I love TV and I don't think kids should be limited in watching it.

The subject line is the short answer to the following question that was posted on one of my homeschooling mailing lists:  

I try to reduce the screen time my children watch TV (actually DVDs), but my [husband]  is the one who [usually] puts movies on.  Is there a website... that talks about the dangers of wachting the screen? I'm also trying to get my husband to read to my children. How can I get him to read more to his children?
 
Here is my long answer:
 
You can find statistics that say anything you want them to, but I personally love TV and don't think it's harmful even in occasional large quantities. As part of my work as a freelance writer, I freelance writing TV reviews and analyses on various web sites and columns. This grew out of writing Star Trek fan fiction adventure stories as a teenager - it helped me hone my writing skills and develop an interest in writing about TV and put me in touch with other writers online. I've made a living very nicely this way, and I've made a lot of great, intelligent friends on TV forums discussing TV, some of whom I've later met in real life. Some of them are even famous. :)

I'm not talking the History Channel or the Discovery Channel - though those are great, too - I'm talking House, Bones, American Idol, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica. Aside from being my preferred background noise while working, and a good way to unwind after a long day, I think I've learned a whole lot from TV shows. You pick up all kinds of tidbits about science, civics, law & government, history, music, health, finances, literature, art, and many other subjects. The stuff that's distasteful to me hasn't really influenced me to live a distasteful life, it just makes me glad I'm not like that and makes me more aware of what the consequences of harmful choices look like. And, yes, PBS, the History Channel and the Discovery Channel have GREAT content on a daily basis. I've even learned a ton about one of my pet subjects - interior decorating and home organization - from TV shows on the Style Channel like "Clean House" and "Dress My Nest."

I'm not saying that you should let your kids watch Law & Order marathons all day; children don't have the perspective or experience to know that they're liable to see something that's harmful or traumatizing to them on shows with intense violence or sexuality, or even adult situations like on "House," which has little of the first 2 things but often shows open heart surgery and things like that. (I find this fascinating, but I won't lie and say some of it is hard to watch.) Your kids don't want to be traumatized, so it's up to you to help them remain untraumatized and inform them of what's on the show so they can make an informed decision. I've never controlled or restricted what my son watches, so he trusts that when I say, "This show has a lot of violence and an upsetting theme," I'm not trying to tell hiim what to do or what to watch, but I'm legitimately looking out for him, and skips it. In this way, also, he has learned what is too intense for him, too.
 
He also knows that he can watch TV whenever he wants in his free time, so he... doesn't actually watch that much TV. I think like with anything else, if a child knows he has access to something, it loses some of its mystique. In homes where I've seen "screentime" tightly regulated, TV is like a precious gem to those kids. It's all they think about all day long! They do their schoolwork with their eye on the clock. They will harangue their mother with "is it time yet?" and argue about every last minute they have and it's just sad. My kid just knows it's there for fun and sometimes chooses to watch it, but mostly not. It doesn't cast a shadow over all his free time. It's just one of many things we can do for fun.

That's a sticking point, of course - if there's nothing to do in your house, then you can't blame the kids for wanting to watch TV, vs. sitting down with a worthy novel or something.  If you're worried your kids watch too much TV, try providing them with tons of alternatives that THEY love (not that you find worthwhile - stuff THEY enjoy and THEY think is cool.)  If you're having too much fun to remember to watch TV, you're not going to turn into a couch potato.
 
I'm saying that if your kids and husband really love watching television, maybe instead of trying to control that love, you could try to watch with them and see what it is they love so much about it and try to share it with them. I watch a lot of Disney channel shows with my son and we've shared a lot of laughs and had a lot of good talks with him about many issues thanks to what we see.

What we watch doesn't always reflect my values, but when it doesn't, I talk about it with him or mention it briefly with him, and sometimes he asks me to expound, so that's lead to a lot of good discussions about how our values differ from the world's. And watching "American Idol" tryouts together is a joy for four generations of my family every year. :)

Part of it is trusting what your kids' idea of fun is, and part of it is also trusting that they're smart enough to understand that just because Hannah Montana said it, doesn't mean it's okay for them to say it, too. It's never been a problem for us.

Your husband, I'm afraid, can't be "made" to do anything he doesn't want to do. Unlike children, who CAN be controlled (for now), husbands are adults who get to make their own choices. Trying to take that away is likely to breed resentment, even with good intentions. How would you feel if your husband tried to make you read less, and watch more TV? It would probably just breed resentment then, too. For the peace of the household and peaceful relationships with family members, I think it's better to just embrace what family members enjoy doing rather than try to make them conform to what my idea of "good" and "worthwhile" is. I'm trying this with my son's video games, too, and whaddaya know, those are also turning out to be fun and educational.

