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Category Archives: parenting and homeschooling

My heart was sad because his was devastated.

Posted on 30 January, 2012 by Jen Rothmeyer (Em)

A Facebook remix:

As kids we don’t understand that when we are heartbroken, our parents are twice as heartbroken. I had the chance to experience that this weekend when my son entered into the local pinewood derby. He’d spent hours dreaming and planning and designing – thinking about his ideal car. He and Aaron worked on it, although Aaron mainly let Nate run the show, and Nate was really excited. His face when his car didn’t even make it across the finish line in all four heats?

He sat there like a stone, silently allowing tears to stream down his face. My son is not normally a quiet crier. He will let you know when you’ve done something wrong. He’s sensitive to sounds, textures, and too much visual stimulus. He’s got buttloads of anxiety to the point that after meeting a doctor three minutes earlier, she was already asking if I wanted to medicate him. It was excruciating to sit there and watch as the tears just slid down and he didn’t move and didn’t make a sound.

By the end, we’d convinced him that he had four more shots to make a better car. He has four more pinewood derbys.

This was a very good learning experience for him. He’s not normally able to control emotions or frustration. This was definitely frustrating for him – watching weeks of work culminate in a car that couldn’t even make it to the end. He had been so anxious prior to the event, asking what he was supposed to do if he lost, and saying that he’d better not lose because he would not be happy. That’s code for he would be uncontrollably upset.

He wasn’t. He held in the noise and let out some tears. But he was dejected. He was devastated.

We could have designed the car for him so that it had a better chance at winning, but we let him design it. Learning to handle disappointment is such an important part of childhood…

…But man, it hurts us both. My heart is sad, even as I laugh, knowing that he won’t remember in a few months how devastated he was.

This is on its way.

At Peace

Posted on 19 January, 2012 by Jen Rothmeyer (Em)

Today was a busy day for me. I accomplished quite a few things, but sadly writing something to EmSun was not one of those things. I feel encouraged, enthused, and hopeful about the work our community is doing to increase connections, resiliency, happiness, and health. I’m so proud to belong to this town of such amazing and creative people in such an amazing area. It’s not just Mount Vernon, either. It’s also Lisbon and the surrounding communities.

I met with students at Cornell College who are forging ahead to create a school garden with ties to the community and we talked for an hour and a half about their impact on the community and their goals. I have a feeling they’ll go quite far. I spoke with the president (or co-president, maybe) of our local gardening club about the programming for this year. I took photos of Heritage Hall and their over-a-century-old grafitti. I spoke with the library director there about her other passion – community theater.

Then I was lucky enough to meet up with some of the others who are working on the Blue Zones Project. It was nice, as always, to see how invested the citizens of our community are.

The photo above really has nothing to do with this post – I took it with the others of the bald eagles out by Indian Creek Nature Center. But, every time I look at that photo I feel at peace. And tonight, when I’m heading to bed with Hurt Machine in my hands (nothing like a murder mystery who-done-it to put you into a peaceful sleep), I’m there. Peaceful. Happy. Content. What a day.

Just Flying Along

Posted on 17 January, 2012 by Jen Rothmeyer (Em)

Homeschooling can be very hard. Sometimes, I feel very much like a deer in the headlights. Often, though, it seems like things just fly along. Today we tackled some math. We turned our abacus into a bead stair (see My Two Happy Homeschoolers for pictures of a bead stair) and I asked Nate how many beads he thought were on the left side of the abacus. He immediately guessed seventy. I asked him if there could be one hundred twenty beads on the left side. He shrugged his shoulders. I told him there couldn’t be and I asked him to explain why.

“Well, Mom. There are only one hundred beads.”

Uh-huh. So then we utilized some strategies to see how many beads there were on the left side and it turned out there were fifty-five. Then I asked him to guess how many beads were on the right side. Without even one hestitation, “Forty-five, Mom!”

Uh-huh. Duh. Of course, Mom. Then I asked him how he knew. “Well, there are only one hundred beads and there are fifty-five over there,” he shrugged with a sigh.

Okay then. Time to move on.

A few hours later, Nate and I went over to Canton Studio and spoke with Becky Hess about some photographs she had of Heritage Hall. Nate was rather well behaved and seemed impressed to meet a real artist who makes artisan glass sculptures and pieces, but his eyes really lit up when we went over to the Lisbon History Center. Nate had the chance to meet Mayor O’Connor of Lisbon and I took the opportunity to ask her to explain to Nate what a mayor does. A little lesson on civic responsibility and government ensued. I suppose we can chalk that up to an introduction to art and government all in one hour and a half long trip.

Not to mention, even hours later he was found – wide-eyed – telling his sister about how he learned all about the history of Lisbon and this really ancient building they have called Heritage Hall which people drew all over!

I dropped Nate off at school for the rest of the day (he attends the specials such as gym and art with his classmates; he’s dual-enrolled) and went on to a meeting about Mount Vernon’s bid to become a Blue Zones Community. (If you haven’t pledged support, do!) Afterwards, I came back home and we bundled up warm so that we could go out to Indian Creek Nature Center. I had heard from a fellow master gardener intern that there were plenty of bald eagles out that way.

We hopped into Aaron’s truck and he drove us out the windy snow-covered roads. We saw plenty of deer (as evidenced above) – I counted well over fifteen. Then, we saw it. A really big bird.

A gorgeous, really big bird. Nate and Sam thought it was “pretty cool,” but they weren’t all that terribly excited. They asked a few questions, scuffed their toes into the snow, and muttered about it being cold. That’s okay. At least they saw bald eagles in the wild.

Now I sit here in front of my computer, sipping my cup of tea, and thinking that really this homeschooling thing isn’t half bad. My son finished a math lesson, some grammar – he can now recite more pronouns than I can and use them correctly, a few spelling exercises, voluntarily read about the human brain and skin in his human body encyclopedia, met a mayor and had a discussion about the government (and bullying, interestingly enough), learned that people make stained glass, saw wild animals in their habitat and received answers to his questions about them, and did it all with a smile on his face and a hug for his mom at the end of the day.

I’m left thinking that when my two leave the nest, I’m certainly going to miss them and the time I spend with them. So, while homeschooling my son can be very hard, it can also just fly along.

Category Archives: parenting and homeschooling

My heart was sad because his was devastated.

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At Peace

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Just Flying Along

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Category Archives: parenting and homeschooling

My heart was sad because his was devastated.

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At Peace

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Just Flying Along

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