I registered for and attended a local homeschool/unschool conference this past weekend at a local community college. Under the reccomendations of my mother, simply because she saw it in the paper. I want to say, "Thank you mom for the best belly laughs I have had in a long time!" I had contacted my friend Lizbeth to see if she would like to attend the conference to see what information we could glean from it, since both of us seem at times to be pulling our hair out as to how well equipped we're not at homeschooling. So I thought.
And we're off early Saturday morning to get there when the doors open and smell the aroma of textbooks and wooden toys and learning. I was excited. I had not attended a conference yet and was looking forward to what was out there to enhance my homeschooling.
The campus was beautiful! The building we were in housed the college theatre. I was in my element here! I knew the day was going to be wonderful! We acquired our free totes and nametags at the registration table and moved on to see which sessions we were most interested in attending.
"Oooo..." I said in delight, "I am going to the one about what you eat and how it affects your learning." You must know that I think Satan invented soda pop so therefore it doesn't darken my door. See?
Lizbeth decided to mozey on down to the Cindy Gaddis Right Brain Learner. Hindsight is 20/20!
Within the first 10 minutes of the session my presenter had already said "holy sh@#" and had counseled us on how we should be disecting our children's and our poop to determine food sensitivities and thus being able to adjust our and their diets to accomodate a better learning environment. I knew then I had gotten the better end of the deal! I was texting Liz....."Guess what? My presenter just said 'Holy Sh@#'!" Liz was jealous, she knew I was dying on the inside with intestinal guffaws and silent outbursts of laughing. You're kidding me right? I have to sift through their poop? Honestly? Her daughter was even there to recall a situation where she had become a raving lunatic in a Chinese restaurant because of what she had eaten from the buffet. This from the girl who frantically called her mother in to the bathroom when she had a normal bowel movement because she had never had one before. So that they could stand around the porcelain throne and take advantage of a teaching moment. Yes, I know what you're asking. I DID pay for this conference. You can't get this stuff for free ya know?!
Moving on to the next session where I loved the presenter. Very real. Lots of good info. Wasn't full of ..... Anyway, I felt better about using the restroom after her and not feeling like I should have someone with me to determine whether or not by sifting through fecal matter and urine color if I would be able to follow along with the rest of the conference with the attention span needed.
I felt confident that my selection of sessions was improving. So Liz and I decided that we needed to be a part of the discussion room session where topics about homeschooling would be discussed. Our concerns, our questions on how or why, our brainstorming with other mothers. I was pumped! Finally a forum where I could get some one on one information from people who actually do this stuff. This was a room that was a drop in and out, sort of like a virtual chat room in real life kind of thing. We found our seats and were eager to soak up whatever we could from the room. Little did we know that these women had already passed around a litte somin-somin and took a few puffs off the peace pipe before we got there! Shoot! How'd we miss that party? The discussion was off to a good start with a young mother of two kids, one of which was duct taped to her belly thus squeezing out it's little arms and legs through the side. I hope she was breathing. She was having an issue with her two and a half year old sucking the life out of her 24/7. Her husband wasn't helping, instead he just came in wanting to also have her attention 24/7. And she has a nursing baby, which means you need to be ready 24/7 to drop what you're doing and attend to them as well. She was overwhelmed and looking for reinforcement on how to balance it all. "Have some tea. Meditate. Write your husband a letter and tell him how you feel." Write him a letter? I must tell you that her husband worked from home. She admitted that she let her son watch 30 min of tv a day, which you would've thought she'd beaten him with this group's gasps. These moms pretty much told her to not enforce any rules on him so as not to squelch his little personality or what they referred to as "lifeforce". This woman was almost in tears. She looked as though her clothes were the only thing holding in her melted body. I wanted to hug her.