To answer the original question, I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there is no direct, concrete proof that watching TV is harmful in any way. There are anecdotal opinions, and there is a lot of fear-mongering and a lot of slanted conclusions based on loaded studies, but there's no established causal correlation between TV and any kind of physical or emotional harm to kids.

I hope this post is taken in the loving, encouraging spirit it's intended.

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Why we don't do special diets.

Lately I've been reading a lot about unschooling/ natural parenting. What I've found is that the more I read, the more I have to unsubscribe from homeschooling list/ discussion/ message forum I've been reading, because I find it so toxic to deal with so many people's overwhelming control issues.   One of the main ways in which people perpetuate control issues is through their controlling their kids' food. Whether it be through a special diet or through vegetarianism or limiting sweets or SOMETHING. I guess since it's such a basic need, it's a basic starting point for control. For me this has been very evident in online and RL circles of parents with special needs kids. It seems like everyone who homeschools a kid with autism is obsessed with controlling the autism (or more accurately, the autistic child) via controlling their kids' food.    When my son was very small, I tried the Gluten Free, Casein Free diet prescribed to many parents of autistic kids. I saw my son suffering, and connected it to his being different from other kids; I didn't blame it on the fact that *I* was the one struggling because his personality and needs don't fall in line with cliche child development expectations but because he was autistic and hyper and I was convinced THAT NEEDED FIXING and this diet claimed to help me do that.   I tried the GFCF for 9 months. It was sincerely all 31 flavors of hell. I am a single parent who works from home and though Dad is supportive and contributes, we are on a very tight budget and I have limited amounts of time. GFCF cooking and eating was expensive and time consuming. AND DISGUSTING. All the GFCF substitutes for the real things are gross, y'all. Fake bread and pasta and cookies - all gross. Real Oreos are good, GFCF "oreos" are nasty (my son and I have a joke now - any food whose name includes quotes is probably inedible). Some things are edible, but edible isn't the same as enjoyable. And I'm not going to pay $7 for a marginally edible loaf of bread that takes me 3 hours to make, when $1.59 buys me a really good normal loaf from Publix.   I hated the diet the whole time we adhered to it. I felt like a horrible person, snatching cookies out of my kid's hands at birthday parties, naysaying all his food preferences, nagging him to drink soymilk (which neither of us, we can now admit, really likes) instead of cow's milk, etc etc. etc. It was socially limiting and restrictive to my child, so I couldn't see how that helped with my son's social struggles. And the more you find out about this way of eating, the longer the list of foods you cannot eat gets. Your food world gets narrower and narrower. And worst of all, when I really started questioning and reading the scant research there is out there, I discovered there is almost NO SCIENTIFIC PROOF that it helps make autistic kids happier or more well-functioning (whatever that even means) at all.   And yet there are autism treatment centers who won't even see you for a consultation if you are unwilling to absolutely control everything your kid eats.   I am not saying there is no such thing as a gluten intolerance or allergy to artificial ingredients or whatever. Obviously there are. There are tests for that. I now tell parents, if you think your kid is celiac, or allergic to anything else, this is a serious thing that is permanently and radically life-altering. Get him tested and make sure there are solid medical reasons for controlling his food to that degree. Don't start eliminating all your kids' preferred food just because you hope, based on frantic Internet anecdotes, that it'll make your 5yo less hyper. (God forbid a 5yo should be hyper.) That is a recipe for sure-fire misery all around and probably won't do anything but perpetuate misery.

 
I now think it's easier to blame a slice of bread for your unhappy but otherwise perfectly normal-for-him 5yo than it is to blame your own parenting. I'm not saying that to be unkind to other parents; I'm saying that out of my own experiences. It was easier for me to blame wheat and milk for the unhappiness in our home than it was for me to blame my attempts at control and my lack of understanding toward my son.
 
I read so much about autism and diets now and parents' massive control issues and pain seem so transparent, it hurts me to read it. "You've heard apples cause problems? My son loves apples. He eats apples every day. Maybe it's making him more autistic. What about apples is bad? Maybe I should throw out all his apples." And I just hurt for that poor little child who already takes so little joy in eating, and now he won't get his apples either!
 
