I know this blog needs updating more frequently and I promise that I will work on doing just that. In the meantime you can read the 36 blog posts and listen to more than a dozen episodes of the DaddyLife.net podcast.

That’s Not All

Sherry aka @MrsOzz has agreed to co-host a podcast with me on the topic of homeschooling titled the Home School Support Network. This one is also a blog and podcast site offering curriculum and resource reviews, time management tips, as well as experiences with various teaching methods. I have not seen my wife as excited about something technology related since she got her first iPod Touch.

Babywise and Preparation for Parenting are pretty clear on the subject of co-sleeping and we completely agree with the Ezzos on this subject. That said, there might be a night or two when you can safely deviate on the co-sleeping issue with an older kid without messing up all the great nights of sleep you have been given by following the priciples taught in Babywise? An yes, I know that a 15-months old is well out of the ages covered by Babywise but I thought the title would be cute and catchy.

This post is really not about co-sleeping an, but it is about the two big C’s of parenting.  The two big C’s are Context and Characterization.  What is the context of the situation?  Are you characterized by this as a parent?  The context of this situation was pretty obvious in our case.  Sherry was considering the preciousness of others and wanting to allow our older boys to get the amount of sleep they needed.  I am sure this was also the easiest way to get Josiah back to sleep for an hour or so without having a big power struggle.

We are certainly not characterized by having our children sleep in the same room with us even though there have been some (a lot of) occasions where Sherry or I would bunk in the same room with Caden for health and safety reasons.  Caden has got very congested with a cold in the past and he has required frequent suctioning at night to help him avoid aspiration of his secretions.  At four years old Caden still does not swallow at all, not even his own saliva.  If we didn’t help him keep his airway clear then we could have ended up in the hospital with pneumonia.  We ended up in the hospital a few time anyway, but I am sure there would have been many more hospital stays if we had not taken the extra precautions.  Other than those occasions I can probably count the number of times we have slept in the same room with our kids on my fingers. Most of those other occasions happened when we were visiting relatives or friends.

So it is not unheard of for a Babywise mama to co-sleep with a child, but you can be assured that in our family it will only happen on special occasions based on the context of the circumstances.

You can see the Maxwell’s full schedule at Titus2.com.  Aunt Addie said I was the first to RSVP for this event.

Explaining convictions to our young children is one of the most difficult things.  Finding a way to say that people who participate in Halloween are not bad and most people are just having fun.  It is hard when you are using the word fun not joining the “fun”.  We tell our kids that Halloween is an activity that we choose not to participate in as a family.  This is just one more way that we build family identity and set ourselves apart from the world.

I want to share a note my wife left on a parenting forum this week concerning this subject:

I have found a good book that we read every year to communicate the spiritual issues of Halloween. It is called Mommy, Why Don’t We Celebrate Halloween? by Linda Winwood. I find it gives enough details about the spiritual side of the holiday without going overboard.

I too have struggled with the balance. As a child, I remember sitting under the kitchen table with all lights turned out (and of course not a word was spoken)! Those kind of actions left me fearful of the holiday and in a sense elevated evil’s power over the power and authority of Jesus. I rebelled when I was older and indeed participated fully in celebrating Halloween. My moral warehouse wasn’t being filled with any reason WHY! I had no idea why we were sitting in the dark except the explanation that “Halloween is the Devil’s holiday.” This was hard to understand when on the outside nothing looked “evil” in fact it looked pretty fun!

A couple of years after my oldest child was born I felt my heart being pulled away from participating in the holiday though it wasn’t until a year later that I learned the origins of many of the rituals of Halloween. Even with that being said, we are very careful to include our own fun. Building a strong sense of family identity makes the perfect opportunity to bring balance to this holiday. There are many things we do or don’t do because of our convictions based on the Word of God. Our children already know (and Riley will tell you) “We’re the Osborne family and we do/don’t do _________” and they know why we do or don’t do things.

The balance? I think that comes in creating our own fun as a family! We’ve had a family movie night on Mom and Dad’s bed before with popcorn and candy. This year we are looking forward to games, movie and sleeping in the living room (which is on the back side of the house !) We’ll put up a little tent in the living room and we have a huge cardboard box to imagine with. We’ve been saving that box knowing how much fun they’ll have!! I wonder how much sleep we’ll all receive….?!

Have a blessed Fall season!
Sherry for The Osbornes

For those Christians who are led to ignore Halloween or find other alternatives, God bless you, you are not alone even though it may seem so on some days even within your own church family.  For those who are led to minister to people during this time of year or just have a good time dressing up and collecting candy, God bless you.  You are not judged by our family either way.  You are viewed as folks with different convictions.

Previous posts on the subject of Halloween:

Halloween II – Why Christians should not celebrate
Halloween – Should Christians Participate?

2008 SAT scores in South Carolina

Type School       AVG Score*

Public School          980

Private School       1043

Home School         1088

*These scores do not include the new writing section of the SAT.

One observation I took away from this article is that SC is already spending over $11k per student which is more money per student than any of its neighbor states, yet SC is trailing in results. The home schooler are barely mentioned in this article, but at least they shine as the class act with the highest SAT scores mentioned in the article.  I have more to say on education as a whole as it relates to the upcoming election, but I will save that for a separate post on another day.

What are the benefits of teaching parents about modesty and sex education?

• No one can do the job better than properly trained parents, for they are the only ones who have the right to determine what value system is placed into the hearts of their children.
• By training parents it puts the responsibility for this education back where it belongs.
• It reduces moral intrusion into the family structure since the value system of the family is not violated by a secular interest.
• It avoids forcing the institutional morality on family and child such as is represented in various public pro-homosexual curriculums.
• It can be done under the best conditions since parents pick the time and place for its implementation, rather than resorting to a group classroom setting.
• It is more cost effective. As pointed out by Josh McDowell in The Myth of Sex Education, the more money spent per capita on sex education of children the higher the percentage of sexual activity. Expensive public programs are not effective.

Thanks to Shawn Wood for leading me to this post by M. Hyatt.