The discussion moved on. Whew! I was ready for some schoolin stuff. Ha. The next lady with her baby was concerned about her house being in such a dissaray from her 5 kids not wanting to pick up toys or clean up their food mess in their rooms, yadda, yadda, yadda. It took me a minute to understand that I had stepped into a world, a surreal world that I didn't belong in. One poor innocent bystander that had just come into the room piped in, "You need to institute a rule for no food upstairs." I thought the room was going to club her. She grabbed her bag and bolted for the door after hearing from one of the other moms on how you do NOT under any circumstances put rules or limitations on your children. Do NOT tell them no because this just makes the dynamic one of parent vs. child and that the correct way to handle it was to discuss with each child individually how we can all live in harmony together in this house. Ok, her kids are 10 years old down to 10 months. I don't see how that is possible. She basically went on to discuss how to manipulate your child into getting what you want. I would rather scar them with a rule. The room was filled with church-like hecklers with heads nodding and arms raised and some internal "amens" I'm sure. It went on to include some random discussion on one lady's daughter who was babysitting and the mom was holding said baby and it exploded in poop and the daughter said she would clean it up, meaning the baby, and how the mom had to tell her to clean all of it up, but in a way that it was a discussion on how we could harmoniously see that the poop should be irradicated from the floor and the couch and the table. Again, we were back to poop. How did we get there from here?
Lizbeth kept elbowing me saying, "You have to say something."
I admit that I was scared. We were so far from the door and would have to pass by these ladies if we needed to make a quick get away. But I got to the point where I couldn't take it and thought that if I wasn't gonna get what I came for that I might as well see to it that it was fun, in a horror movie adrenaline rush kind of way.
I basically piped in and said that it was unfair of this mother of 5 to think that she was the only one suffering in this chaotic mess and that maybe one or two of her children may also not like it and were suffering because of it. Maybe she should understand that because she allowed to to get this bad that some kids couldn't function in that mess enough to see what needed to be done. I eluded to the fact that she was stifling their own learning, creativity, growth to let it remain a mess. Then I turned to Lizbeth and quietly said, "I'm starving and I need to leave before I eat one of these people." We snuck out while their mouths were still hung open in shock. How dare I. The funny thing is I dumbed it down for their listening pleasure. They couldn't have handled what I had to say.
After lunch we sat in on Cindy Gaddis' sessions on Collaborative Learning. This woman knows her stuff and I would've paid more money to go to a Gaddis Conference that included no BS (and I don't mean Bachelor of Science, either). No matter what age your kids are, from birth to college, this is a great resource for just getting to know their styles and passions and what works best for them as they grow and learn. I would highly encourage you to look into her stuff.
From there I ventured into the Entrepreneurship session. Don't know what it had to do with homeschooling, but I was intrigued. Lizbeth decided I'd had so much fun with the poop disector lady that she was gonna sit in on her Q&A. She didn't make it through her intro before she slipped into the Entrepreneurship session. This lady was hyped up on mountain dew and red bull with a side of no-dos. It was like watching popcorn pop. She had started alot of businesses, but stopped most of them. She admitted that she liked the creative part of starting one but once the doors opened she was bored. Why am I here? Why is she here? She counseled some about writing a plan, a business plan. She didn't have any advice on how or what she did. She just said to go on the internet and search for one and edit it how you wanted it. Ok. Then the question from one mom on how to start her kids in a business. They had done lawn maint but were ready to move on. This lady's advice? But of course, start a poop scooping business. Call it "poop by the yard". What? Did we go back there? Are we talking poop again? What is this conference about anyway? Liz and I started coming up with ideas for renaming this conference for next year. I think I'm gonna put it on the evaluation form before I leave.
And we're off early Saturday morning to get there when the doors open and smell the aroma of textbooks and wooden toys and learning. I was excited. I had not attended a conference yet and was looking forward to what was out there to enhance my homeschooling.
The campus was beautiful! The building we were in housed the college theatre. I was in my element here! I knew the day was going to be wonderful! We acquired our free totes and nametags at the registration table and moved on to see which sessions we were most interested in attending.
"Oooo..." I said in delight, "I am going to the one about what you eat and how it affects your learning." You must know that I think Satan invented soda pop so therefore it doesn't darken my door. See?