In fact, a big part of the GFCF autism cult is the idea that if a child strongly prefers a food, it is because they're "addicted" to it and causes serotonin levels to spike "like an opiate" (again, adherents will freely concede there is no scientific basis for this at all, it is almost entirely anecdotal) and that preferred food should automatically be SUSPECT and possibly eliminated in a radical way.  It seems so obvious now to me where this all stems from. I feel like thousands of autistic kids must be living lives of quiet food-related desperation because of this, because they are told that what they love to eat makes them SICK. And sadly, SICK mostly means "more authentically themselves".
 
About 9 months into the GFCF diet, I gave up and announced we we would start eating whatever we wanted. My kid is now 11 and eats whatever he wants, whenever he wants it.  I am a single mom on a limited budget and can't afford EVERYTHING, so each week we make a list of stuff we feel like eating, way more than we could eat that week. We include stuff I like and stuff he likes - they don't always overlap, but neither of us censor ourselves. Then we check on the local grocery ads and, being fiscally responsible sorts, we try to buy food for the week based on what's on sale from our list.
 
We then have a list of stuff we can make from what we bought posted on our fridge. It's a list of about 25 different meal ideas. They are suggestions. Every mealtime, he checks out the list and picks out what he wants and I make it. Sometimes we have breakfast for dinner or vice versa. Sometimes I make new things as "sides;" sometimes he tries them and sometimes he doesn't. He's incredibly healthy; he hasn't been sick in forever and he's shooting up like a weed, so I don't worry.
 
Annnnd. Guess what. He's still "hyper" and high-energy (when did we decide this was an illness?). He's also still autistic. But taking ice cream and chocolate milk away isn't going to change that for him. So if he wants ice cream, he eats ice cream. And so do I! It is interesting to me that despite his school-psychologist diagnosis of "worst case scenario ADHD" my son has a great capacity for attention - to things in which he is interested. I just no longer classify his interests as dysfunctional and no longer try to coercively change them with food.
 
Of course I cannot say this on any autism-homeschool list without being flayed alive. When I expressed doubts about the GFCF racket (it is a racket, there are whole companies devoted to marketing vitamins, nasty bread substitutes, etc. to adherents of the diet) on these lists, I was told I was a bad parent who didn't try hard enough and who sought after my own convenience over the "needs" of my child. I have even been called abusive because people believe giving wheat to a kid with autism is the same as giving sugar by the spoonfuls to a child with diabetes. But the reality is that my child didn't "need" to have cookies snatched out of his hand at birthday parties to be happy.
 
My child just needs to be loved and encouraged exactly as he is.

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Pictures from the Pablo Cano Marionette and Art Show

Today we attended a beautiful marionette show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, FL.  It featured a Greek-myth inspired play populated by stunningly detailed and charming marionette puppets made from found objects (aka trash!) by the incredibly talented Miami-based artist, Pablo Cano. You can see many of his beautiful and very moving pieces and find out more about this unique artist on his web site.

 
The show, an original libretto by the artist's friend, told a tale of Cavaletti, a Renaissance knight who longs to make a name for himself, but falls asleep in the forest and dreams of interacting with Odysseus and many members of the Greek pantheon, including Athena, Aphrodite, the Chimera (made from a lady's purse, a headboard and some LED lights, it's the red creature puppet seen in the pictures), the Cyclops, the Pegasus and much more.
 
The stage was hand-crafted for the show, and had empty doorways on either side of the backdrop as stage wings, instead of the traditional perpendicular theater entrances. The actors stepped right on and off the stage in front of us. In this way, the stage mimicked the mechanics of a German cuckoo clock!  The show was absolutely fantastic, and afterwards the artist, Mr. Cano, directly interacted with the children and was happy to answer all their questions. Much to my surprise, he didn't chastise the children who got so curious and fascinated with his pieces that they couldn't resist reaching out and touching. He even let our friend Simon work the wings on the Pegasus! He was very kind, and is obviously very, very talented. What a great experience for everyone! Below are the pictures.

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Pictures from the Best. Halloween. Ever.

