that are very slow and hard, quite fun. She tickles her boy, loves him no matter what, and Jack is just blossoming!

I love seeing how my brother has so much fun with his boy, and Jack has great basketball skills for a one year old.

I can not put a price on these experiences–taking Jack to the apple orchard, celebrating Halloween with him, and making hand-print dough ornaments. The little guy that calls me “Mare-me” is such a gift.

By M. H. Campbell Copyright 2014