Lizbeth decided to mozey on down to the Cindy Gaddis Right Brain Learner. Hindsight is 20/20!
Within the first 10 minutes of the session my presenter had already said "holy sh@#" and had counseled us on how we should be disecting our children's and our poop to determine food sensitivities and thus being able to adjust our and their diets to accomodate a better learning environment. I knew then I had gotten the better end of the deal! I was texting Liz....."Guess what? My presenter just said 'Holy Sh@#'!" Liz was jealous, she knew I was dying on the inside with intestinal guffaws and silent outbursts of laughing. You're kidding me right? I have to sift through their poop? Honestly? Her daughter was even there to recall a situation where she had become a raving lunatic in a Chinese restaurant because of what she had eaten from the buffet. This from the girl who frantically called her mother in to the bathroom when she had a normal bowel movement because she had never had one before. So that they could stand around the porcelain throne and take advantage of a teaching moment. Yes, I know what you're asking. I DID pay for this conference. You can't get this stuff for free ya know?!
Moving on to the next session where I loved the presenter. Very real. Lots of good info. Wasn't full of ..... Anyway, I felt better about using the restroom after her and not feeling like I should have someone with me to determine whether or not by sifting through fecal matter and urine color if I would be able to follow along with the rest of the conference with the attention span needed.
I felt confident that my selection of sessions was improving. So Liz and I decided that we needed to be a part of the discussion room session where topics about homeschooling would be discussed. Our concerns, our questions on how or why, our brainstorming with other mothers. I was pumped! Finally a forum where I could get some one on one information from people who actually do this stuff. This was a room that was a drop in and out, sort of like a virtual chat room in real life kind of thing. We found our seats and were eager to soak up whatever we could from the room. Little did we know that these women had already passed around a litte somin-somin and took a few puffs off the peace pipe before we got there! Shoot! How'd we miss that party? The discussion was off to a good start with a young mother of two kids, one of which was duct taped to her belly thus squeezing out it's little arms and legs through the side. I hope she was breathing. She was having an issue with her two and a half year old sucking the life out of her 24/7. Her husband wasn't helping, instead he just came in wanting to also have her attention 24/7. And she has a nursing baby, which means you need to be ready 24/7 to drop what you're doing and attend to them as well. She was overwhelmed and looking for reinforcement on how to balance it all. "Have some tea. Meditate. Write your husband a letter and tell him how you feel." Write him a letter? I must tell you that her husband worked from home. She admitted that she let her son watch 30 min of tv a day, which you would've thought she'd beaten him with this group's gasps. These moms pretty much told her to not enforce any rules on him so as not to squelch his little personality or what they referred to as "lifeforce". This woman was almost in tears. She looked as though her clothes were the only thing holding in her melted body. I wanted to hug her.
The discussion moved on. Whew! I was ready for some schoolin stuff. Ha. The next lady with her baby was concerned about her house being in such a dissaray from her 5 kids not wanting to pick up toys or clean up their food mess in their rooms, yadda, yadda, yadda. It took me a minute to understand that I had stepped into a world, a surreal world that I didn't belong in. One poor innocent bystander that had just come into the room piped in, "You need to institute a rule for no food upstairs." I thought the room was going to club her. She grabbed her bag and bolted for the door after hearing from one of the other moms on how you do NOT under any circumstances put rules or limitations on your children. Do NOT tell them no because this just makes the dynamic one of parent vs. child and that the correct way to handle it was to discuss with each child individually how we can all live in harmony together in this house. Ok, her kids are 10 years old down to 10 months. I don't see how that is possible. She basically went on to discuss how to manipulate your child into getting what you want. I would rather scar them with a rule. The room was filled with church-like hecklers with heads nodding and arms raised and some internal "amens" I'm sure. It went on to include some random discussion on one lady's daughter who was babysitting and the mom was holding said baby and it exploded in poop and the daughter said she would clean it up, meaning the baby, and how the mom had to tell her to clean all of it up, but in a way that it was a discussion on how we could harmoniously see that the poop should be irradicated from the floor and the couch and the table. Again, we were back to poop. How did we get there from here?