Today we hung out in Miracle Mile, did a little trick-or-treating there, then we went to the 8th birthday party of a friend of Shorty's, then all the kids went trick-or-treating in THEIR neighbhorhood. We all had SO much fun!!!   Shorty dressed as Mario from Super Mario Brothers - he looked so cute and he was a huge hit! Everyone who passed him oohhed and ahhed at his costume. :) We had bought a fake moustache, but it was so hot out that he kept sweating the glue on, so we ended up just drawing it on with eyeliner. It looked hilarious!    I just had various holiday paraphernalia on, and some fancy make-up (I had been planning to wear big sparkly fake eyelashes, but forgot to buy the adhesive. So now I own big sparkly eyelashes...)  Shorty said my costume was "Someone who enjoys Halloween." Hee! A few little kids asked me how I got my hair that uniformly silvery. "Was it like a spray or something?" Yeah, or something. LOL!!   My mom unfortunately has a pinched nerve in her back at the moment, and is limping as a result, so true to her sense of humor, she dressed as a zombie. She handed out candy to the trick-or-treaters who stopped by the party and gave many of them quite a scare.  My friend's son the birthday boy dressed as a flying squirrel - you'll see him demonstrating how they glide through the air below. ;)  Best of all, my friends the parents of the birthday boy dressed as Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman from "Mythbusters."   And a good time was had by all!

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My friends Tracy & Sean, dressed as the Mythbusters. LOL!

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At Starbucks with Super Mario... I mean the kidlet... lol he looks GREAT!

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Two cake stands/displays I made, from upcycled & vintage glassware.

Paid a visit to my local Goodwill store today, and decided to turn this group of vintage mismatched china and glassware into two cake stands/ displays.   The blue one is a French provincial pattern with some modern geometric elements. I thought that paired nicely with the cobalt blue glass base, which has little polkadots etched all over it. It turned out quite fancy looking :) So I'll be using that to serve things, probably at holidays and when guests come calling and whatnot. I would love to find a large bell jar to cover it and make it a real cake stand!   The second project was significantly trickier, as I was using a liquid adhesive and it was difficult to glue the thin lip of the plum colored shot glass to the mustard-colored plate (from Pier One). But so far it looks pretty solid.  I liked the elegant Japanese-inspired brush painting on the top plate; wish the gold trim wasn't quite so worn, but I guess that's part of its shabby-chic appeal. I'll be using that as a permanent display on my kitchen table, for fruits and other goodies.   Total costs for the project: $3.50. Not including the adhesive. :)   I have one more left to make - a jewelry holder made from an upcycled matching violet-trimmed salad plate and tea saucer, with a gorgeous purple votive holder as the stand between them. Maybe I'll make a few of these for Christmas! They're pretty, versatile, easy, inexpensive, unique and quite durable. Needless to say,  I'm quite pleased with myself right now. :D

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My cute cute cute new glasses :)

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Review: Trail Guide to US Geography from GeoMatters

This year for US geography, my son, age11, is using the Trail Guide to US Geography curriculum from GeoMatters. We're on week six, and so far, we are very happy with the results. Shorty is learning one state per week nstead of cramming two or three states per week as the curriculum recommends. When we get to Florida, our home state, we will spend an extra week or two doing a Florida history and state study lapbook using additional resources as well.

In this way, Shorty will take a little under two years to complete the course, but so far, we're finding that pace really suits him. He is really digging into each state every day and chatters endlessly about all the cool stuff he's learning about America.

The curriculum teaches the same content with questions and activities for three levels: K-3, 4-8 and high school. So you can use the same curriculum for all your kids and do a state study with the whole family, or do it three times with each child and learn totally new information. It also teaches research skills with atlases, dictionaries, almanacs and other sources, and includes map drills, art projects and other hands-on recommendations. It's fairly inexpensive for everything you get and you can use the resources for several years.

Here is a link for their online store.

For this curriculum, you'll need:

- Trail Guide to US Geography - $18.95 - it is $12 on Amazon. This is the spine of the curriculum, with all the daily questions, map drills, and projects and resources listed for each state, plus an 8-week literature-based study on the fifty states at the end.

- Some kind of comprehensive US State atlas - we LOVE the one she recommends, Children's Illustrated Atlas of the 50 states, which is $10. The author explained to me on the Yahoo! group that no atlas she found was 100% amenable to the questions and approach in her book - all the ones she reviewed lacked this feature or that piece of information, because there seems to be no perfect children's state atlas around - but that is okay, because a main goal of the course was to teach the child research skills on a global scale, so that if your child can't find something in the atlas, he knows how to find it elsewhere, or online. I liked that, and so far, I have seen it bear out results.

You'll also need some kind of access to blank maps. We've been really happy with the Uncle Josh book she has for sale - it's usable for world geography, history, and many other purposes as well, very well worth the $20 on the site, available from Amazon and RainbowResource for $12 or so. I think it's probably possible to get blank outline maps of each state for free online, but I like having it all there in one place. I make copies on my printer each week. They have all the maps available on CD-ROM for nearly $30, but we found that a little out of our price range. Your family's mileage may vary, and I think it may be very worthwhile if you have more than one child.

You'll also need a recent almanac, we got the 2009 paper back almanac from Time Life for about $9, but Time for Kids has a kid-friendly one for the younger set for that much, too. Again, these are resources you'll use for years and a main purpose of the curriculum is to teach research skills organically. Of course, there are online almanacs and resources which can take the place of a hard copy almanac, but I am really loving the hands-on approach to teach children research skills. It has definitely been successful in that so far with my kiddo and I'm really happy with it.

Finally, they have an 8-week section at the end on learning geography through literature, so for the US geography course, you'll need a copy of the novel "The Captain's Dog" about the Lewis and Clark adventures. We won't get to that until late next year, and we'll then get ours from the library for free.

There are 2 other recommended resources that are optional from GeoMatters - Geography Through Art, an art project book which can also be used with their world geography curriculum, and Eat Your Way Through the USA, a national recipe book. My son has textural/ food/ OCD issues due to his autism so we skipped the recipes, but he has been enjoying the Geography Through Art book - I put the projects from that book as an art workbox whenever we have it come up :) But the curriculum is quite doable without either of these books.

It cost me under $50 total, and considering it was for over 2 years' worth of in-depth hands-on material I didn't think that was too bad at all! I could probably have cut down on the costs, too, if I had decided to forgo the almanac and the outline maps, yet I don't regret purchasing either of these. I'm just very impressed with the quality of the programs. When Shorty gets done with the US Geography course next year, we'll definitely consider purchasing their Trail Guide to World Geography course for 8th and 9th grade. They have an additional course, Trail Guide to Bible Geography, which is a survey of geography of the ancient world, but that's thinking too far ahead for us!

They have a Yahoo! group, on which the author posts quite actively, in case you have any questions not covered by their course samples and detailed FAQs on their main site: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/GeographyTrailGuides/

They also offer two complete curricula centered around geography that come very highly recommended by many parents I know, Galloping the Globe for world geography, and Cantering the Continent for US geography. Those are a little more expensive initially, but as I understand it, they are complete, geography-centered unit-based curricula designed for multiple years of use, and all you need to do is add math and language arts/phonics. Their Trail Guide series is their stand-alone geography curriculum, which we chose because we already had AmblesideOnline as a main curriculum and because my son doesn't really like unit studies.

I should mention that AmblesideOnline has its own literature-based geography studies, using living books by Holling C. Holling like "Seabird," "Minn of the Mississippi" and "Paddle to the Sea." Unfortunately, for some reason, my son HATES doing geography this way and strongly dislikes all of Holling's books! So we're happy with this more formal, structured, research approach to learning geography.

Bonus points for us: it's turned out to be very workboxable!

We're on the sixth week of our school year this year, and so far, my son enthusiastically cites geography as his favorite subject, and can tell you all kinds of details about the six states he's learned about so far. I think that speaks for itself!

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Pictures from the Christmas Carol Train Tour!

Yesterday my friend and I took our boys to see the Christmas Carol Train Tour here in Miami, FL. It was a really lovely exhibit. The kids loved being able to see all of Charles Dickens' artifacts up close and personal, and they REALLY enjoyed being able to find out how all the stop-motion animation of the film took place. We were amazed to find out that over 8000 computer servers were used in processing the data for this film. The staff was Disney-friendly as per the norm, and the exhibit was on a real, live train. The exhibit was truly interactive - both I and my adult friends and our kids found enough to be interested. At the end the kids got to have their faces morphed into the various characters, and then we went into the large inflated tent, where we watched a 15 minute sneak preview of how the film was made.

During this, we saw a 3-minute clip of the scene where Fred invites Ebenezer Scrooge to Christmas dinner, and the infamous scene where Jacob Marley first visits his old business partner. The dialogue sounded like it was taken straight from the novel, not dumbed down for kids at all, and Jim Carrey outdid himself doing the voice for Scrooge - he is unrecognizable in all the best ways. Overall, I was extremely impressed with the preview - this looks to be not just a cutting-edge CGI film, but a faithful and loving retelling of a timeless tale of redemption. Can't wait!

If you want to see when the train comes by your hometown (if it hasn't already - this exhibit has been touring since late May) you can check it out here: http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/christmascaroltraintour/

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