Lizbeth kept elbowing me saying, "You have to say something."
I admit that I was scared. We were so far from the door and would have to pass by these ladies if we needed to make a quick get away. But I got to the point where I couldn't take it and thought that if I wasn't gonna get what I came for that I might as well see to it that it was fun, in a horror movie adrenaline rush kind of way.
I basically piped in and said that it was unfair of this mother of 5 to think that she was the only one suffering in this chaotic mess and that maybe one or two of her children may also not like it and were suffering because of it. Maybe she should understand that because she allowed to to get this bad that some kids couldn't function in that mess enough to see what needed to be done. I eluded to the fact that she was stifling their own learning, creativity, growth to let it remain a mess. Then I turned to Lizbeth and quietly said, "I'm starving and I need to leave before I eat one of these people." We snuck out while their mouths were still hung open in shock. How dare I. The funny thing is I dumbed it down for their listening pleasure. They couldn't have handled what I had to say.
After lunch we sat in on Cindy Gaddis' sessions on Collaborative Learning. This woman knows her stuff and I would've paid more money to go to a Gaddis Conference that included no BS (and I don't mean Bachelor of Science, either). No matter what age your kids are, from birth to college, this is a great resource for just getting to know their styles and passions and what works best for them as they grow and learn. I would highly encourage you to look into her stuff.
From there I ventured into the Entrepreneurship session. Don't know what it had to do with homeschooling, but I was intrigued. Lizbeth decided I'd had so much fun with the poop disector lady that she was gonna sit in on her Q&A. She didn't make it through her intro before she slipped into the Entrepreneurship session. This lady was hyped up on mountain dew and red bull with a side of no-dos. It was like watching popcorn pop. She had started alot of businesses, but stopped most of them. She admitted that she liked the creative part of starting one but once the doors opened she was bored. Why am I here? Why is she here? She counseled some about writing a plan, a business plan. She didn't have any advice on how or what she did. She just said to go on the internet and search for one and edit it how you wanted it. Ok. Then the question from one mom on how to start her kids in a business. They had done lawn maint but were ready to move on. This lady's advice? But of course, start a poop scooping business. Call it "poop by the yard". What? Did we go back there? Are we talking poop again? What is this conference about anyway? Liz and I started coming up with ideas for renaming this conference for next year. I think I'm gonna put it on the evaluation form before I leave.
"I didn't realize how stupid I was til I came here," I exclaimed to Liz as we ran for the car.
Overall, a good day with lots of blog material and lots of stuff I learned in the real sessions. I guess I didn't realize that some of these were just for entertainment. They probably don't want you to get too bored between real sessions.
BTW, my 19 yo son came home last night. I hadn't seen him in a few weeks. He said, "Mom, my poop was algae green. What do think that means?"
Are you kidding me?
Overall, a good day with lots of blog material and lots of stuff I learned in the real sessions. I guess I didn't realize that some of these were just for entertainment. They probably don't want you to get too bored between real sessions.
BTW, my 19 yo son came home last night. I hadn't seen him in a few weeks. He said, "Mom, my poop was algae green. What do think that means?"
Are you kidding me?
5 comments:
Holy CRAP! ROTFL
Wait to go for standing up for sanity!
SMOMN I wish I could have gone with you or at least been a fly on the wall. I luv you
well said. I think I need therapy to recover :) I know Adam's poo isn't algae green because of veggies :)
That sounds like a riot. Thanks for the laugh, it made my day.
It must be green because you are such a phenomenal homeschooler. I'm not quite clear on the connection between hsing and pooping but, obviously, I'm still one of the stupid hsers. Maybe the general population doesn't poop? ;-) That's the only reason I could see for seminar sessions on the topic.
Thanks for the laughs today.
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